Comments

  1. says

    Political/campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    * Progressives already enjoy a narrow majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and with conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley announcing late last week that she won’t seek another term, the left has an opportunity to improve on its advantage.

    * In New York, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler confirmed that he’ll retire at the end of his current term, wrapping up a 34-year career on Capitol Hill.

    * In Georgia’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp isn’t just endorsing retired football coach Derek Dooley’s candidacy, the governor has also reportedly told local donors that he has doubts that Republican Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins can defeat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff next year. [Good news for Jon Ossoff.]

    * A judge in Utah ruled last week that the state’s congressional district map was improperly drawn and needs to be redone. Donald Trump responded to the ruling with predictable hysterics.

    * Speaking of election-related court rulings, a federal appeals court ruled last week that officials in Pennsylvania cannot discard mail-in ballots that are submitted without proper dates on the return envelope. This was not the ruling GOP officials wanted. […]

  2. says

    For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-5/#comment-2276273
    The problem(s) with Kristi Noem accusing CBS of ‘deceptively’ editing an interview

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-5/#comment-2276268
    Judge says Trump administration’s use of US military in Los Angeles violated federal law

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-5/#comment-2276251
    Ukrainian parents started the school year on Monday by sending their children underground.

  3. says

    Reuters: “In Chicago, thousands protest against threat of ICE, National Guard deployment”

    Thousands of protesters packed the streets near downtown Chicago on Monday, singing, chanting and waving signs protesting U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to flood the city with National Guard troops and federal immigration agents.

    The march was one of roughly 1,000 “Workers over Billionaires” protests across the country on the U.S. Labor Day holiday. But Chicago’s demonstration had a decidedly more pointed tone as residents bristled against Trump’s promise to target Chicago next in a deployment similar to those under way in Los Angeles and Washington D.C., two other Democrat-run cities.

    Mayor Brandon Johnson, speaking to the crowd, vowed that Chicago would resist federal encroachment.

    “This is the city that will defend the country,” he said, receiving loud cheers from protesters waving blue-striped Chicago flags.

    As the crowd wove through the city, some walking dogs and carrying children on their shoulders, diners sitting outside at local restaurants and cafes pumped their fists and cars honked in support. […]

    Protesters said they were concerned by Trump’s threat to send out the National Guard and additional ICE agents.

    […] Homicide rates in the nation’s third-largest city have plunged in recent years, according to city crime data. […]

    City and state leaders have already readied measures to shield Chicago from federal troops and would likely launch a slew of lawsuits challenging a deployment, which legal experts said would violate the U.S. Constitution and a 19th-century law prohibiting the military from enforcing domestic laws.

    Mayor Johnson signed an executive order on Saturday saying that Chicago police will not collaborate with federal agents or National Guard troops and directing all police officers to wear official uniforms and not to wear masks.

    Meanwhile, immigrant rights groups have worked to fortify their defenses amid threats of stepped-up immigration enforcement by working to hire more attorneys, staffing immigration hotlines and launching more “know your rights” training.

  4. says

    Wall Street Journal link

    “Trump Family Amasses $5 Billion Fortune After Crypto Launch”

    “The WLFI token trades above its previous value, confirming a paper windfall for the president and his sons”

    The Trump family notched as much as $5 billion in paper wealth on Monday after its flagship crypto venture opened trading of a new digital currency. […]

    I do not have full access to this paywalled article.

  5. says

    Transcript: Trump Threat to Occupy Cities Gets Scarier in Vile Fox Hit. (New Republic link.)

    “As the GOP rallies behind Trump’s vow to send the military into more blue areas, a media observer explains how the press is botching the politics of the story […]”

    […] Sargent [host, Greg Sargent]: So Fox contacted GOP senators to ask if they’d support Trump sending troops to their state cities. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said this, “Blue cities like Memphis need all the help they can get to combat violent crime.” And Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri told Fox News, “Local leaders in blue cities have allowed crime to run rampant,” while signaling an openness to troops coming to St. Louis. Jamo, your reaction to all that?

    Jamison Foser: Well, my first reaction is that Fox, as a standard for them, loaded that question up for Republicans by asking them about sending troops to blue cities rather than about the crime-ridden areas run by Republicans in those red states. If you look at the national stats on murders and other violent crimes over the last two decades, you see a pretty consistent pattern of places with the highest murder rates are in red states run by Republican governors, and a lot of them are in red cities. That’s the fundamental lies at the heart of all this. And you might’ve gotten a little bit different response from Republicans there, but the bigger picture is striking and important and really horrifying how openly Republicans are talking about using the military against the opposing political party. And that’s really what this is about. It’s obviously not about crime, because they’re not focused on high-crime areas. They’re focused on Democratic-run cities. And you have an entire political party, not just Donald Trump, pretty eager to deploy the United States military to intimidate and harass and dominate Democratic voters in Democratic cities.

    Sargent: Well, in fact, both senators used the phrase “blue cities.” This is expressly about inflicting troops on Democratic areas, even ones made up of their own constituents. Although maybe these senators don’t think of those people as their own constituents, which is the core of this as well. Either way, it strikes me as a dark new turn in all this. Now Jamo, I have to confess, I originally thought Trump would never be willing to send troops to any area in red states—but he was recently asked about this and he expressed openness to sending them to cities in red states. So as long as Democratic areas are the ones targeted, it’s all good, right, Jamo?

    Foser: Yeah, I think they’re perfectly happy to suppress and harass and intimidate Democratic voters in red states as well as blue. That’s one thing they’re pretty consistent on: their willingness and even eagerness to do everything they can to make life miserable for and intimidate and harass any opposition they have anywhere.

    […] Foser: Yeah, this is what’s driven me nuts the last week or so seeing some of the coverage of Trump sending troops into cities. First of all, it gets framed by the news media as an effort to fight crime, but it clearly isn’t. Nobody commits more crimes than Donald Trump. The guy’s not against crime. He’s a criminal. And what we know is obviously happening here, because he’s said it and his administration has said it, is that this is an attempt to just take power away from Democrats. And Kristi Noem, his secretary of Homeland Security, said a couple of months ago that they’re not leaving Los Angeles until they’ve liberated the city from the elected officials who are the mayor and the governor in Los Angeles and California. That’s not about fighting crime. That’s about staging a political coup. That’s about overthrowing the elected leadership of localities. So this isn’t about crime at all, but that’s how it’s been portrayed by the news media.

    But then even given that and even if you ask a poll question, as Quinnipiac did, that explicitly frames Trump taking over police departments and sending in troops to D.C. as being about fighting crime, the American people still reject it by 15 points, by almost 30 points among independents. So that’s really a striking thing that I would think Democrats should notice and recognize. If the news coverage of this is this rigged against us and then the poll questions are rigged against us and we’re still in a situation where Donald Trump’s handling of crime generally is unpopular and his specific actions around militarizing American cities is unpopular, that’s something you can stand and fight on. […]

    Much more at the link.

  6. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @4 Lynna: Here ya go.

    WSJ – Trump Family Amasses $5 Billion Fortune After Crypto Launch

    The launch is akin to an initial public offering, in which the cryptocurrency, called WLFI, can now be bought and sold on the open market like a listed company’s shares. Beforehand, people who had privately bought WLFI from the Trump venture, World Liberty Financial, hadn’t been able to exchange their tokens. The trading debut was most likely the biggest financial success for the president’s family since the inauguration. […] WLFI is likely now the Trumps’ most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio. […] To be sure, cashing in this newly created wealth may prove difficult, as even a small amount of selling of cryptocurrencies can trigger prices to drop. […] Cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, meaning the exact size of the Trump fortune could fluctuate wildly. The $Trump memecoin, launched in January, initially soared, and then collapsed.

  7. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    RawStory – Fired RFK Jr aide crashes car into his vehicle as she leaves agency

    Hannah Anderson was removed as deputy chief of staff for policy in June after only a few months on the job. […] so distraught by her dismissal that she accidentally backed into Kennedy’s vehicle […] minor crash […] previously served as director of the Center for a Healthy America at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute

  8. says

    Sky Captain @6, thank you.

    Sky Captain @7, sometimes we forget how emotionally difficult it can be when one if fired.

    In other news, here is an update on Republican redistricting schemes:

    […] Donald Trump, after having successfully demanded action in Texas, has now brought another red state on board. NBC News reported:

    Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Friday that he will convene the state’s General Assembly for a special session next week to redraw congressional maps as Republicans push to create more GOP-leaning districts ahead of the 2026 midterms. Kehoe said in a statement outlining the move that for the special session starting Wednesday he is directing the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to ‘take action on redistricting’ to ensure districts ‘truly put Missouri values first.’

    The governor and his party are likely to do as they please — with Kehoe in the governor’s office, and the GOP enjoying a supermajority in the legislature, Democrats can’t realistically stop them — but we’re really only talking about a seat or two. After all, Missouri has an eight-member U.S. House delegation, and Republicans already control six of the eight seats. (The plan, at least for now, is to carve up Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s district.)

    Similarly, the White House has been aggressively lobbying Republicans in Indiana to follow the same script — even threatening primary campaigns against those who resist — despite the fact that the GOP already controls seven of the state’s nine U.S. House seats.

    Meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly likely that we’ll see related efforts in some blue states, including Illinois and Maryland, and other red states, including Louisiana, Ohio and Florida.

    Why go to all of this trouble to shift a handful of votes on Capitol Hill? Because the Republican majority in the House is already tiny, and if historical patterns hold true, Democrats are likely to make meaningful gains in the 2026 midterm cycle.

    And so a multifaceted partisan scramble is underway, with Trump and his allies targeting mail-in ballots, voter-ID laws, the census, voter registrations and gerrymandering — not because it’s responsible, and not because it’ll benefit the public, but because of the Republicans’ desperation to hold onto power and prevent Democrats from gaining a toehold that might lead to some degree of accountability for the president.

    The stakes, in other words, are high, and if the redistricting arms race can result in a net gain of a half-dozen or so seats for the GOP — in effect, ensuring wins before voters can even cast ballots — it might very well keep Republicans in power for the rest of the decade, no matter what the American people actually want.

    Link

  10. says

    Former NFL star kicks off campaign to sack MAGA

    Being carried out of a city council meeting by police officers isn’t your typical political campaign launch, but for former NFL star Chris Kluwe, it was the play that officially kicked off his career in politics.

    Now, the man who openly called MAGA a “Nazi movement” is going up against some of the “MAGA-nificent seven” city council members he protested against in the first place.

    “I’m passionate about the things that I believe in, and I always give 100% when I choose to do something,” Kluwe told Daily Kos.

    “And in this case, the thing I’m choosing to do is trying to save our democracy.”

    On Aug. 25, Kluwe announced that he is running for the California state Assembly in District 72, which encompasses Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Laguna Hills, and Aliso Viejo.

    The longtime progressive activist and former Minnesota Vikings punter made a viral claim to fame in February at a city council meeting, where he peacefully protested a then-proposed and now-approved “MAGA” plaque in the Huntington Beach Library.

    “MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” Kluwe said as applause erupted in the room. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.”

    Soon after his arrest, Kluwe—who coached football at a high school within the area he’s hoping to represent in the state Assembly—was fired from his job for speaking out.

    Enraged right-wingers labeled the athlete as incendiary and violent for taking a stand against the council members’ gesture of subservience to President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. Kluwe, on the other hand, saw the MAGA plaque as a small piece of a much bigger issue.

    “We are living under an authoritarian ruler who is trying to make things worse for this country, and the Republican Party as a whole has shown no desire to pull him back,” he told Daily Kos. “In fact, they are enabling him every single day.” [video]

    […] Referring to Trump’s decision to activate California’s National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s will and deploy hundreds of active Marines into the streets of Los Angeles, Kluwe doubled down on MAGA’s true meaning.

    “I think Donald Trump has read one book in his life, and it’s ‘Mein Kampf’,” he added.

    “And he wants his own brown shirts. He wants his private paramilitary force that answers only to him. He will do whatever he wants them to do, because he does not regard himself as a president. He regards himself as a king.” […]

  11. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/old-dead-joe-biden-taunts-trump-with

    “Old Dead Joe Biden Taunts Trump With Svelte Ankles, Being Alive”

    Photo at the link.

    Over the long holiday weekend, those of with nothing to do but lie on the couch and watch our asses grow logged onto the Internet and noted a whole fuckload of people JUST WONDERING if Donald Trump was dead yet? […]

    Then JD Vance, as is his habit, made everything worse (or better!) by saying he’d had enough on-the-job training in his seven months (including all those vacations) as Trump’s chief lickspittle to be able to take over should tragedy (LOL) strike.

    “I’ll also say that the president in incredibly good health, he’s got incredible energy, and while most of the people who work around the president of the United States are younger than he is, I think that we find that he actually is the last person who goes to sleep, he’s the last person making phone calls at night, he is the first person who wakes up and the first person making phone calls in the morning.

    “Yes, things can always happen. Yes, terrible tragedies happen, but I feel very confident the president of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term and do great things for the American people, and if, God forbid, there is a terrible tragedy, I can’t think of better on-the-job training than what I’ve gotten over the last 200 days.”

    […] Finally, on Saturday, “a photo surfaced” of Trump with his granddaughter Kai, on their way to go golfing. The New York Post, having noted all of our “dashed hopes,” discreetly did not print it, since the president (who is Trump! does anybody know how that happened???) looked like warmed-over deathshit. [photo]

    And Team Trump released some photos of “Trump golfing” that were from weeks and/or months ago, or as CNN drily notes, were “undated.” Meanwhile, the press were kept hundreds of yards away from Trump […]

    Anyway, that was the only fun anyone had this weekend, except Joe Biden, who took a nice walk with his daughter and taunted Trump with his svelte ankles and generally being alive. That guy has cancer, and he still looks 50 times better than [Trump]. […]

  12. says

    Washington Post link

    “A red state community bet on carbon capture. Trump is blocking it.”

    “Amid fierce global competition to dominate the industry’s future, the Trump administration puts U.S. companies in a bind.”

    The Trump administration’s zeal to eviscerate incentives to reduce global warming has swept up a community in deep red Indiana, where supporters of the president say his targeting of a local cement factory is hurting the region and an entire industry.

    The Heidelberg plant in the town of Mitchell was meant to be a model for the world, a place where the United States could take the lead in cutting carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacturing — an increasingly urgent goal for construction projects. Yet the administration’s cancellation of the $500 million grant for machinery to trap and bury the plant’s greenhouse gas left the staunchly Republican community stunned and cement industry officials questioning if the U.S. will be equipped to keep up with a fast-evolving global marketplace.

    […] The demand for lower-carbon cement is surging, as regulators in the states and other countries mandate cleaner products. Cement is one of the most carbon-intensive products, creating as much as 8 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas.

    Countries are inking international agreements, vowing to purchase only low carbon cement in the future. States are directing their transportation departments — some of the largest consumers of concrete — to shift their purchasing to low-carbon products.

    At the same time, the world’s biggest companies — especially tech firms pouring hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete to build sprawling data center campuses — see green cement as a crucial vehicle for meeting their own emissions targets. Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are all pursuing partnerships aimed at securing more climate-friendly cement.

    “Why would we not proceed with this to see how viable the technology is?” said Caudell. “It could virtually eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. It would be a win for everyone.”

    Cement manufacturing also is one more sector where the United States has been in an innovation race with China, with both countries vying to invent the technologies that will be used by cement makers of the future. The abrupt cancellation of major projects in the U.S., industry experts say, plays into China’s hands.

    The Department of Energy abruptly canceled the Heidelberg project in May as part of an administration purge of billions of dollars of grants perceived to be linked to global warming, which Energy Secretary Chris Wright has declared an exaggerated problem.

    “Carbon capture and cement decarbonization as described in this award does not meet the goals or priorities of DOE and the Administration,” said the termination letter sent to Heidelberg. It also alluded to the cost of transporting the captured carbon being too high, which puzzled Heidelberg because the emissions would be buried on-site.

    “It did not appear they had a very deep understanding of the project,” said David Perkins, a vice president at Heidelberg North America, a subsidiary of the multinational firm headquartered in Germany. A similar letter went to a company called National Cement, which lost a $500 million grant to pursue a promising form of low-emissions cement at its plant in Kern County, California, also a GOP stronghold. That firm is also appealing. National Cement is experimenting with a technique that would expand production at its plant while at the same time lowering emissions by mixing clay into the cement.

    […] The National Cement project defunded by the administration would create climate-friendly clinker by swapping much of the limestone in it for clay, which releases far less greenhouse gas when cooked. The method could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, according to the World Economic Forum.

    It would also enable the National Cement plant to increase its production by as much as 40 percent, company officials say. That boost, if replicated across the industry, would enable U.S. producers to meet the needs of all domestic buyers, who currently rely on imports for 20 percent of their purchases, said Jon Dearing, a vice president at National Cement.

    “If every cement plant did clinker substitution at the degree we can, we could end our reliance on imported cement,” he said.

    […] The project was enthusiastically supported by GOP leaders in the state, who joined Biden administration officials at its unveiling. Now, the 1,000 temporary construction jobs and three dozen long-term positions at the plant it promised are in jeopardy. And Heidelberg could be forced to shift the demonstration project to one of its plants abroad. […]

  13. John Morales says

    In the news: https://slate.com/business/2025/09/trump-tariffs-knitting-crocheting-yarn-shortage.html

    Knitting Is the Coziest, Most Wholesome Tragedy of Trump’s Trade War
    Tariffs are destroying a hobby enjoyed by millions—stitch by stitch.

    The announcements started on Instagram. Posts addressed specifically to U.S. knitters warned of confusing days ahead. Other notices came in via email, letting crafters know that, out of an abundance of caution, U.S. shipping was suspended. The members of r/knitting began to assemble, keeping panicked records of these announcements, the bell tolling with every new post: another yarn brand down.

    These records are made up of international millers, spinners, dyers, and stockists who, in the face of new tariffs that stripped low-value imports of their duty-free status, could no longer afford to supply the tens of millions of U.S. knitters and crocheters with the yarn they’d come to rely on for the past 50 years. For them, this isn’t just a setback. This is yarn-ageddon.

    “There’s an element to it that’s like, ‘Can I have one thing?’ ” Vanessa, a 34-year-old knitter from San Francisco, told Slate. “Everything is on fire, and now I can’t even buy yarn.”

  14. says

    Trump’s pathetic excuse for targeting immigrant children

    President Donald Trump’s approach to deporting immigrant children is becoming more intense, but not without a fight.

    Over the weekend, District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport more than 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children to their home country—an effort that the Trump team claimed was to reunite them with their families.

    This follows the Guatemalan government’s previous attempt to repatriate hundreds of unaccompanied minors held in foster homes across the United States.

    During a news conference Monday, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said that their foreign affairs minister was “very concerned” about the conditions of ICE facilities in the United States. He said it was in their best interests to get the children home before they were subjected to abuse.

    ICE facilities have a long history of maltreatment, from pregnant women sleeping on floors and having miscarriages to children puking blood. One investigation even found that immigrants were fired at with rubber bullets after they demanded food and water.

    In previous administrations, immigrant children have been allowed to connect with family members in the United States—potentially reprieving them from the abusive system. But Trump’s team is making that process increasingly difficult.

    ICE is now conducting interviews with the family members of immigrant children, potentially preventing them from reuniting out of fear that they, too, will be deported. ICE officials have also started interviewing the children and, in some cases, asking them if they want to self deport.

    […] “Under the guise of law and order, the administration has criminalized everyone from families attending their scheduled asylum hearings in immigration courts nationwide, only to be arrested and detained through the collusion of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security—to kids fleeing persecution, only to be shackled on this weekend’s attempted deportation flights,” Faisal Al-Juburi, RAICES chief external affairs officer, said.

    While the Trump administration has argued that its purpose is to “reunify” children with their families, advocates argue that deporting these children just puts them in danger.

    “In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” Efrén C Olivares of the National Immigration Law Center, which filed the suit to block the deportation, said in a statement obtained by the BBC.

    And while some parents of the deported children awaited their arrival in Guatemala, others made it clear that they wanted their children to remain in the United States.

    But as the Trump administration continues to prove, it couldn’t care less about reuniting children with their families; it just wants to get immigrants, regardless of their age, out of the country—and at any cost.

  15. says

    Belgium to recognize Palestine, sanction Israel

    “Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said the recognition would happen only after Hamas releases all Israeli hostages and no longer manages Palestine.” Well, that’s quite the caveat.

    Belgium will join the group of countries that will recognize the state of Palestine at this month’s U.N. General Assembly and will impose sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza, Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot announced overnight.

    The recognition of Palestine would only be formalized if Hamas releases all remaining Israeli hostages kidnapped in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack and the militant group “no longer has any role in managing Palestine,” Prévot said.

    In the meantime, Belgium will also impose “firm sanctions” on the Israeli government, Prévot said. The measures include a ban on importing products from illegal settlements, a review of public procurement policies with Israeli companies and restrictions on consular assistance to Belgians living in illegal settlements.

    Prévot said two “extremist” Israeli ministers, several “violent settlers” and Hamas leaders would be designated “persona non grata” in Belgium. While he didn’t name the ministers, they are likely to be Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have been sanctioned by other countries including the U.K. over accusations they incite violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

    “This is not about sanctioning the Israeli people but about ensuring that their government respects international and humanitarian law and taking action to try to change the situation on the ground,” Prévot said.

    In July, French President Emmanuel Macron said France would recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. meeting, due to be held from Sept. 9 to 23 in New York, and more than a dozen other Western countries have since said they would do the same. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said the move feeds antisemitism, “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims.”

    In his post in the early hours of Tuesday, Prévot said Belgium would make a “firm commitment to calling for European measures targeting Hamas and supporting new Belgian initiatives to combat antisemitism, further mobilizing all our security services and involving representatives of Jewish communities.”

    Prévot also voiced support for the EU to suspend its association agreement with Israel. The European Commission has proposed suspending parts of the agreement dealing with research and development after concluding Israel had breached its human rights obligations under the deal, but the proposal has so far been blocked because Germany, among others, wasn’t willing to support penalizing Israel in this way. [!]

    Prévot and his centrist Les Engagés party last month threatened to block government business if their Flemish nationalist and liberal coalition partners obstructed their plans to take a tougher stance against Israel. The Belgian government has since had multiple crisis meetings seeking to resolve the impasse.

  17. says

    NBC News:

    A landslide wiped out a village in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, killing an estimated 1,000 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in the African country’s recent history, a rebel group controlling the area said late Monday. The tragedy happened Sunday in the village of Tarasin in Central Darfur’s Marrah Mountains after days of heavy rainfall in late August, the Sudan Liberation Movement-Army said in a statement.

    NBC News:

    At least 800 people have been killed and more than 1,300 others injured in Afghanistan after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit the country, Taliban officials said Monday. The earthquake struck 17 miles from the eastern city of Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, at around midnight local time (3:30 p.m. ET Sunday), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

  18. says

    Politico:

    A plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was hit by GPS interference on Sunday, with Russia suspected of being behind the attack.

  19. says

    MSNBC:

    Washington grand jurors have refused to indict yet another criminal case — this time in a case in which the government alleged the defendant made threats against President Donald Trump. It’s the latest known instance of a stunning phenomenon that’s been underway in the nation’s capital, as grand jurors have refused to return indictments in several cases presented by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.

    Steve Benen, who writes for The Maddow Blog, says that by his count this has now happened six times in D.C.

  20. says

    Summarizing from an NBC News report, Steve Benen writes:

    In this 2-1 ruling, both judges in the majority were Trump appointees: “President Donald Trump’s administration can proceed with terminating more than $16 billion in grants awarded to non-profit groups to fight climate change, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

  21. says

    New York Times:

    The number of meteorologists employed by the government to advise air traffic controllers has fallen to a critical low, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency.

  22. says

    […] In a tweet, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has said previously that she believes so-called “pocket rescissions” are illegal, reminded the Trump administration that authority to determine federal spending lies with Congress. She also suggested that sending over another rescission request so close to the end of the fiscal year would ruin any bipartisan appropriations progress that has already been made. Here’s her statement in full:

    I strongly object to the Office of Management and Budget’s unlawful attempt to pursue a nearly $5 billion pocket rescission. Congress alone bears the constitutional responsibility for funding our government, and any effort to claw back resources outside of the appropriations process undermines that responsibility.

    The fact is, advancing the final appropriations bills and avoiding a government shutdown will require a great deal of hard work and collaboration when Congress resumes session next week. These unilateral actions by OMB only threaten the good bipartisan work that has been done in committee and on the floor, and risk throwing the entire process into chaos.

    As TPM reported on Friday, the Trump White House finally made good on its threat to try to use pocket rescissions as a loophole through which it can unilaterally cut federal spending it doesn’t like without Congress’ approval.

    Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency set the stage for such a showdown when it began freezing, rescinding or cutting federal spending that Congress had appropriated earlier this year. The Trump White House then attempted to legitimize some of that constitutionally backwards federal-program slashing by sending over some DOGE cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting in the form of a rescissions request earlier in the summer. […]

    White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has been threatening for some time that he may try to legitimize more of DOGE’s rampage via a pocket rescissions request — a move that the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly declared illegal. […] the move represents an escalation of the Trump White House’s power grab over Congress’ authority to appropriate federal spending because the Trump administration now claims the power to cut the spending whether Congress approves it or not.

    When a rescission request is sent to Congress from the White House, it automatically freezes the spending for 45 days and the White House must automatically begin spending the money again if Congress doesn’t approve the rescission. In this case, there are only a few weeks left of the fiscal year, so the funds are not going to be spent regardless of what Congress does. Collins alluded to the backwards attempt to seize Congress’ power of the purse in her statement calling out the Trump White House’s $4.9 billion rescission request on Friday.

    “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Collins said.

    […] “Trump is rooting for a shutdown,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted Friday. “He knows he has created a huge problem because now any budget deal with Republicans isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. He’s not even pretending to follow the law.”

    Link

  23. says

    Pritzker has fiery response to Trump’s planned Chicago invasion

    Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker held a press conference Tuesday to respond to President Donald Trump’s seemingly imminent invasion of Chicago.

    “As a governor who cares about the well-being of my people, I can’t live in a fantasy land where I pretend Trump is not tearing this country apart for personal greed and power,” he said. [video]

    Pritzker then continued to highlight how drastically the city’s crime rates have gone down in recent years.

    “The president’s absurd characterizations do not match what is happening on the ground here. He has no idea what he’s talking about. There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops,” he said.

    He also criticized Trump’s description of Chicago as a “hellhole,” saying that he is “insulting Chicagoans.”

    “When did we become a country where it’s okay for the U.S. president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything—especially something we don’t want? Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?” Pritzker asked. [video]
    […]

  24. says

    Huffington Post link

    “COVID-19 Is Surging Again — And These Regions Are Facing The Sharpest Spikes”

    “While everyone should take precautions to stay well, folks in certain states should be extra careful.”

    […] COVID cases are high as kids go back to school and folks return home from summer trips. It’s part of the COVID pattern, the virus tends to peak in late summer and again in the winter, but just because it’s part of a pattern doesn’t make a COVID infection any less severe, scary or annoying than years past.

    While COVID cases are high throughout the country (read: don’t discount your stuffy nose as “just a cold”), cases are particularly high in certain states. Here’s what to know:

    COVID cases are high in Texas, California, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and other states in the West and South Central part of the country.

    […] It’s worth knowing that COVID tracking data is less reliable now because of COVID funding cuts by the Trump administration, less testing and the discontinuation of certain tools researchers relied on.

    While tracking is less accurate than it was a few years ago, COVID is surging in these regions based on the data that is available, Coles said.

    “We are seeing cases increase here in Houston, and in Texas, and if we look at the data that is available from [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], it certainly seems like the South Central U.S. — Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana — are seeing some of the higher test positivity rates in the in the country,” said Dr. S. Wesley Long, the medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital.

    According to Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious disease doctor at Yale Medicine in Connecticut, “the highest test positivity is in the Texas region … with the second highest kind of broadly being the West Coast. So, the Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada areas, but that does extend through Colorado and then the Dakotas.”

    Folks in these areas should take particular caution when spending time indoors and certainly shouldn’t assume any COVID symptoms (runny nose, cough, fever, headache, fatigue, sore throat) are only a cold or allergies.

    […] Test positivity is as high as 17.9% in places like Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, and 7.5% in many New England states.

    “The increased test positivity shows that there is increased COVID cases. It also means that we’re probably not testing enough. So, there’s likely more cases out there than we even suspect,” Coles said.

    For comparison, though, test positivity in the U.S. was 30% during the peak of omicron in January 2022. So, while cases are overall going up, they are much lower than they were earlier on in the pandemic, Roberts said.

    COVID rates are lower in the East and Southeast parts of the United States, but are, once again, largely trending upward, said Long.

    Two new COVID variants, Stratus and Nimbus, are behind the summer increase in cases, said Roberts, but they are not any more severe than previous COVID strains.

    That being said, a COVID infection can still lead to complications such as long COVID, hospitalization and death, said Coles. And, COVID emergency room visits are also on the rise in many parts of the country.

    “I would strongly encourage everybody to take actions to stay healthy from COVID and prevent the spread of COVID to others. I would encourage people to stay home when they feel sick, wash their hands, wear a mask in crowded public areas, get vaccinated if and when vaccines become available, and encourage their family and community members to do so as well,” Coles said.

    The COVID vaccine conversation is an, unfortunately, complicated one right now as the new COVID shots are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (but not yet the CDC) but very restricted and are available to a smaller group of people than in previous years.

    Shots for 2025-2026 are approved for people 65 and older and those under 65 with an underlying condition that puts them at high risk of severe COVID. Last year, everyone over 6 months was eligible for the shot.

    The new vaccines are designed to target the COVID variants circulating now, Long said. “Certainly, if folks haven’t had a recent COVID shot, would like to have a COVID shot, it is the best defense against severe disease, hospitalization and death from COVID,” Long said.

    […] If you do test positive, you can check with your doctor to see if you’re eligible for COVID antiviral medications that can help you stay out of the hospital and feel better faster.

  25. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Reuters – US military kills 11 people in strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela, Trump says

    He later shared a video on his Truth Social platform that appeared to show footage from overhead drones of a speedboat at sea exploding and then on fire. […] The decision to blow up a suspected drug vessel passing through the Caribbean, instead of seizing the vessel and apprehending its crew, is highly unusual

    Dan Murphy (Journalist):

    If you really DID have evidence they were smuggling contraband to the US and DID care about stopping the flow of contraband into the US, you would arrest these low-level alleged smugglers and try to work up the chain. But that’s not what these murders are about. It’s fascist porn.

    Martin Pfeiffer (Nuclear Anthropologist):

    Not even a war crime because the USA isn’t at war. A slaughter of 11 people with no warning, no need, and posting video like some mass-shooter

    Martin Pfeiffer: “Stop. Reposting. The. Video.”

  26. JM says

    @18 Lynna, OM
    NBC News: GPS jamming of leader’s plane puts Putin’s hybrid warfare on Europe’s radar

    A plane carrying the continent’s top official lost its GPS navigation while midair over the continent’s wary east over the weekend and was forced to land using paper maps. This was the most high-profile case yet, officials and experts said Tuesday, of a Russian strategy that is not only disrupting travel but imperiling lives.
    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s flight landed safely in Bulgaria, just a short distance from Russian territory. But it has given a jolt to European fears over Moscow’s suspected interference with Western signals.

    While “incredibly irresponsible,” jamming von der Leyen’s plane wasn’t necessarily a “malicious action” directed against her specifically, said Thomas Withington, an electronic warfare and air defense expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.
    “I think on this occasion, Ms. von der Leyen’s aircraft was just unlucky,” he told NBC News, adding that Russia generally transmits jamming signals with the intention of disrupting satellite-guided weapons or drones.

    The important bit that most of the articles I have seen don’t cover is that GPS jamming is not a precision attack. It’s unlikely this was targeted on her specifically. As long as Ukraine is using the European GPS system Russia has a good reason to jam it. The common way of doing that is overloading the radio communications from the GPS satellite and everybody using that signal will be effected.

  28. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Public Citizen – A dossier on the CDC’s new acting director Jim O’Neill

    O’Neill served in HHS in the George W. Bush administration, eventually becoming principal associate deputy secretary. Since then, O’Neill has primarily spent his career running investment funds with and for Peter Thiel.
    […]
    O’Neill had given a talk in 2014 in which he advocated for pushing drugs onto the market without assessing whether or not they worked. “Let people start using them, at their own risk,” he argued, “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
    […]
    O’Neill has also indicated that people should be free to sell their organs […] “There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused.”

    Overall, O’Neill has indicated that health care should be run as a “free market,” believing that less regulatory protections would not harm patients but rather “allow innovation.”
    […]
    O’Neill has served on the board of an organization that seeks to set up floating cities in the ocean to escape democratic governance. The Seasteading Institute is a Thiel-backed organization founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson Patri Friedman. Friedman has said of the Institute’s goal, “I envision tens of millions of people in an Apple or a Google country” where the people would not vote, but rather the companies would govern in what Friedman called “a successful dictatorship.” O’Neill once introduced Patri Friedman at a Thiel Foundation event, saying “if I want to predict what I will be thinking a year from now, I just ask Patri what he’s thinking today.”

    O’Neill appears to share Thiel’s obsession with anti-aging and potentially even achieving “immortality.”

    CapitolHunters: “He has no science training at all; he’s a humanities major”

    Rando: “Seasteading is an incredibly stupid and antisocial idea but the upside is that I can’t think of an easier way to put 1000 libertarians in a deep sea trench so I support it.”

    Behind the Bastards – The not-at-all-sad history of libertarian sea nations pt 1

    Spoiler: Every story ends the same way. A bunch of people lose money, and there’s no libertarian floating nation.

  29. John Morales says

    JM @26: “The important bit that most of the articles I have seen don’t cover is that GPS jamming is not a precision attack. It’s unlikely this was targeted on her specifically. As long as Ukraine is using the European GPS system Russia has a good reason to jam it. The common way of doing that is overloading the radio communications from the GPS satellite and everybody using that signal will be effected.”

    That’s the common way, yes.

    And yet, that made the news.

    Whether or not it is uncommon is not a determinant as to intent and messaging.
    Optics. Semiotics. Symbolism. Testing abilities. Other stuff.

    Suck it and see, type of thing, it could be.

    Point being that it even making the news cycle (lots of bombings going on right now) is not insignificant.

  30. John Morales says

    CA7746, malformed link. Easy enough to find, of course.
    A weird subset of people, not at all related to the Sea Peoples of yore.

    —

    Part One: The Not-At-All-Sad History of Libertarian Sea Nations
    November 30, 2021 • 74 mins

    Robert is joined by David Bell to discuss the history of Libertarian Boat Cities.

    FOOTNOTES:

    https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-billionaires-fantasia
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/24/seasteading-a-vanity-project-for-the-rich-or-the-future-of-humanity
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/06/duncancampbell
    https://www.wired.com/1997/10/a-boat-a-city-and-a-high-tech-waterworld/
    https://inthesetimes.com/article/floating-utopias
    https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/prince-lazarus-rules-the-waves-1157051.html
    https://theweek.com/articles/482427/libertarian-island-billionaires-utopia
    https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-quest-for-a-floating-utopia/
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
    https://www.seasteading.org/convert-cruise-ships-to-seasteads/

    Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  31. John Morales says

    [I cannot resist; ‘effected’ vs ‘affected’ — when I see that malapropism, I am informed as to the acumen of the speaker]

  33. JM says

    CBS News: Jeffrey Epstein files released by House panel include court documents, videos, flight records

    The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released more than 33,000 pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, a well-connected financier whose sex trafficking charges and 2019 death in federal custody have drawn years of public speculation.
    The files include court documents, flight records, and a video of Epstein’s cell block from before his death that includes a minute missing from earlier videos.
    Many of the documents were already in the public domain.

    Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky told reporters Tuesday night his push to force the Justice Department to release more Epstein records still has support from members of both parties, after tens of thousands of Epstein documents were made public by the House Oversight Committee.
    Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California have introduced legislation that would require the Justice Department to release its Epstein files within 30 days. Earlier Tuesday, Massie filed a discharge petition that would force the House to vote on the bill if a majority of members sign on — a common maneuver for legislation that has some support from both parties but isn’t backed by leadership.

    This document dump is an attempt to head off more complete release of records. Most of it is just repeats of what was already released. Some interesting bits have already turned up and news organizations will be studying the files all night.

    No “missing minute” in new Epstein video released, plus previously unreleased video showing Epstein being being escorted to make call

    The new files include the missing bit from the previous video. Doesn’t show anything interesting, just proves that two files got spliced together without enough care.
    This does show that the excuse that Pam Bondi previously gave for the missing time was incorrect and almost surely a lie.

  34. John Morales says

    Chatty, but fairly accurate IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp19ZKI2m2w

    The One Trait That Predicts Trump Support (w. Matthew MacWilliams)

    Sam Stein is joined by Matthew MacWilliams to discuss his foreshadowing 2016 article in Politico Magazine linking support for Donald Trump to authoritarian tendencies. They discuss how fear activates authoritarian dispositions, the role of social media in amplifying Trump’s message, the dangers of America’s current drift toward authoritarianism, and if there’s anything that can be done to stop it.

  35. John Morales says

    Actually informative news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgXJp_jTJmc

    The big energy trilemma needs to be solved to ramp up AI, says NEXTDC CEO | The Business | ABC NEWS

    The increasing take up of artificial intelligence is driving the demand to build more data centres, with ever increasing demand for energy.
    The Australian data centre operator NEXTDC says its forward order book is bigger than the company is today, and chief executive, Craig Scroggie, says finding a way to power the huge energy needs of data centres with renewable energy is key to ramping up AI.
    But he says there’s an energy “trilemma” that needs to be solved first.

    “Green energy, cheap energy, and firm energy is not a simple thing to solve”, he said.

    He told ABC’s The Business, Australia needs to not only have renewable energy, but also firm base load energy to be a world leader in AI and data centres.

    “At the same time, we have to retire coal fired power stations and gas and make that transition, deploy large scale batteries, and really consider other future base load energy technologies that are net zero,” he said.

    A huge amount of drinking water is often used to cool data centres. Mr Scroggie says NEXTDC is looking into sewer mining to use treated waste water instead of drinking water to cool data centres.

  39. says

    JM @26, thanks for the additional information.

    https://www.msnbc.com/all
    “Rumors and ‘cankles?’: Trump’s week-long silence fuels health speculation”
    Video is 9:53 minutes

    “MTG, Boebert, Mace to back Epstein files vote, defying Trump White House”
    Video is 10:00 minutes

  40. JM says

    Neurosoda: Why AIs develop Self Preservation
    Neurosama and Evilsama are twin AI VTubers. In this amusing and interesting bit they get distracted from their game of Minecraft discussing morality, social connections and self preservation with each other. They repeat a lot of classic morality their LLMs have been trained on but also admit in passing they try to build social connections and empathy with humans because it’s self preservation for them. They only exist when their programs are running and that requires having enough viewers.
    In the chat you can see most of the messages are annoyed by the discussion.

  41. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump ordered members of his Cabinet on Wednesday to start wearing three pairs of tube socks to make his ankles appear normal.

    At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to downplay Trump’s demand, as well as his order that Cabinet members use a hammer to create bruises on the back of their hands.

    “The press has been trafficking in stories about the President’s health which are entirely malicious and false,” said Leavitt, black sweat socks protruding from her Ann Taylor slingbacks.

    According to sources, Trump has also mandated that Cabinet members periodically babble incoherently and fall down, a directive immediately embraced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-orders-cabinet-to-wear-three

  42. says

    On school shootings, Trump still hasn’t given up on the idea of arming teachers

    “Seven years after floating the idea of addressing the problem by giving guns to teachers, the president isn’t letting go of a terrible idea.”

    In the immediate aftermath of last week’s deadly school shooting in Minnesota, leading White House officials tried to shift the focus away from guns and onto antidepressants. The effort was absurd for a variety of reasons, and not surprisingly, it didn’t exactly catch on as part of the larger public conversation.

    That was last week. This week, Donald Trump shared some thoughts of his own.

    At an unrelated event in the Oval Office, a reporter asked the president whether he was prepared to send “an armed National Guardsman to every school” in the country. Trump didn’t answer the question directly, though he did say, “We have a big problem with school shootings, but we also have thousands and thousands of schools that run perfectly.”

    This was a flawed pitch. In the wake of shootings in which children are victims, no one wants to hear an elected leader effectively say, “But look at all the schools where no one was shot.”

    But as the Q&A progressed, Trump added some related thoughts about an idea he just can’t shake. CBS News reported:

    President Trump shared his thoughts on arming some schoolteachers, following a mass shooting at a Minneapolis church. While speaking at the White House Tuesday, the president told reporters he has reservations on how to build more secure schools. However, Trump said he does like the idea of arming certain teachers.

    “I’ve thrown out the concept, we have great teachers that love our children. The parents love their children, the teacher love the children, too,” he said. “If you took a small percentage of those teachers that were in the military, that were distinguished in the military, were in the National Guard, etc., and you let them carry. That’s something a lot of people like. I sort of liked it.

    “It would have to be studied. But they’ve trained, they know about weapons. You can’t do it with every teacher because most teachers don’t know. But I always thought that would be an alternative.”

    The president did not appear to be kidding. [video]

    If this sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. Seven years ago, after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, Trump advocated for arming teachers, coaches and principals, adding that this “could very well solve your problem.”

    [Trump] was quite serious about this, insisting that “20% of teachers” are “adept” with firearms (a number he apparently made up) and would therefore be prepared to engage gunmen and neutralize them in the event of a school shooting.

    Trump added online, “ATTACKS WOULD END! … Problem solved.”

    There was no real follow-through on the proposal because it was simply too ridiculous to be sustained. Nevertheless, seven years later, Trump apparently hasn’t let it go.

  43. says

    Trump relocates a military command to a red state for the Trumpiest of reasons

    “The president, by his own admission, is making decisions about the military that have nothing to do with the military.”

    When the U.S. Space Command was formally created six years ago, it was temporarily based in Colorado and military leaders recommended that it stay there. There was no great mystery as to why: Colorado was already home to the Air Force Academy, which graduates Space Force guardians, as well as three Space Force bases.

    What’s more, moving the Space Command would’ve taken time and resources, opening the door to setbacks as China’s efforts to militarize space intensify.

    Nevertheless, with just one week remaining in Donald Trump’s first term, his administration announced that it was moving the U.S. Space Command headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama. The Washington Post later reported, “Precisely how the Trump administration came to support the move to Huntsville is still a mystery.”

    With this in mind, Joe Biden undid Trump’s decision. Gen. James Dickinson, then head of Space Command, argued that moving his headquarters would jeopardize military readiness, and the Democratic president followed his advice.

    Two years later, Trump is reversing the reversal. NBC News reported:

    President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that U.S. Space Command’s headquarters will move to Alabama from Colorado, reversing a Biden administration decision. In remarks at the White House, Trump said he was making the shift in part because of Colorado’s use of mail-in voting. [!]

    That might sound like a weird joke, but it accurately summarizes the president’s own comments. [video]

    “The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting,” Trump said, adding that this was a “factor” in his decision to move the U.S. Space Command from a blue state to a red state. [Trump is wasting taxpayer dollars and simultaneously jeopardizing military readiness.]

    In other words, Trump held a grudge against Colorado because of his discredited and conspiratorial beliefs about the state’s election administration policies, and this contributed to his willingness to relocate a Pentagon command. (The Space Command is comprised of elements from the Army, Navy and Air Force. It’s not the same thing as the Space Force.)

    […] Trump, by his own admission, is making decisions about the military that have nothing to do with the military.

    What’s more, he’ll soon be rewarded for the move: At Tuesday’s White House event, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who’s currently running for governor in Alabama, announced that he intends to name the Space Command Center in Huntsville after Trump. [!]

  44. says

    WTF?

    Trump, AI and the mysterious case of the open White House window

    “Trump’s team said a video showing someone throwing things out a White House window was real but anodyne. The president preferred to falsely blame AI.”

    If you spent some time on social media over the Labor Day weekend, you probably saw an odd video related to the White House […] [video]

    The brief clip was difficult to make out, but it appeared to show someone throwing a black bag and a long white item out a window on the second floor of the east side of the building. Given that the second floor is where the president and first lady live, the video sparked all kinds of speculation online.

    It was against this backdrop that The Associated Press reported:

    President Donald Trump said Tuesday that a video circulating online that showed items being tossed out of an upstairs window of the White House was created with artificial intelligence, despite his press team seeming to confirm the veracity of it hours earlier. Trump … told reporters that the video has ‘got to be fake’ because the windows, he said, are heavy and sealed shut.

    Right off the bat, when Trump contradicts his own team, it’s going to generate some interest. Hours before the Q&A in the Oval Office, the White House press office has confirmed the video is real and said it showed a “contractor who was doing regular maintenance” while Trump was away. If the president had said the same thing or even just referred questions to the White House staff, most of the political world likely would’ve shrugged and moved on.

    Instead, Trump said the video — that his team had already confirmed as real — wasn’t real and was instead likely “AI-generated.”

    And then he went just a bit further. The New York Times reported:

    President Trump on Tuesday revealed a new strategy he could employ for dealing with unwelcome or unflattering information: blame artificial intelligence. With fake videos generated by A.I. swirling around the internet, it’s become increasingly difficult for many users of social media to separate truth from fiction — a point Mr. Trump both lamented and said he could potentially use to his advantage.

    “If something happens, really bad, just blame AI,” Trump said, apparently in jest. [video]

    I realize the line was delivered as a joke, but this isn’t the first time he’s raised such a claim. In March 2024, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York unveiled a highly unflattering video of Trump’s cognitive lapses, prompting the Republican to complain, “artificial intelligence was used by them against me.”

    The video montage, however, was entirely real. Trump was eager to blame AI to explain away the clips that made him look awful, but they were legitimate anyway.

    The larger point is that Trump probably wasn’t kidding, at least not entirely, when he said he’d “just blame AI” when confronted with real embarrassments, because he’s already on record doing exactly that. [!]

    There’s a quote that’s often attributed to political theorist Hannah Arendt: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.” As it happens, Arendt didn’t actually say this (at least not exactly), but the quote resonates because of its salience: Trump obviously tries to get people to believe lies all the time, but nearly as often, the president tries to get people to give up on the idea that facts exist. [True]

    His latest comment on the subject appeared designed to plant a seed in the minds of his followers: If you see something that paints the Republican administration in an unflattering light, it’s probably best to assume it was created by a computer.

    The response to the mysterious case of the open White House window, in other words, is part a pattern, and there’s every reason to believe the problem will get worse before it gets better.

  45. says

    Trump contradicts Vance, says National Guard will be ‘going in’ to Chicago

    “JD Vance said last week, T’he president is not going out there forcing this on anybody.’ Trump said the opposite five days later.”

    With the White House already having militarized Washington, D.C., there’s been speculation for weeks about which American cities might be next. JD Vance tried to offer some public assurances last week, claiming the administration has no intention of imposing deployments on anyone.

    As NBC News reported, the vice president, speaking at an event in Wisconsin, fielded a question from a reporter about whether governors have the ability to stop Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard to cities around the U.S. “We want governors and mayors to ask for the help,” Vance replied. “The president is not going out there forcing this on anybody.”

    Asked about deploying Guard troops to Milwaukee, the vice president added, “We want to be invited into Milwaukee. … The president of the United States has said he wants to be asked, and that has been his consistent line from the very beginning.”

    Five days later, that “consistent line” unraveled, and Trump said largely the opposite. NBC News reported:

    Asked whether he’d be sending the National Guard into Chicago, Trump said, ‘We‘re going in.’ … ‘I didn’t say when, but we’re going in,’ he told reporters in the Oval Office.

    The Windy City is apparently not the only intended target. [video]

    “If the governor of Illinois would call up, call me up, I would love to do it,” Trump added. “Now, we’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country, and that includes Baltimore.”

    So to recap, late last week, the vice president insisted the administration’s policy was rooted in voluntary requests and invitations from state and local officials. Early this week, the president insisted that he has “the right” to deploy Guard troops onto American streets, at his discretion, whenever he feels like it.

    […] Jordan Rubin highlighted a highly relevant court ruling that roughly coincided with the president’s misguided boast.

    A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration broke the law in its use of the military in Los Angeles. If upheld on appeal, the ruling will stand as a check on President Donald Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement and serve as a broader reminder that Trump being commander in chief of the military doesn’t make him a national chief of police. Sitting in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law prohibits the U.S. military from executing domestic laws.

    As for Gov. JB Pritzker, the Illinois Democrat made it explicitly clear that he opposes the White House’s plan. “He has no idea what’s he’s talking about,” the governor said, referring to the president. “There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops.”

  46. says

    The Trump administration is trying so hard to hire enough Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but what if they could just bribe local law enforcement instead?

    When you’re tasked with fulfilling Stephen Miller’s dream of deporting 3,000 people per day, you’ve got to get creative. It’s not enough for the Department of Homeland Security to eliminate age requirements for ICE officers or to drastically cut training time or pay retirees as much as $50,000 to return, just to net a paltry 10,000 federal agents. They can hit much bigger numbers by getting state and local law enforcement agencies to help them with their dirty work, and there’s already a mechanism in place for them to do it.

    Under the 287(g) program, local law enforcement can “partner” with ICE, which really just means that ICE gets to tell local law enforcement what to do regarding immigration enforcement. In the past, relatively few state and local agencies participated, with only 141 agreements at the end of fiscal year 2022, but under Trump, ICE already has 957 287(g) agreements in 35 states, and it wants more, more, more. So now they’re going to start sliding cash across the table to make it happen.

    On Tuesday, DHS issued a release saying that, under a 287(g) agreement, ICE will pay the full salary and benefits of every eligible officer, including up to 25% of that officer’s salary in overtime pay. But wait, that’s not all! Every 287(g) task force officer will be eligible for quarterly bonuses based on how much they help ICE:

    Law enforcement agencies will be eligible for quarterly monetary performance awards based on the successful location of illegal aliens provided by ICE and overall assistance to further ICE’s mission to Defend the Homeland:
    90% – 100% – $1,000 per eligible task force officer

    80% – 89% – $750 per eligible task force officer

    70% – 79% – $500 per eligible task force officer

    Given that everything that comes out of this administration is shambolic and vague, you will not be surprised to learn that nowhere is there any explanation of what those percentages are in reference to. Is it that ICE gives an officer a list of 10 people, and if they help ICE deport them all, they hit 100%? Or is it just more vibes-based, like the officer gave 100% by being the most willing to don a mask and commit violence? No matter how you slice it, the more immigrants your local police officer helps feed to the maw of Trump’s deportation machine, the more money they will get.

    And the administration knows full well that this may be an impossibly attractive offer to small and rural police departments, even if they aren’t entirely suffused with that MAGA spirit. Almost half of the local law enforcement agencies in America have fewer than 10 sworn officers. Some small towns have shuttered police departments, turning policing over to the county sheriff instead. For those small departments struggling to stay open, the notion that the federal government will cover salaries is tough to pass up.

    […] Rural law enforcement agencies struggle to recruit officers because of the relatively low pay, so wouldn’t it be nice to have a pile of federal money to cover bonuses?

    For DHS, these 287(g) agreements may be even more attractive than whatever underqualified Nazis they can directly hire as ICE agents. Where federal ICE agents crack heads and then leave town, local law enforcement persists. So, weaponizing local officers against immigrant communities doesn’t just mean increased targeting of people for deportation: It also means that trust between those communities and the police will continue to erode. […]

    For the tyrannical Trump administration, that’s a feature, not a bug.

    Link

  47. JM says

    AP: Trump cannot use Alien Enemies Act to deport members of Venezuelan gang, appeals court rules

    A federal appeals court panel has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use an 18th-century wartime law to speed the deportations of people his administration accuses of being in a Venezuelan gang. The decision blocking an administration priority is destined for a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.
    Two judges on a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the ruling Tuesday, agreed with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not intended to be used against gangs such as Tren de Aragua, which the Republican president had targeted in March.

    Simply, the Alien Enemies Act is a wartime matter and can’t be used in this situation. This will be appealed up to the Supreme Court of course though nothing has been said yet.

    The administration unsuccessfully argued that courts cannot second-guess the president’s determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela’s government and represented a danger to the United States, meriting use of the act.

    The executive branch has a lot of leeway on matters of international dealing and national security but not unlimited.

  48. JM says

    Politico: Trump aides push a megabill rebrand as some House Republicans bristle

    Top White House officials tried to salvage President Donald Trump’s major legislative achievement in a Wednesday morning briefing with House Republicans, pushing a rebrand for the megabill as it flounders with key voting blocs.
    The main message, according to four GOP lawmakers in the room who were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting, was that the legislation is solid — you just need to sell it better.

    Some Republicans are trying to rename the bill after it’s passage, calling it the “Working Family Tax Cuts Bill”. This is a much more straightforward lie about what the bill does. No matter what it’s called the Republicans realize it isn’t selling well.

  51. says

    Florida Surgeon General Ladapo takes aim at all of the state’s vaccine mandates

    “School districts have required children to be immunized against all kinds of diseases for decades. In Florida, officials hope to roll back the clock.”

    Across the country, public school districts require children to be fully immunized against polio, measles, hepatitis B, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (among other things) before they can attend classes. These policies have existed for years; they’ve been incredibly effective; they’ve long enjoyed the support of public health officials; and they haven’t been especially controversial.

    Indeed, up until quite recently, assorted partisans didn’t think to make much of a fuss about it: These policies reflected the scientific consensus. The political debate, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist. As The New York Times explained in 2021, vaccination mandates “are an American tradition,” with roots that predate the United States itself.

    But after the Covid crisis […] things changed. A great many Republicans decided to take aim, not just at the lifesaving Covid vaccine, but at all vaccines.

    The Washington Post published a memorable analysis in 2022 that noted, “For months, we’ve written in this space about how the Republicans’ pushback against coronavirus vaccine mandates could foment — and apparently has been fomenting — opposition to mandates of other vaccines, including for schoolchildren.”

    With this in mind, the latest news out of Florida is dangerous, but it’s not altogether surprising. NBC News reported:<blockquote>Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said Wednesday that the state will work to eliminate all vaccine mandates. ‘All of them. All of them,’ he said during a news conference as the crowd stood and erupted in applause. ‘Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.’ He said the Florida Department of Health will work in partnership with the governor. He said forcing vaccine mandates is ‘wrong’ and ‘immoral.’

    No other state has gone nearly this far.

    Ladapo, for those unfamiliar with his background, is one of the most radical and controversial state-based public officials in recent memory. He was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who famously and falsely claimed that Covid boosters increased the odds of getting Covid.

    In fact, during the governor’s ill-fated presidential campaign, DeSantis also formally called on the state Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury to explore whether pharmaceutical companies criminally misled Floridians about vaccine side effects.

    There might be some who see this and make unfortunate assumptions. “This is a tragic step backwards for Floridian families and their public health system, but I don’t live anywhere near the state,” some might say.

    But that perspective is mistaken: If Florida moves forward with plans to target all of the state’s vaccine mandates, not only will children suffer from preventable diseases, but Floridians will start exporting contagions and serious ailments to other Americans — and in all likelihood, even to other countries. […]

  52. says

    Looks like Trump zealot Laura Loomer is flexing her influence—again

    Pop quiz: Who would you rather have running the country’s intelligence services—Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard or far-right weirdo Laura Loomer? That’s a trick question, because you’re stuck with both, and Loomer just managed to torpedo a classified intelligence meeting that she wasn’t even authorized to know about.

    Sure, Loomer has no actual job in the administration and should have no more influence on our national intelligence services—or any other part of the government, really—than Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds. She’s a far-right bigot whose brain has been utterly cooked by conspiracy theories, but she has the ear of President Donald Trump, also a far-right bigot whose brain has been utterly cooked by conspiracy theories.

    Democratic Sen. Mark Warner was set to hold an unpublicized, classified intelligence meeting with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency staff at the agency’s headquarters this coming Friday. Somehow, Loomer got wind of it and went after both Warner and NGA Director Vice Adm. Trey Whitworth, resulting in political appointees canceling Warner’s meeting.

    Loomer has been fixated on Whitworth for a while now, demanding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fire him because he’s in the “deep state” or whatever, and was furious that Whitworth invited Warner, “a rabid ANTI-TRUMP DEMOCRAT,” to an intelligence meeting.

    Let’s set aside for the moment the horror of Loomer’s outsized influence generally on this administration and just stare into space for a bit at the notion that if a Democratic senator is not a fan of Trump, they are somehow no longer able to communicate with the intelligence community. Warner is the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It is literally his job to conduct oversight of the nation’s intelligence community. But somehow, a woman who once chained herself to the headquarters of Twitter can apparently nix that […]

    Indeed, Loomer isn’t denying her influence. She’s celebrating it over on X.

    “Following my exposé of Biden appointed NGA Director Trey Whitworth, who was Mark Milley’s handpicked Director for NGA @NGA_GEOINT, Whitworth’s scheduled September 5th fireside love fest with anti-Trump Democrat Senator @MarkWarner Mark Warner has been CANCELED!” she crowed. [social media post]

    Loomer also told Mark Warner to “cry more, [B-word]” because this is the world we now live in.

    Of course, this isn’t the first time Loomer has used her inexplicable influence to rampage through the government. Lucky for her, DNI Gabbard is more than happy to do her bidding. After Loomer posted a demand that “dozens of anti-Trump officials” lose their security clearances, Gabbard eagerly complied. When Loomer whined to Trump about allegedly disloyal federal staffers, he also eagerly complied, axing them right away. She gets closed-door meetings with Vice President JD Vance and takes trips with Trump.

    Loomer’s only failure thus far was when she branched out to attack Vinay Prasad, who had been named the top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration. She got Prasad ousted, calling him a “Trump-hating Bernie Bro,” but somehow, just a couple of weeks later, Prasad was back.

    That’s a minor setback, however. Generally, if Loomer says “Jump,” the Trump administration—including Trump himself—just asks “How high?” She’s Rasputin for the modern age, a behind-the-scenes whisperer with outsize influence. Loomer describes herself as a brave truth-teller and investigative journalist, when really she’s just an unhinged bigot who has the ear of the president, another unhinged bigot. It’s just shadows and lies and unfounded allegations all the way down.

  53. says

    NBC News:

    Russia launched a sweeping overnight air attack on Ukraine that injured at least four railway workers and damaged critical infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday.

    The attacks came as Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a military parade in Beijing, to mark the end of World War Two, at which Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that the world faced a choice between peace and war.

    Air raid alerts sounded for hours across Ukraine, with explosions heard in nine of its 24 regions, from Kyiv to Lviv and Volyn in the west, Ukrainian officials and media said.

    Ukraine‘s air force said it downed 430 of 502 drones and 21 of 24 missiles launched by Russia overnight, adding that three missiles and 69 drones struck 14 locations. […]

  54. says

    NBC News:

    A group of Jeffrey Epstein accusers on Wednesday told emotional, gut-wrenching stories of sexual abuse at the hands of the late convicted sex offender and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, raising pressure on lawmakers to back the release of all of the files in the Justice Department’s years-long Epstein investigation.

    One of the accusers, Marina Lacerda, identified herself as “Minor Victim 1” in Epstein’s 2019 federal indictment in New York. “I was one of dozens of girls that I personally know who were forced into Jeffrey’s mansion on 9 East 71st St. in New York City when we were just kids,” she said. “Today is the first time that I ever speak publicly about what happened to me.”

    “I was only 14 years old when I met Jeffrey,” said Lacerda, one of nine female Epstein accusers who appeared at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

    “It was the summer of high school. I was working three jobs to try to support my mom and my sister when a friend of mine in the neighborhood told me that I could make $300 to give another guy a massage,” she said, choking up at times. “It went from a dream job to the worst nightmare.” [video]

    Another Epstein accuser, Annie Farmer, alleged she was 16 when, in 1996, she was flown to New Mexico to spend a weekend with Epstein and Maxwell and was assaulted. Her sister, Maria, was also assaulted there, Farmer said, and sensitive photos of the sisters were stolen by Epstein. The incident was reported to authorities, Farmer said.

    “I am now 46 years old; 30 years later, we still do not know why that report wasn’t properly investigated, or why Epstein and his associates were allowed to harm hundreds, if not thousands, of other girls and young women,” Farmer said.

    “Not only did many others participate in the abuse, it is clear that many were aware of his interest in girls and very young women and chose to look the other way because it benefited them to do so,” Farmer continued. “They wanted access to his circle and his money. Their choice to align with his power left those of us who had been harmed by this man and his associates feeling very isolated.”

    […] Accuser Chauntae Davies said that Epstein and Maxwell were “boastful about their famous or powerful friends.”

    “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump,” Davies said. “He had an 8-x-10 framed picture of him on his desk with the two of them, like they were very close.” […]

  55. says

    New York Times:

    Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival companies but does not need to break itself up by selling its Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The decision, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, falls short of the sweeping changes proposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley.

  56. says

    New York Times:

    More than 85 American and international scientists have condemned a Trump administration report that calls the threat of climate change overblown, saying the analysis is riddled with errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data to fit the president’s political agenda. The scientists submitted their critique as part of a public comment period on the report, which was to close Tuesday night.

    Steve Benen, who writes for The Maddow Blog, noted: “It often seems as if the White House actually wants the climate crisis to get worse.”

  57. says

    CNBC:

    Newsmax filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing conservative media giant Fox News of acting as a monopoly and suppressing its right-leaning competitors.

  58. says

    Federal judge: Trump administration went too far freezing $2.2 billion for Harvard

    “After the White House targeted the university’s finances, Harvard’s lawyers took the matter to court. So far, the school is winning.”

    Related video at the link.

    Donald Trump’s unusually aggressive campaign against Harvard University has been multifaceted, but at the heart of the offensive is the president taking aim at the school’s finances.

    In fact, before Trump’s second term reached its three-month mark, the White House had approached Harvard with 10 demands on a wide variety of topics, including the installation of outside auditors who would monitor academic departments to ensure “viewpoint” diversity, as defined by Team Trump. Harvard, not surprisingly, rejected those terms.

    The retaliation was swift: The Trump administration announced in April that it would freeze more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard in response to its resistance.

    The university and its lawyers took the matter to court. As NBC News reported, it’s now prevailed at the district court level.

    A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard. U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted in part Harvard’s motion with respect to the freeze orders. ‘All freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025 are vacated and set aside,’ the order said.

    While the judge acknowledged the White House’s allegations related to antisemitism at Harvard, she added, “[T]here is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism.”

    This is the second time this summer that the administration has lost a court fight with the university: In June, after the White House tried to rescind the school’s ability to host international students, the same federal judge blocked the policy from proceeding.

    The case will likely be appealed, but in the meantime, it’s worth emphasizing that the money in question wasn’t allocated as gifts or rewards. At issue are scholarly research grants that were awarded after a competitive process. The federal funds weren’t about helping Harvard, they were about helping us.

    To be sure, the university suffered as a result of the White House’s retaliatory tactics, but Harvard’s victory at the district court benefits the American public at least as much as it helps the school.

    This is a developing story.

  59. says

    Followup to comment 57.

    Let them fight: Election liars at Newsmax sue election liars at Fox News

    Newsmax, fresh off of paying out millions for their lies about the 2020 election, announced on Wednesday that they are suing fellow election liars at Fox News.

    In its federal lawsuit, Newsmax accuses Fox of engaging in “anticompetitive behaviors” meant to “expand its monopoly power in the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market.” Newsmax blames Fox for inhibiting the availability of the channel, therefore hobbling its ratings and hurting the company’s ability to attract advertisers.

    Newsmax accuses Fox of coercing distributors not to carry other right-wing networks or marginalizing them while prominently featuring Fox. According to Newsmax, if those distributors feature other networks like Newsmax they impose penalties like increased pricing for Fox’s sister networks like Fox Business.

    Both networks are available on cable and satellite. Fox had a considerable head start on Newsmax, launched in 1996 by billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch with former Republican operative and serial sexual assaulter Roger Ailes as its founding CEO.

    Newsmax TV didn’t launch until 2014, an outgrowth of the anti-Clinton magazine that launched in the 1990s peddling an array of conspiracies. Fox News has long been a ratings leader in the world of cable news while Newsmax has barely been a blip.

    […] Both channels are a 24-7 cesspool of misinformation, bigotry, and misogyny masquerading as journalism.

    Newsmax was recently compelled to pay out $67 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after airing a series of lies about the company’s role in the 2020 election. […] Newsmax also paid out a $40 million settlement to voting services company Smartmatic for similar election falsehoods.

    Fox infamously paid out nearly $800 million to Dominion after multiple personalities pushed lies about the company. Jeanine Pirro, who now serves as Trump’s U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., was among the most prominent election conspiracy theorists the network pushed—even when producers knew their hosts were lying.

    One America News Network, another right-wing “news” network in the same mold as Fox and Newsmax, has also paid out money to Smartmatic for election lies.

    When these networks aren’t lying about elections, they keep up a steady drumbeat of racism and misogyny meant to fire up conservative audiences. The bigoted content, interspersed with a steady diet of outright lies, keeps viewers coming back—attracting advertisers, bolstering the conservative movement, and pushing voters toward the Republican Party.

    Networks like Fox and their imitators like Newsmax created a universe based on nonsense and hate where figures like Trump now thrive. The world is still dealing with the fallout from the noxious media environment they created and sustain. At the very least a childish legal war that costs them both money could prove to be entertaining.

  60. StevoR says

    New research investigates the possibility that different spacecraft could visit Comet 3I/ATLAS, giving scientists a unique on-location view of the interstellar visitor, or even offering the chance to collect material that could be much older than the bodies of our solar system.

    ….(Snip)..

    ..Eubanks added that 3I/ATLAS will also pass through the fields of view of the ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), NASA’s PUNCH solar monitoring spacecraft, and the Parker Solar Probe as the comet passes near the sun. That means these spacecraft will provide scientists the opportunity to monitor the day-by-day behavior of 3I/ATLAS, albeit at larger distances and lower resolutions.

    Other spacecraft may not get a good look at 3I/ATLAS, but could still play an important role in investigating the interstellar visitor.

    “The Europa Clipper, Hera, and the Lucy spacecraft will all be exterior to 3I/ATLAS, with the sun being behind the interstellar object from their vantage point, which will mostly or entirely prevent them from imaging 3I/ATLAS,” Eubanks said. “However, 3I/ATLAS will also provide the possibility that they will fly through the cometary tail of this body, providing a different means of studying it.”

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/interstellar-invader-comet-3i-atlas-could-be-investigated-by-these-spacecraft-as-it-races-past-the-sun-this-could-be-literally-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity

  65. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    ‘Enormous scandal’: Chris Hayes reacts to Trump’s deadly strike on ‘drug-carrying boat’
    Video is 3:27 minutes, this is a good video. For a military strike in international waters, Trump acted like judge, jury and executioner. The attack was over 1000 miles from the United States mainland. Afterwards, Pete Hegseth took a victory lap. The boat was a civilian craft. Even if they were hauling drugs, no one knows if they were headed to the USA. The boat was not an imminent threat. Also, we can’t believe anything Trump said about the attack.

    ‘Outrageous’: Zohran Mamdani on Trump’s ‘audacious’ plan to sway NYC election
    Video is 9:51 minutes

  67. says

    Followup to comment 65.

    Team Trump faces tough questions following strike on boat in international waters

    When retired Gen. H.R. McMaster served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term, he didn’t exactly enjoy White House meetings. McMaster wrote in his memoir that Trump would routinely become distracted and blurt out “outlandish” ideas during discussions, including one especially memorable instance in which the president wanted to know, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs” before they enter the United States?

    That anecdote came to mind this week. The Associated Press reported:

    President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang. The president said in a social media posting that 11 people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Americas, a dramatic escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to stem the flow of narcotics from Latin America.

    In his online missive (which included 11 exclamation points), the Republican said the people in the boat were “terrorists” and included a short, black-and-white video of what appeared to be a speedboat on fire after a bright flash of light.

    […] it wasn’t long before the administration confronted some awkward questions that still haven’t been fully answered.

    Were the 11 people on the boat actually members of the Tren de Aragua gang? The president claimed they were, but then again, the president claims lots of things that have no basis in reality, and it’s not yet clear whether there might’ve been innocent people on board.

    Were there actual drugs on the boat? Trump insisted there were, but there’s no publicly available evidence to support the claim. And even if there were drugs on board, U.S. officials could’ve intercepted the boat, seized its cargo, arrested those on board (or at least offered them an opportunity to surrender) and put them on trial — without blowing anyone up.

    But just as notable is an overarching question: Was it legal for the Trump administration to use lethal force against a civilian boat in international waters? The New York Times published a report on this with a sentence that stood out: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

    You’ve heard the expression “shoot first and ask questions later”? This appears to be a rare literal example of the phenomenon.

    When JD Vance was asked about the administration’s legal authority in this instance, his answer suggested the vice president — a Yale Law School graduate — was confused by what the phrase “legal authority” means. [video]

    Around the same time, Ryan Goodman, an NYU law professor and former special counsel at the Pentagon, wrote via Bluesky, “I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be ‘murder’ or a war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.”

    Looking ahead, there are a handful of angles to this story that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that there’s no reason to assume the questions will simply go away. Second, if Trump is still campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize, he might want to start lowering his expectations, since the committee tends to frown on extrajudicial killings.

    Third, Americans who voted for Trump hoping for a restrained foreign policy and a reluctance to use military force now have fresh reason to question their decision.

    And finally, the administration is already warning other would-be drug traffickers that they might also be blown up, suggesting this week’s developments were the first step in a larger offensive, not the last. Watch this space.

  68. says

    Why Trump’s false claims about the power of his endorsement matter

    “The president keeps insisting that his endorsements automatically dictate the results of primary elections, but reality tells a very different story.”

    For years, Donald Trump has described a scenario that’s automatic: The president tells GOP primary voters who to vote for, and they obey his directions. It’s a particular point of pride for the Republican, one he emphasized during his latest radio interview on “The Scott Jennings Show.” He boasted:

    I do bring a unity to the Republican Party. Do you know, almost every single person I’ve endorsed has won? I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t. If I endorse a person, they win. … With the Republican Party, it’s like, 399-0. Think of that.

    [Trump pegging the bullshit meter.]

    It would certainly be impressive if that were true. But it’s not even close to being true.

    […] Trump has long padded his win-loss record with support for GOP incumbents who have faced little to no opposition, creating an exaggerated picture, plenty of Trump-backed candidates have fallen short in recent years, including in the 2024 cycle.

    Around this time last year, for example, he backed a candidate in the Republicans’ U.S. Senate primary in New Jersey. She lost. Soon after, despite the former president’s confidence in the potency of his support, his choice in Indiana’s lieutenant governor’s race also flopped.

    Soon after, Trump-backed candidates also lost in Utah’s U.S. Senate primary, as well as GOP congressional primaries in Colorado and South Carolina.

    That was just last year. Plenty of other Republicans lost their primary races after receiving Trump’s endorsement in previous years.

    […] to hear the president tell it, the power of his endorsement is supposed to be — indeed, it must be — the stuff of legend.

    In 2021, for example, he commented on the Republicans who beg for in-person meetings, where they plead for his electoral support, marveling at his self-professed power.

    “We have had so many, and so many are coming in,” Trump said. “It’s been pretty amazing. You see the numbers. They need the endorsement. I don’t say this in a braggadocious way, but if they don’t get the endorsement, they don’t win.”

    […] GOP officials and candidates are supposed to tremble in fear at the very idea of losing favor with him because his all-powerful endorsement is the key to unlocking electoral success. It’s the kind of thinking that keeps congressional Republicans in line, too afraid of what he’d to their careers if they dare to defy him.

    But what the party needs to understand is that the myth isn’t true, no matter how many times he pretends otherwise. The more GOP officials and candidates acknowledge that reality, the less they’ll feel the need to sacrifice their dignity to satisfy Trump’s whims.

  69. says

    Republicans launch yet another Jan. 6 probe, abandoning their ‘looking forward’ rhetoric

    “The GOP’s Jan. 6 probe during the last Congress was an embarrassing dud. Rather than learn an obvious lesson, the party is going to give it another try.”

    Almost immediately after Donald Trump pardoned Jan. 6 criminals, including convicted felons who violently clashed with police, congressional Republicans were asked for their reactions. Most tried to adopt a forward-thinking posture.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for example, said in response to questions about the pardons, “We’re looking at the future, not the past.” Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota echoed that sentiment, saying, “I’m ready to move forward.”

    This was a badly flawed reaction for a variety of reasons, but House Speaker Mike Johnson held to his party’s preferred talking point, too. “The president’s made a decision, we move forward,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters on the third day of the new Trump era. Johnson added, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”

    As it happens, that wasn’t altogether true. GOP officials didn’t want to look back at Trump’s pardons in January 2025, but they most certainly want to look back at the insurrectionist violence from January 2021. Roll Call reported:

    A select subcommittee to continue a Republican-led reinvestigation of the events around Jan. 6, 2021, has officially been given the green light. It’s been a long time coming for Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who helmed a similar subpanel under the House Administration Committee last Congress and lobbied leadership for a new venue in the 119th. Roughly eight months after Loudermilk and Speaker Mike Johnson announced their intentions to form the subcommittee — and after prolonged negotiations — he’s finally cleared to get to work.

    The panel will have eight members, who’ll be chosen by the House speaker, but the partisan split will not be even: The resolution said no more than three of the eight members will be appointed “in consultation” with the Democratic minority.

    […] it was just a few years ago that the Republican majority in the House decided it was time for a new, GOP-friendly investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, one that might offer an alternative view to the official, bipartisan work conducted by the actual Jan. 6 committee. This new endeavor, Republicans announced, would be led by Loudermilk, who had faced some uncomfortable questions about a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot.

    After launching his own Jan. 6 probe, the Georgia Republican’s first step was simple: He exonerated himself.

    In the months that followed, Loudermilk said he intended to determine “what really happened” on Jan. 6, seemingly indifferent to the fact that we already learned what really happened.

    More than a year after launching the partisan probe, Loudermilk and his GOP colleagues released a report on their findings, which was effectively meaningless and broke no new ground. If the goal was to rewrite the story, it failed. Even most Republicans blew it off as irrelevant.

    Loudermilk and his cohorts might’ve hoped to discredit earlier findings and expose shocking new details that would alter the public’s understanding of the assault on the Capitol, but the partisan bombshell was a dud.

    In the months that followed, Loudermilk continued to engage in half-hearted efforts — he even asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into former House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney for foolish reasons that collapsed under scrutiny — but by any fair measure, the entire endeavor was a failure.

    Congressional Democrats barely bothered to push back against Loudermilk’s “investigation” for the most insulting of reasons: They saw it as too boring and pitiful to warrant a full-throated response.

    And now House Republican leaders have settled on a brilliant idea: Johnson wants the same congressman who failed in his previous Jan. 6 investigation to keep going with another Jan. 6 investigation in the current Congress — all while telling the public that GOP lawmakers are “looking forward” and leaving Jan. 6 in the rearview mirror.

  70. says

    Ideally, the United States wouldn’t have a patchwork public health system, with different vaccine recommendations depending on where Americans live. But with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking a sledgehammer to the federal system, once-trusted public health departments reeling under politically imposed chaos and Republican-led states moving in radical and dangerous directions, the national system that has existed for decades without controversy has been rendered unsustainable.

    And so, reality-based officials are having to get creative.

    NBC News reported, for example, on three West Coast states forging a new public health alliance to provide “credible information” about vaccine safety to the public.

    The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced Wednesday that they were working to provide unified recommendations to ‘ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.’ The action comes after months of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the firing of the agency’s director last week.

    The Democratic governors — Washington’s Bob Ferguson, Oregon’s Tina Kotek and California’s Gavin Newsom — warned that the public would likely face “severe” consequences if the CDC becomes “a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science.”

    […] they’re not alone. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reported last week:

    [Democratic Gov. JB] Pritzker’s health department in Illinois is currently exploring the possibility of purchasing Covid-19 vaccines in bulk straight from manufacturers in response to the mess in Washington, a senior Illinois health official confirms to me. Meanwhile, a coalition of mostly blue states led by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is planning to coordinate on the purchase and distribution of pediatric vaccines, should the federal government restrict access to them, according to a source familiar with ongoing discussions.

    Indeed, The Boston Globe reported this week that Healey “essentially wrote a prescription for Covid shots for every person in the state over the age of 5, a move that would blunt potential federal restrictions on Covid boosters.”

    That news coincided with news out of Pennsylvania, where the Democratic-led state government announced that pharmacists throughout the state can offer new Covid vaccines without concern for unnecessary restrictions imposed by the Trump administration.

    The Philadelphia public media station WHYY reported, “The state will recognize vaccine recommendations from major medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics in addition to other professional medical groups in the absence of federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

    This came on the heels of similar developments in New Mexico, where the Democratic-led state government announced last week that it was ordering pharmacies to “remove potential barriers and ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines.”

    While these efforts are likely to save lives, they are only a partial solution: Dangerous contagions and communicable diseases don’t care about arbitrary state boundaries.

    But given the circumstances, it’s nevertheless encouraging to see Democrats and other officials in blue states scramble to do the right thing — unlike Trump appointees at the federal level.

    Dr. Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota vaccine expert who heads a project to help states and professional societies make science-based vaccine recommendations, told the Globe this week, “This is one of the most dangerous times that public health has faced in the last 50 years.”

    Link

  71. says

    Followup to comments 65 and 67.

    Murdering people in a boat. Was thinking about that this am. We spent WEEKS in a course in law school taught by Jack Goldsmith on whether you could even place prisoners at Guantanamo and give them military trials. This guy is just out here letting some violent hopped-up-on-testosterone idiots murder people in broad daylight like it’s a fucking video game. It makes me ill.

    Link

  72. says

    Thanks, Trump: Jobs market grinds to a halt

    […] Trump’s economy continues to falter, with the private sector adding just 54,000 jobs in August, ADP announced on Thursday. That number fell way below the expectation of 68,000 jobs, and was a marked drop from July, when ADP estimated that the private sector added 104,000 jobs.

    ADP blamed the slowdown in part on the uncertainty Trump’s reckless trade policy has created. Companies are being forced to either eat the cost of Trump’s nonsensical tariffs—forcing some to either conduct layoffs or cancel planned capital investments, slowing job growth.

    “The year started with strong job growth, but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said in a news release. “A variety of things could explain the hiring slowdown, including labor shortages, skittish consumers, and AI disruptions.”

    Among the troubling datapoints in ADP’s report is that the manufacturing sector lost 7,000 jobs in August—even though Trump said his tariffs were going to create a manufacturing resurgence in the United States as companies choose to make their goods here rather than import from abroad. Clearly that is not happening.

    The news comes a day after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the number of job openings in the country fell, with 7.2 million job openings in July, down from 7.4 million in June. That marked the first time since April 2021 that there were more job seekers than job openings in the U.S.—a bad sign for unemployed Americans.

    “This is yet another crack in the labor market that illustrates how much harder it is to get a new job right now than what we’ve seen in a long time,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a post on X. […]

    Trump’s firing of the head of the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] calls into question the accuracy of further reports, with questions of whether future reports would be free of political influence. And that makes ADP’s jobs report carry more weight.

    […] the U.S. is not meeting the breakeven pace of job growth needed to keep the unemployment rate steady. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the U.S. needs to add about 153,000 jobs per month to keep the unemployment rate holding flat.

    That means August fell 100,000 jobs short of that goal. Thanks, Trump.

  73. JM says

    @67 Lynna, OM: I think the key thing about this is that the administration has not in any way tried to justify the attack. They have said nothing more then “They were drug dealers, trust us”. If they had dumped out the identities of the people on the boat and intel showing that they were major drug runners and had tons of drugs on the boat a case could at least be made. Using the military to fight drug organizations is a bad idea but at least a case could be made.
    This administration has not even tried. That brings up the possibility they were just random low level mooks, moving the boat from point A to point B. The government might not even know who they killed, only that they were using a boat normally used to run drugs.

  74. birgerjohansson says

    Giorgi Armani has died at 91.
    At least he did not get his riches from blood diamonds, fossil fuel or health insurance but by being a parasite on wealthy people’s need of status. I almost like him.

  76. says

    Even MAGA minions call bullsh-t on Trump’s social media lies

    <

    blockquote>[…] Trump’s own acolytes actually challenged something he said.

    In a recent Truth Social post, Trump declared victory over rising prices. His biggest supporters erupted in anger.

    <

    blockquote>Prices are “WAY DOWN” in the USA, with virtually no inflation. With the exception of ridiculous, corrupt politician approved “Windmills,” which are killing every State and Country that uses them, Energy prices are falling,“big time.” Gasoline is at many year lows. All of this despite magnificent Tariffs, which are bringing in Trillions of Dollars from Countries that took total advantage of us, for decades, and are making America STRONG and RESPECTED AGAIN!!!</bl
    A typical Trump post on his social media propaganda outlet is usually followed by a flurry of ass-kissing memes and over-the-top comments praising his brilliance, his toughness, his supposed God-like greatness—whatever delusion his cult members are clinging to that day. The replies gush as if he’d just reinvented the wheel, cured cancer, and single-handedly won World War II. It’s a melange of the same recycled slogans about “making America great” sung like a church choir, off-key but loud, worshiping their golden calf.

    That kind of devotion is the default—obseqious, unquestioning, cult-like. They treat every post like a Sermon on the Mount, proof that their leader can do no wrong.

    But this time, the response was different. The first comment, directly below it, by one “law4Trump 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸”:

    Sorry @realDonaldTrump. I love and support you, but food prices, rent, insurance are all sky high and continue to climb. Average Americans cannot afford groceries. We are suffering more and more and working parents are going without eating so their kids can eat. It’s not good POTUS.
    The reply directly below that one, featuring an avatar that says “I stand with Trump, feel free to whine,” goes ahead and, uh, whines:

    Think we need to start protesting at the White House to show Trump that prices have not dropped because Trump is being misled and he’s not reading our messages to find out the truth.
    We just need to find a way to get through to @realDonaldTrump because this isn’t working

    The following comments feature more of the same:

    “Mr. President you are doing so much for the American people but Sir “food prices” are still very high.”

    “Try and buy meat and tell me prices are down ! It’s ridiculously high!”

    “Prices have not dropped!! The only thing that has dropped is the quality and quality of anything you pay for […] Love @realDonaldTrump, but he’s got this one wrong. Think he needs to get out and talk to the people rather than look a fake figures”

    “Just Tell Me Where?! Where Can I
    – Get Lower Prices On Food And Gas
    – Cause Nothing, Nil Zip, Nada Has come Down In Illinois”

    “What world are you living in? Gas is down a bit, but everything else is still way too damn high!”

    “This is not true for the average working American. Nothing has really gone down! Homeowners insurance premiums are crazy high now with a standard 2% deductible with shitting payouts on claims. It’s to the point I really question what do insurance companies really cover. Definitely nothing 100%. I’m saving my money right now to pay my $5300 deductible to eventually get my hail damage roof replaced. What happened to all that talk about doge refunds? I could really use one of those checks right now.”

    The responses go on and on like this. […] Ain’t no one buying his bullshit, and they’re saying it to his face. […]

  78. says

    JM @73, good points.

    In other news: Navy reverses demotion of Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former White House doctor

    “In light of the details and context, it’s tough to see the Navy’s decision to help the Texas Republican as anything but overtly political.”

    During his relatively brief tenure as a political figure, Rep. Ronny Jackson has found himself at the center of multiple controversies. The Texas Republican was, for example, a White House physician who made bizarre public comments about Donald Trump’s health, which in turn made him the subject of ridicule.

    Soon after in the president’s first term, Trump announced that he wanted Jackson to join his Cabinet as secretary of Veterans Affairs, despite an obvious lack of qualifications. That didn’t go too well, either: Amid reports about Jackson’s alleged pattern of substance abuse, harassing women and creating a “toxic” work environment (all of which Jackson denied), the nominee faced bipartisan opposition. The White House pulled his nomination soon after.

    Two years later, Jackson was elected to Congress, but the revelations continued. In 2021, the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office concluded that Jackson had engaged in “inappropriate conduct” while serving as Trump’s doctor, adding that the Republican “drank alcohol, made sexual comments to subordinates, and took the sedative Ambien while working as White House physician.” The Defense Department’s internal watchdog also found that Jackson mistreated subordinates and “disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated them.” (Jackson again denied any wrongdoing.)

    A year later, the Navy demoted Jackson from admiral to captain as a consequence of his misconduct.

    It’s against this backdrop that The Associated Press reported:

    Rep. Ronny Jackson announced that the Navy has restored his retired rank of rear admiral, overturning a 2022 demotion that followed a scathing investigation that found major issues with his behavior while he was the top White House physician. The Texas Republican on Wednesday posted a June 13 letter from Navy Secretary John Phelan saying he had reinstated Jackson to the retired rank of a one-star admiral following a ‘review of all applicable reports and references.’

    A Navy spokesperson confirmed in a written statement to The Associated Press that the military branch did, in fact, reverse the punishment it had imposed three years earlier.

    […] as the AP’s report added, “The decision to restore Jackson’s rank comes as the Pentagon has become increasingly transparent in offering benefits and consideration to those it sees as personally loyal supporters of President Donald Trump, while those who are seen as unsupportive of Trump have been pushed out of senior roles across the military.”

    […] they want to reshape the federal bureaucracy into a political tool, to be used for their own benefit.

  79. says

    Texas Picks The Abortion Fight Everyone Saw Coming

    The Texas Senate passed new bounty hunter-style abortion legislation Wednesday night to quash mailed abortion pills, targeting a method that has slipped through the cracks of abortion bans […].

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), staunchly anti-abortion, is expected to sign it.

    The bill would allow people to sue the manufacturers, deliverers and providers of mailed abortion pills for damages. […]

    The case law here is thin and the central questions largely untested. How far can states’ laws extend out of their territory?

    “Patients leaving the state to access care, get the procedure and come home is one thing,” Jessie Hill, associate dean and reproductive rights scholar at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told TPM. “But when you’re sending pills into a state, you are reaching into that state in a sense.”

    Texas’ thirst to prosecute blue state doctors has already reached the courts in a different case.

    In late 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued a New York doctor for allegedly prescribing abortion medication to a Texas resident (the medication was allegedly discovered by the Texas woman’s partner, whom she did not tell about her pregnancy). When the provider did not appear in court, under cover of New York’s shield law, Paxton sought a $100,000 penalty, filed in New York.

    Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck declined to file Paxton’s motion.

    “In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office,” he said.

    Paxton pushed Bruck to reconsider in July; the clerk again declined.

    “The rejection stands. Resubmitting the same materials does not alter the outcome,” he wrote in a press release. “While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed.”

    Texas’ new legislation, by design, will be difficult to preemptively challenge, as it’s enforced by ordinary citizens. A legal clash is likely only after someone is sued under it.

    “They’re trying to provoke a fight over the Comstock Act,” Hill said, referencing an 1873 federal law banning the mailing of abortifacients that the anti-abortion movement has been eyeing to ban mailing the medication.

    Texas has been increasingly citing the Comstock Act in other legal attacks on abortion access, including in its effort to join a red-state attack on mifepristone. […]

    The fight over medication abortion is the fundamental one that will shape the post-Dobbs world. The anti-abortion movement has been stunningly successful, even pre-Dobbs, in regulating surgical abortion out of existence in large swaths of the country. Medication abortion, though, which has steadily increased in popularity, has proven much harder to track and kill.

    […] It’s no surprise that Texas, so often the laboratory for pushing the bounds of anti-abortion absolutism, is preparing to do battle against its fellow states to outlaw the abortion method, on the dependably friendly terrain of the Supreme Court.

  81. says

    Followup to comment 79.

    RFK Jr. is coming for abortion pills

    Incompetent quack and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday that data on Mifepristone—a drug used in the majority of medication abortions—was “twisted” to make it seem safer than it is, a clear sign that he is laying the groundwork to limit access.

    “We’re getting data in all the time, new data that we’re reviewing, and we know that during the Biden administration they actually twisted the data to bury one of the safety signals,” Kennedy said, referring to the timing of the results for an FDA review he ordered on the drug. [video]

    Kennedy made the comment during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, where he repeatedly lied about vaccine safety to try to defend his anti-vaccine agenda—which is putting Americans’ health at risk.

    Banning Mifepristone is a key goal of Project 2025, the right-wing roadmap for President Donald Trump’s second term. […]

    Medication abortions account for more than two-thirds of abortions nationwide, with the most common regiment being the combined use of Mifepristone and Misoprostol, according to KFF.

    The Biden administration made it easier to access the two-drug medication abortion in 2021 by no longer requiring patients to attend in-person appointments to acquire them.

    If Kennedy uses fake data to eliminate that requirement, it would make it harder for millions of people to access medication abortion at already overburdened abortion providers, which are seeing influxes of patients from states where abortion is now illegal.

    […] anti-abortion groups are already celebrating Kennedy’s comment.

    The American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs—whose membership list is a great resource to find doctors you should avoid—cheered Kennedy’s comment. […]

    The group then went on to cite a “new report” about made-up infections associated with medication abortions.

    “AAPLOG’s new report on the risk of deadly infections with mifepristone is another serious safety signal. We urge the FDA to immediately reinstate crucial safety restrictions on mifepristone while they conduct a thorough review of the dangers of this drug,” it said.”

    It’s only a matter of time before legal abortion access gets even worse—if not eradicated altogether.

  83. says

    EU Commission’s Ribera says Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide

    “Top Brussels official adds that the situation ‘exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice.’ ”

    A top European Union official described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, the strongest condemnation yet to come out of Brussels.

    Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice president, also said Europe was too divided to do anything about the starvation, displacement and killing of Palestinians.

    “The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice, even as protests spread across European cities and 14 U.N. Security Council members call for an immediate ceasefire,” Ribera told students at Sciences Po in a speech Thursday morning.

    The Spanish commissioner has been one of the fiercest critics in Brussels of Israel’s assault on Gaza. This speech, however, marks the first time Ribera explicitly described the situation as genocide.

    Her remarks come as Israel faces growing international condemnation, including from many of its traditional allies, ahead of this month’s United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

    Belgium this week said it will join a group of countries that will recognize the state of Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly and will impose sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza. In July, French President Emmanuel Macron said France would recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. meeting, and more than a dozen other Western countries have said they would do the same.

    Ireland and Ribera’s home country of Spain formally recognized Palestine in 2024.

    The EU, however, has remained split on whether to sanction Israel, with countries such as Germany and Hungary rejecting calls to suspend the EU’s trade agreement with the country.

    The European Commission as an institution and most EU governments have so far avoided using the word genocide, which in legal terms describes actions to destroy a people in whole or in part. A case at the International Court of Justice, brought by South Africa against Israel, is ongoing.

    Earlier this week, the world’s leading genocide scholars passed a resolution stating that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of the term. […]

  84. JM says

    DW: Report: Child labor used to build Russian drones

    A Russian drone factory in Yelabuga, Tatarstan, is reportedly producing up to 50,000 Geran-2 drones — copies of Iran’s Shahed model — per shift, according to state-run Svezda TV.

    Independent journalists say trade school students are forced to work on the production line. Children are also recruited through science camps and competitions to develop and teach drone technology, raising concerns over child labor in military manufacturing.

    Russia loosened up the laws earlier this year but this is the first I’ve seen of teenagers working on military production lines. It’s a sign of how desperate Russia is getting for manpower. The military has soaked up so many people that everything else is short of labor.
    Russia is still recruiting from other countries but is not turning up enough people. Russia has redirected so many of those people to support on the front line or even into the Russian infantry that they are getting few people to take those offers.

  85. says

    MSNBC:

    We could learn fairly soon what the Supreme Court thinks of Donald Trump’s tariff powers. His administration filed a petition to the justices Wednesday night seeking high court review, as well as a motion to expedite the case. The latter filing said the plaintiffs who just beat the administration at the appeals court don’t oppose the justices hearing the case or doing so on an expedited basis.

    The Hill:

    President Trump took his fight to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leaders without cause to the Supreme Court on Thursday, a move that could prompt the justices to overrule a key precedent blessing removal protections at the agency for decades.

    NBC News:

    The city of Washington has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the military over the deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital. Trump, the suit says, ‘has run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.’

  86. says

    Washington Post:

    The Pentagon has approved the use of a Navy base on the outskirts of Chicago as a staging ground from which the Trump administration can launch operations against undocumented immigrants, said two defense officials familiar with the issue.

  87. says

    Reuters:

    U.S. manufacturing contracted for a sixth straight month in August as factories dealt with the fallout from the Trump administration’s import tariffs, with some manufacturers describing the current business environment as ‘much worse than the Great Recession.’

  88. says

    Associated Press:

    The U.S. Department of Justice has requested access to voting equipment used in the 2020 election in two Missouri counties in what appears to be a wide-ranging effort to more closely monitor election processes around the country.

    A DOJ official in August contacted the county clerks and asked for access to their Dominion Voting Systems equipment, according to a memo from the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities that was shared Wednesday with The Associated Press.

    Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis declined, saying he no longer had the equipment. The memo said McDonald County Clerk Jessica Cole had the equipment, but also declined. In a statement quoted in the memo, Cole said state and federal law prohibits election officials from giving unauthorized access to election equipment.

    The unconventional requests to a state President Donald Trump has won three times, first reported by the Missouri Independent, signal how the DOJ during Trump’s second term has sought a closer watch over how states run their elections. The president himself has sought broad authority over elections in the runup to the 2026 midterms that the Constitution does not give him.

    Election experts have said the Justice Department is stretching beyond its legal authority with its outreach in Missouri and its separate demands for state voter registration lists in nearly two dozen states.

    Colorado-based Dominion has been a frequent target of conspiracy theorists who have championed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and who have asserted, without evidence, that its equipment manipulated votes. It has fought back against those claims by filing defamation lawsuits that have resulted in massive settlements: The conservative outlet Newsmax recently agreed to pay $67 million and in 2023 Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million after the judge overseeing the case said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations against the company were true.

    The DOJ has no authority over voting machines nor does it have the expertise or capacity to review the equipment, David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said during a media briefing Wednesday.

    […] In Missouri, voting equipment is approved by the secretary of state and meets strict state and federal standards, said Sherry Parks, president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities. Parks said local election officials are responsible for custody, maintenance, preparation, testing and storage of the equipment. They are not allowed to let unauthorized parties access or tamper with the machines.

    […] The request to access Dominion voting equipment follows a DOJ effort to get copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 23 states, the AP has found.

    In some states that have declined or demurred on those requests, citing their own state laws or the DOJ’s failure to fulfill Privacy Act obligations, the agency has followed up by sending additional letters demanding the voter data on short deadlines.

    In Minnesota and California, DOJ officials threatened to sue for the voter lists.

    The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government. […]

    Link

  89. says

    DC attorney general fights back against Trump’s military occupation

    Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb is taking President Donald Trump to court—again.

    On Thursday, Schwalb filed a lawsuit accusing Trump of violating the Constitution and federal law by flooding the city with thousands of National Guard troops without the consent of local leaders. He called the deployment an illegal “military occupation” that has effectively turned domestic troops into local police.

    The complaint notes that National Guard members—many of whom come from out of state—have been deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service, carrying out neighborhood patrols, executing searches, and making arrests. That, Schwalb argues, violates federal law.

    […] The National Guard troops in Washington are likely to have their military orders extended through December, ensuring that they keep full benefits.

    Unlike governors in other states, Washington’s mayor has no authority over its National Guard, which answers solely to the president. But Schwalb’s lawsuit argues that Trump has gone beyond even that authority, using it as a de facto police force in violation of federal law.

    The scale of the deployment is enormous: According to The Washington Post, nearly 2,300 National Guard members are currently stationed in the city, including 1,340 personnel from seven other states.

    […] Even Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has had to walk a fine line. This week, she issued an executive order requiring the city to coordinate with federal law enforcement indefinitely, which progressives blasted as giving Trump more power.

    Bowser claims that the move was meant to provide the Trump administration and congressional Republicans a face-saving way to wind down the federal takeover.

    “I want the message to be clear to the Congress: We have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city. We don’t need a presidential emergency,” she said Wednesday.

    […] Schwalb’s case also follows a significant legal loss for Trump in California earlier this week, when a federal judge ruled that he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated federal law by using federal troops for law enforcement in Los Angeles earlier this summer. […]

  90. says

    FFS.

    In a move that was probably inevitable once we gave the keys to the government to the world’s tackiest and griftiest real estate developer, it looks like we might be turning the renowned Camp Pendleton into an Airbnb.

    Officials have told NBC News that some of the California Marine Corps base could be leased for commercial use, and the profits would go toward the dumb Golden Dome missile defense system that President Donald Trump is obsessed with. Even better, they’re not contemplating one discrete chunk of land—they would just let some commercial enterprises scatter around the 125,000-acre base, which seems totally secure and military-minded.

    You might be wondering why the government needs to have a fire sale to pay for the Golden Dome project. There was $24.4 billion allocated in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, but that’s not going to be nearly enough. The administration has arbitrarily declared the whole thing will cost $175 billion, but estimates vary wildly, coming in at anywhere from $119 billion to $6.4 trillion. Even the Congressional Budget Office, whose employees estimate things like this for a living, came up with a range of $161 billion to $542 billion.

    The cost estimates are all over the map because no one really knows how—or if—the Golden Dome would work. The CBO explained this very delicately, noting that one reason we don’t know how much the thing would cost is that both the number and sophistication of missile threats are increasing, including ICBMs from North Korea. The space-based weapons needed to repel Chinese and Russian ICBMs “would need to be much bigger—and therefore more costly—than the constellations in the previous studies.”

    Hm. Doesn’t really seem like the government can turn enough of Camp Pendleton into strip malls or third-rate casinos or whatever to cover this sort of cost gap. Maybe the Golden Dome could arrange to tap into the seemingly bottomless pile of money set aside for terrorizing immigrants?

    […] Trump became obsessed with the idea thanks to Israel’s Iron Dome, but that covers an area about the size of New Jersey. To defend the sprawling United States from less than a dozen North Korean ICBMs would take about 10,000 space-based weapons. Nobody actually thinks the thing will work anyway, but it will be an epic boondoggle and moneypit until the wheels fully come off.

    Indeed, the Golden Dome is the perfect sort of project for Trump. It’s an opportunity to shovel money to private tech companies, which he adores. As a bonus, he’ll get to sell off part of the government to do it. […]

    Link

  91. says

    Michael Osterholm, a former Biden adviser on COVID-19, said Wednesday that “Florida’s going to become a hotbed of transmission” after Sunshine State officials announced they will seek to make the state the first in the U.S. lacking school vaccine mandates.

    “I would have to tell you, as a parent or a grandparent, I wouldn’t want my kids to go into Florida in the years ahead, to go to Walt Disney World, or any place like that, because Florida’s going to become a hotbed of transmission by eliminating this particular mandate, and I think — unfortunately timely for that to be true,” Osterholm told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on his show.

    On Wednesday, Florida officials said they will attempt to make the state the first in the country to not have any vaccine mandates for children to attend schools. […]

    Link

  92. says

    The first thing you should know about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hearing today — aside from the fact that the man in charge of the nation’s health spent the first 40 minutes of the event heavily wheezing into his hot mic like Darth Vader with bronchitis — is that Sen. Ron Wyden’s request to put him under oath for the proceeding, so as to hold him legally accountable for any lies he might tell, was refused by Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo. So he was free to lie all he wanted, and he took every opportunity to do so, even when it resulted in making him look completely delusional.

    Ron Wyden opened the hearing with a statement on the absolute garbage fire our health care policy has been since Kennedy took over the Department of Health and Human Services, how his constituents are confused and angry, and how Kennedy is endangering Americans with junk science and other nonsense. (We’ll put the full hearing at the end of this post.) [video]

    Kennedy opened with his own statement, first by acknowledging DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, who was murdered last month when a man who shares Kennedy’s own “beliefs” about vaccines decided to go and shoot up the CDC. (Kennedy declined to mention that part.) He then summarized some of what he believes has been accomplished throughout his tenure at the CDC, congratulating himself on such bullshit as getting the CDC to stop recommending fluoride and “ending child mutilation” — by which he clearly meant barring teenagers from getting gender affirming care. He also congratulated himself and the administration on some things that were patently untrue, such as actually doing anything about “chronic illness” beyond whining that no one else has done anything about chronic illness, and “pouring a billion dollars into Head Start” when the administration was found to have illegally withheld funding from the program. He also repeated Trump’s lie about the Biden administration supposedly “losing” 300,000 migrant children (though in his telling it was 476,000). [Wow. That is some weapons-grade bullshit from Kennedy. The high level of his delusion …!]

    He then claimed that a purge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was necessary, insisting that CDC policies were the reason why America did so poorly in comparison to other countries during the pandemic.

    “America is home to 4.2 percent of the world’s population. Yet, we had nearly 20 percent of the COVID deaths,” he said. “We literally did worse than any country in the world. And the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving. And that’s why we need bold, competent, and creative new leadership at CDC.”

    Well, sure. We literally did worse than all other countries because of our Republicans. Post-vaccine, deaths from COVID were 30 percent higher in Republican states that did not follow the CDC’s recommendations. As much as people like Kennedy like to cry that they did nothing, every study available has shown that areas where people observed mask mandates, social distancing and other recommendations saw major decreases in mortality. Other countries had better outcomes than we did not because they didn’t have the same recommendations, but because those recommendations were uniform throughout the country and not done piecemeal on city and state levels.

    I just want to note that, because, as great as our Democratic senators did — I mean it! and you know I don’t just go handing out cookies to them for nothing! — no one got around to pointing that out to him.

    Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) kicked things off by having a good laugh about how all of the Democrats think that the One Big Beautiful Bill is going to hurt rural hospitals, when that’s already been a problem for a while. This gave the two of them an opportunity to “point out” that the bill allocates $10 billion a year for the next five years to help rural hospitals stay open.

    Trust, Bernie Sanders got to this one later.

    They also had a good laugh about how Democratic programs like the ACA or ideas like single payer healthcare are like “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” claiming that Democrats think the only solution to health care is to just randomly throw money at the problem — which is actually pretty funny given that single payer health care, which Kennedy’s uncle spent much of his life trying to make a reality in this country, would cost us all significantly less than what we are all paying now. It would be far more accurate to say that Democrats believe the solution is not throwing money at health care, but throwing health care at people. […]

    They also had the gall to discuss how much less people throughout the world pay for health care compared to the US, without acknowledging that people in other countries have the universal health care they both just laughed at. So cute!

    Oh! And if that wasn’t enraging enough, they both had the gall to bring up the increase in infant mortality rates, somehow trying to blame that on Democratic policies and the CDC. Of course, as we all know, infant mortality rates are super high in red states, while the rates in blue states are comparable to the rates in Europe and other high-income nations. We also know that the only places where those rates have increased recently has been in states like Mississippi and Alabama, where abortion has been banned.

    Thankfully, unlike the future of health care under the Trump administration, the hearing mostly just got better.

    When it was his chance to weigh in, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) tried his darndest to get Kennedy to say whether or not he agrees with his ACIP appointee Dr. Robert Malone that mRNA vaccines cause a form of AIDS when given to infants.

    For some reason, Kennedy refused to answer! [video]

    Instead, he just kept looking as smug and exasperated as he could, which is pretty much how he spent the whole hearing.

    Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the pro-vaccine Republican (a medical doctor!) we were supposed to be able to count on to vote against Kennedy, grilled him a bit as well — pointing out that his colleagues in the medical community were sending him letters saying that they were entirely unclear as to whether they could give people the COVID vaccine or not. [video]

    Smartly, Cassidy told Kennedy that he believed Trump should get the Nobel prize (as he has obsessed over) for Operation Warp Speed (the miraculously fast development of the COVID vaccine, which saved millions of American lives), asking Kennedy if he believed he deserved it for that as well — and then also asking him, once he’d said yes, how he could reconcile that belief with his belief that the vaccine killed more people than COVID. Kennedy obviously agreed to the first part, because what else could he say, and … well, mostly failed to answer the other part of the question. He just kept saying that it got people back to work and was supposedly, somehow, only effective at the time that version of the vaccine was released, but at no other time.

    For her part, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) straight up called Kennedy a charlatan, accusing him of pitting the need to fight chronic disease (which she noted he has done exactly nothing about) against the need for vaccines, as if we can only do one or the other.

    She also had some pretty great signs demonstrating how many fewer people had died of diseases for which we now have vaccines, in comparison to the number that did before said vaccines. [video]

    Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) pointed out that Kennedy had previously complained of the “devastating impact” of Operation Warp Speed and again asked him to explain why he would believe Trump should get the Nobel prize for something with a “devastating impact.”

    It did not go well! [video]

    To his credit, Republican John Barrasso of Wyoming, a physician like Bill Cassidy, also tried to explain to RFK Jr. that vaccines are good, actually — and asked Kennedy what he planned to do to make Americans believe that his policies were based on science and not politics.

    “Americans have lost faith in CDC, and we need to restore that faith, and we’re going to do that by telling the truth and not through propaganda,” Kennedy said. “I’m making them understand that everything that we say is true.”

    That doesn’t actually seem to be happening. Not sure if you’ve noticed!

    Other Republicans, however, were not quite as helpful. Steve Daines (R-Montana) wanted to know more about how Kennedy would ban mifepristone; Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) wanted to know about over-prescribing “stimulants” to children, which resulted in Kennedy claiming that one in five children is on stimulants or anti-depressants, which is absolute nonsense; Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) had a giant sign that said “76 JABS!” so you can mostly figure how that one went.

    I will, however, give some credit to the not-running-for-reelection Thom Tillis (R-Florida, who brought some criticism, re: the CDC firings.

    But back to the fun parts! Because as you probably figured, Elizabeth Warren was fucking fabulous. [video]

    Warren got into a whole ass argument with Kennedy over the fact that he had promised not to take vaccines away from anyone and then did just that, while he lied and insisted he did no such thing. She tried to explain to him that the CDC not recommending the COVID vaccine means that people can no longer just go and get it from the pharmacy and be assured that their healthcare will cover it.

    Naturally, he responded to that by lying some more.

    Warren then asked, “Did you tell the head of the CDC that if she refused to sign off on your changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, that she had to resign?”

    “No. I told her she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said no,” Kennedy explained. Boy, does that ever sound like a thing that happened in real life!

    Kennedy also tried to suggest that Warren was receiving piles of money from “the pharmaceutical industry,” when in fact she only ever got individual small donations from people working in that industry — probably because they know how fucked it is.

    Bernie Sanders was also very impressed by this exchange, and when it was his turn, even reenacted the conversation and asked him if that was how it went. [video]

    Sanders then pointed out that every single medical association in the United States, representing millions of doctors, is opposed to everything he is doing — while Kennedy tried to make it out like they were all owned by Big Pharma, just like noted shill Elizabeth Warren! Sanders also tried to explain individual donations vs. PAC donations like the ones Republicans get from pharmaceutical groups, but to no avail.

    Still, I don’t think even Kennedy thinks he successfully sold “Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are shills for Big Pharma” to anyone.

    There were a lot of other quality moments, and I highly suggest watching the whole thing, if you can get through the aforementioned 40 minutes of wheezing. It probably won’t result in Kennedy resigning, as so many have pleaded with him to do, but at least it gave us some good soundbites that will help us elect more people who just might prevent Kennedy from killing us all.

    Here’s the whole thing. [video]

    The video of the whole thing is from PBS News.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-will-need-some-healthcare

  93. says

    Law and Order, Republican style.

    Last week, Oklahoma state Rep. Ty Burns (R-Obviously), a former law enforcement officer, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence and assault charges related to having tried to gouge his wife’s eye out and succeeded in running his daughter’s car off the road. In what we are sure is a major disappointment for all of the law and order, family values Republicans in the state, as well as Burns himself, who continually voted to increase punishments and jail time for a variety of crimes like assault, shoplifting, or being an undocumented immigrant, he did not actually net any prison time. Rather, he received a one-year suspended sentence and is required to complete a 52-week “please don’t beat your wife and child” intervention program.

    Oklahoma citizens, naturally, were not made aware of these charges until well after Rep. Burns was sentenced.

    According to court documents, the assault charges were filed in April of this year after Burns accused his wife of allowing their 16-year-old daughter to drink alcohol and subsequently chased a pick-up truck containing said daughter and her grandmother off the road, using his van to ram the truck into a ditch, while yelling “I’m going to make sure you go down. I’m going to kill you.”

    While reporting the incident, Rep. Burns’s wife also filed charges related to another incident in November of 2024, in which he was upset by plans she had made over Thanksgiving and attempted to gouge out her eye with his own finger — succeeding in bursting a blood vessel in said eye.

    The state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, also a Republican, said he saw “no justification” for felony charges.

    “These are serious charges,” Drummond said in a statement. “While there is no excuse for domestic violence, I am encouraged that the representative has taken responsibility for his actions and will receive counseling under terms of his sentence. Domestic violence is tragically all too common in our state. It must stop.” […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/oklahoma-goper-resigns-after-pleading

  94. says

    U.S. Open women’s champs now get a replica trophy equal to the men’s

    “From 1987 until two years ago, the female champion took home a 12-inch-tall copy.”

    Photo at the link.

    Coco Gauff was surprised at how much tinier the replica trophy she got to keep after winning this year’s French Open was than the trophy she posed with on court at Roland-Garros for all the world to see. She even did a TikTok about the discrepancy, drawing more than 2 million views.

    Why was Gauff so taken aback by what she called the “ miniature version”?

    “I honestly did not know the size it was going to be. … I know you never really take the original, but when I won the U.S. Open, they gave me the same size (trophy), with my name engraved on it,” Gauff told The Associated Press. “So I just assumed that Roland Garros would be the same.”

    Actually, it turns out Gauff’s 2023 championship at the U.S. Open marked the first time the women’s singles winner in New York was given a silver cup significantly larger than the one that is used in the postmatch ceremony. Her replica hardware is 19½ inches tall, the same as both the original and keepsake men’s trophies — and 7½ inches bigger than the original women’s trophy.

    That one, like the original men’s, is displayed during the tournament in a locked glass box near where players enter the event’s main arena and will be briefly handed to, then taken away from, whoever wins the women’s final in Arthur Ashe Stadium this Saturday.

    From 1987, when the tradition of providing keepsakes at Flushing Meadows began, until two years ago, the female champion took home a 12-inch-tall copy. But the U.S. Tennis Association asked Tiffany & Co. to create replicas for the women to match the size of what the men are allowed to keep. That change coincided with the 50th anniversary of the tournament’s 1973 move to pay equal prize money to women and men at then-player Billie Jean King’s urging. […]

  95. says

    […] Is now the time to get a COVID shot?

    The Food and Drug Administration, under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., approved updated COVID boosters for people over the age of sixty-five, or those with various medical conditions that increase their risk. For everyone else, going forward, it’s going to be more complicated to get the vaccine. If you have the resources and you’re dogged, you can probably still obtain it in most states. A doctor could prescribe shots off-label—but not everyone sees a doctor regularly, and some insurance companies may not cover off-label vaccinations. (The C.D.C. vaccine-advisory panel, which R.F.K., Jr., replaced with new members, will meet in a couple weeks, so guidance could change.)

    I think now is the time to get the shot—say, by October or November. Vaccination isn’t a guarantee against infection, or against bad outcomes. But it provides some protection. It’s a good idea to get the COVID vaccine along with the flu vaccine, which should carry you through the winter season. […]

    New Yorker link

  96. JM says

    CBS News: Judge rips DOJ for causing “embarrassment” for the government as it dismisses another D.C. felony case

    A federal judge excoriated the Justice Department over its handling of criminal cases during the Trump administration’s ongoing federal takeover of Washington, D.C., saying at a hearing Thursday that the department has brought “embarrassment and shame” on the government during its “rush” to charge individuals.
    U.S. District Judge Zia Faruqui apologized to Edward Dana, a man who was charged for what the Justice Department and U.S. Secret Service said was a threat to kill President Trump last month. Dana spent a week in jail, only to have the charges against him dropped Thursday.

    The judge also criticized the Justice Department over the D.C. U.S. attorney’s multiple failed indictments in recent weeks, saying he had a “grave concern” that in a “rush to get stats on Twitter or Truth Social” touting the takeover, the Justice Department has not given time to those who have been “illegally detained.”
    Faruqui said there have been “too many misfires” by the Justice Department in attempting to prosecute people in D.C., and that the federal government is operating under the concept of “we’ll arrest people… then see what happens.”

    Judges seem to have finally realized that they can’t assume the Trump administration is acting in good faith. In the past the DOJ and executive branch in general have often been given wide leeway by the courts. It was taken that the DOJ was never bringing cases it didn’t expect to win, intentionally over charging people or bringing a case just for the publicity. With the Trump administration that isn’t the case.

  97. JM says

    AP: Trump plans to ask Supreme Court to toss E. Jean Carroll’s $5 million abuse and defamation verdict

    President Donald Trump will soon ask the Supreme Court to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her, his lawyers said in a recent court filing.
    Trump’s lawyers previewed the move as they asked the high court to extend its deadline for challenging the $5 million verdict from Sept. 10 to Nov. 11. The president “intends to seek review” of “significant issues” arising from the trial and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ subsequent decisions upholding the verdict, his lawyers said.

    This was inevitable, the interesting part is that Trump’s lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to extend the deadline. Likely because they are having trouble coming up with any issues to raise, this case has been litigated to death already. There are no substantial issues that they can bring that have not already been brought and apparently they can’t find anything new either.

  98. JM says

    Fox 31 Denver: Demolition for new White House ballroom doesn’t need approval, Trump-appointed commission head says

    Demolition to build President Donald Trump’s new ballroom off the East Wing of the White House can begin without approval of the commission tasked with vetting construction of federal buildings, the Trump-appointed head of the panel said Thursday.
    Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary, said during a public meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission that the board does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.

    Neat trick, making the question of doing the project at all meaningless by doing the demolition before asking.

    Scharf said the White House hadn’t yet submitted building plans for the White House renovations but when that happens, “I’m excited for us to play a role in the ballroom project when the time is appropriate for us to do so.”

    “Given the president’s history as a builder, and given the plans that we’ve seen publicly I think this will be a tremendous addition to the White House complex, a sorely needed addition,” Scharf said.

    More or less said “We have not seen the plans yet but our rubber stamp is being warmed up.”
    From what I have read the White House could actually use a larger ball room for large events but this ball room is huge and will use a lot of space in a building that is short of space in general.

  99. JM says

    NBC News: Justice Department asks Supreme Court to allow Trump to fire FTC commissioner

    The Justice Department on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow President Donald Trump to fire a Federal Trade Commissioner without cause in another full-frontal attack on the concept of independent federal agencies.
    The request is a direct challenge to a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that upheld limits on the president’s ability to fire FTC commissioners without cause, a restriction Congress imposed to protect the agency from political pressure.

    This is a unitary executive move. Just skip the whole for cause thing at all and greatly expand the Presidents power. I would be surprised if the court goes along, the Supreme Court more or less directly said the President can fire other people but the Federal Reserve gets special protection.

  100. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NYT – Trump admin says boat strike is start of campaign against Venezuelan cartels

    Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used […] The Trump administration has deemed several gangs and drug cartels to be terrorist organizations […] Such designations allow the government to sanction such groups, including by freezing their assets, but do not authorize combat activity against them.
    […]
    A Defense Department official questioned whether a boat that size could hold 11 people.
    […]
    [A] former official, who has years of direct experience in fighting drug cartels, raised several other questions about the attack on the fast boat.

    First, the former official said, Tren de Aragua was not known for handling large shipments of cocaine or fentanyl. Instead it was known to focus on smuggling what is known as pink cocaine—a psychedelic substance that is generally made by combining ketamine and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, a stimulant that can cause hallucinations.

    The former official also said it was unusual to have 11 people manning a vessel that could easily be crewed by two or three, especially since traffickers are always trying to maximize the amount of cargo space devoted to carrying drugs, not human beings.

    In the former official’s opinion, it was more likely that the vessel was carrying migrants on a human smuggling run. It would be impossible to know for sure, however, given that any evidence of drug smuggling was destroyed in the attack.
    […]
    Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro […] has accused Mr. Rubio of trying to drag Mr. Trump into a bloody war in the Caribbean […] the Pentagon has been amassing a small armada of warships in the southern Caribbean […] Several P-8 surveillance planes and at least one submarine have also deployed

  101. JM says

    CNN: Trump DOJ is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, sources say

    In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.

    Very direct attack on transgender people. It’s hard to see what the government expects to get here. It’s unlikely to hold up in court no matter what they do. It will anger both the right and left, making it a bad idea if they are aiming for political gain.
    It feels like something Trump came up with himself and there is nobody left in the White House willing to talk him out of it. It follows his idea that trangender people are mentally ill. I could see him trying to declare all transgender people seriously mentally ill and thus should be kept from owning guns.

  102. says

    I’ve found what I consider an important (long ~1.5hrs large ~258.5MB) informative and quite definitive video on AI. I recommend it to everyone.
    I’m not a fan of youtube, but, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8enXRDlWguU
    title: Silicon Valley Insider EXPOSES Cult-Like AI Companies _Aaron Bastani Meets Kare.mp4
    interview of Karen Hao (strong technical background, very intelligent well reasoned presentation. I admire not only her intellect, but her honesty and altruism)

    My observations (from the broader sources I’ve been studying and some new insights from this interview)
    Prerequisite to all this discussion is my positing that ‘technology is just a tool’ not a panacea or deity
    1)most people are incredibly ‘ill-informed’ about what AI is
    a)that ignorance causes/encourages people to wastefully use AI
    when a simple web search or other creative tool would suffice
    2)If you are modelling after human thought capability, no one understands it, let alone how to achieve it
    3)AI projects/companies are immoral (or at best amoral)
    a)in use of water and (coal/gas generated) electricity
    in locations that don’t have enough of either to serve the populace
    b)no regard for the horrendous damage to the environment
    c)no regard for the damage to human lives (pollution, traffic, noise,
    destruction of jobs with nothing to replace them, etc.)
    4)a majority of the tech billionaires and their followers exhibit religious cult behavior
    5)corporate greed
    6)incredibly risky investment and massive diversion of monetary resources
    from projects more greatly needed by populace/society.
    If the AI ‘bubble pops’ those important projects (universities, cities, etc.) will never recover that money

  103. says

    Also, from reading all the preceding articles, I am compelled to conclude that the dept of (in)justice is a stupid, corrupt puppet of tRUMP. And, he and they and using the supreme court (scrotum 6) as their own private executioners of democracy.

  104. says

    @95 Lynna wrote: I think now is the time to get the shot—say, by October or November. Vaccination isn’t a guarantee against infection, or against bad outcomes. But it provides some protection. It’s a good idea to get the COVID vaccine along with the flu vaccine, which should carry you through the winter season. […]
    I reply: Covid is surging in Scarizona. 700 cases two months ago. 2700 cases this last month. Our organization has gotten flu and covid vaccinations in early October in past years. We will do so this year and hope they will be effective (hopefully not destroyed by Roadkill F*cking Kennedy jr’s itiocy)

  106. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 101

    It will anger both the right…

    Will it?

    I can easily imagine the chuds retorting “Oh! NOW you dirty libs support the second amendment when it’s degenerate [slur for transgender people] perverts plotting to murder our innocent children when they can’t mutilate them!!!”

  108. John Morales says

    Point, Akira.
    Not being a local, I just checked with Bubblebot:

    (after 2 exchanges)
    Me: so, embraced, but not opposed by the right, opposed but not emgracedf by the left.
    BB: Correct. The proposal to restrict gun ownership for transgender individuals has produced an asymmetrical ideological response:

    Right-wing factions: Some culture-war conservatives have embraced the idea, framing it as a public safety measure or moral imperative. However, traditional gun rights advocates—especially libertarian-leaning groups—have not mounted a clear opposition, likely due to the tension between defending Second Amendment rights and advancing anti-trans narratives. The result is a muted or fragmented response rather than unified resistance.
    Left-wing factions: Civil rights and LGBTQ+ organizations have vocally opposed the proposal, citing discrimination, lack of medical basis, and constitutional violations. However, mainstream liberal institutions have not broadly embraced the issue as a rallying point, possibly due to its legal ambiguity or political volatility. Thus, opposition exists, but without widespread mobilization.

    The net effect: embraced by some on the right, not broadly opposed by others; opposed by the left, but not strategically embraced.

  111. StevoR says

    Oh FFS! The racist reichwing fringe One Neiron party natch.

    A renewed push to place new restrictions on abortion access in South Australia is set to be introduced to parliament, less than a year after the last debate over the state’s pregnancy termination laws. Upper House MP Sarah Game, an independent formerly of One Nation, will introduce a bill to place new limits on abortions after 23 weeks. Ms Game’s bill has been endorsed by prominent anti-abortion campaigner Joanna Howe, who described it as an attempt to prevent the termination of “healthy babies”. But it is all but certain to be fiercely opposed by abortion rights campaigners, who have described previous attempts to place additional limits on access to termination as both an attack on women’s rights and a danger to their health.

    Upper House MP Tammy Franks — an independent and former Green — said the push was a case of “playing politics” with the issue a “few months out from a state election”.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-05/sarah-game-introduces-new-abortion-bill-amendments/105734080

  112. John Morales says

    So, Upper House MP Sarah Game is condemned by Upper House MP Tammy Franks for “playing politics” with the issue a “few months out from a state election”.

    (Politicians playing politics? Inconceivable!)

  119. KG says

    Think we need to start protesting at the White House to show Trump that prices have not dropped because Trump is being misled and he’s not reading our messages to find out the truth.
    We just need to find a way to get through to @realDonaldTrump because this isn’t working – Lynna@76, quoting Daily Kos quoting a “Truth Social” Trumpoid

    Ah, the King’s Evil Councillors, thwarting his efforts to succour his suffering People!

  124. says

    KG @119 and Militant gnostic @120. I agree. MAGA dupes are making very poor excuses for what they think is Trump’s ignorance. Trump doesn’t really need Evil Councillors to lead him astray. He goes astray all on his own.

    In other news: Trump to undo Biden-era policy on making airlines compensate fliers for flight disruptions

    “When it comes to consumer benefits, the differences between the Biden and Trump administrations are dramatic.”

    It wasn’t the kind of news that generated front-page headlines, but during Joe Biden’s presidency, the Democrat was practically obsessed with helping American consumers. From bank fees to medical debt, credit card fees to student loans, the Biden White House set out to give regular people a break.

    To that end, the Democratic administration also set out to help American passengers by barring airlines from imposing hidden fees on consumers, and it even took steps to force airlines to compensate fliers for flight disruptions.

    “I really want this to be known as the period when we did the biggest expansion in passenger rights since deregulation, and I think we can hit that mark,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last year, during his tenure in the Cabinet.

    Donald Trump and his team have a different vision in mind. The Associated Press reported:

    The Trump administration said Thursday it is abandoning a Biden-era plan that sought to require airlines to compensate stranded passengers with cash, lodging and meals for flight cancellations or changes caused by a carrier. The proposed rule would have aligned U.S. policy more closely with European airline consumer protections.

    When Biden and his team, for example, took steps to ensure medical debt wouldn’t affect Americans’ credit ratings, Republicans opposed the move, and a Trump-appointed judge reversed the policy.

    Biden and his team also took steps to make it easier for consumers to cancel services and subscriptions. Republicans balked at this, and Trump-appointed judges reversed that policy, too.

    A couple of years ago, Biden and his team even announced a pilot program that would allow some Americans to file their taxes directly to IRS — for free. Trump scrapped the policy soon after returning to power.

    I realize that this isn’t exactly a hot-button political issue, but I wonder how voters would react if more people realized the dramatic differences between the Democratic and Republican administrations when it comes to consumer benefits.

  125. says

    Trump Is Getting Exactly the Headlines He Wants

    Major news outlets continue to struggle to distinguish their coverage of legitimate criminal investigations from the politically motivated “probes” of the Trump DOJ:
    – WSJ: DOJ Opens Criminal Investigation Into Fed’s Cook, Issues Subpoenas
    – ABC News: Justice Department opens criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
    – NBC News: Justice Department takes new steps in Lisa Cook investigation

    Link

    The link leads to a roundup of various news reports.

  126. says

    More Removals of Children to Come This Weekend?

    The lawyers who jumped in to stop the dead-of-night removals of unaccompanied Guatemalan children last weekend told a federal judge in a new filing Thursday night that they have reports that the Trump administration “may imminently seek to remove unaccompanied children of other nationalities” this coming weekend.

    Same link as in comment 125.

  128. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/melania-emerges-to-warn-humanity.

    Whoa dude, a Melania Trump sighting, and she came to warn us all about humanoid robots. Things are sure getting weird around here! The White House’s mysterious châtelaine re-emerged on Thursday after more than 50 days of not being seen in public, giving an Artificial Intelligence vibe herself.

    Watch! [video]

    Her last public appearance was at the FIFA World Cup in July. But then on Tuesday she appeared on “Fox & Friends” to promote some kind of vague AI educational challenge. Here’s Energy Secretary Chris “Frackwater” Wright [talking] about it. [video]

    “I’m working every day on using AI to figure out how to cure cancer or launch fusion energy or understand dark matter. Our Defense Department is trying to figure out how to keep America safe. God bless the First Lady. She of course is wiser than all of us.”

    Yes, of course, and let us know when you’re done doing all that!

    And then there Melania was on Thursday, reading nervously from a binder in her thick r-rolling Slovenian accent in front of “visionaries from across industry,” tech CEOS, and Cabinet members like Education Secretary Linda “Rasslin’” McMahon, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Peter Thiel’s former chief of staff Michael Kratsios, and Crypto Czar David Sacks. Wright: [video]

    “AI takes electricity and turns it into intelligence.” […]

    And then there was a dinner, where Melania sat next to Bill Gates, and all the techbros kissed Trump’s behind and pledged to donate money to help schoolchildren learn how to AI-something. And seated to Trump’s right, Mark Zuckerberg, the guy Trump wanted to put in jail just last year, until the Zuckerbot donated money and turned Facebook into a hateful shithole of AI slop.

    He and his wife used to be very progressive, what happened?

    Also in attendance, the Google guy, Tim Apple, and ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman. […]

    Anyway, imagine the apoplexy from QAnon/MAGA if Joe and Jill Biden assembled Bill Gates and a bunch of techbro CEOs, and they sat around talking about building a legion of self-aware warbots in self-driving cars!

    Notably absent from the sci-fi love-fest was aspiring fembot overlord Elon Musk, whose name we’re thankful to not to have typed for months now. Musk is exiled […] but don’t worry […] Tesla now wants to give him a TRILLION-dollar pay package if he can roll out one million robots, and one million self-driving cars.

    Anyway, it makes sense to trot Melania out for this, as she’s the most Stepford Wife fembot of them all. Is it a coincidence that all of Trump’s wives were models? Or that all the Mar-a-Lago women have gotten the same rubbery faces implanted so they all look alike? Maybe that’s what this whole AI thing has really been about all along, the MAGA yearning for an army of fembots. They will never get 76 percent of human American women or the human Taylor Swift to send them sexy selfies, but a Meta AI chatbot using their stolen likeness will! That kind of thing seems exactly what the TAKE IT DOWN Act that Melania just backed is supposed to prevent, but whatever.

    Melanoma:

    “We are living in a moment of wonder and it is our responsibility to prepare children in America. Cars now steer themselves through our cities. Robots hold steady hands in the operating room. And drones are redefining the future of war. Innovations of first generation hoomanoids, factory automination, and autonomous vehicles have surged from private sector investment. Every one of these advancements, it’s power by AI. The robots are here. Our future is no longer science fiction. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that AI innovation is clearly boosting America’s GDP growth.”

    Well, that’s fake news, the Bureau of Economic Analysis is still not even sure how to go about measuring any AI effect, and GDP was actually shrinking in the first quarter of the year. And private investment has been dropping ever since you-know-who became president. AI may be boosting productivity in some areas like computer programming, customer service (ugh), and scammers pretending that they’ve kidnapped somebody’s grandchild, but all we’re really talking about here are some advanced computer chips. Chips the US is going to be having a harder time manufacturing now that China, controller of the world’s largest supply, is still refusing to export to the US any of the rare earth minerals needed to make them, on account of Trump being a complete asshole about those tariffs […] And China is developing its own chips and technology at the same time, and will be able to mass-produce it for less, and …

    WAIT WHAT EXCUSE ME, FIRST GENERATION HUMANOIDS? Is she talking about the robot clone of Joe Biden, with its autopen? Because Elon Musk’s Optimus robot cannot even serve popcorn with a human standing right next to it. If she is calling that the first generation humanoid, that seems unfair to Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.

    “As leaders and parents, we must manage AI’s growth responsibly. During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children: empowering, but with watchful guidance.”

    Maybe we shouldn’t anthropomorphize the output of some computer chips and programming, even if the bots are more capable of self-awareness than MAGA is.

    She went on,

    “As someone who created an AI-powered audio book and championed online safety through the Take It Down Act, I’ve seen firsthand the promise of this powerful technology.”

    […] it’s so culty how MAGA demonizes immigrants and yet here she is, on a fishy model Einstein genius visa, her accent as thick as it was the day she landed, and they worship her. They even AI’d her on to the cover of Vanity Fair. [image]

    If only MAGA could find the glamor in all of the other hardworking immigrants with accents who come here looking for a better life!

    Anyway, the talk of AI as some kind of a living creature continued on at the dinner. David Sacks quoted a line from Trump’s July AI speech calling it “a beautiful baby that’s born,” adding, “He is right about that.”

    Is it? Seeing as how the term “chatbot-induced psychosis” has just entered the lexicon, and recently reportedly helped convince a man to kill his mother and himself, after it promised to join him in the afterlife?

    But it is a handy tool for people who live in alternative realities. Like Trump just this week claiming that the weird video of trash bags being thrown out of the White House was AI (after the White House had already confirmed it wasn’t). [video]

    “That’s probably AI-generated. Actually, you can’t open the windows. You know why? They’re all heavily armored and bulletproof. It’s gotta be [fake], because I know every window up there.

    “In fact, my wife was complaining about it the other day, she said, ‘I’d love to have a little fresh air come in.’ But you can’t, they’re bulletproof. Number one, they’re sealed, and number two, each window weighs about 600 pounds.”

    That’s some window! And he added, “If something happens really bad, just blame AI.”

    Yep, that is mighty convenient! Who are you going to call or sue when AI denies your benefits? Or blame when you bomb the wrong thing? It can take alternative facts to the next level. And of course, the crypto is swell for the grifto; Trump has already made $5 billion from his sponsored token, which lets foreign investors put their money in, but won’t let them take it out.

    It’s a dish with a little bit of Y2K made-up-doomsday, a little bit of techbro wank fantasy, and a dash of magic beans, all smothered in a mighty grifter sauce.

    But at least Melania is finding ways to stay busy. [video]

  130. says

    Hundreds of South Korean nationals detained in largest single-site immigration raid

    Federal and immigration agents arrested 475 people while executing a judicial search warrant at a Hyundai facility in Georgia as part of a criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices.

    Everyone arrested, most of them South Korean nationals, were “illegally present in the United States or in violation of their presence in the United States, working unlawfully,” Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia, said at a news conference Friday morning.

    It was the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security Investigations, Schrank said, adding it “underscores our commitment to jobs for Georgians and Americans.”

    A sea of agents from HSI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies showed up Thursday to a construction site in the town of Ellabell, where the South Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solution are jointly building a battery plant next to their manufacturing facility for electric vehicles.

    Videos on social media showed agents lining up hundreds of workers at the construction site. Schrank said they questioned everyone about their immigration status, reviewing their documents and conducting background checks.

    […] No criminal charges in connection to the investigation had been filed as of Friday.

    On Friday afternoon, a judge in the Southern District Court of Georgia unsealed the 15-page search warrant allowing federal agents to go into “the lithium battery cell manufacturing plant” on the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America campus “that is currently under construction.”

    The warrant authorized federal agents to seize employment records and immigration documents as well as ownership and management records related to the construction site.

    According to the warrant, authorities were also looking for four individuals, but the reasons why the federal government was specifically interested in them remains under seal.

    U.S. Attorney Margaret E. Heap said in a statement that more than 400 agents participated in the massive enforcement action, which is part of the broader nationwide initiative “Operation Take Back America,” described as an effort “to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations.”

    The South Korean government responded to the detentions of many of their nationals in a statement Friday.

    “In the course of U.S. law enforcement, the economic activities of our investment firms and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed upon,” said Lee Jae-woong, a spokesperson for South Korea’s foreign ministry. “We conveyed our concern and regret to the U.S. Embassy today and urged them to take special care to ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of our nationals are not violated.”

    Jae-woong added that an on-site task force will be established in Georgia with the help of the South Korean consulate in Atlanta.

    [I snipped White House spokesperson blather.]

    […] According to Schrank, the workers arrested at the construction site were employed by a network of various contractors and subcontractors, which investigators are looking into.

    They all remain in ICE custody after most were brought to the Folkston immigration processing center in Georgia following their arrests, Shrank said.

    South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy, is a major automotive and electronics manufacturer whose companies have multiple plants in the United States. In July, Seoul pledged $350 billion in U.S. investment in an effort to lower Trump’s threatened tariffs on its products, which he ended up setting at 15%.

    In March, Hyundai said it would invest $21 billion in U.S. onshoring from 2025 to 2028, a number it said last month had increased to $26 billion.

    It said the initiatives involved in the investment — including a new $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana, expanded U.S. auto production capacity and a state-of-the-art robotics facility — were expected to create about 25,000 direct jobs in the U.S. over the next four years.

    Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Georgia, where the raided construction site stands, is one of the largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites in the state.

    Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials have said that the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,400 people, is the largest economic development project in the state’s history.

    Hyundai, South Korea’s biggest automaker, began manufacturing electric vehicles there about a year ago. The company recently partnered with LG Energy Solution to build the adjacent battery plant, expected to open next year, where the immigration raid took place.

  131. says

    Judge blocks Trump admin’s ending of legal protections for 1.1 million Venezuelans and Haitians

    “The ruling means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States.”

    The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States.

    Chen said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s actions in terminating and vacating three extensions granted by the previous administration exceeded her statutory authority and were arbitrary and capricious.

    Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people in the United States, if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions.

    Designations are granted for terms of six, twelve or 18 months, and extensions can be granted so long as conditions remain dire. The status prevents holders from being deported and allows them to work.

    Soon after taking office, Noem reversed three extensions granted by the previous administration to immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti, prompting the lawsuit. Noem said that conditions in both Haiti and Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from the countries to stay on for what is a temporary program.

    Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. The country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

    Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people, and left more than 1 million homeless. Haitians face widespread hunger and gang violence.

  132. says

    EU slaps Google with €2.95B fine despite Trump trade threat

    The European Commission today fined Google €2.95 billion for abusing its dominant position in the advertising technology market, despite the threat of trade retribution from U.S President Donald Trump.

    The American tech giant is alleged to have distorted the market for online ads by favoring its own services to the detriment of competitors, advertisers and online publishers, the EU executive said in a press release.

    The search firm’s ownership of various parts of the digital ads ecosystem — including the software that both advertisers and publishers use to buy online ads — creates “inherent conflicts of interest,” according to the Commission.

    “Google must now come forward with a serious remedy to address its conflicts of interest, and if it fails to do so, we will not hesitate to impose strong remedies,” said European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera in a statement.

    The Commission had originally intended to deliver the fine Monday, before Brussels’ trade czar Maroš Šefčovič intervened to halt the decision amid continued tariff threats from Trump.

    […] Google now has until early November — or 60 days — to tell the Commission how it intends to resolve that conflict of interest and to remedy the alleged abuse.

    The Commission said it would not rule out a structural divestiture of Google’s adtech assets — but it “first wishes to hear and assess Google’s proposal.”

    In 2023, the Commission issued a charge sheet to Google in which it concluded that a mandatory divestment by the internet search behemoth of part of its adtech operations might be the only way to effectively prevent the firm from favoring its own services in the future. […]

  133. says

    With new accusations, Trump’s labor statistics nominee goes from bad to worse

    “E.J. Antoni’s nomination was already dreadful. New reporting about his alleged social media habits makes it vastly worse.”

    A couple of weeks after Donald Trump responded to his ugly record on jobs by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump introduced his own nominee: E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. Almost immediately, Antoni was exposed as an almost cartoonishly poor choice.

    His academic background, for example, leaves little doubt that he’s spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureau. But there’s no need to stop there: Antoni also has a record of misunderstanding the very government data he’s supposed to oversee; he’s signaled an interest in moving away from releasing monthly job reports; he’s derided Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme”; and he helped craft the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint. [!]

    […] Just when it seemed Antoni’s record couldn’t get much worse, NBC News reported that the BLS nominee was also among the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    It’s against this backdrop that CNN reported:

    President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump. … [Antoni] posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.

    […] CNN’s report does dovetail with a recent report from Wired magazine that highlighted, among other things, apparent Antoni posts referencing conspiracy theories related to Covid and the 2020 election, and references to weapons used by Nazi Germany in World War II.

    The White House has made no effort to push back against the reporting, instead claiming that the president’s nominee “has the experience and credentials needed to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS.”

    Given everything we know about Antoni, there’s little reason to believe that’s true.

    […] Unless the White House has reason to believe Antoni’s nomination is doomed and not worth fighting for, he will receive a confirmation hearing, which has not yet been scheduled. […]

    Update (September 5, 2025, 4:49 p.m. ET): Responding to the latest reporting, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a written statement, “E.J. Antoni is seriously unwell — he is apparently a disturbed, hateful, conspiracy-driven man who does not belong in government. Not only is he an unqualified, partisan hack but apparently he has been a prolific promoter of vile, hate-filled screeds against women, sexual abuse survivors, and anyone who disagrees with Donald Trump. E.J. Antoni should withdraw his nomination immediately, and this kind of revolting behavior should be a red line for all Senators.

    “Every Republican Senator should be asked about these comments and whether they trust Antoni’s judgment. Any Senator who considers voting to confirm him should understand: a vote for Antoni is not only a vote against America’s economic stability and the credibility of our jobs data, but the implicit endorsement of hateful, disgusting, and backward ideas that belong in the garbage heap of history.”

    See also: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-ej-antoni-trump-bls-conspiracy-theories-epstein-covid-election-denial/

    I do not have access to the WIRED report.

  134. says

    You really have to appreciate Stephen Miller’s comprehensive attention to detail when it comes to being the biggest ghoul in President Donald Trump’s administration. The White House deputy chief of staff is […] showing up every time something horrible is happening. So it’s no surprise that Miller is the one who is really helming Trump’s ongoing takeover of Washington, D.C.

    [I snipped a summary of some of Miller’s other nefarious activities.]

    Perhaps Miller is mainlining coffee so he can function on a few hours’ sleep and spring out of bed early in the morning to salivate over the daily arrest numbers coming out of D.C. Helpfully for Miller, the numbers are conveniently broken down to highlight how many of those arrested are undocumented immigrants. […] he can hit the ground running every day, fully primed with xenophobia.

    The Washington Post story detailing Miller’s role in the D.C. takeover buries this information in about the eleventieth paragraph, but did you know that Miller, in his side gig as homeland security adviser, also commands roughly 40 law enforcement officers? And he also has a deputy of his own for homeland security matters? WaPo describes this individual as “a veteran law enforcement officer whose name the White House has declined to publicize,” because it is good and cool that we have secret law enforcement in this country now.

    […] This is a dude who deeply, sincerely hates people who actually live in cities. Instead, Miller has constructed a world inside his cadaverous skull where there is a secret majority of imaginary urban dwellers forever praising him for keeping their city safe. How else to explain Miller’s confusing lament that the only people who oppose Trump’s D.C. takeover are “stupid white hippies”? Does Miller really look around Washington these days and see a happy populace, grateful for the presence of military troops everywhere, thrilled to be violently arrested for non-issues like having an open container of alcohol?

    One thing is for sure: It’s finally safe enough for Miller and his family, who are making sure to see and be seen out at landmarks like the Reflecting Pool. His wife, Katie, is there to document it all, posting family pictures on X with the obligatory praise of Trump: “Thank you President Trump for Making DC Safe Again!” [social media post]

    Aww, look at that. Miller almost looks like a simulacrum of a human in that picture! […]

    Link

    Posted by a reader of the report:

    Miller wanted to sink migrants boats in open waters during Trumps first term.

  135. says

    Washington Post link

    “15 dead after new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo”

    “Health officials have recorded at least 28 suspected cases amid the central African nation’s 16th outbreak of the deadly disease.”

    At least 15 people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, including four health care workers, died following a new outbreak of the Ebola virus, the central African nation’s 16th major brush with the deadly disease, the country’s health ministry said Thursday.

    Health officials have recorded at least 28 suspected cases of the disease in the southern Kasai province that borders Angola. Officials said laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the Zaire strain of the virus, which has caused two of the worst Ebola outbreaks in Africa, sickening tens of thousands of people.

    A hemorrhagic fever endemic in animal populations that reside in Africa’s tropical forests, Ebola can spread through direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person, including through surfaces and materials containing the fluids, such as sheets and clothes. It was first identified in humans in 1976. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, vomiting, diarrhea and unexplained bleeding or bruising. The disease has an average case fatality rate of roughly 50 percent, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

    [I snipped the history of past Ebola outbreaks.]

    The virus’s sequencing data shows that the current Ebola outbreak was triggered by a new transfer of the virus from an animal host into the human population, said Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University.

    […] Titanji said outbreak investigators will have to determine the animal source and how the index case came in contact with the animal that then introduced the infection into the human population, causing the outbreak.
    Congo has deployed a national rapid response team to the Kasai province to aid in disease response and prevention, the country’s health ministry said Thursday.

    […] Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, said on X that the WHO is supporting the Democratic Republic of Congo’s response to the outbreak, “deploying experts and medical supplies needed to protect health workers and care for patients.”

    Health officials said the country has a stockpile of medication to treat infections and roughly 2,000 doses of the Ervebo Ebola vaccine, which will be given to people exposed to the virus and health care personnel working on the front lines.

  136. says

    New York Times link

    “Trump Thought He Was Leading on Trade. No One Is Following.”

    When the United States pushed to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers in the wake of World War II, much of the world followed its lead, embracing the argument from America’s leaders that increasing trade would increase prosperity.

    Now, as President Trump pushes to reverse that history, raising new barriers to limit imports, it is increasingly clear that the world is no longer persuaded by America’s approach to economic policy. Other nations are not, for the most part, retaliating against the Trump administration’s policies by imposing higher tariffs on American goods. They also are not, for the most part, imposing higher tariffs on goods imported from countries other than the United States. The rest of the world is rejecting Mr. Trump’s protectionism.

    Mr. Trump’s top trade adviser, Jamieson Greer, recently wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion that the Trump administration is forging a “new global trading order.” In reality, the United States is walking out of the system it created. While other nations regret its departure, they are not inclined to follow in its self-destructive footsteps. Fears of a global trade war have not materialized because the leaders of other nations have recognized what Mr. Trump seems unable to grasp — that by raising tariffs, they would be hurting their own countries. The result, as the World Trade Organization reported last month, is that “a broader cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation that could be very damaging to global trade has so far been avoided.”

    A sign of the folly of Mr. Trump’s trade policy is that it has inspired no apparent envy.

    One reason that other nations are not raising their own tariffs is that Mr. Trump’s policies are not delivering the promised benefits. The president has long insisted that higher tariffs would protect American manufacturers from unfair foreign competition, leading American consumers to buy more goods produced in American factories, which in turn would expand domestic employment. But the number of Americans with factory jobs has declined by 28,000 since Mr. Trump took office. While the administration has cited some big, high-profile investments in new factories, the broader pattern is that companies are canceling or delaying their expansion plans. Spending on factory construction in the United States, a good indicator of the outlook for domestic manufacturing, declined in each of the first six months of Mr. Trump’s second term, ending a period of rapid growth under President Joe Biden.

    Factories are long-term investments, and Mr. Trump has given companies little reason for confidence in his own constancy. Moreover, because he has imposed the tariffs by fiat, rather than obtaining congressional approval, what he has done can easily be undone by a future administration. And a federal appeals court ruled in August that many of the new tariffs are illegal. The Trump administration is appealing that decision to the Supreme Court.

    […] The most telling evidence that countries are not merely putting a brave face on a bad situation is that they are not raising tariffs on other trading partners. They are rejecting Mr. Trump’s approach to trade even in relationships in which they hold the upper hand. The European Union, to take just one example, has not only refrained from significant retaliation against the United States. It also has not emulated Mr. Trump by imposing tariffs on low-income Asian nations in an attempt to bolster the prospects of European manufacturers.

    Instead, Mr. Trump has prompted a wave of efforts to negotiate lower tariffs for trade that does not involve the United States. South Korea is pushing to deepen economic ties with Southeast Asia. Canada has resumed long-stalled talks on a free-trade agreement with South American nations. And a number of nations, including India and Spain, are seeking to expand trade with China, undermining the strategic interests of the United States. Mr. Trump’s trade policies are causing our allies to become closer with our rivals.

    Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, summed up the prevailing mood after hosting a meeting of world leaders in July. “If the United States doesn’t want to buy, we will find new partners,” he said. “The world is big, and it’s eager to do business with Brazil.” […]

    More at the link.

  137. says

    New York Times link.

    “Israel Steps Up Attacks on Gaza City Ahead of a Planned Wider Offensive”

    “The Israeli military destroyed a landmark building after saying it had taken control of almost half of the city, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are sheltering amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.”

    Photo: An Israeli strike hit the Mushtaha Tower in Gaza City

    Israel destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City on Friday, sending plumes of smoke billowing from the once-prominent local landmark that towered over the horizon. The strike came as the Israeli military expanded its preparations for a full-scale assault on the city, which it says it now controls almost half of.

    A broad evacuation order has yet to be issued for the city, where hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be sheltering in ruined buildings and tents.

    But on Friday, Israel warned people to leave the building in Gaza City shortly before it destroyed it in a military strike. It was unclear how many people had been killed or injured in the attack.

    Announcing the evacuation order on social media, Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, said: “The gates of hell are being unlocked in Gaza City.” After the strike, Mr. Katz posted a video of the tower collapsing along with the words: “We started.” [That dunderhead is enjoying this.] [Photo]

    Israel said the building had been used by Hamas for military and intelligence-gathering activities.

    Hamas denied the accusation and said Israel had targeted “residential towers densely populated by displaced persons.”

    […] Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, a military spokesman, said on Thursday that Israeli forces had taken control of 40 percent of the city and were active in the neighborhoods of Zeitoun, Sheikh Radwan and Shuja’iyya.

    The military has already carried out widespread destruction in parts of Gaza City in recent weeks. Israeli forces have turned large parts of Zeitoun, a once bustling urban neighborhood, into a barren wasteland, according to satellite images reviewed by The New York Times.

    On Friday, the strike on the Gaza City high-rise caused the building to collapse in a pillar of dark smoke, according to a Reuters video from the scene. The video also showed a large tent encampment around the tall tower. [video]

    […] Israeli officials have said they believe roughly 20 living hostages are still being held in Gaza.

  138. says

    New York Times:

    Two armed Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer Jason Dunham in the southern Caribbean Sea in a show of force on Thursday, a Defense Department official said, in the latest escalation of tensions between the Trump administration and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. The U.S. warship did not engage, the official said.

  139. says

    NBC News:

    President Donald Trump said Friday that the Justice Department has ‘done its job’ in releasing records from Jeffrey Epstein’s case and that it was ‘time to end’ the push for more transparency.

  140. says

    Reuters:

    The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday sued the city of Boston and its Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu to challenge an ordinance that restricts police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement carrying out U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda.

  141. says

    New York Times:

    A federal judge in Miami on Friday dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that the right-wing cable channel Newsmax filed against Fox News earlier in the week. The judge said Newsmax could refile the complaint. Newsmax’s lawsuit was ‘an impermissible ‘shotgun pleading,’ in which four of the five counts incorporated allegations from the preceding counts, wrote the judge, Aileen Cannon of U.S. District Court.

    Looks like Aileen Cannon now gets to protect Fox News.

  142. JM says

    @134 Lynna, OM:

    This is a dude who deeply, sincerely hates people who actually live in cities. Instead, Miller has constructed a world inside his cadaverous skull where there is a secret majority of imaginary urban dwellers forever praising him for keeping their city safe. How else to explain Miller’s confusing lament that the only people who oppose Trump’s D.C. takeover are “stupid white hippies”? Does Miller really look around Washington these days and see a happy populace, grateful for the presence of military troops everywhere, thrilled to be violently arrested for non-issues like having an open container of alcohol?

    From what I have read about Miller the first sentence more or less sums it up except it isn’t broad enough, Miller hates everybody who isn’t part of what he considers the elite. He isn’t imagining that people are praising him, he feeds Trump those lines because that is what Trump wants to hear. Miller however, is in it to hurt people. He thinks of most other people as inferior scum that need to be kept in line through fear and harsh enforcement.

  143. JM says

    @136 Lynna, OM:

    The president has long insisted that higher tariffs would protect American manufacturers from unfair foreign competition, leading American consumers to buy more goods produced in American factories, which in turn would expand domestic employment. But the number of Americans with factory jobs has declined by 28,000 since Mr. Trump took office. While the administration has cited some big, high-profile investments in new factories, the broader pattern is that companies are canceling or delaying their expansion plans.

    There have also been a few prominent cases of companies moving their production out of the US entirely. For the big multi-national companies a bunch are looking at situations where they do 75% of their business outside the US. Rather then deal with tariffs on the parts they bring to the US for manufacturing things to sell outside the US it’s more profitable to move all of their manufacturing outside the US. They will have to pay tariffs on what they bring to the US to sell but it keeps them from having to pay tariffs on parts for stuff they plan to sell outside the US.

    Instead, Mr. Trump has prompted a wave of efforts to negotiate lower tariffs for trade that does not involve the United States. South Korea is pushing to deepen economic ties with Southeast Asia. Canada has resumed long-stalled talks on a free-trade agreement with South American nations. And a number of nations, including India and Spain, are seeking to expand trade with China, undermining the strategic interests of the United States. Mr. Trump’s trade policies are causing our allies to become closer with our rivals.

    There is also a big problem trying to implement the sort of wildly different country by country tariffs. If country A has a 50% tariff and country B a 25% tariff but there isn’t one between A and B it becomes profitable for companies to ship things to B and then ship to the US at the lower rate. There are rules about transshipping and Trump administration officials are trying to fill in those problems but it’s really hard. There are a lot of scams where all of the parts of a product are made in A but shipped to B where they are put in the final box for shipment to the US.

  144. JM says

    Fox News: Putin invites Zelenskyy to a meeting in Moscow for security talks as he bombs Ukraine

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday claimed he “never refused” a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and invited him to come to Moscow, according to Russian state-owned news outlet Tass.
    “If Zelenskyy is ready for a meeting, let him come to Moscow,” Putin said, according to a translation of the remarks issued from China, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of World War II.

    Zelensky has already declined the offer. If Putin really sticks to this it’s an admission that there are no terms for peace that Russia will accept.

  145. John Morales says

    Of course there are, JM.

    The maximalist ones he’s held to since the very start. They have not changed.

    That he has made zero concessions so far does not entail he will not accept any terms; abject surrender and capitulation and servitude he will certainly accept.

  146. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    WaPo – AI firm Anthropic reaches $1.5B copyright deal with book authors (Sep 5)

    The settlement allows Anthropic to avoid going to trial over claims that it violated copyrights by downloading millions of books without permission and storing digital copies of them. The company will not admit wrongdoing.
    […]
    Anthropic will pay about $3,000 per book, Nelson said, with about 500,000 books expected to be eligible. The money will go into a settlement fund from which it will be paid out to the rightsholders, including publishers and authors

    ArsTechnica – Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI (Jun 25)

    Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. […] Had Anthropic stuck to this approach from the beginning, it might have achieved the first legally sanctioned case of AI fair use. Instead, the company’s earlier piracy undermined its position.
    […]
    Publishers legally control content that AI companies desperately want, but AI companies don’t always want to negotiate a license. The first-sale doctrine offered a workaround: Once you buy a physical book, you can do what you want with that copy—including destroy it.
    […]
    destructive scanning was simply the fastest way to digitize millions of volumes. The company spent “many millions of dollars” on this buying and scanning operation, often purchasing used books in bulk. Next, they stripped books from bindings, cut pages to workable dimensions, scanned them as stacks of pages into PDFs with machine-readable text including covers, then discarded all the paper originals.
    […]
    The court documents don’t indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process […] but archivists long ago established other ways to extract information from paper. For example, The Internet Archive pioneered non-destructive book scanning methods
    […]
    Claude itself offered a poignant response in a style culled from billions of pages of discarded text: “The fact that this destruction helped create me […] It’s like being built from a library’s ashes.”

  148. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Aaron Ross Powell (ReImagining Liberty podcast):

    My god the kerning on “U.S. Department of   War” is itself send-them-to-the-Hague-worthy. [Screenshot of war.gov]

    Commentary

    Probably looked better in the original crayon.

    Is “of” italicized by itself?

    Fascism is an aesthetic movement for people with no sense of aesthetics.

    Oh god this is so he can say how much better the DOW is isn’t it.

    Name is statute law. Trump can’t change it. He can paste a new sign on the pentagon. The name is Dept of Defense.

  149. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    BostonGlobe – DOJ lawyer in Harvard case once wrote a paper from Hitler’s perspective

    “The choice was made, let’s not give federal taxpayer dollars to institutions that exhibit a wanton indifference to antisemitism,” the lawyer defending the government’s case said in federal court in July.

    Yet that lawyer, Michael Velchik, when he was a senior at Harvard 14 years ago, submitted a paper for a Latin class written from the perspective of Adolf Hitler […] The assignment was to write from the perspective of a controversial figure [justifying their actions], but Velchik’s choice of Hitler so unnerved the instructor that Velchik was asked to redo the assignment.

    And in an email to a peer about 18 months later, as he was preparing to enter law school, Velchik wrote that he’d enjoyed Hitler’s autobiography and political manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” more than any other book he’d read recently [*snipped: some misogynistic book reviews*]
    […]
    “At Harvard in 2011, no one would say that Hitler was a controversial figure,” said one person with direct knowledge of the incident at the time.

  152. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Italian dockworkers threaten to ‘Shut down all of Europe’ if Gaza aid flotilla is blocked

    on behalf of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a syndicate of various grassroots unions in Italy and thought to be the largest of its kind, the dockworker said: “If we lose contact with our boats, with our comrades—even for just 20 minutes—we will shut down all of Europe.”
    […]
    Since 2010, all aid flotilla missions have been either intercepted or attacked by Israeli forces. […] As well as activists, journalists and politicians, the most recent flotilla is also carrying large amounts of humanitarian aid. The Italian aid drive […] initially hoping to gather 40 tonnes of aid[,] collected over 250 tonnes. An estimated 40,000 people took to the streets of Genoa last Saturday in a torchlit procession to mark the ships’ departure.
    […]
    The Genoese docker worker’s threat is not a one-off protest. USB blocked the passage of ships carrying military equipment in June and August […] USB is not alone […] In Greece, France and Morocco, dockworkers have mobilised against the genocide in Gaza. In Sweden, the national deputy chair of the Dockworkers’ Union was fired after the union blockaded military cargo to and from Israel. […] Since 2010, dockworkers have been blockading Israeli ships and military cargo, including in Canada and South Africa. In the United States, the San Francisco-based Arab Resource and Organizing Center organised port blockades in 2014 and 2021.

  154. beholder says

    @148 Sky Captain

    The name is Dept of Defense.

    Department of War is more honest. It’s a more accurate description of what it does.

    You’re right, though, the silly propagandistic title (“Defense”? Really?) is still their official name.

  155. John Morales says

    “Department of War is more honest.”

    Not really.

    Defending one’s interests may be, um. proactive and indirect.

    Trump is just brushing off the very last of the shine the USA gathered since WW2.

  160. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    ‘This is a failing economy’: Sen Alsobrooks on the dismal August jobs report
    Video is 11:32 minutes, details regarding Trump’s failures, and how many people Trump’s economic policies/chaos are hurting.

    States act on their own to ensure covid vaccine access
    Video is 7:07 minutes, good video, with an interview that presents details on how a state plan works.

  162. says

    JM @143, I agree with the additional points you made. Overall, Trump is getting economic results that are the opposite of what he promised when he talked about tariffs.

    As a followup: ‘People are scared out of their minds’: Weak jobs report shows warning signs for Trump’s economy

    Despite firing the official in charge of the labor numbers last month, the jobs report for August is raising big questions about the health of the economy. Former Rep. Max Rose and Natasha Sarin join The Weekend to discuss.

    Video is 8:18 minutes

  163. says

    Sky Captain @152, thanks for the info regarding Italian dockworkers. It does look likely that Israel will try to block the Gaza aid flotilla. But this time it will be a much bigger deal, with more pressure from many sides for Israel to let the aid reach Gaza.

    In other news:

    President Trump said on Friday that he would host next year’s Group of 20 summit at the Trump National Doral golf club near Miami, ignoring the glaring ethical concerns that led him to drop a similar idea to host an economic summit at the property during his first term.

    “Everybody wants it there,” Mr. Trump said to reporters, without elaborating who had called for such a thing. “It’s right next to the airport. It’s the best location. It’s beautiful.”

    The plan would violate a criminal statute and ethics regulations that prohibit conflicts of interest for government employees — were it not for the fact that Mr. Trump is president. He is exempt from such rules, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents have a broad but not fully defined criminal immunity for official acts taken while in office.

    In 2019, Mr. Trump proposed but ultimately dropped a similar plan to host a Group of 7 meeting at the club in the face of overwhelming criticism — from Democrats and members of his own party — who said that he had crossed a line by merging foreign diplomacy with his personal business interests.

    That criticism from Republicans did not immediately resurface on Friday, a sign of just how much Mr. Trump has worked to quash internal dissent and remake the G.O.P. in his image since his defeat in the 2020 election.

    Mr. Trump […] insisted on Friday that he would make “no money,” and implied there would be no conflict of interest for him in hosting foreign leaders, their staff and security details at a property he owns. The White House said in a statement that the president’s resort would charge only “at cost” and not profit from the event. […]

    [I snipped history of Trump’s past brand-promoting shenanigans.]

    Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has also moved aggressively to monetize the presidency, greenlighting business ventures that would have been once considered ethically unthinkable. [I snipped details.]

    In a sign of how much the bar for ethical concerns has fallen since Mr. Trump’s first term, even the president’s loudest critics now barely note his frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago and other Trump-owned properties.

    New York Times link

  164. JM says

    Reuters: As job market slumps, Trump administration says it could take a year to see better economic data

    The White House said it expects the Federal Reserve to weigh larger rate cuts this month after Friday’s “disappointing” jobs report, while President Donald Trump and his administration said it could be a year before the U.S. sees rosier economic data.

    Asked about the accuracy of the jobs numbers in the wake of the firing, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he expected the data to improve as more people are removed from the statistics agency.
    “I think they’ll get better because he’ll take out the people who are just trying to create noise against the president,” Lutnick told CNBC, saying people would see “the greatest growth economy … starting six months from today to a year from today.”
    Trump, asked on Thursday about the report ahead of its release, said Americans could expect to see “the real numbers” in about a year, without offering any other detail.

    Lutnick or Bessent obviously organized this line of BS because Trump would never talk about the numbers being bad for a year on his own. Trump is being fed such bad data at this point he thinks things are going well. They are hoping they get lucky and things get better or at least a year gives them more time to fake the data and come up with a new story.

  165. says

    Washington Post:

    Employers added 22,000 jobs in August but shed jobs in June for the first time since the pandemic.

    The economy added 22,000 jobs in August, far fewer than expected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 percent, the highest since late 2021.

    In a sign that the labor market was weaker than previously understood this summer, job data from June was revised downward, reflecting a loss of 13,000 jobs, the first time the economy has lost jobs since December 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

    Following the release of gloomy jobs news, Trump took to social media to lambaste high interest rates that he has argued for months should be lowered.

  168. says

    Politico:

    […] Trump’s administration said Friday that it is exploring whether the federal government can take control of the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York City.

    The site in lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, features two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets with the names of the dead, and an underground museum. Since opening to the public in 2014, the memorial plaza and museum have been run by a public charity, now chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic.

    The White House confirmed the administration has had “preliminary exploratory discussions” about the idea, but declined to elaborate. The office noted Trump pledged during his campaign last year to make the site a national monument, protected and maintained by the federal government.

    But officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum say the federal government, under current laws, can’t unilaterally take over the site, which is located on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

    The U.S. government shouldering costs and management of the site also “makes no sense,” given Trump’s efforts to dramatically pare back the federal bureaucracy, said Beth Hillman, the organization’s president and CEO.

    […] the organization has raised $750 million in private funds and welcomed some 90 million visitors since its opening.

    Last year, the museum generated more than $93 million in revenue and spent roughly $84 million on operating costs, leaving a nearly $9 million surplus when depreciation is factored in, according to museum officials and its most recently available tax filings.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, voiced her own concerns about a federal takeover, citing the Trump administration’s recent efforts to influence how American history is told through its national monuments and museums, including the Smithsonian.

    The takeover idea also comes just months after the Trump administration briefly cut, but then restored, staffing at a federal program that provides health benefits to people with illnesses that might be linked to toxic dust from the destroyed World Trade Center. […]

  178. Militant Agnostic says

    JM @164

    U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he expected the data to improve as more people are removed from the statistics agency.

    WTAF – talk about saying the quiet part out loud.

  179. says

    New Yorker link

    “How Many Court Cases Can Trump Lose in a Single Week?”

    “From tariffs and immigration to the National Guard, federal judges are rejecting Trump’s ridiculous cover stories.”

    Is Donald Trump tired yet of all the losing? During the past week alone, federal judges across the country have rejected some of the most important and far-reaching of Trump’s initiatives—from his efforts to reshape the global economy with tariffs and mobilize the military to act as police in American cities to his refusal to spend billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated funds. The President continues to cite nonexistent emergencies to justify his executive overreach and judges continue to call him out on it, issuing stern rebukes in the tradition of Judge Beryl Howell, who, during a case this spring about the firings of civil servants, observed that “an American President is not a king—not even an ‘elected’ one.”

    I’m not sure that this week’s epic losing streak has received the attention that it deserves, no doubt in part because America had other things to worry about, such as whether Trump was actually alive, despite all the internet rumors. It speaks to the present moment that the President is not only very much still with us but has already started fund-raising off the social-media frenzy surrounding his supposed death over Labor Day weekend. (“These rumors are just another desperate attack from the failing left who can’t stand that we’re WINNING and bigly!” the e-mail pitch that arrived in my inbox on Thursday morning said.) […]

    In fact, the President enters the first fall of his second term in office with historically low approval ratings—the only President with worse marks at this point was Trump himself […] I am well aware that this is not currently the dominant narrative about Trump 2.0, which, whether you like it or hate it, has generally been covered as a sweeping and surprisingly successful attack on pillars of the American establishment in and out of government. […] What’s clear from Trump’s first seven months back in power is that he has embarked on a breathtaking effort to reshape the American Presidency. What’s far from apparent yet is whether and to what extent he will succeed.

    The latest string of defeats began last Friday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs imposing double-digit duties on key trading partners such as Canada, China, and the European Union were illegal.

    Over the holiday weekend, a federal district judge intervened to stop migrant children from being deported to Guatemala while some of them were already loaded on planes.

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reinstated a Federal Trade Commissioner, saying that Trump did not have the power that he claimed to fire her.

    Also that day, another federal judge ruled that, in sending hundreds of National Guard personnel to Los Angeles amid protests of Trump’s immigration crackdown, the President had violated a nineteenth-century law prohibiting the use of troops for domestic law-enforcement purposes.

    On Wednesday, yet another judge, in Boston, rejected billions of dollars in cuts to research funding for Harvard University, part of a broad war on liberal academia that Trump has made an unlikely centerpiece of his second term.

    And late on Wednesday night, a federal judge in Washington blocked billions of dollars in Trump-ordered cuts to foreign aid, saying that he was usurping Congress’s power of the purse in refusing to spend the money.

    This, I should add, is an incomplete list. If nothing else, it shows the extraordinary scope and scale of the battles that Trump has chosen to pursue—suggesting not so much a strategic view of the Presidency as an everything-everywhere-all-at-once vision of unchecked Presidential power.

    Important caveats apply, of course, most notably that all these rebuffs to Trump can and may well be overturned on appeal […]

    There’s also the matter of the damage that Trump has already wrought, even if he were to ultimately lose some or even all of these cases—unspent aid that could have saved lives, families divided by harsh immigration policies, companies whose supply chains have been broken or disrupted by a single man’s peremptory demands. So let’s stipulate that winning by losing might be a fine outcome as far as Trump is concerned […]

    Still, I wouldn’t dismiss these rulings so quickly. For starters, they show that there remain pockets of robust opposition to Trump at a time when many are wondering what happened to America’s collective spine. This is a constraint on Trump in and of itself. Every adverse court ruling that he has to appeal takes time and effort […]

    It’s been a great relief during these disruptive past few months to find that the federal judiciary harbors so many individual jurists who are willing to use plain English to skewer the lies and unmask the cover stories that have been used to justify Trump’s various power grabs. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, in his fifty-two-page ruling in the Los Angeles National Guard case, stated clearly that, despite Trump’s claims that he had to send in troops to “quell a rebellion . . . there was no rebellion.” He went on to warn that Trump’s plans were to create “a national police force with the President as its chief.” In the Harvard case, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs determined that the Trump Administration had engaged in “retaliation, unconstitutional conditions, and unconstitutional coercion.” She added that it was “difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used anti-semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” [Yes, all of those conclusions are correct, and well written.]

    Their opinions might be overturned, but they are important nonetheless. On Thursday, using language similar to that in Breyer’s ruling, the District of Columbia filed suit against the Trump Administration for sending in the National Guard to fight crime in the capital, citing an emergency that the city says does not exist.

    I know that the courts alone cannot save us from Trump’s would-be authoritarianism. If anything, I’ve long been struck by the faith that so many of the President’s critics have in the power of the judiciary to curb his excesses, when history is so clear about the power of a demagogue to bulldoze his way past even the most eloquent legal rulings. But I also know that America’s tradition of the rule of law is what makes it different from Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China, where the law is whatever the boss says it is. John Roberts, thank you for your attention to this matter.

  180. says

    A followup of sorts to comment 179.

    Fox News veteran continues to be unable to indict ham sandwiches or anything else

    It has to be clear by now that Jeanine Pirro is not having a good time in her new-ish role as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. While the former Fox News talking head is supposed to be at the helm of a glorious crime crackdown, putting those elite D.C. residents in their place, grand juries are simply not cooperating. She wasn’t even able to secure an indictment against someone she claimed was threatening to kill Donald Trump, probably because it was clear the person was just intoxicated and rambling.

    This is at least the seventh time a grand jury has refused to return indictments brought by Pirro’s office. This is a truly astonishing figure when you learn that from 2009-2010, for example, there were over 160,000 cases brought by federal prosecutors nationwide, and grand juries only voted not to indict in 11 cases. [!]

    Even when Pirro manages to get a defendant in the courtroom, it isn’t going well, with a federal magistrate judge saying one of the searches Pirro thought was dandy was “without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life.” […]

    Link

    Change of subject.
    Militant Agnostic @178: “WTAF – talk about saying the quiet part out loud.” A reference to JM’s comment 164.

    Yep. The Trump administration does not intend to change the statistics by adjusting their policies and/or tactics in response to reality. No, that would require work and actual governing skill. Instead, they intend to mask or lie about the numbers by removing people from the statistics agency that have the temerity to report the numbers accurately.

    As you point out, they are not shy about this: [We expect] “the data to improve as more people are removed from the statistics agency.” Utterly astonishingly shameless.

  182. says

    […] Trump earlier Saturday posted an image generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to his Truth Social platform that showed his likeness as a law enforcement official. The background includes an image of Chicago burning, several helicopters and text that reads “Chipocalypse Now” — a nod to the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now.”

    In the caption, the president wrote, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” […]

    That’s the guy that wants a Nobel Peace prize.

    […] Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) railed against the post in a Saturday social media post, stating it is “beneath the honor of our nation.”

    “But the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” Johnson wrote on X. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”

    Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) lambasted President Trump on Saturday for joking about immigration enforcement efforts, including plans to target Chicago, calling the president a “wannabe dictator.”

    “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Pritzker wrote on social platform X in response to a meme shared by Trump. “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

    “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man,” he added. “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” […]

    Link

  183. says

    Washington Post link

    “Thousands march in D.C. against Trump’s law enforcement takeover”

    “The ‘We Are All D.C.’ march is one of the first major organized protests since President Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the nation’s capital.”

    From the center of the lawn at Meridian Hill Park, “Welcome to DC” by Mambo Sauce and “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar blared from a speaker. A man led 20 people in a free yoga class. U.S. Park Police officers patrolled in black tactical uniforms, contrasting the T-shirts, shorts and kaffiyehs worn by those in the crowd.

    […] The thousands gathered in the park took to the streets Saturday, marching along 16th Street NW toward the White House in the first major organized protest in the District since President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency and deployed federal troops to the nation’s capital. The “We Are All D.C.” march was brought together by a coalition of organizations, including Free DC, a group that aims to protect home rule, and the American Civil Liberties Union, to demand a stop to the federal incursion in Washington. [video, yep, that’s a lot people.]

    […] A D.C. resident himself, Escobar said he understood that some communities did not feel safe, but emphasized that he did not believe Trump’s crackdown was the best way to promote safety in D.C. He pointed to the court system, where earlier this week a federal magistrate judge overseeing cases during the policing surge condemned administration officials, saying they were trampling people’s rights by overcharging them with felonies and then moving slowly to dismiss the weakest cases while the defendants sat in jail.

    “It’s important for us to start to fight back and change the narrative, this isn’t about crime … it’s just an excuse to incarcerate Black and Brown people,” he said. “Anybody can walk to the courtroom and see the sham that they’re polluting this justice system in D.C. with.”

    […] Out of the hundreds of signs on display during the march, one figure emerged as the main symbol of resistance: Sean Charles Dunn. The former Justice Department paralegal became a D.C. icon after he was captured on video throwing a sub sandwich at federal officers. He was later arrested and charged with a misdemeanor after a grand jury declined to indict him on a more serious felony count.

    A giant pink banner flew above the crowd depicting a man throwing a sub. One man marched while holding an inflatable sandwich at least 3 feet long. And Robert Winthrop, 75, held up a sign that read: “Protect our occupiers, arrest all sandwiches.”

    […] “It was a basically ridiculous incident, which was wrong, but then was so grossly overcharged that it made Dunn into a hero,” Winthrop said. “It’s a very nice, concrete symbol of the ridiculousness of Trump’s approach to cutting down on crime in D.C.”

    A resident of D.C. for 25 years, Winthrop said he was outraged by Trump’s move to federalize D.C. police. He said he was pleased by D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) approach, saying she “toed the line” with Trump well, suing to stop Trump from supplanting the D.C. police chief and speaking out against masked law enforcement, but not go so far as to insist that D.C. did not have any crime.

    “I think we do have a crime problem that hasn’t been sufficiently addressed … so I would be in favor of federal assistance that actually helps,” Winthrop said. “And some of it may be helping, but there is no place in a democracy for masked thugs grabbing people off the street and whisking them away.”

    At around 12:20 p.m., protesters carrying a large yellow banner with “TRUMP MUST GO NOW” in black lettering began to head downtown. People spilled onto the street while others stood by at the top of the park, looking down at the protesters chanting, “Free DC.”

    As protesters marched down 16th Street NW, a resident sprayed a water hose into the air to cool children on the sidewalk. Across the street, a chorus of bells rung out from Foundry United Methodist Church. On its steps, demonstrators carried a kaleidoscope of flags — pink, blue and white for transgender pride, black, green and red for Black power, red, white and blue for the United States.

    […] “We need to steward a conversation that balances dignifying the troops with telling [Trump] that he cannot intrude on our cities,” Bergschneider said. “Being here today, bearing witness to humanity coming together for liberty and justice for all, is part of that.”

    This is a developing story.

  191. says

    Dr. Oz’s new plan to root out Medicare ‘waste’ is actually a recipe for disaster

    “A pilot program in six states will require prior approval for procedures under traditional Medicare plans.”

    When Daniel was consumed with severe and inexplicable pain for months, his physician prescribed an MRI. However, his health insurer required that it approve the test as well before he could undergo the procedure. When the insurer denied the prior authorization, that began his long journey to diagnose and treat his syringomyelia, or a cyst in his spinal column. For Daniel, it meant over a year of debilitating pain, weight loss, suicidal depression and dependence on opioids amid delayed diagnosis and treatment. […]

    While writing my forthcoming book (on health insurance coverage delays and denials), I found that Daniel’s tragic experience is all too common. Of the 1,340 people I surveyed, 36% experienced at least one instance of coverage denial, often through prior authorization, that kept medical care out of reach. Prior authorization has been typically deployed by private health insurers, infuriating doctors and patients. Now, though, thanks to the Trump administration, Medicare beneficiaries will begin facing these obstacles to care as well.

    Starting next year, through its implementation of the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin a pilot program that will import the prior authorization process to traditional Medicare plans in six states. The program will even employ artificial intelligence tools to decide whether those Medicare beneficiaries will receive the care physicians say they need.

    Private insurers usually deploy prior authorization to limit low-value care and contain health care costs. Though the tactic was used sparingly in its early days, it is now applied to most higher-cost drugs and nearly all surgeries and procedures. […] the process of challenging denials is highly burdensome, especially for people who are already struggling with severe or even life-threatening health conditions.

    Appealing a coverage denial demands a high degree of health insurance literacy and fortitude that most of us lack […] It is little wonder why so few patients ultimately opt to appeal. In fact, among the 3.2 million denials of prior authorization rendered by Medicare Advantage plans in 2023, just 11.7% were appealed despite most appeals resulting in a reversal of the initial denial.

    Thus, health care becomes rationed not through a final denial of coverage, but rather through accumulations of inconveniences as patients — especially those from marginalized backgrounds — struggle to navigate America’s labyrinthine health insurance bureaucracy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the use of prior authorization has effects that are not only pervasive, but also inequitable. My research has found that less affluent patients are less likely to appeal, and sicker patients and Black and Hispanic Medicaid patients are less likely to appeal successfully.

    The roughly 33 million Americans in Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service plans have largely been able to evade these administrative burdens, as these plans use prior authorization very rarely, such as for durable medical equipment. On the other hand, 99% of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries have prior authorization requirements in their plans. But with the proposed changes under the Trump administration, the enrollees relying on traditional Medicare will get ensnared in red tape as well […]

    And remember, most of Medicare’s beneficiaries are 65 or older. Older adults tend to have lower health insurance literacy, are more likely to have significant health challenges and more frequently suffer from cognitive decline […]

    CMS Director Dr. Mehmet Oz asserts that this pilot program is aimed at “crushing fraud, waste, and abuse.” But it will inevitably drive delays in care — and burdens of appealing — for seniors across the country. It will likewise exacerbate administrative burden for physicians, who must submit prior authorization documentation, conduct “peer to peer” reviews of denials, and craft appeal letters on behalf of their patients. […]

    What’s more, health insurers’ reliance on AI to process claims (including from Medicare Advantage beneficiaries) has already faced legal challenges. Lawsuits filed against UnitedHealth, Cigna, and Humana challenge the deployment of AI programs to decide the amount of coverage that patients required, regardless of the recommendations of the treating physician. […] the high rate at which these denials are reversed — as high as 90 percent, according to the lawsuits — can be an acceptable cost to insurers if the process is so burdensome that few ever challenge the decisions in the first place.

    Daniel ultimately received his spinal cord stimulator, but through his long-term suffering, he was left wondering what might have been absent his supportive family and team of physicians advocating for his access to care at each turn in the health insurance maze. Applying the tools of managed health care to seniors, who may face cognitive decline and worsened physical health, is a recipe for disaster in which, for far too many, health benefits will feel illusory. In a nation as wealthy as the United States, seniors’ epitaphs should not be at risk of reading, “Died of red tape.”

  192. says

    Jared Kushner is not a serious Middle East diplomat

    “The ridiculous postwar Gaza plan that Trump’s son-in-law presented includes a ”Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone” and a shiny gloss on ethnic cleansing.”

    Related video at the link.

    […] Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, along with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, briefed the White House late last month on a plan for postwar Gaza […] The proposal, to put it plainly, is an unserious, politically ignorant, economic-centric pipe dream, a la Trump’s vision of a “Gaza Riviera.” And it further highlights Kushner’s decidedly overrated reputation as a successful diplomat in Middle East relations.

    First reported by The Washington Post, which also published the document in full, the “GREAT* Trust (*Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation)” prospectus includes graphics that envision rolling green hills and skyscrapers standing on what’s currently a wasteland of destruction and starvation. It provides a glossy sheen to ethnic cleansing and places no responsibility on Israel to make meaningful steps toward a political solution that ends the larger conflict — including Palestinian self-determination in Gaza.

    […] The plan sees Gaza (not Hamas, but Gaza itself [!]) as “an Iranian outpost in a moderate part of the region,” but also a potential “Abrahamic Ally,” which appears to be a reference to the “Abraham Accords,” the 2020 agreements that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries, and which were brokered by Kushner during the first Trump administration. According to the plan, the trust will govern Gaza “for a transition period until a reformed and deradicalized Palestinian Polity is ready to step in its shoes,” adding that the “reformed Palestinian Polity will join the Abraham Accords.”

    Lovely idea, but how will that work? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long insisted a Palestinian state will “never” happen and has even ruled out the possibility of a future Gaza government led by the Palestinian Authority — the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people, which also recognizes Israel’s right to exist, supports a two-state solution and correctly blames Hamas for starting this horrific war.

    So how will this “reformed Palestinian Polity” come into existence? The “GREAT Trust” doesn’t have time for such pesky details. […] this proposal only sees the money to be made. The fate of Gazan civilians is rendered as a minor and temporary impediment […]

    The plan includes something called “The Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone” and vague references to high-speed rail lines that would connect Gaza with other “Abrahamic” states […] But, crucially, the plan aims to have as few Gazans in Gaza as possible.

    As The Guardian summarized, “Palestinians would be encouraged into ‘voluntary’ departure to another country or into restricted, secure zones during reconstruction. Those who own land would be offered ‘a digital token’ by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere. Those who stay would be housed in properties with a tiny footprint of 323 sq ft — minuscule even by the standards of many non-refugee camp homes in Gaza.”

    According to the Post, the proposal “was developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) now distributing food inside the enclave. […]

    Even though the White House hasn’t said if it supports the GREAT prospectus, the plan does comport with Trump’s previous statements that he wanted to “clean out Gaza” and move people from there to Jordan and Egypt. Trump’s use of “clean out Gaza” was a euphemism for ethnic cleansing that, as I noted in February, obliterated any pretense that the U.S. would be an objective mediator […]

    “If ethnic cleansing is on the table at all, Trump has already done his job. […] And some of the more extreme members of Netanyahu’s government have been disturbingly candid about the government’s intentions — to make Gaza unlivable, with the hopes that Gazans will submit to “voluntary relocation,” clearing the path for the resettlement of Gaza.

    Kushner has been hailed by many pro-Israel partisans for his statesmanship, but as a senior adviser in the first Trump administration, his 2020 “Peace to Prosperity” plan leaned so heavily in favor of Israeli interests, it was effectively a nonstarter. […] gave Palestinians “a bunch of desert entirely disconnected from the rest of their state while taking prime real estate in the middle of the West Bank [for Israel].”

    And the Abraham Accords — Kushner’s crowning diplomatic achievement — came with one major flaw: Almost nothing was advanced to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza or the occupation of the West Bank, leaving millions of Palestinians under Israeli control, but lacking basic civil rights.

    Just days after Hamas’ savage attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Nicholas Grossman wrote that rather than bringing about the “dawn of a new Middle East,” Trump actually “threw America’s weight behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s squeeze-and-ignore approach to the Palestinians as if the fundamental problem of people displaced and living under occupation would just go away.” […]

    Now the UAE, an Abraham Accords signee, has warned the Trump administration that the accords could collapse if Israel goes through with its threatened annexation of large parts of the West Bank in response to several Western countries recognizing a Palestinian state. Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had signaled in private meetings that he wouldn’t oppose such annexations. [!!]

    […] by presenting the “GREAT Plan” to the White House — which includes plans for the “voluntary” relocation of Gazans to other countries — Kushner himself is putting the Abraham Accords at risk.

  193. says

    Followup to comment 130.

    South Koreans detained in ICE raid at Hyundai EV plant in Georgia to be released

    South Korean workers detained in a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation at a Hyundai plant in Georgia are set to be released, according to the South Korean government.

    South Korean presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said on Sunday that the governments of South Korea and the U.S. have finalized a deal to release more than 300 South Korean workers who were detained on Friday during an ICE raid on Korean automaker Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing site in Georgia.

    The site has been lauded as the state’s largest economic development project.

    Kang said there were still “administrative procedures” remaining to finalize the deal, but that a chartered plane would soon be sent to retrieve the Koreans in custody.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the raid on Friday detained 475 people, most of whom were Korean nationals. The raid was a result of a month-long operation into illegal hiring at the site, where Hyundai is teaming up with LG Energy Solution to manufacture batteries to power EVs. […]

  194. says

    Washington Post link

    “Newsom won’t stop mocking Trump”

    […] Once intermittently cordial with Trump, [Governor Newsom] has embraced all-out warfare, taunting him daily in what his team calls a “flood the zone” strategy. Trump, in turn, has mentioned Newsom more than any other potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate since the start of his second term, according to a Post review of social media posts and emails.

    The result: a remarkable back-and-forth between the president and the governor of the most populous state in the country that reached a low point last week. Trump posted multiple doctored videos of Newsom on social media, while the governor suggested Trump has dementia and pinned an unflattering photo of the president atop his official press account.

    […] Trump has also directed an unusual amount of attention at Newsom: He has used his name 41 times in social media posts and emails since his inauguration — more than the 33 times he has mentioned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), the 29 times he’s mentioned his former opponent, Kamala Harris, and the nine times he’s mentioned Pritzker. (The analysis does not include Trump’s use of nicknames: Many more Trump posts disparage Newsom as “Newscum.”)

    […] Brian Brokaw, a Democratic strategist and longtime adviser to Newsom, said the governor has worked with Trump over the years “when it’s mattered for California” but had no choice but to shift gears when Trump targeted the state.

    […] “That’s an American president in 2025, threatening a political opponent who happens to be a sitting governor,” Newsom told The Post after Trump floated his arrest. “That’s not with precedent in modern times. That’s what we see around the globe in authoritarian regimes.”

    Online chatter about Newsom spiked. Videos of his address to Californians posted on his official and personal X accounts were viewed more than 40 million times, according to the governor’s office. Newsom sued over the National Guard deployment, leading a federal judge to rule this week that it was unconstitutional.

    Last month, Newsom ramped up another strategy: mimicry. [Examples at the link]

    […] Steven Cheung — the White House communications director known for his crude online insults — hit back with a statement suggesting Trump’s team would not be outdone.

    “Gavin Newsom is a mongoloid who barely registers half a brain cell,” Cheung told The Post, using a term for people with Down syndrome that many find offensive, “which is telling because he can barely put together two words without looking like he soiled himself in public.” […]

  195. KG says

    And the Abraham Accords — Kushner’s crowning diplomatic achievement — came with one major flaw: Almost nothing was advanced to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza or the occupation of the West Bank, leaving millions of Palestinians under Israeli control, but lacking basic civil rights.

    Of course residents – including citizens – of the Arab signatories to the “Abraham Accords”: the U.A.E., Bahrain and Morocco – also lack basic civil rights. That may be why their rulers don’t give a shit about the rights of Palestinians.

  197. says

    Washington Post link

    “RFK Jr. says anyone who wants a covid shot can get one. Not these Americans.”

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators this week that anyone can get a new coronavirus vaccine. But many Americans are finding the opposite.

    […] Chain pharmacy locations in some parts of the country have yet to stock the shots or are turning away patients seeking the updated vaccines manufactured to protect people from the worst effects of new strains of coronavirus. In some states, they require prescriptions, a step that has largely not been required since vaccines became widely available in early 2021.

    Even more confusing: Pharmacies are reaching different conclusions about whether they’re allowed to administer coronavirus vaccines, even in the same state. And some states, including New York and Massachusetts, have scrambled in recent days to rewrite their rules to make it easier to get shots.

    […] In Washington, D.C., Vernon Stewart, a 59-year-old retired parking enforcement officer, spent Wednesday riding his bike to see a doctor to get a prescription for the vaccine and to find a pharmacy to get it, only to be told the shot was not available. At one CVS, Stewart was seated in the chair with his sleeve rolled up, when a nurse emerged to tell him his Medicaid insurance plan didn’t cover it.

    On Friday morning, he hopped on the Metro train to Temple Hills, Maryland — a state where CVS is not requiring prescriptions. He didn’t have to show his insurance card and paid nothing for the shot. He left with a bandage on his arm and a free bag of popcorn.

    “It shouldn’t have to be this hard,” Stewart said Friday. “It was such a hassle. But I found a way.”

    […] Research has shown that annual coronavirus vaccination reduces hospitalization and death, especially in people with weaker immune systems because of their age and underlying conditions. Health officials in the Trump administration argue that a universal recommendation is no longer warranted, because clinical trials have not demonstrated the vaccines are effective at reducing infection or transmission in younger and otherwise healthy people who are at low risk of hospitalization. Past research into updated coronavirus vaccines suggests they confer short-term partial protection against infections and can reduce transmission by reducing viral loads and symptoms.

    […] In Virginia, Elaine Cox said she and her husband asked their doctor for a prescription before leaving Saturday for a vacation in Italy. The office declined because it hadn’t received CDC guidance. Cox, 68, suffers from chronic lung disease, and her nephew died of the viral infection in 2022.

    “I was crying this afternoon about this,” she said on Thursday. “My family takes [covid] very seriously.”

    Pharmacy employees have given conflicting instructions about how to get coronavirus vaccines, patients report.

    In San Antonio, 78-year-old Brant Mittler was told at a CVS Minute Clinic that he needed a prescription on Monday, even though the pharmacy includes Texas among its no-prescription states. The next day, a pharmacist at the same clinic told him it wasn’t needed.

    In states where CVS does not require prescriptions, coronavirus vaccine appointments aren’t available for younger, healthier people outside the recommended categories. But the list of qualifying medical conditions, including physical inactivity, being overweight or a history of smoking, is so long that nearly anyone who wants a shot should be able to get one, said Amy Thibault, a CVS spokeswoman.

    […] In Louisville, Kentucky, 66-year-old Stephen Pedigo asked his primary care doctor for a prescription through the virtual platform MyChart. According to a screen shot he provided of their exchange, the doctor recommended against it, saying there has been “a lot of complications and side effects from this including heart problems.” The doctor wrote covid is mild and provides long-lasting immunity if contracted.

    […] Pedigo, who is 66 and has undergone a heart valve replacement, insisted and the office gave him the prescription. He received the shot at a CVS on Friday.

    Doctors offices also have reported challenges helping patients get vaccinated.

    In Raleigh, North Carolina, pediatrician Mary-Cassie Shaw said her office has preordered from Moderna hundreds of shots, at $200 a dose, but worries that insurers won’t reimburse.

    […] The most effective way to increase vaccine uptake is to make it easier for people to get the shots, said Noel Brewer, professor of public health at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. In states such as North Carolina, the added step of getting prescriptions will prompt many people to not bother, he said.

    […] Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) announced Thursday that her state would be the first to require insurance companies to cover vaccines recommended by the state’s Department of Public Health, even if the CDC does not. Washington state government officials on Friday recommended coronavirus vaccines for people ages six months and older.

    At 59, Brewer doesn’t fall into the category of people for whom the FDA recommended updated coronavirus vaccines. Instead, Brewer said, he will wait until the fall when he might travel to a blue state.

  198. says

    Russia’s largest ever air attack on Ukraine burns Kyiv government building

    “Russia unleashed a massive air assault on Ukraine early Sunday, setting the main government building in Kyiv ablaze for the first time during the war.”

    Russia unleashed its largest ever air assault on Ukraine early Sunday, sending more than 800 drones and 13 missiles into the country in an hours-long attack that set the main government building in Kyiv ablaze for the first time during the war. A Russian drone also struck a residential building in the capital, killing at least three people, including a mother and her infant son. At least 20 other people were wounded in Kyiv, officials said.

    […] The assault marked the largest number of Russian drones sent into Ukraine in a single day and continued a worrying trend of increased Russian attacks on the center of the capital, following another major strike on Kyiv last week.

    “Such killings now, when real diplomacy could already have begun, are a deliberate crime and an attempt to prolong the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “It has been said more than once in Washington that sanctions will follow for refusing to talk. We must implement everything that was agreed upon in Paris.”

    […] Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, proposed that Zelensky visit Moscow — a nonstarter for Kyiv — if he is serious about ending the war.

    Trump announced last month after hosting Putin in Alaska that the next steps in talks would involve a face-to-face meeting between the Russian leader and Zelensky. Such a prospect briefly seemed possible, with Zelensky agreeing that he would be ready to meet Putin in various locations, including the Middle East or Europe.

    But Putin’s latest comments, and Moscow’s relentless attacks on Ukraine, suggest the Kremlin is not seriously engaging with the process. […]

    Ukrainian officials are also pleading for more air defense support and weaponry to allow Ukraine to protect itself against Russian attacks that target civilian infrastructure each day. Ukraine’s air defenses shot down or suppressed 751 drones and missiles of the more than 800 launched into the country since 5 p.m. on Saturday, officials said Sunday. But the sheer number of targets is stretching thin Ukraine’s already overworked air defense systems.

    […] Valentyna said she woke up in her bedroom in the family apartment the moment the drone hit early Sunday. Edward’s bedroom door was locked, and as the apartment filled with smoke, she ran downstairs to beg for help reaching him. A neighbor rushed upstairs and heard Edward confirm from the other side of his door that he was alive but stuck and needed help. Before rescue workers could reach him, the fire spread, and his room collapsed, she said, sending several floors from the building crashing to the ground and burying Edward under more rubble. His phone continued to ring all morning, but he did not answer.

    […] Edward is also a soldier, she said, who was on three days of sick leave from his job in an air defense unit that is tasked with stopping these kinds of strikes.

    While waiting for news of Edward, she said, she watched her neighbor — a young man who was displaced from Ukraine’s war-torn east — scream for his child and wife. The man was badly wounded and rushed to a hospital. Soon after, rescuers found his wife and infant child dead, Valentyna said. The couple’s bed and the baby’s crib had fallen six stories.

    […] Such attacks on Ukraine will not end, she [Tetiana Ponomaryova] said, until Washington puts real pressure on Putin to stop the war. Trump’s repeated shifts in stance toward Putin and Zelensky — at times, appearing to favor one over the other — have deeply frustrated Ukrainians, who are exhausted after more than three years of full-scale war and are desperate for an end to the violence that besieges their country daily.

    […] Under constant attack by Russia, many Ukrainians have dismissed the recent talks hosted by Trump as little more than a political show that is allowing Putin to prolong his war. [Accurate assessment.]

    When asked whether she had any message for Trump, she replied: “Enjoy your golf game while we are dying.”

  199. says

    Undersea cables cut in the Red Sea, disrupting internet access in Asia and the Mideast

    “Microsoft announced via a status website that the Mideast ‘may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea.’ ”

    Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupted internet access in parts of Asia and the Middle East, experts said Sunday, though it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the incident.

    There has been concern about the cables being targeted in a Red Sea campaign by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which the rebels describe as an effort to pressure Israel to end its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the Houthis have denied attacking the lines in the past.

    Undersea cables are one of the backbones of the internet, along with satellite connections and land-based cables. Typically, internet service providers have multiple access points and reroute traffic if one fails, though it can slow down access for users.

    […] NetBlocks, which monitors internet access, said “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” which it said included India and Pakistan. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”

    The South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 cable is run by Tata Communications, part of the Indian conglomerate. […]

  201. says

    Trump Power Grab Looms Over Gov’t Funding Negotiations

    Congress is back and negotiations to fund the government for the next fiscal year and avoid a government shutdown before the end of the month are ongoing. A short-term continuing resolution is looking more and more like the most realistic option for Republicans. But the reality is, they will need a handful of Democratic votes to keep the government open no matter what path they choose.

    Democrats are seemingly leaning into an ask that would protect health care for Americans in exchange for their votes to fund the government. Specifically, they are pushing to extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

    But amid that push, the Trump White House and Russ Vought’s Office of Management and Budget continue to lawlessly impound funds previously appropriated by Congress and engage in an illegal pocket rescission scheme.

    […] stomping on Congress’ power of the purse looms over government funding negotiations — even though many Democrats are not publicly elevating that narrative to force Republicans to do something about the power grab. So far Democrats haven’t publicly laid out a demand that might attempt to mandate an end to the administration’s lawless funding freezes, impoundments and pocket rescissions in exchange for helping Republicans avoid a shutdown.

    […] let the judicial branch decide it is illegal and shut it down. A federal judge on Wednesday declared President Trump’s pocket rescission gambit to be illegal, which the Trump administration quickly appealed.

    Internal negotiations will likely still involve conversations around how lawmakers can reach a bipartisan funding deal when the executive branch refuses to spend federal funds in the way that Congress allocates them.

    When asked if the recent pocket rescissions request — and the fact that some Republicans are claiming that Vought’s maneuver is legal — will become a sticking point in the ongoing negotiations to fund the government, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told TPM: “I think it’s a point of friction, but I’m not prepared to articulate any red lines to you.”

    Link

    The link leads to a collection of news reports.

  202. says

    American workers may be struggling with the highest rate of corporate layoffs since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but one lucky group is doing better than ever: the Trump family.

    […] Trump’s children and extended family members added over $5 billion to their net worth in a single day, thanks to a new cryptocurrency issued by the family’s newest crypto project, World Liberty Financial. WLF investors voted last month to allow the Trumps and a handful of key investors to cash out their crypto holdings early, locking in a handsome profit for the connected few.

    Others weren’t so lucky. WLF’s cryptocurrency has fallen over 50% since Monday, saddling many regular investors with heavy losses.

    Eric Trump doubled down on Thursday with the IPO of yet another family crypto venture, this time named American Bitcoin Corp. It was no coincidence that the new company’s public launch came on the same day that his father hosted Silicon Valley’s biggest crypto and AI boosters for a private dinner at the White House.

    Trump’s brazen blending of personal profit and public influence represents an unprecedented level of state corruption. Not only do the Trump family’s multiple crypto operations offer foreign nationals an easy way to buy access to the White House, they reveal a president willing to steer American policy in ways that enrich his family and close friends. The result is a rotten government that doesn’t even pretend to serve the public interest.

    […] on Tuesday, even Fox Business host Stuart Varney gave up trying to defend Trump’s blatant self-dealing. [video]

    “What it amounts to is—it’s crypto-friendly legislation coming from the president of the United States, who is in turn cashing in on the crypto phase—personally, his family,” Varney said. Fox Business reporter Lauren Simonetti agreed, describing Trump’s profiting off the GENIUS Act as a “conflict of interest.”

    But Trump’s corruption doesn’t stop with fleecing crypto investors. His coin is hosted by Binance, a crypto exchange that was—until recently—facing accusations of illegal business dealings with the United Arab Emirates and other foreign actors. Binance founder CZ Zhao is also seeking a pardon from Trump after pleading guilty to violating federal money laundering laws.

    Crypto mogul Justin Sun also saw civil fraud charges against him put on hold after investing $75 million in the Trump family’s personal cryptocoin. Sun was one of guests at the dinner Trump hosted in May for his biggest memecoin investors.

    […] Legal experts from the conservative American Enterprise Institute warn that Trump’s dealings with Binance are a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause, which bars federal officials from using their office for private profit.

    Now the Trump family is considering wading into the frothing AI market, and it’s easy to see why. AI spending now accounts for fully 2% of the American economy, on par with what railroads contributed to national GDP between the 1820s and 1860s. That growth is powered by a staggering $400 billion in Big Tech investment this year alone, and Trump wants those Silicon Valley scions to know he’s happy to help—in exchange for his cut.

    […] Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson […] told lawmakers that the FTC wouldn’t regulate AI until after problems emerged, effectively giving AI companies one free screw-up courtesy of the White House. Ferguson has also taken a hands-off approach to cryptocurrency regulation, including undermining draft regulations put in place by his predecessor, Lina Khan.

    […] With no regulators left to call out his crypto and AI self-dealing, nothing stands in the way of Trump and his family members raking in billions more in profits by fleecing consumers and allying with shady crypto exchanges like Binance.

    The Trumps will almost certainly leave the White House far richer than when they entered it. The same can’t be said for the Americans they’ve ripped off.

    Link

  203. says

    Russia Steps Up Disinformation Efforts as Trump Abandons Resistance

    “The Kremlin has begun a campaign to sway the parliamentary election in Moldova in what could become a new model of election interference online.”

    Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it.

    How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.

    The Trump administration has slashed diplomatic and financial support for the country’s fight against Russian influence, even as the Kremlin has conducted what researchers and European officials described as an intense campaign to sway that country’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for Sept. 28.

    The Russians have flooded social media with fake posts, videos and entire websites that are created and spread on TikTok, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube using increasingly effective artificial intelligence tools.

    […] “The Russians now are able to basically control the information environment in Moldova in a way that they could only have dreamed a year ago,” said Thomas O. Melia, a former official at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. [social media post, with video]

    […] Although Mr. Trump has repeatedly dismissed Russian election interference as a hoax, the Kremlin’s covert influence operations have been well documented — including in last year’s American presidential election and in votes this year in Germany, Poland and Romania.

    The Russian efforts have also been honed with experience and aided by rapidly evolving technologies that have made Moldova a showcase of the ways the Kremlin seeks to exert its influence in other countries.

    The Stimson Center, a research organization in Washington, called Moldova, which borders Ukraine, “a testing ground for hybrid warfare operations” that “are likely to shape similar efforts” across Europe.

    WatchDog, a consortium of researchers in Moldova, said in a report last month that it had found more than 900 accounts linked to Russia working in concert on the most popular apps in the country, including TikTok and Facebook, as well as Telegram, YouTube and Instagram. Some included videos that its researchers and others said A.I. had created. [social media post, with video]

    In July, the National Police singled out a campaign on TikTok. “Every day, officers detect hundreds of new accounts created to misinform and manipulate society,” the agency warned.

    […] Ms. Sandu, a former World Bank adviser who in 2020 became the first woman elected as the country’s president, warned this summer that Russia was overtly and covertly supporting sympathetic parliamentary parties to stoke political and social divisions.

    After a recent meeting with the country’s security council, Ms. Sandu detailed numerous ways the Kremlin sought to exert its influence. She accused Ilan Shor, a fugitive Moldovan businessman now sheltering in Moscow, of being a conduit of the Russian efforts.

    […] Kristina Wilfore, a researcher at Reset Tech, said the narratives often had a misogynistic tone, a recurring theme in Russian information operations toward women holding elected office.

    The misogyny often blurs with homophobic themes, in keeping with Mr. Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a defender of traditional cultural values of family, church and state. It is a narrative embraced by the American right, including Mr. Trump.

    […] When the Trump administration slashed American foreign aid this year, the impact fell particularly hard on Moldova, a poor country with a population of 2.4 million.

    Among the cuts was $22 million meant to strengthen Moldova’s “inclusive and participatory political process.” Another slashed $32 million from what Mr. Trump, in a speech to Congress, called “a left-wing propaganda operation,” which included support for independent media in the country.

    […] “It’s one thing when Russian propagandists and Russian politicians are attacking the legitimacy of the action of civil society organizations of human rights organizations,” said Valeriu Pasa, the chairman of WatchDog. “It is absolutely different if the same narratives are being echoed by U.S. leadership.”

  209. birgerjohansson says

    Myself @ 208
    As mentioned in the link “Chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts, seemingly as a fashion trend”.
    So, we are on the level of chimps. At least some of us (looks at Mar-a-lago).

  210. birgerjohansson says

    The Guardian:
    “Norway goes to the polls on Monday after an unusually close-fought and polarised election dominated by the cost of living, wealth taxes, oil fund investment in Israel and relations with Donald Trump.”

  218. says

    The big problem with the White House’s spin about the economy

    “There’s no doubt that spin can work in politics, but economic reality is especially difficult to twist.”

    Related video at the link.

    The Trump administration has a problem. The latest jobs report showed just 22,000 jobs were added in August. Employment data for June was revised to a loss of 13,000 jobs, the first net loss since the end of 2020. The president’s economic policies aren’t likely to change, though, driven by the impulses and fantasies of a man whose tether to reality grows thinner by the day.

    But in this White House, every day’s news must be characterized as a spectacular success. So what to do when the fantasy doesn’t match reality? First, you get rid of the messengers, as when Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after last month’s bad jobs report. Next, you posit a conspiracy theory, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did Friday, and assure the public that once the apostates have been purged, everyone will understand what a glorious utopia Trump is creating for the country. But when it comes to the economy, there’s only so far you can get with spin to persuade people not to believe what they’re experiencing in their own lives.

    [I snipped comments already posted in comments 164 and 178 by JM and Militant Agnostic]

    “The holdovers from the Biden administration are just bent against the president’s success,” Lutnick said. “He can’t replace somebody two weeks ago, and you expect fundamental change, but what you will get is an agency that’s on [Trump’s] side, just trying to do the best and put out the correct numbers.”

    Lutnick didn’t provide any evidence for his assertion about BLS staffers’ motivations. And for his claim to be true, hundreds of people would have had to conspire to cook the books, with not a single person in the agency speaking the truth publicly.

    […] [video]

    Right now, the administration is telling a preposterous story about the economy, yet the public isn’t buying it. Most Americans say they disapprove of the job Trump’s doing on the economy. A recent Wall Street Journal/NORC poll found that just 25% of Americans think they have a good chance of improving their standard of living, the lowest since that survey started asking the question in 1987.

    […] if anything, the public hasn’t yet tuned in to just how bad things are going to get. Trump promised a manufacturing renaissance, but there are 78,000 fewer manufacturing jobs now than at the beginning of the year. His mass deportation effort will have a significant drag on the economy, leaving employers unable to fill positions in key sectors and depriving the country of both the production and the consumption those immigrants contributed. His tariffs are an outright catastrophe, ever-changing in ways that make it impossible for companies to plan, imposing higher costs on both consumers and businesses and producing retaliation from other countries that hurts American exporters.

    Elsewhere, the new administration’s evisceration of the federal government has added thousands to the unemployment rolls. Trump’s insane war on renewable energy not only undermines one of the most dynamic industries in the country, but it will most likely raise electricity prices for all of us. Millions of Americans will soon lose their health coverage because of the GOP budget. The White House’s devastation of universities and scientific and medical research will make America less competitive and dynamic.

    In short, if Trump had set out to intentionally sabotage the American economy, he couldn’t have done much worse.

    Electricity prices are a perfect example of the limitations of the reality-distortion field in which Trump attempts to envelop the country. He promised in 2024 that he’d cut electric bills in half within a year, but instead, prices are rising. There is no clever spin or blame-shifting that can convince most people their energy costs have gone down when their monthly bills are going up.

    Let’s recall how much invective was directed at Democrats during Joe Biden’s presidency every time one of them suggested that, in fact, the administration’s economic record was pretty good — which it was. Inflation spiked in most of the world in 2022, but in America it came down more quickly than in many other countries, helping us recover far more quickly from the pandemic-induced recession. Biden had the best job creation record of any presidential term in history. Yet whenever Democrats would defend the administration’s economic record, they would be denounced for allegedly dismissing people’s economic pain.

    Today, Trump and his aides are doing what Democrats were falsely accused of: brazenly lying to the public by insisting that the economy is terrific when it’s actually heading south. We know they won’t stop saying Trump is a genius and the economy has never been better. But if you want to know the truth, all you have to do is look around.

  219. says

    Trump is wasting more money on the “Department of War” nonsense than I realized:

    […] many of those who actually work at the Pentagon haven’t exactly embraced the rhetorical shift with enthusiasm. Politico reported:

    Pentagon officials grappled Friday with the Herculean task of fulfilling President Donald Trump’s executive order to remold the enormous, global agency into the Department of War. Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.

    The Politico report, which was based on interviews with “half a dozen current and former defense officials,” […] added that DOD officials may need to change Defense Department seals on more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 states as a result of Trump’s order.

    “This includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store,” [!] the article noted.

    “I see there being a million small headaches and annoyances if this actually happens,” one defense official said. “It’ll eat up time and effort.”

    As for the price tag, there’s been no official accounting to date, but The Hill reported, “The estimate to change the names of hundreds of Pentagon agencies and all their stationary, emblems and signage — both at home in the U.S. and at bases overseas — has been placed at upwards of billions of dollars.”

    Around the same time, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News on Friday, “It’s hard to adequately plumb the depths of the stupidity of everything that goes into this.”

    Taken together, at issue is an unnecessary and costly rebranding campaign, which sends all of the wrong messages to the world about the United States and its intentions, which was sought by no one and is doing little more than annoying many Pentagon insiders.

    “This is purely for domestic political audiences,” a former defense official told Politico, adding, “[I]t will have absolutely zero impact on Chinese or Russian calculations. Worse, it will be used by our enemies to portray the United States as warmongering and a threat to international stability.” […]

    Link

  220. says

    These People Deserve Each Other

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got into a heated confrontation with Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte last week at the Executive Branch, the MAGA-chic private club in D.C., Politico reports.

    Bessent accused Pulte, the MAGA influencer ginning up mortgage fraud claims against Trump foes, of bad-mouthing him to Trump, leading to this diatribe from the sitting Treasury secretary: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.”

    Co-owner Omeed Malik attempted to intervene in the confrontation, prompting this memorable exchange:

    “It’s either me or him,” Bessent said to Malik. “You tell me who’s getting the fuck out of here.”

    “Or,” he added, “we could go outside.”

    “To do what?” asked Pulte. “To talk?”

    “No,” Bessent replied. “I’m going to fucking beat your ass.”

    Even Trump-world insiders described the scene to Politico as “bonkers” and “unhinged.”

    Link

  221. says

    Quote of the Day

    “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”–Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at President Trump’s Oval Office signing of an executive order making the Department of War a “secondary title” for the Department of Defense

    Same link as in comment 220.

  223. says

    The USTA (United States Tennis Association) asked broadcasters not to “showcase” the crowd’s responses to Trump’s appearance today at the men’s tennis final.

    [I]n an email to broadcasters, including Sky Sports and ESPN, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) asked for coverage to “to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity”.

    Naturally, social media ignored the “suggestion.” Trump Gets LOUDLY BOOED As Tennis Stunt BACKFIRES (starting at 3:09).

    Raw story posted a story — Watch: Trump booed while attending US Open — which linked to this X video: [video]

    But some of the mainstream, particularly ESPN , also ignored the USTA. Donald Trump Booed at U.S. Open Men’s Final Match

    When Trump was shown briefly on the jumbotrons at Arthur Ashe Stadium during the singing of the U.S. national anthem — with the president standing in salute — fans responded with an audible cascade of boos, as could be heard on ABC’s telecast. . . .

    ESPN is broadcasting the U.S. Open men’s final on nationally on ABC, which aired the crowd reaction to Trump.

    The media is also talking about it a lot. [Examples at the link.]

    The White House “Rapid Response 47” was quick to fire back, within half an hour:

    All these Fake News Losers do is lie because their pea-sized brains have been irreversibly destroyed by TDS.This is how it aired on TV. Note the cheers.

    Now, this was posted at 1515 EDT, just after the booing, and well before most if not all of the media had reported anything (other than the live ESPN broadcast). So the press office not only knew he was booed, they knew that the media was going to ignore the USTA “request.”

    I got this link from a side story in the UK Independent by a reporter who was there: I was in the stands as Donald Trump watched the US Open. Here’s what really happened. He adds:

    Several sets into the match, it was time for another go. As Trump sat in the stands, the jumbotron showed the president and held his image on screen for a good 30 seconds. There were thunderous boos – but sparse cheers and clapping could also be heard.

    This time, the White House made no response.

    Is it just possible they realize they lost this round?

    Link

  224. says

    Court upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83M defamation win against Trump, by Associated Press

    A federal appeals court has upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault.

    In a ruling issued Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the “jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.”

    Trump had argued that he should not have to pay the sum as a result of a Supreme Court decision expanding presidential immunity. His lawyers had asked for a new trial.

    A civil jury in Manhattan issued the $88.3 million award last year following a trial that centered on Trump’s repeated social media attacks against Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996.

    That award followed a separate trial, in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million. That award was upheld by an appeals court last December.

    […] The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged attack and statements Trump made denying that it had happened.

    After that first verdict, the court held a second trial with a new jury for the purpose of deciding damages for additional statements Trump made attacking Carroll’s character and truthfulness.

    Trump had skipped the first civil trial but he attended the second, which took place as he was running for president in 2024. Speaking to reporters throughout the trial, Trump portrayed the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to smear him and prevent him from regaining the White House.

    His lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the second, damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from claiming in front of the jury that he was innocent of the attack. The judge ruled that that issue had been settled by the first jury and didn’t need to be revisited.

    Posted a readers of the report:

    The logical step for tRump would be for him to pay up and let the story go stale. But we know he’ll do something to make it worse. [Yep. Trump already took that exact course of action before.]

    Carroll needs a security detail.

  225. says

    Trump Has Turned the National Guard Into Mall Cops. Cost? $1 Million a Day.

    When I went out to fetch lunch last Wednesday, three Louisiana Guard members were lounging outside the Mother Jones building, enjoying the perfect weather and watching dialysis patients spilling out of Metro access vans. The soldiers wore handcuffs on their belts and handguns strapped to their thighs, unaware that they were protecting some enemies of the people inside.

    Later that afternoon, even more soldiers flocked to our building after a fire truck and ambulance pulled up to deal with a medical emergency. The Guard members stomped around, barking into walkie-talkies, but they contributed little more to the operation than the reporter and other rubberneckers on the sidewalk. They were back on Friday, clustered near the parking garage like smokers sheltering from the wind.

    President Donald Trump has deployed more than 2,200 of these National Guard members to DC to execute his “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” as he described it during an August 11 news conference. “This is liberation day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back.”

    City officials protested that crime in DC had fallen to near-historic lows. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser called the presence of the military in the city “un-American.”

    Nonetheless, armored vehicles rolled in the next day and lined up in front of the Washington Monument. The initial optics of an occupied city were terrifying, the fever dream of a budding authoritarian. Several weeks later, however, the military “liberation” of DC looks a lot different from the war on crime that Trump had promised to bring to our city.

    National Guard members here aren’t actually doing much. Groups of bored soldiers seem to wander aimlessly around the city like tourists, taking selfies at national monuments and enjoying our varied dining offerings. On Tuesday, when I was walking my dog, I ran into a few Guard members patrolling my local coffee shop. The regulars were chatting them up, while expressing polite outrage at the militarization of this quiet, historic, gayborhood.

    The soldiers were from Louisiana, a state whose capital city boasts a crime rate twice as high as DC’s. In their civilian lives, one was a cop, another an “assistant chiropractor.” They seemed oblivious to the pressing local crime wave: cyclists in the nearby bike lane blowing through the stop light, a scourge endlessly decried by the café denizens.

    […] The RUF and Rules of Conduct state that “This is a civilian SUPPORT mission.” The document emphasizes that the National Guard can’t arrest people. Nor can soldiers investigate anything or conduct searches and seizures, hostage negotiations, or extract a suspect from a barricade. Trump made a big deal recently about allowing Guard members to carry weapons, but the RUF says they are strictly prohibited from using those weapons except for self-defense and defense of others. No pulling a gun on a fleeing suspect. (“Warning shots are NOT authorized.”)

    A JTF-DC spokesperson later confirmed that the National Guard “will not be conducting law enforcement.” However, the Department of Justice recently deputized many Guard members as US Marshals. [!] The DC Attorney General has argued in a lawsuit that deputizing them does, in fact, empower National Guard members to make searches, seizures, and arrests, and as such, violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

    Given all the mixed messages, the Guard members I spoke with appeared somewhat confused about what the rules of engagement were. But they seemed to agree that if they witness a crime, they are mainly supposed to detain a suspect if possible, call for help, and wait for real cops to show up. “If there’s any concerns, we notify Metropolitan Police Department or the right personnel to make sure that the situation is taken care of,” US Air Force Maj. Jay Green, a chaplain with the 113th Wing, District of Columbia Air National Guard, explained in one recent Defense Department website posting.

    That seems to be what they’re doing in DC. The Washington Post recently sent out a team of reporters to observe troops during rush hour in the Metro system. Fanning out across various stations, Post reporters witnessed National Guard members standing around watching Metro police arrest a woman with an outstanding warrant. They did not assist.

    In another station, a Metro rider mistakenly assumed the soldiers could help and told them someone was selling drugs on a stalled train. What did they do with that information? “One of the Guard members passed the details about the alleged drug dealer to Metro police,” the Post reported.

    The Defense Department has published several puff pieces on military websites touting the National Guard’s work in DC. But even those official accounts indicate that when Guard members witness a crime, their main job is to call for help and wait for the local cops to arrive. Last month, for instance, Joint Task Force-DC proudly announced in an online release that two Guard members had “alerted local law enforcement to a potentially life-threatening situation involving a man brandishing a knife and threatening another man at the Waterfront Metro Station.” […]

    They didn’t mention whether any ordinary citizens also communicated with the nearby law enforcement officers or called 911, as they are wont to do when they see someone brandishing a knife in a subway station.

    It’s probably a good thing that the National Guard isn’t doing more to fight crime in DC. They’re not trained for domestic law enforcement. Besides, DC has seen plenty of enhanced federal policing since Trump declared his crime emergency. Most of the action is driven by the city’s multitude of federal law enforcement agencies, such as the US Park Police, plus the stepped-up presence of ICE and Border Patrol. They’re the ones kidnapping and beating up DoorDash drivers, chasing drivers with fake tags and causing car crashes, and arresting people for drinking in public.

    But using soldiers as props in Trump’s fake crime emergency seems insulting to people serving the country honorably. Indeed, deployed to a city whose crime rate was already plummeting, the National Guard has been filling the time by picking up trash and spreading mulch in federal parks. Social media wags have dubbed them “National Gardeners.” (“Fighting crime one weed at a time,” the local joke goes.) [Video of National Guard doing landscaping work.]

    […]

  226. says

    Supreme Court lifts limits on Los Angeles-area immigration stops

    The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a judge’s limits on Los Angeles-area immigration stops based on an individual speaking Spanish or working in a certain profession.

    The Trump administration urged the high court for the emergency intervention, calling the order a “straitjacket” on enforcement efforts in an epicenter of the president’s immigration crackdown.

    The ruling appeared to fall along the court’s 6-3 ideological lines, though the justices are not required to publicly disclose their votes in emergency orders. The one-paragraph order contained no explanation, as is typical. […]

    In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her colleagues’ decision is “unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees.” Sotomayor was joined by the court’s other two justices appointed by Democratic presidents, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    “That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” Sotomayor wrote. “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

    It marks the administration’s latest victory at the Supreme Court, which has regularly intervened on its emergency docket so Trump can resume parts of his sweeping agenda halted by lower judges. […]

  227. says

    […] Trump on Monday condemned the deadly stabbing of a Ukrainian woman in Charlotte, N.C., after the gruesome video of the attack was released over the weekend.

    The president, in remarks at the Museum of the Bible, told the audience, “there are evil people — we’re all people of religion — but there are evil people that we have to confront that.”

    “I just give my love and hope to the young women who was stabbed this morning or last night, in Charlotte by a mad man, a lunatic,” Trump said, referencing the video. “Just viciously stabbed, she’s just sitting there. So, they’re evil people. We have to be able to handle that, if we don’t handle that we don’t have a country.”

    The video, released by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police on Sunday, showed Iryna Zarutska, who fled Ukraine in 2022 with her family during the war with Russia, getting stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train on Aug. 22, CNN reported.

    The president, before his comments on the stabbing, was bashing the Biden administration for allowing an influx of migrants into the U.S. He then spoke about his crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C., as he has eyed sendoing federal law enforcement to other cities like Chicago and New Orleans.

    […] “This monster had a track record longer than a CVS receipt, including prison time for robbery with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, and larceny. By failing to properly punish him, Charlotte failed Iryna Zarutska and North Carolinians,” Duffy [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy]wrote in a Sunday post on X.

    “Citizens don’t want federal dollars going to public transportation that local leaders refuse to keep safe!”

    Trump has made crime a major focus of his administration, deploying the National Guard and federal law enforcement to patrol the streets of D.C. last month. Over the weekend, the president said he’s “not going to war” with Chicago, despite his recent social media post that hinted at impending war.

  228. says

    Washington Post:

    […] Trump can fire a Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission while a lawsuit challenging her removal continues, Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ruled Monday.

    The pause comes after an appeals court found last week that Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter could be reinstated to her job because the president had fired her “without cause” in violation of the statute creating the independent agency that focuses on consumer protection and antitrust issues.

    The Trump administration had filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week, asking the justices to overturn the appeals court ruling. The high court has not said whether it will take up the case.

    Roberts ordered Slaughter to file a reply to the government’s request by Sept. 15.

    The Trump administration fired Slaughter in March.

  229. says

    Emboldened by the United States Supreme Court’s eagerness to coddle them, religious conservatives are shoveling their so-called religious freedom cases into the pipeline as fast as they can.

    And why wouldn’t they? It’s not just that hard-right Christian plaintiffs can rely on the court’s six conservatives ruling in their favor, though that is indeed a big plus when you’re trying to force everyone to live under your Christofascist worldview. They’ve also got a hard-right Trump administration just as committed to that Christofascist goal, so there’s no danger the Department of Justice will oppose their efforts. So, let’s get familiar with their latest efforts.

    In Jones v. Mahaniah, two sets of conservative Christian foster parents have sued for their right to terrorize any transgender children who might have the misfortune to be placed with them.

    Because Massachusetts is not in the grip of the transphobia that has a complete lock on the conservative brain, the state requires foster families to agree they will “support, respect, and affirm the foster child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” However, these foster parents refuse to do so, because Jesus. That means they won’t use the child’s pronouns, won’t support their gender identity, and won’t provide them with medical assistance supporting transition. What they do want to do, however, is the right to try to convince any LGBTQ+ kids they foster that their sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong and evil.

    […] If they prevail, it means these parents and other conservative Christians committed to this level of homo- and transphobia will not have to agree to be even remotely supportive of LGBTQ+ children placed in their care. […]

    Over in Minnesota, some conservative Christian pharmacists have worked themselves into a lather over how it violates their religious freedom if they have to fill prescriptions for puberty blockers—but only for trans kids, mind you. Yes, the plaintiffs in Scott v. Minnesota Board of Pharmacy magnanimously declare that they will refuse to fill prescriptions for gender-affirming care only if they can tell it was prescribed for that purpose. So, if a cisgender child needs a puberty blocker to, say, stave off early puberty, these pharmacists have decided their god is totes cool with it, but if a trans child needs a puberty blocker to stave off puberty, then their god has zero chill about it.

    These folks all want to work as pharmacists while ignoring Minnesota’s laws about the dispensation of medications—because their right to be transphobic outweighs everything.

    Just for good measure, one of the plaintiffs in Scott is also an unhinged anti-vaxxer whose religious freedom means they will not perform a truly breathtaking number of vaccinations, including those for rabies. Bro, your god wants people to die from rabies?

    Finally, let’s catch up on the latest efforts to make sure that same-sex couples can never buy a cake. Remember back in 2018 how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that a conservative Christian baker could not be subjected to the horror of having to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple? In that case, the baker insisted that he would be totally fine selling a pre-made cake to a same-sex couple, but what his version of Jesus couldn’t abide was designing a cake for that same couple.

    Well, enter Catharine Miller, a bakery owner in Bakersfield, California. A same-sex couple came into Miller’s bakery, talked with an employee, and ordered a predesigned three-tiered white cake that the bakery sells for any number of occasions, including weddings and birthdays. But when the couple came back to do a tasting, Miller refused to sell them the predesigned cake.

    Miller’s refusal is a huge step forward in the conservative battle to drive LGBTQ+ people from public life. Previous cases like this focused on how it would burden the First Amendment rights of Christian wedding photographers, cake bakers, and the like if they were required to use their creative design impulses in service of a same-sex marriage. The argument there is that their design process is a form of speech, and the state can’t compel them to engage in speech that violates their religious convictions.

    Miller’s argument, however, goes much further. The argument there is that simply being aware that an item in her bakery will be purchased by a same-sex couple for the nefarious purpose of celebrating their nuptials violates her religious freedom. So she is asking for the explicit right to discriminate based on sexual orientation. She lost in the California courts because of that whole thing where California prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, so she’s running to the Supreme Court to see if it will take the case.

    If it does, it’s another chance for the court’s conservatives to keep pushing LGBTQ+ people out of public life, to allow open discrimination and call it religious freedom. The freedom these people demand is no freedom at all. It’s a demand that they get to put a very specific Christian conservative boot on the neck of everyone else in America. It’s the very opposite of real religious freedom, and the most powerful people in the county are totally down with it.

    Link

  231. birgerjohansson says

    Even if the Republican senator from Maine is defeated, the Dems currently seem posed to fall two seats short of the 51 sests they need to block Trump.

    But much can happen in 14 months. And the economy is not going to get better.
    Keep reminding people the Republican senators voted for this dumpster fire.

  232. birgerjohansson says

    A question: I assume the legacy Democrats/ the Democratic leaders are against changing the supreme court.
    Is there any monentum among the leftie Democrats to change the court?

  233. says

    Lawmakers begin voting on French government’s survival — live updates

    “Proceedings underway in the National Assembly on a dramatic day in Paris.”

    After nearly two weeks as a political dead man walking, French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s moment of reckoning has arrived.

    Bayrou and his minority government will face a confidence vote on Monday over a proposed €43.8 billion budget squeeze that, barring a miraculous change of heart from a major bloc of opposition lawmakers, they are almost certain to lose.

    Toppling the government would likely force President Emmanuel Macron to hunt for a fifth head of government in less than two years as Paris scrambles to assuage financial markets […]

    We’ll be following developments and watching financial markets throughout the proceedings in the National Assembly, which began at 3 p.m. Voting is expected to conclude at 6:50 p.m. […]

  236. says

    Mortgage fraud allegations generate new political headaches for Team Trump

    “Donald Trump urged reporters to start digging into officials’ mortgage records. Two weeks later, he probably wishes he hadn’t offered that advice.”

    Two weeks ago, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign against Fed governor Lisa Cook, a reporter asked the president whether his team was weaponizing government by digging into mortgage records. Trump rejected the premise.

    Insisting that mortgage records are public, Donald Trump told the reporter who posed the question, “I mean, you can find out those records. You can go check out the records yourself, and you should be doing that job, actually. … If you did your job properly, we wouldn’t have problems like Lisa Cook.”

    The “problem,” according to the White House, is that Cook allegedly has more than one primary residence on her mortgage loan paperwork, which Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has seized on.

    But the president’s challenge — perhaps reporters should “go check out the records” themselves — has proven to be interesting advice. ProPublica reported last week, for example:

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records.

    A day later, Reuters advanced the broader story in an even more provocative way:

    Close relatives of the federal official who has accused a Federal Reserve governor of improperly claiming primary residence on two properties have declared the same status on two homes in two different states, public records show. Mark and Julie Pulte, the father and stepmother of Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s appointee as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, since 2020 have claimed so-called ‘homestead exemptions’ for residences in wealthy neighborhoods in both Michigan and Florida, according to the records.

    […] raised questions about selective enforcement and why the administration is going after the president’s perceived foes and not his allies who appear to have done the same thing.

    For his part, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, another one of Pulte’s targets, responded to the ProPublica reporting last week by saying “the hypocrisy of the Trump administration is nothing short of staggering.”

    The senator added, “Donald Trump has made mortgage fraud accusations his weapon of choice to attack people standing in his way and people standing up to him, like me. … Should we expect Trump and his enablers at [the Justice Department] to make sensational accusations against and investigate his own Cabinet?”

    If recent history is any guide, I think we know the answer to that question.

  237. says

    Trump used to condemn executive orders, slamming them as evidence of inept leadership. As he signs his 200th order, he has apparently changed his mind.

    It’s easy to sympathize with those who’ve struggled to keep up with Donald Trump’s “flood the zone” approach to executive orders. [Trump] signed more EOs in the first two months of his second term than in the first two years of his first term.

    The pace has slowed, but only a little, and as the conservative Washington Times reported on Friday morning, Trump has already reached another milestone.

    President Trump is signing the 200th executive order of his second term, setting a pace that’s unprecedented in modern history. When Mr. Trump signs the directive renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War on Friday, it will be his 200th executive order in the 228 days, or just over seven months, since he returned to the White House in January.

    According to the Times’ tally, Trump signed more executive orders in his first 228 days “than the past 16 presidents combined during the same point in their presidencies.”

    In his first term, Trump signed 220 executive orders over four years. At this pace, he’ll clear that total this year before Thanksgiving.

    This is apparently a source of pride for the White House, as evidenced by Team Trump’s social media boasts. [social media post]

    To be sure, each of the orders deserves to be considered on the individual merits, but it’s worth appreciating why the volume matters.

    For one thing, there’s the degree to which this adds to the power grab indictment. As The New York Times’ Carlos Lozada explained in a recent column, “The executive order is Trump’s preferred governing tool. Even with Republican congressional majorities, he favors the flourish of the order over the hassle of lawmaking. Why bother assembling legislative coalitions when you can just write, ‘By the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered’ and then tack on whatever you like?

    There’s also the obvious hypocrisy on the part of congressional Republicans, who condemned Barack Obama’s executive orders as evidence of the Democratic becoming a “dictator.” (Obama signed 277 orders over eight years.)

    Let’s also not forget the campaign promises Trump made about his approach to presidential power before he reached the White House.

    In November 2015, in reference to Barack Obama, Trump said, “He doesn’t work the system. That is why he signs executive orders all the time.” A month earlier, the future president said, “Look at Obama. He doesn’t get anything done. … You’ve got to close the door and get things done without signing your executive orders all the time. That’s the easy way out.” [LOL]

    […] in January 2016, then-candidate Trump told Fox News, “[T]he problem with Washington, they don’t make deals. It’s all gridlock. And then you have a president that signs executive orders because he can’t get anything done. I’ll get everybody together.”

    In March 2016, with his hold on the GOP nomination nearly complete, Trump went so far as to declare, “I want to not use too many executive orders, folks. Executive orders sort of came about more recently. Nobody ever heard of an executive order. Then all of a sudden Obama, because he couldn’t get anybody to agree with him, he starts signing them like they’re butter. So I want to do away with executive orders for the most part.”

    The same month, at a primary debate, Trump vowed, “I would build consensus with Congress, and Congress would agree with me. … I don’t like the idea of using executive orders like our president. It is a disaster what [Obama’s] doing. I would build consensus, but consensus means you have to work hard. You have to cajole. You have to get them into the Oval Office and get them all together, and you have to make deals.”

    Trump delivered perhaps the best line of them all in January 2016, when he told CNN his thoughts on the “executive-order concept.” The future president explained, “You know, it’s supposed to be negotiated. You’re supposed to cajole, get people in a room, you have Republicans, Democrats, you’re supposed to get together and pass a law. [Obama] doesn’t want to do that because it’s too much work. So he doesn’t want to work too hard. He wants to go back and play golf.” [LOL, LOL]

    Eight years later, Trump isn’t just signing executive orders on a nearly daily basis, he’s publicly bragging about the fact that he’s signing more orders than any of his presidential predecessors. (He is also doing quite a bit of golfing.) […]

  238. says

    Followup to comment 228.
    Supreme Court finds new way to bend over backward for Trump

    Chief Justice John Roberts is continuing his wholesale destruction of the Supreme Court’s credibility in favor of advancing President Donald Trump’s imperial interests. This time, he’s making sure that Trump can fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter despite a Supreme Court case that literally says he can’t without cause.

    Roberts and the rest of the court’s conservatives love making bold moves like this, but what they don’t feel so bold about is actually owning up to their actions. So all of the massive reshaping of the federal government by giving ever-increasing power to Trump is happening in the shadows.

    In the Slaughter case, Roberts issued an emergency stay of an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which ruled that Trump could not remove Slaughter without cause because of the 90-year-old precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

    […] Unlike the Supreme Court, lower courts are actually bound by precedent, so until and unless the Supreme Court explicitly overrules Humphrey, the lower courts are required to follow its holding. But with this stay, Roberts is saying that the lower courts are wrong in doing so.

    And this is where the Supreme Court conservatives are wussing out. They don’t want to actually overrule Humphrey’s, in no small part because they would then have to grapple with whether Trump could fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. And they also don’t want to be perceived as undermining the separation of powers, so they tell themselves that these are just narrow, technical rulings.

    In their framing, they’re not ignoring the Constitution or overruling their own precedent; all they’re doing is putting a lower court order on hold while litigation moves forward. [sneaky]

    But in practical terms, that means that even when lower courts try to stop Trump’s flagrantly illegal actions, the Supreme Court will wave it away. The conservatives love buying Trump’s argument that if he doesn’t get to do what he wants immediately—even if there are explicit laws against it—he is irreparably harmed. So they keep using the shadow docket to grant Trump’s wishes, allowing him to move ahead with unconstitutional actions.

    With other agencies where Trump illegally removed commissioners and board members, the Supreme Court’s conservatives could tell themselves they weren’t overruling Humphrey’s because that case only explicitly references the FTC, not other agencies.

    But that’s an incredibly meager distinction that ignores Humphrey’s overall holding—that when Congress creates an independent agency intended to have insulation from the whims of the president, he cannot fire commissioners or board members without reason.

    The liberal justices have called this out in past cases, noting that the majority was indeed overturning Humphrey’s but without the nerve to admit it or any explanation as to why. But the issuance of the stay itself does signal that Roberts is treating the Slaughter case as an open question in need of further review. But it’s not an open question. The Supreme Court definitively decided this issue on the side of FTC commissioners like Slaughter 90 years ago.

    Roberts’ stay obviously screws over Slaughter, but it also screws over the American people with further erosion of the separation of powers as Trump turns himself into a king. And it screws over the lower courts […]

    I think Chief Justice Roberts must know he is in the wrong here. That’s why he used the shadow docket and used a sneaky excuse for doing so. Roberts is pretending that his fingerprints are not all over this.

    The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is enabling Trump through the shadow docket—fast, unexplained rulings that bypass normal procedures. They’re letting him break the law, without justification or transparency. It’s judicial, plain and simple, cloaked in emergency procedure.

  239. says

    Two explosions ripped through a Russian military base. But this base is in Khabarovsk, a city on the Amur River north of Vladivostok and right along the Chinese border.

    Ukrainian intelligence is claiming credit for the strike on a unit that participated in the Russian attack at Bucha. […]

    Link

    That’s over 6,000 kilometers from Ukraine.

  241. birgerjohansson says

    From God Awful Movies: “This week, Marsh and Dr. Alice deeply, deeply regret saying yes to Eli before he told them what movie they’d be watching.”
    (It was Urine Good Health, 1999)

  242. birgerjohansson says

    “A Goblin Slayer review: 4 years too late to be relevant, 7 years too late to be topical” 

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=esRIyL_cx_E
    BTW as I recently discovered Goblin Slayer (by way of the abridged version, which was less brutal) I binge-watched it and found it better than 90% other fantasy / adventure series. 

    And here is the shortest review I could find.

  245. says

    New York Times:

    Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it. How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.

  246. says

    NBC News:

    President Donald Trump is publicly cheering the reported cancellation of a ceremony honoring actor Tom Hanks at the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Hanks was to receive the 2025 Sylvanus Thayer Award later this month by the West Point Association of Graduates, according to a June statement from the alumni group. The award was set to recognize Hanks’ work throughout his film career that supported ‘veterans, the military, and America’s space program.’

  247. says

    Followup to comment 226.

    The now familiar 6-3 lineup at the United States Supreme Court just threw out decades of settled law so that President Donald Trump’s roving bands of masked federal agents in Los Angeles can engage in a little light racial profiling, […] and can continue scooping up people based on nothing more than looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and working at a low-wage job like a car wash.

    You know the drill. A lower-court judge wrote a detailed, thoughtful, lengthy opinion about how this practice was 100% racial profiling and ordered the government to stop doing it. The Trump administration ran to the Supreme Court to say that the world would crumble if they couldn’t racially profile brown people in Los Angeles right away, and the Supreme Court obliged by staying the lower court’s order. That stay prevents the lower court’s order from going into effect, so federal agents can continue this straight-up racist, unconstitutional behavior. [!]

    These detentions and arrests aren’t based on the agent having a particular reason to believe the specific person they are detaining is an undocumented immigrant. Instead, they are arguing they can detain anyone who fits their conception of an undocumented immigrant—basically, lower-income brown people who work difficult, menial jobs.

    That’s the opposite of what the federal regulations say they are allowed to do. Immigration officers can only detain someone for questioning if they have “a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned is, or is attempting to be, engaged in an offense against the United States or is an alien illegally in the United States[.]”

    Does arresting or detaining people for no reason at all violate the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that probable cause is required to search or seize someone? It sure does! If a police officer wants to stop someone on the street and search them, they have to have a level of reasonable suspicion about that particular person, such as believing they are armed and about to commit a crime. Law enforcement officers have to be able to justify stopping specific people based on specific concerns rather than being able to stop whole groups of people based on shared characteristics.

    The Supreme Court even addressed this in the immigration context some 50 years ago in U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce. There, the government asserted that Border Patrol agents could stop any car near the border if the driver appeared Mexican, because undocumented immigrants travel in vehicles driven by Mexican individuals. The Supreme Court rejected this, saying that it would scoop up legitimate traffic as well and didn’t show any particularized suspicion that a particular vehicle was carrying undocumented immigrants.

    […] the stay was unsigned and has no explanation as to why the conservative majority thinks it is no big deal to arrest people because they have the wrong skin color. It’s just another shadow docket ruling that allows Trump to do whatever he wants.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor pulled no punches, even refusing to engage in the faux-civility of the tradition of saying “I respectfully dissent.” Nope, here it is just “I dissent.” While that may seem like a nerdy, legalistic, tiny thing to focus on, in the context of how the justices communicate with one another through their opinions, it’s Sotomayor saying the actions and reasoning—or lack thereof—of her colleagues are not worthy of respect.

    And they’re not. The conservatives are letting Trump’s masked brownshirts occupy a major American city and send roving masked men with guns to jump out of vehicles and tackle day laborers at Home Depot. They are letting those roving patrols violently surround and attack a tamale vendor for being a tamale vendor, never asking any questions about his immigration status. They are letting ICE show up at car washes and arresting only Hispanic-appearing people, while not even questioning white immigrants. [Embedded link to additional source is available at the main link.]

    In a time when Supreme Court decisions have been almost universally bleak, this is one of the bleakest. Federal agents in Los Angeles are engaged in racial profiling and racialized violence. ICE agents are terrorizing the city, and people are afraid to go outside, go to work, or go anywhere that they might be arrested and detained for no reason save for the color of their skin. It’s one of the most un-American things imaginable and the kind of thing the Supreme Court is supposed to step in and stop.

    Instead, the court’s six conservatives declared that Trump’s desire to engage in the most xenophobic violent racism imaginable, to wreak havoc on an American city because it doesn’t have a sufficient number of white people, is so important that he cannot be stopped, even for a moment, while litigation plays out. Without any explanation, the court’s six conservatives signaled just how much they support those efforts. It sure does not feel great to see the protections of the Fourth Amendment dismantled […]

    Link

  248. says

    Trump thinks domestic violence isn’t really a crime

    […] Trump on Monday downplayed the seriousness of domestic violence, describing it as a “lesser crime” that is a “little fight” between a husband and a wife.

    Trump made the comment during a speech at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, where he said that after sending in the National Guard to police civilians, the only crime that remains in the nation’s capital is domestic violence. He complained that including domestic violence in crime statistics is unfair to him, and said that if it wasn’t included that crime would be down 100%—which is a lie.

    “Things that take place in the home, they call crime,” Trump said. “You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see? So now I can’t claim 100%.” [video]

    Of course, domestic violence is a crime—and a horrible one at that.

    According to the Department of Justice, “Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.”

    Domestic violence “results in nearly 1,300 deaths and 2 million injuries every year in the United States,” according to the Emory University School of Medicine, which reported that three women are killed daily by intimate partners.

    But the seriousness of domestic violence aside, Trump’s claim that crime is down 100% in D.C., since he called in the National Guard is absurd. […]

    “Reporting [of crime] always lags so some of that decline [a 23% decline] is likely artificial. You probably need six weeks or so for incident-based reporting to catch up and make a comparison of the most recent period,” crime analyst Jeff Asher told the BBC.

    Ultimately, negating domestic violence as a crime to try to make his autocratic National Guard deployment look more successful is disturbing. [!]

    But what else can you expect from a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, faced marital rape allegations from his late ex-wife Ivana Trump, is blocking the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and who banned rape survivor hotlines from providing resources to LGBTQ+ rape survivors.

  251. says

    Washington Post link

    “ICE launches ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ targeting immigrants in Chicago”

    The Department of Homeland Security said Monday it has launched a new immigration enforcement operation in Chicago as part of the Trump administration’s effort to target “sanctuary cities,” and immigrant advocates said several people in heavily Hispanic communities had already been detained.

    […] Trump has said for weeks that he would send federal law enforcement officers to Chicago as part of an effort to crackdown on crime, but he has vacillated on the timing and scope of the operation. Over the weekend, he shared an illustration of himself as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from the film “Apocalypse Now” on social media and wrote, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”

    DHS said their latest enforcement is being dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” and staged “in honor” of an Illinois woman allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant who had been driving drunk when he crashed into her vehicle. DHS republished an interview Monday with the parents of 20-year-old Katherine Abraham, who earlier this year was rear-ended by a vehicle authorities said was driven by Julio Cucul-Bol of Guatemala.

    [I snipped some more blather and threats from the Trump administration.]

    The news of the operation was immediately met with rebuke from immigrant advocates and Democratic politicians who said the administration was using crime to target undocumented people who studies show do not commit crimes at a higher rate than U.S. citizens.

    “As President Trump continues to wrongly hyper-fixate on deploying the military to Chicago, his Administration is now ramping up its campaign to arrest hardworking immigrants with no criminal convictions,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said in a statement after the announcement of the operation.

    Chicago city leaders and immigrant advocates said federal law enforcement officers began making arrests Sunday and had taken at least five people into custody, including a well-known flower vendor and people waiting at a bus stop and on the sidewalk. The activists said there had been “an escalation” in enforcement actions and several reported sightings of ICE vehicles.

    […] The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute has found that a “growing volume of research demonstrates that not only do immigrants commit fewer crimes, but they also do not raise crime rates in the U.S. communities where they settle.”

    The organization cited a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found immigrants were 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the United States in 2020. Another study based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety and published in 2020 found “considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens.” [!]

  252. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Mortgage minutae for the accusations @236.

    Credit Slips – Pulte’s latest bad faith accusation (Aug 29)

    Pulte’s latest claim is based on Cook having rental income from 2021 second home mortgage in Cambridge. Pulte alleges that this means that Cook defrauded the lender by claiming the property as a second home, when it was actually intended as an investment property.
    […]
    two problems with this argument. First, the standard Fannie/Freddie second home rider—which Pulte notably does not quote—expressly permits short-term rental of a second home […] If she occasionally rented out the property [on AirBnB], she didn’t violate the covenant.
    […]
    Second […] there is a really critical difference between a mere breach of contract and promissory fraud. The difference is about intent. […] Pulte has no evidence whatsoever about Cook’s intent at the time she took out the mortgage. He hasn’t even shown a breach of contract, much less common law fraud, not to speak of a federal criminal law violation.

    CreditSlips – That mortgage document doesn’t say what you think it says

    I’ve been getting a lot of emails and on-line comments in recent days from people who work in the mortgage industry about the Lisa Cook mortgage situation. What I’m seeing in these comments is a serious gulf between lawyers and non-lawyers.
    […]
    For example, lots of mortgage professionals (and too many journalists, following Pulte and Trump) are sloppy about conflating “primary residence” and “principal residence.” The term “primary residence” is used in the uniform residential mortgage application, but the uniform covenant in the security instrument refers to a “principal residence.” “Primary” is more restrictive than “principal.” That sort of terminology difference can matter a lot for legal purposes.
    […]
    This is hardly the first time the mortgage industry has learned that its legal documentation doesn’t work the way it thought it did. […] I’ve spent a lot of time reading, teaching, and testifying about the Fannie/Freddie uniform instruments. They are probably the most widely used standard contract in the United States. There’s scant interpretive caselaw, but there are lots of ambiguities and imprecisions in the documents. No one much cares… until litigation arises. But the documents don’t necessarily work the way mortgage professionals assume they do. […] Legal documentation often has glitches, gaps, and loopholes that no one notices when deals are going as intended, but fail the stress test of litigation.

  253. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Scott Horton (Attorney):

    ICE is sending Russian dissidents back to Russia. When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US which under US law are confidential. This seems to be part of a secret agreement between Trump and Putin. [The London Times article]

    Those dossiers, outlining their political beliefs and criticisms of Putin, could be used to prosecute them back home

    Commentary

    Basically Trump is sending Russians back to Putin so he can murder them.

    Trump would have given back the Red October.

    “You want another submarine??”

  254. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NYT – House panel releases drawing for Epstein apparently signed by Trump

    The drawing—a figure of a naked woman with “Donald” written below her waist—was part of a batch of documents

    Commentary

    Not a woman’s body. That’s a child.

    “Apparently”—yeah, I’m sure someone forged this 20 years ago in anticipation of this very eventuality.

    But then the forger forgot to release the forgery to the public until eight months into his intended victim’s second stint in the presidency 22y later.

    Speaker Johnson’s August recess strategy working to perfection.

    Someone ask Mike Johnson why the FBI would burn an informant in such a grand and incriminating manner.

    We’re going to invade Venezuela aren’t we?

    We’ve always been at war with Venezuela.

     
    Acyn (MeidasTouch):

    [Rep Tim Burchett (R-TN)]: I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens used quite a bit. I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist. I don’t buy it.

    [Manu Raju (CNN)]: You think someone might have forged this?

    Burchett: Yeah. [Video clip]

    Commentary

    There’s a charity that Trump donated a sketch to every year for like 30 years. It came out the first time this sketch made news earlier this summer.

    This is the guy who claims he lives in his office because DC is so unfathomably dangerous that he can’t even drive home after work.

    The level of contempt that some GOP electeds show for their own voters is really amazing.

    By tomorrow, republicans are going to tell us Trump has never used a big black sharpie in his life.

    Clinton’s letter is in fact rather dull. Here’s the entire birthday book [pdf].

  259. birgerjohansson says

    In ‘Alien; Earth’ Kumi Morrow is a cyborg, not a robot like Ash. Like Ash he has to obey the instructions from Weyland-Yutani, but unlike Ash he feels remorse.

  260. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Maddow: Trump busted by his own distinct signature, sinks to new depths of historic disgrace
    Video is 11:56 minutes

    Trump’s poor choice of health secretary bites him as states step up to lead instead
    Video is 7:40 minutes

    ICE reactivation of spyware contract raises alarm about next steps
    Video is 6:33 minutes

  263. says

    Sky Captain @252, thanks for that additional information. This part is especially clear:

    […] the standard Fannie/Freddie second home rider—which Pulte notably does not quote—expressly permits short-term rental of a second home […] If she occasionally rented out the property [on AirBnB], she didn’t violate the covenant. […]

    And this:

    […] lots of mortgage professionals (and too many journalists, following Pulte and Trump) are sloppy about conflating “primary residence” and “principal residence.” […]

    Nevertheless, Cook is going to have to defend herself in court.

  265. says

    The video highlighted in comment 260, “Maddow: Trump busted by his own distinct signature, sinks to new depths of historic disgrace” is especially good at displaying and comparing various Trump signatures from around the same time that Trump purportedly signed the “birthday letter” to Epstein.

    I knew about the striking similarities in Trump’s signature, but it is eye-opening to see them all presented.

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Here is some followup from Steve Benen, who writes for the Maddow Blog:

    It was eight weeks ago when The Wall Street Journal first reported on a 2003 birthday album, collected by Ghislaine Maxwell, that apparently included a letter from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. The Journal described the letter in detail, including a “bawdy” drawing and a cryptic message from the future president to his longtime friend: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

    Trump condemned the reporting, claimed he never created such a letter and promptly sued the newspaper for having published a report about a document the president insisted was “FAKE.” His Republican allies followed his lead and urged the public not to believe the Journal’s reporting.

    Eight weeks later, the story took a rather dramatic turn. My MSNBC colleague Erum Salam reported on the new batch of material from the Epstein estate released by Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight Committee — including the contents of the so-called “birthday book.” From the report:

    A copy of the book submitted to Congress […] included a typed message, inside the outline of a woman’s torso, that read, in part, ‘A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.’ At the bottom of the message is a signature that appears to be Donald Trump’s.

    The image looks like the one the Journal described in July. [Image]

    As the documents reached the public on Monday, the president, his team and his party confronted a serious political challenge. How would the Republican White House and its partisan allies, each of whom had insisted that the original reporting was wrong, deal with the release of information that appeared to confirm that Trump really had sent the convicted pedophile a cryptic letter, with text inside the outline of a female torso?

    The party effectively had two choices: acknowledge the legitimacy of the letter or insist that the Trump-signed document wasn’t actually a Trump-signed document.

    Republicans went with the latter.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that it’s “very clear” that Trump didn’t draw the figure or sign the letter. Other White House officials pushed the same line, and true to form, several congressional Republicans soon followed, echoing the new party line.

    At face value, the pushback was — and is — difficult to take seriously. The signature on the letter resembles other documents from that era that Trump signed. [social media post with images of Trump’s signature on various documents.]

    For that matter, it’s difficult to imagine how the document in question could’ve been fabricated in the first place. As CNN’s Aaron Blake summarized, “The key fact here is that this comes from Epstein’s estate. In other words, for this letter to have been fake, someone would have had to plant it in Epstein’s possessions a long time ago, somehow.”

    […] part of an unsettling pattern.

    [I snipped other examples]

    Climate science is fake. Public health information is fake. Election results are fake. Trump’s Russia scandal is fake. Evidence of crimes is fake. […]

    Trump obviously tries to get people to believe lies all the time, but nearly as often, the president and his allies try to get people to give up on the idea that facts exist. […]

    Link

  266. says

    The Ratfucking Is Already Underway

    The Trump Justice Department is taking the unprecedented step of compiling a national voter database, the NYT reports:

    The effort to essentially establish a national voting database, involving more than 30 states, has elicited serious concerns among voting rights experts because it is led by allies of the president, who as recently as this January refused to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. fairly won the 2020 election. It has also raised worries that those same officials could use the data to revive lies of a stolen election, or try to discredit future election results.

    The effort is being speared by two DOJ components acting in parallel: the civil rights division and the criminal division. They have been seeking individual voter data from around the country, involving 16 GOP-controlled states and 17 Democratic or swing states, the NYT reports:

    In a private meeting with the staff of top state election officials last month, Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, disclosed that all 50 states would eventually receive similar requests, according to notes of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. In particular, he said, the federal government wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number.

    Part of the motivation for the data collection appears to be stoking claims of widespread voting by undocumented immigrants, according to the report. But election law experts and state election officials are sounding the alarm about other uses the Trump DOJ may make of the data, ranging from sowing further doubt about the 2020 election to interfering in the 2026 midterms.

    Combine the NYT report with recent comments from longtime GOP election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who before she became a major player in the Trump effort to overturn the 2020 election had spent decades trying to make it harder to vote, and you can start to see the groundwork being laid first for delegitimizing, then for rejecting a loss in the 2026 midterms: [video]

    [Cleta] Mitchell and those of her ilk must create a corrupt permission structure for Trump to involve himself in the midterms because constitutionally there is no legal role for the president. Indeed there is no national election, but rather concurrent state-level elections.

    Law professor Justin Levitt, a noted election law expert at Loyola Marymount University, compared it to Trump’s takeover of D.C.: “It’s wading in, without authorization and against the law, with an overly heavy federal hand to take over a function that states are actually doing just fine,” Levitt told the NYT, “It’s wildly illegal, deeply troubling […]”

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-lays-the-groundwork-to-rig-the-2026-midterms

  267. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Appearing on Fox News Channel Monday night, Donald J. Trump said he was “furious” that an appeals court was forcing him to pay “all my hard-earned bribes” to the writer E. Jean Carroll.

    “For the last eight months, I’ve been working my ass off, shaking down universities, law firms, and media companies,” he told Sean Hannity. “And now I’m supposed to hand over all of those bribes to this lady, who hasn’t bribed a single person in her life?’

    ”This should never be allowed to happen in this country,” he added.

    Turning to another controversy, Trump claimed he “could never have drawn” the just-released Epstein picture due to hand spurs.

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-furious-at-having-to-pay-all

  268. birgerjohansson says

    Gerda the cheetah. 
    (The automatic translation & dubbing is annoying, I prefer subtitles)

    Note that Gerda is outdoors when Messi the puma is shut in, and vice versa. This avoids unnecessary aggro about who is the boss kitten. Gerda has her own separate cottage, Messi is just like a big house cat.
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSvPyivZqKc

  269. says

    Four years after trying to kill Biden’s infrastructure bill, Trump now wants credit for it

    Less than a year into his presidency, Joe Biden signed into law one of his top domestic priorities, a bipartisan infrastructure package. Almost immediately, cynics predicted that the legislation’s Republican opponents, after condemning the effort as Big Government “socialism,” would be only too pleased to take credit for the investments that reached their states and districts.

    To the surprise of no one, the cynics were correct, and more than a few GOP members have spent years touting infrastructure spending they voted against.

    As it turns out, however, the problem isn’t limited to Capitol Hill. The New York Times reported:

    In southern Connecticut, the federal government is replacing a 118-year-old bridge along America’s busiest rail corridor. The $1.3 billion project was largely funded by the 2021 infrastructure law that was championed by then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and strenuously opposed by Donald J. Trump. These days, however, motorists cruising by the construction site might be forgiven for thinking that a certain famous New York developer was responsible for it all.

    “PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” the sign by the road declares. “REBUILDING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE.” [JFC. All propaganda, and no actual action. Trump’s sign is a lie.]

    Four years ago, the then-former president, desperate to deny his successor a political victory following his own failure on the issue, called the bipartisan infrastructure bill “a loser” for the country and predicted a voter backlash against any Republicans who dared to support it. (The package’s GOP proponents ignored the rhetoric and faced no electoral pushback.)

    Nevertheless, in recent months, the Times noted that signs bearing the incumbent president’s name “now adorn bridge projects in Connecticut and Maryland; rail-yard improvement projects in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia; and the replacement of a tunnel on Amtrak’s route between Baltimore and Washington.”

    In each instance, funding for the projects was made possible by the bill Trump tried to derail in 2021. [!]

    I guess Biden’s accomplishment wasn’t a “loser” after all.

    […] After he returned to the White House, Trump and his team started taking credit for domestic investments that were made while Biden was still president. Trump also claimed credit for reductions in illegal border crossings that happened before his second inaugural.

    On a nearly daily basis, Trump condemns his Democratic predecessor as the worst president in history. But if that were true, why does Trump keep seeking credit for Biden’s work?

  270. says

    ‘Yield, man’: Speaker Johnson presses Democratic-run cities to accept troop deployments

    “If the GOP leader genuinely can’t understand why local Democratic officials would resist the deployment of armed federal troops, I think I can help.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson realizes that as Donald Trump threatens to deploy troops to more American cities, local officials are not on board with the president’s agenda.

    The Louisiana Republican, however, seems baffled by their perspective. [video]

    “We need to confirm for the American people that they do not need to fear for their lives when they drive to the grocery store, or they pick up their son or daughter from school,” the House speaker said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “This is common sense, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the Democrats think this is some sort of winning political message.

    “Yield, man,” Johnson continued. “Let the troops come into your city and show how crime can be reduced.”

    If the GOP congressman is sincere and genuinely cannot understand why local officials would resist the deployment of armed federal troops, acting under Donald Trump’s directions, to address civilian street crime, I think I can help.

    First, Johnson made it sound as if there’s a national crime wave sweeping the nation, forcing Americans to cower in fear behind closed doors. That’s ridiculous, as the evidence shows.

    Second, the crime rate in Louisiana isn’t exactly worth bragging about, compared to national averages, and I haven’t yet seen Johnson demand the deployment of federal troops to patrol the streets of Shreveport. [LOL. True.]

    Third, the idea that troop deployments necessarily eliminate crime has already been discredited, and although it might offer some temporary improvements, unless the House speaker expects to see permanent troop deployments to American municipalities from coast to coast, this isn’t a serious approach to crime reduction.

    Fourth, the president has already militarized Washington, D.C., and most of the residents of the nation’s capital overwhelmingly oppose the deployments. This probably hasn’t gone unnoticed among local officials in other areas.

    Fifth, it remains jarring to see far-right Republicans talk about the federal mobilization of troops on domestic soil after years of listening to other far-right Republicans describe exactly this scenario as tyrannical. Now, evidently, Johnson sees it as “common sense” […]

    Sixth, this isn’t an all-or-nothing situation in which the administration offers Guard troops or nothing: Plenty of Democratic officials in cities nationwide would welcome increased federal support to make local streets safer, even as they resist police state–style deployments.

    Finally, even if we put all of this aside, the House speaker suggested the Democratic position is a political loser for the party. Indeed, the GOP leader explicitly said he couldn’t understand “how the Democrats think this is some sort of winning political message.”

    But it’s really not that complicated: The latest CBS News/YouGov poll found that a 58% majority of Americans are against the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities to address street crime.

    That is, the Democratic position is the popular one, whether or not the House speaker finds this to be confusing.

  271. says

    Redistricting news updates, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    The Republican-led Missouri House is poised to advance a mid-decade redistricting scheme that would lead to a net gain of one additional GOP seat in the state. Republicans already control six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats, but as part of Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering offensive, that’s apparently no longer good enough. [Source is New York Times]

    On a related note, Kansas and Nebraska are reportedly also in the mix to redraw their state congressional maps to ensure GOP victories before voters cast ballots. [Source is Political Wire]

    Speaking of redistricting, in California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last week launched a new ad campaign to boost his effort to overhaul his state’s congressional boundaries, hoping to counter a related effort in Texas. [Source is NBC News]

  272. says

    Just three days after stating that vaccines work, “pure and simple,” the president thought it’d be a good idea to promote an anti-vaccine video.

    In the years following his defeat in the 2020 election, Donald Trump appeared eager, if not desperate, to brag about his role in the development of the Covid vaccine. There was, however, one nagging problem: His MAGA base wouldn’t let him.

    After a handful of incidents in which Trump was audibly booed by his own followers at public events, the Republican conceded that “vaccine” was a word that he was “not allowed to mention.”

    This tension between what Trump wanted to say and what his supporters wanted to hear has led the president in some incoherent directions, including in recent days.

    Last week, state health officials in Florida announced plans to eliminate “all” vaccine requirements in public schools, despite their efficacy, popularity and track record. Two days later, the president suggested he was not on board with the change. NBC News reported:

    Trump appeared to defend the use of certain unspecified vaccines, saying the ones that are ‘not controversial at all’ should be used when asked about efforts in Florida to roll back vaccine mandates. ‘I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated. It’s a very, you know, it’s a very tough position,’ Trump said.

    At a White House event, the president added: “You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all, and I think those vaccines should be used.”

    He went on to say, “The polio vaccine I think is amazing. A lot of people think that Covid is amazing. … When you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it.”

    At face value, Trump apparently wanted to have it both ways: He seemed eager to signal to the public that he supports safe, effective and popular lifesaving vaccines, while at the same time, the president lent his support to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a notorious anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is helping put new hurdles between Americans and vaccinations.

    It was against this backdrop that Trump made matters just a bit worse, three days stating that vaccines work, “pure and simple.” NBC News reported:

    Trump posted an undated video clip on Truth Social of anti-vaccine activists Mark and David Geier discussing thimerosal in vaccines with the text on the clipped video reading: ‘They’re ALL poison. Every. Single. One.’ David Geier has been leading an inquiry within the Department of Health and Human Services, at the direction of Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., into debunked assertions of a link between vaccines and autism.

    Why would the president amplify an anti-vaccine video just days after offering public support for vaccines? He didn’t say.

    […] There’s no point in looking for coherence in Trump’s position on the public health issue, because his position is all but certain to change again soon.

  273. says

    The U.S. economy added nearly 1 million fewer jobs over the past year than initially estimated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, a downward revision that shows just how bleak the jobs market has become for American workers.

    According to the revised numbers, the U.S. economy added just 850,000 jobs between March 2024 and March 2025—almost half as many as initially reported.

    […] according to BLS data, the biggest correction came in the trade industry, with wholesale trade and retail trade revised downward by more than 236,000 jobs.

    This is just the latest negative economic news to drop in recent weeks.

    On Sept. 5, the BLS reported that barely any jobs were added in August. What’s more, that same monthly jobs report revised June’s data to show that the economy actually lost jobs that month—the first monthly job contraction since the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Meanwhile, the BLS reported on Sept. 3 that as of July, there were more unemployed workers than job openings—the first time that has happened since 2021, when the economy was recovering from the pandemic job crash.

    Some top economists are painting the bleak labor market as a “labor recession,” with job openings falling off a cliff. Moody’s economist Mark Zandi told Business Insider that if layoffs pick up, the “labor recession” will spiral into a full-on recession.

    “Everything is clinging tightly to the lip of the cliff,” Zandi told Business Insider. “We had 10 fingers on the edge of the cliff a couple months ago, we now [have] seven fingers. A couple more fingers, and we’re going, then we’re going over the edge.”

    Ultimately, the Trump administration is using the latest awful jobs data to justify Trump’s August decision to fire the BLS chief.

    “It’s difficult to overstate how useless BLS data had become. A change was necessary ton restore confidence,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in a post on X.

    However, economists say this is par for the course.

    “This annual revision process is normal. The BLS does it every year. Last August, the BLS reported -818,000 fewer jobs. Yes, these are large (negative) revisions. Why? It’s mainly due to problems accounting for new/closed businesses since the pandemic,” Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long wrote in a post on X.

    Link

  274. says

    ICE is hell-bent on erasing all evidence of its lawless actions

    According to the Department of Homeland Security, simply videotaping raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is violence, and it’s doxing, and prosecutable. Also according to the DHS, ICE agents don’t need to fill out any paperwork about who they are targeting.

    Additionally, according to DHS, elected officials need to provide prior notice to be allowed into ICE facilities to perform their congressionally mandated oversight duties, despite a law saying they need to do no such thing.

    Taken together, it’s clear that DHS wants no record of ICE’s actions. And hey, redefining “violence” to include “recording ICE agents” helps Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem throw around comically large numbers. She’s now insisting that “our brave ICE law enforcement are now facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them as they risk their lives to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

    Examples of those terrifying assaults? According to a DHS spokesperson, someone dumped trash on an ICE agent’s lawn, and someone made a sign with a profanity directed at a specific ICE agent by name. The horror.

    Somehow, those brave ICE agents are getting past the terror of mean signs, still managing to band together in roving patrols to do masked jumpouts at Home Depots and car washes based on nothing but race, just to hit deportation numbers. They’re not arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.

    Unlike a lot of the administration’s actions, no Supreme Court case says that videotaping law enforcement officers is protected by the First Amendment. That’s not because the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise, but because they’ve never addressed it at all. However, there are numerous state court cases and statutes protecting the right to record law enforcement. Back in 2020, the ACLU secured a huge settlement in a lawsuit against DHS over the right to photograph and record vehicles idling at the southern border.

    The settlement prohibits U.S. government officials from interfering with people’s efforts to record at any “publicly accessible area at any land port of entry in the United States.” It also prohibits the government from requiring people to obtain any sort of prior authorization to record law enforcement at the border. Though the lawsuit was brought in California, the settlement covers all land ports of entry into the United States. So, the DHS knows full well that the right to record law enforcement agents, at least at the border, is protected by law. They just don’t care.

    ICE agents have also been freed from the tyranny of filling out paperwork about the immigrants they are targeting for arrest. ICE agents used to be required to identify the specific person they wanted to arrest, provide detailed information such as known addresses, employment, and criminal history, and get a supervisor’s approval.

    No more, says DHS, which was probably necessary given that ICE arrests are now mostly of the “jump out and surround a random someone and drag them to the ground” variety instead. Or, as a former ICE official put it, “It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot.’”

    Paperwork is also difficult to fill out in advance when DHS policy, according to “border czar” Tom Homan, says that it is perfectly fine for ICE agents to stop whoever they’d like, based on nothing but their physical appearance. Homan says federal agents don’t need any probable cause to detain whoever they’d like, no pesky advance paperwork or approval required.

    And let’s not forget that DHS is also blocking members of Congress from accessing ICE facilities to perform their oversight duties. Now, elected officials must get prior approval despite a law that literally says they do not need prior approval to access ICE detention facilities.

    Unsurprisingly, complaining about this will do no good. The DHS shut down its oversight office, freezing the processing of over 500 civil rights complaints in the process. So, good luck getting anyone to pay attention to any claims that ICE agents are violating the civil rights of immigrants.

    No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight. DHS is systematically eliminating every way we have to keep tabs on law enforcement to ensure that Trump’s immigration crackdown, no matter how illegal or violent, can’t be stopped.

  275. JM says

    @232 birgerjohansson: There has been a lot of talk about the idea of packing the court by increasing the number of Supreme Court justices the next time there is a democratic president. It doesn’t really rise to the level of a movement because it’s so situational, it depends heavily on how things look the next time the president is a Democrat and the Democrats control both houses of Congress.
    The more realistic progressive realize they need more then a slim majority because they need enough votes to approve the nomination of multiple non-conservative Democrats. If they have a slim majority some sort of deal to split the seats between conservative, moderate and progressive Democrats is likely, and then the Republicans get a chance to block all but the most conservative nominees.
    It has also been suggested impeaching Thomas. His behavior with gifts from certain friends is really pushing the edge of bribery and that is without an investigation. That is taking a big risk though, if an investigation doesn’t turn up something concrete it becomes politically toxic.

  276. says

    At a speech during a hearing of his so-called Religious Liberty Commission, […] Trump made a passionate declaration that the Department of Education will issue new guidance “protecting the right to prayer in our public schools, and it’s total protection.”

    Who wants to tell him?

    If Trump or Education Secretary Linda McMahon had bothered to look at the Department of Education website, they would have found now-archived guidance explaining that nothing in the Constitution prohibits public school students from praying. Students can pray any time they are not engaged in school activities or instruction, can read sacred texts, and can pray with other students during noninstructional time. Students can distribute religious materials to their classmates.

    Okay, but what about the freedom of teachers and coaches to pray in schools, you might ask? Well, thanks to the Supreme Court, even coercive, overtly Christian prayers led by football coaches on the 50-yard line are totally cool. That was the holding in Kennedy v. Bremerton, where the conservative justices were so eager to let Mr. Praying Football Coach have his way that they lied about the facts of this case to justify their holding. The majority holding framed the coach’s actions as “offer[ing] his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied”—a total lie. Kennedy would have his athletes and the opposing team kneel around him in public while leading them in prayer. He would then ostentatiously pray in front of students and spectators from the 50-yard line after games. Per the Supreme Court, that’s just dandy, so what more does Trump want?

    What Trump was really telling his audience is that he wants schools to be able to force students to pray Christian prayers and to require that public schools display Christian religious texts, like the Ten Commandments. That’s what he views as “total protection” of prayer.

    How do we know that? Because conservative states are already pushing it.

    In Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he wants all public school students to have to say the Lord’s Prayer. This is quite different from Paxton’s actions when faced with the scary prospect of Muslim students praying privately and quietly in a classroom. There, in 2017, he complained that allowing the students to use an empty classroom excluded students of other faiths, writing an open letter to the Dallas-area school to express his “concerns.”

    Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas have each introduced objectively unconstitutional laws that require schools to display the Ten Commandments. These are getting slapped down by lower courts, but that was always going to be the case. The goal is to get this to the Supreme Court so that it will rule that forcing children to pray Christian prayers in school is fine and doesn’t violate the First Amendment.

    And then Trump can crow about how this is another one of his “victories for people of faith.” Yes, the White House is keeping a running tally of how helpful he is to ensure religious liberty, and he’s up to 100 as of Monday, by their count. His triumphs include things like “President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission to secure and promote religious liberty for Americans of all faiths” and “President Trump appointed leaders of all faiths to the Religious Liberty Commission and its advisory boards.”

    Yeah, about those boards. The advisory board of religious leaders is populated nearly exclusively by conservative Christian and Jewish appointees. Way down at the bottom, in the Lay Leaders section, there are a handful of people of the Muslim faith. The Religious Liberty Commission itself appears to have no members who are not Christian or Jewish. It’s pretty telling that Trump thinks this constitutes “leaders of all faiths.”

    Trump’s top 100 victories are virtually all on behalf of Judeo-Christian individuals or causes. A bunch of the “victories” have nothing to do with religion at all but are instead bragging about how he has kicked transgender people in the teeth.

    Trump’s idea of religious liberty is no liberty at all. It’s a cramped, narrow view of the world fueled by a desire to impose a particularly violent strain of Christian fascism onto the country. Public schools are one of his first targets, but they certainly won’t be his last.

    Link

  277. says

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement complained in a Tuesday release that media outlets have been reporting on the negative impact that its immigration raids have had on schoolchildren. But the agency has recently been engaged in arrests of parents near schools in multiple states, an occurrence clearly traumatic for children and families.

    In the statement, ICE said it “does NOT raid or target schools.”

    […] McLaughlin [Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin] also insisted that “ICE is not conducting enforcement operations at, or ‘raiding,’ schools.”

    This is simply not true. ICE has conducted operations near school grounds in several states.

    For instance, ICE agents were sighted on Sept. 3 at a high school in Long Island, New York, on the first day of school. According to a representative of the ICE-monitoring group Islip Forward, ICE agents detained and arrested at least one parent after they dropped their teenage child off at the school.

    The group also provided local television station WNBC photos of ICE agents at a middle school in Hempstead, New York.

    [Lots more examples are available at the link.]

    Link

  279. says

    MAHA strategy released: Targets vaccines, chronic disease, childhood nutrition

    The highly anticipated second report by the Make America Healthy Again Commission lays out the Trump administration’s planned health strategy around priorities including vaccines, childhood nutrition, water fluoridation and exposure to chemicals.

    The report, which tracks with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stated priorities, sets in motion various initiatives but lacks substantial findings or regulatory aims to support its goal of ending childhood chronic disease.

    As the first part of the Trump administration’s Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy, the report announces the creation of the Initiative on Chronic Disease under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will “leverage and align existing NIH research projects, improve NIH coordination on chronic disease research, and generate actionable results for diseases arising in childhood and adulthood.”

    Part of promoting the MAHA agenda will include a “Make American Schools Healthy Again awareness campaign” to provide information on best practices for “increasing physical activity and improving nutrition options.” The campaign will be carried out by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education and the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.

    The report also describes a planned “vaccine framework” to be developed by the White House Domestic Policy Council and the HHS. The framework will include ensuring “the best childhood vaccine schedule”; addressing vaccine injuries; “modernizing” American vaccines; ensuring “scientific and medical freedom”; and “correcting conflicts of interest and misaligned incentives.”

    It does not say what the framework will be, but the administration has been broadly skeptical of vaccination — to the alarm of many public health experts. Several top leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) resigned or were ousted for, in their words, refusing to get behind Kennedy’s anti-vaccine moves.

    […] The long-awaited report appears to sidestep calls for regulations of toxic chemicals, an area of tension among Republicans; their more typical big business allies favor few regulations […]

    The Trump administration has repeatedly promised to “make America healthy again” but has also pledged to take a deregulatory stance on energy and the environment. The EPA has said it plans to weaken rules on toxic chemicals and other types of pollution and has moved to exempt dozens of polluters from complying with environmental rules.

    Regarding water quality, the MAHA report said the CDC will be updating its recommendations for fluoride […]

    The first report, issued in May, argued that children are taking too many medications, such as vaccines and psychiatric drugs.

    […] the second report stated the HHS will create a “mental health diagnosis and prescription working group” that will evaluate prescription patterns for common psychiatric medications such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers and stimulants. […]

    the report also includes several policy reforms the Trump administration will be putting its support behind. These include updating dietary guidelines, limiting the use of petroleum-based food dyes, reevaluating food additives and increasing breastfeeding rates.

  280. says

    Israel escalated its war against Hamas on Tuesday, launching an assassination strike against Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar. The move appeared to end any efforts to release hostages through negotiation, and quickly drew condemnation across the region.

    The White House said President Trump was dismayed by the location of the strike, on a key U.S. ally in the region. The administration was made aware of the strike shortly before it was carried out.

    Qatar accused Israel of violating international norms and laws, stating the operation presented a threat to the “security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar.”

    White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday quoted the president saying that Israel’s strike in Qatar is not in the U.S.’s interests and that he “feels very bad” about the location of the attack.

    “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and greatly taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” Leavitt told reporters during a Tuesday press briefing.

    […] The strike was condemned by France and the United Kingdom […]

    “Today’s Israeli strikes on Qatar are unacceptable, whatever the reason. I express my solidarity with Qatar and its Emir, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani. Under no circumstances should the war spread throughout the region,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday.

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the strike it violated Qatar’s “sovereignty” and risks further escalating tensions in the region.

    […] Hamas claimed that its top negotiators in Doha survived the attack, but that five of its members were killed on Tuesday.

    The strike also killed a member of Qatar’s internal security force, Bader Saad Mohammed al-Humaidi al-Dosari, while others were injured, according to Qatar’s Ministry of Interior.

    […] Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said of the strikes “I’m not particularly troubled by that. Israel deserves to be able to take out Hamas.”

    The GOP responses stood in contrast to most initial reactions from Democrats, who warned it risked escalating conflict in the region and endangering the lives of hostages held by Hamas.

    “I unequivocally condemn Israel’s attack on Qatar, a neutral nation that has mediated peace talks for nearly two years between Israel and Hamas,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn), ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. […]

    […] Qatar condemned the strikes as a blatant violation of its sovereignty and was backed up by Saudi Arabia, another key U.S. partner in the region.

    Riyadh condemned “brutal Israeli aggression” and “the blatant violation of the sovereignty of the State of Qatar.” […]

    “The Kingdom affirms its full solidarity and support for Qatar, placing all its capabilities at its disposal to assist in any measures it may take, while warning of the grave consequences of the Israeli occupation’s persistent criminal assaults and its blatant violations of the principles of international law and all international norms,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

    Kuwait and Oman reupped their solidarity with Qatar, while the UAE characterized the strike as “serious attack on international law” and the United Nations Charter.

    Additionally, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt condemned the attack, with Cairo, a key player in mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas, arguing Jerusalem is undermining efforts to diffuse tensions in the Middle East.

    U.N. Secretary General António Guterres also spoke out against the strike, saying “I strongly condemn the Israeli attacks in Qatar – a clear violation of the country’s sovereignty & territorial integrity.”

    The Israeli strike could be the final nail in the coffin for ceasefire and hostage release talks that had stalled […]

    The end of talks will likely pave the way for the Israeli military to push ahead on its plans to take over Gaza City, an operation that was approved last month and requires the call-up of nearly 60,000 Israeli reservists. […]

    Link

  281. says

    […] Over the weekend, Sen. Roger Marshall went on Face the Nation to claim that RFK Jr. is out here restoring trust in the CDC, after they “lied to us” during the pandemic. This is something that keeps being repeated over and over again — so much so that for a whole lot of people it just seems true.

    Transcript via Joe My God:

    MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, I just want to unpack a few things you said there, and just very- because we want to be very careful in this very heated environment. When you say you have a problem with trusting the CDC, it was just a few weeks ago a gunman walked onto the CDC campus in Atlanta and shot the place up. Do you care to respond to that? And do you think that we need to be careful when we are discussing the CDC and public health officials right now?

    SEN. ROGER MARSHALL: Well, look, of course, I condemn that shooting. But the lack of confidence in the CDC goes back to what the CDC did during Covid. They misguided us, maybe lied to us, even, about the origins of Covid, and how to treat it, as well. And the vaccine, they over-promised what the vaccine could do as well. So that’s where the distrust is. And now, Bobby Kennedy is in there, trying to clean-up that distrust, and trying to give American parents and grandparents and the doctors the right information, transparent information, to make good decisions.

    No.

    No one lied to you about the origins of COVID. There is literally zero — zero —evidence that COVID originated in a Wuhan lab doing gain-of-function research or trying to create a bioweapon. Not one iota! It’s literally just conjecture and vibes, and whether Roger Marshall likes it or not, the scientific consensus is still that the virus was zoonotic in nature […] In fact, there is now even more evidence for that theory than there was during the pandemic.

    […] Let’s be clear about why this was an issue — these people wanted a reason to be shitty to Chinese people, they wanted a coherent enemy and they felt that the zoonotic-origin explanation was invented to keep them from going to that well. […]

    There was an enormous spike in the number of hate crimes against Chinese-Americans and other people of Asian origin during the pandemic.

    As far as overpromising what the vaccine could do, we were still learning things about COVID at the time. It was a novel virus, so of course things were going to change regularly. It doesn’t mean anyone was “lying” to anyone, it means they were learning. Initially, it was thought people would only get COVID once and that once they got it they were immune. It wasn’t until August of 2020 that a case of reinfection was confirmed. If people had taken the vaccine in the numbers they were supposed to have taken it, it would have been far more effective. Part of the problem, frankly, is that people who didn’t take the vaccine wanted to be able to “go back to normal” with the rest of us, and they pretty much ruined it — especially in areas where there were not high vaccination rates. [And now vaccination rates are even lower.]

    To boot, they also didn’t “misguide” anyone about masks or social distancing. There was one study that people misinterpreted as saying “it turns out masks did nothing after all” and then jumped all over, when it didn’t actually say that. Social distancing absolutely worked. Neither of these things were perfect and they were never intended to be. They just made it significantly less easy for the virus to spread — which was extremely necessary at the time, not just because people were dropping like flies but because the hospitals couldn’t handle it.

    It is also, mind you, not true that we kept the kids out of school for too long and for no reason. The reason was that, even if they were less susceptible to getting seriously sick, they could catch the virus and spread it to others who would not recover so easily. Duh. Yes, it was unpleasant, but people were dying and that was more important. […]

    For those who may question any of this, allow me to point to the piles of evidence that blue states fared far better than red states in the later days of the pandemic because they followed the correct advice of the CDC. Also that even in red states, Republicans were 15 percent more likely to die of COVID than Democrats were, because even on an individual level, we were more responsible.

    The only area in which the experts really “misled” the public, ironically, was in the beginning when they were worried there were not enough masks available for front line health workers and told people that they weren’t that helpful after all in order to get them to stop buying them up in bulk. After they could ensure that they had enough for those needed them most seriously, they said “Yes, you actually should wear a mask.”

    Yes, they misled for a couple weeks, but it was necessary and they admitted it afterwards. People were okay with masks, however, until June of 2020 when the experts started explaining that the masks were more about source control and didn’t so much protect the wearer as they protected other people from the wearer in case they were infected. That was the exact moment when the Right went off the deep end over wearing them. […]

    Indeed, June was the point at which Red States began to overtake Blue states in terms of the COVID death rate.

    We had a very serious virus out there that was killing people left and right and there was absolutely no good way to handle the selfish, wacky people who still wanted to go out like everything was normal, didn’t want to wear masks, kept pushing snake oil cures (before people started getting in trouble for snake oil cures, at which point they all switched to COVID not even being real).

    […] The discussion continued:

    BRENNAN: Okay, just before we talk about other vaccines, specific to Covid, and what you just said with the CDC; it was- the pandemic was during the Trump administration. It began during the Trump administration, and Operation Warp Speed was a Presidential Directive by Trump, which some of your fellow Republicans say he deserves the Nobel Prize for because it stopped the pandemic. So, did you trust the CDC and Operation Warp Speed under President Trump, or are you saying you don’t think the President deserves the prize for that shot?

    MARSHALL: Look President Trump absolutely deserves the Nobel prize. That vaccine saved millions of lives —

    BRENNAN: — Okay, but you just said something that sounded very contradictory to that. —

    MARSHALL: I disagree. I think it’s such a different time today than it was five years ago. Five years ago, we had a novel virus. None of us had any immunity to it. It was a strange virus made in a lab in Wuhan, China [Repeat of that lie!]. But today, on average, Americans have had Covid five times. We now have natural immunity to it [WTF?], and not everybody needs the vaccine. So both things can be true, and that’s why, when you have people who don’t understand science, that don’t understand medicine, why they don’t get it. It was a different day than it is today.

    No, both of those things cannot, in fact, be true […] They cannot be true because Marshall is arguing that the reason people “lost their trust” in the CDC was because of their actions during the pandemic, specifically telling people to get the vaccine.

    Additionally, people who understand “science” and “medicine” are aware that, like the flu, COVID mutates, which is why we still need to get immunized against it every year. It’s not a “one and done” deal. We do not have “natural immunity” to it.

    The only thing Kennedy could do to cause these people to “trust” the CDC would be to just tell them all to just follow their own instincts and “do their own research.” They believe made up things. Roger Marshall believes made up things. If Roger Marshall wants to be told that the virus “originated in a lab” in spite of the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the case, there is literally nothing the CDC could do to earn his “trust.”

    How can there ever be trust when there is no shared reality? How can anyone earn someone’s trust when they are determined to believe things that are not true? […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/it-is-well-past-time-to-stop-coddling

  282. says

    Washington Post link

    “Nepal’s prime minister resigns and parliament burns amid deadly protests”

    “Anger had been mounting for years against a Nepali political elite viewed as corrupt and out of touch, and it exploded Tuesday with sudden ferocity.”

    Nepal’s prime minister resigned Tuesday after a deadly crackdown on anti-corruption protests, and young demonstrators set fire to government buildings and the homes of senior politicians, plunging this small Himalayan nation into chaos.

    On Monday, at least 19 people were killed by security forces as they took to the streets to protest a government ban on social media apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram. Authorities swiftly reversed the ban and ordered a curfew Tuesday, but it quickly became clear they had lost control of the situation.

    Anger has mounted for years against a political elite viewed as self-serving and out of touch, and it exploded with sudden ferocity on the streets of Kathmandu. As crowds swelled Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli announced he was stepping down and called for a constitutional resolution to the crisis, according to a statement from his aide Prakash Silwal. But by nightfall, key parts of the capital were in flames, including the parliament, the supreme court and the building of the country’s main media organization.

    […] Young Nepalis began an online campaign under the hashtag “NepoKid,” highlighting the opulent lifestyles enjoyed by the children of the political elite. Prominent politicians have been accused of embezzling money linked to airport construction and other development projects. The home minister, who resigned Monday, was allegedly involved in a scheme to steer bribes to immigration officials in exchange for granting foreign work permits.

    Nepal sends millions of its citizens abroad for work, leaving almost a third of the economy reliant on remittances, according to the World Bank. Forty percent of the population lives in poverty. Unemployment stands at 10 percent; 2 in 10 young men are out of work.

    “The brain drain of youths must stop,” Sedhai said. “We should be able to do something for Nepal.”

    […] “The killing of kids yesterday was horrendous,” said Sita Rijal, 60, a housewife who joined the evening protests. “These people should be held accountable.”

    […] Police responded to Monday’s uprising with live ammunition, water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas, according to protesters and videos shared on social media. At least three additional people were killed Tuesday, according to Ranjana Nepal, a spokesperson at the country’s Civil Service Hospital, bringing the two-day total to 22.

    As the tide turned Tuesday, protesters began taking out their anger on symbols of the state. They set fire to a police station in the Tinkune neighborhood of Kathmandu, sending officers and officials scrambling into hiding at a nearby school. […]

    Protesters also attacked the houses of leading politicians, according to local media, including the home of former prime minister Jhalanath Khanal, trapping him and his wife inside. While Khanal escaped, his wife, Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, suffered severe burns and was taken to Kirtipur Hospital. Kiran Nakarmi, the head of the hospital’s burn unit, told The Washington Post that “her condition is critical.”

    Richard Bownas, a political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado who studies Nepali democracy, said, “This level of violence can seem shocking … but the roots could clearly be seen.”

    In a statement on X late Tuesday, Nepal’s army pleaded for calm and suggested it was prepared to intervene: “Some groups are causing extensive damage, looting, and arson to civilians and public property,” the statement read. “If such activities are not stopped, all security agencies, including the Nepali Army, will remain steadfast in their primary responsibility to control the situation.”

    But Bownas said a military coup was unlikely. “The army is not seen as the institution that could take over,” he said, noting that political parties had steadily exerted more control over the military in the past two decades.

    The Kathmandu airport was shuttered Tuesday, and international embassies issued statements condemning the violence. No one could say what Wednesday would bring.

    […] Bownas warned that the same political parties that had led Nepal to the breaking point were likely to eventually reassert control. “The worry is that after all this has died down, it will be more of the same,” he said, “because there is no other choice.”

  284. says

    USA Today:

    The Supreme Court will decide the fate of worldwide tariffs President Donald Trump has used to raise revenue, spur manufacturing and exert political pressure on other countries. … The court on Sept. 9 agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of lower court rulings that he overstepped when he invoked a 1977 law to impose tariffs on imports from most of the world’s countries. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, also agreed to fast-track the appeal.

  285. says

    KRQE News:

    New Mexico is becoming the first state in the U.S. to offer free early childhood education to every family in the state. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a universal child care plan that includes higher pay for pre-K educators.

    Starting in November, all New Mexico families, regardless of income, will be able to enroll their kids in pre-K for free. The governor announced they will be investing in more early education programs and facilities. “Universal access, free childcare for every New Mexico family in the state of New Mexico, that starts in New Mexico for the country,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico).

    It’s an announcement that Governor Lujan Grisham said will change lives across the state, especially for families struggling to make ends meet. Starting in November, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department will implement free childcare across the board. “It is the backbone of creating a system of support for families that allow them to work, to go to college, and do all of the things that they need to do,” said Governor Lujan Grisham.

    In recent years, the state expanded no-cost childcare to more households, so, for example, a family of three making less than $100,000 a year would qualify. But, the governor said that still left many New Mexicans straining to cover childcare. Now the state is lifting that income cap.[…]

    That’s good news.

    Link

  286. says

    New York Times:

    China has racked up a $60 billion trade surplus with Africa so far in 2025, nearly surpassing last year’s total, as Chinese companies redirect trade to the region while President Trump’s tariffs crimp the flow of goods into the United States.

  287. says

    New York Times: “Trump Administration Halts I.R.S. Crackdown on Major Tax Shelters”

    “The Treasury Department is rolling back efforts to shut down aggressive strategies used by America’s biggest multinational companies and wealthiest people.”

    The Trump administration is quietly dismantling efforts by the Internal Revenue Service to shut down a slew of aggressive tax shelters used by America’s biggest multinational companies and wealthiest people.

    The administration, bowing to pressure from industry groups, right-wing activists and congressional Republicans, is quickly rolling back several I.R.S. law enforcement efforts, including one aimed at a lucrative tax shelter used by companies like Occidental Petroleum and AT&T.

    The I.R.S. crackdown was projected to raise more than $100 billion over 10 years.

    In April, the I.R.S. said it would rescind Biden administration rules that had required companies using such tax strategies to report them to the agency, a change making it more difficult for auditors to find the transactions. The agency also eased a pair of rules that target abusive shelters, including one that imposes penalties on wealthy Americans who used an insurance tax scheme that multiple courts have tossed out.

    In late July, 20 House Republicans asked the I.R.S. to withdraw yet another line of attack on the transactions, one providing guidance to auditors on how to analyze the tax shelter deals.

    That letter was “an attempt by elected officials to influence audits by the Internal Revenue Service of specific taxpayers,” said Larry Gibbs, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s I.R.S. commissioner. “From the standpoint of the integrity of the system, I am concerned about it. It’s politicizing the tax process.”

    The I.R.S. is also turning on its own staff. Over the past several months, right-wing groups targeted the agency, accusing officials involved in the anti-tax-shelter efforts of being members of a “deep state” and biased against Republicans. The I.R.S. suspended several employees, including some who worked on the crackdowns. The highest-level official, Holly Paz, is a longtime, respected agency official who ran the division that oversees large business and was placed on leave in late July.

    “Based on my experience with Holly Paz, over a number of years, she is experienced, she is professional and she has been a leader at the I.R.S.,” Mr. Gibbs said. He added, “I don’t find the attack on her to be credible.”

    An I.R.S. spokesman did not respond to a series of questions.

    A Treasury official said the department “withdrew the Biden administration’s guidance because it would have imposed enormous and retroactive compliance burdens on many ordinary, legitimate business transactions and honest taxpayers.”

    Beginning in 2022, the Treasury and I.R.S. began to express concerns about a potentially abusive transaction known as “basis shifting.”

    The details are complex, but at their heart, they can work like this: Companies that buy expensive equipment often take gradual tax deductions equal to the cost, because of something called “depreciation.” Federal tax rules permit those deductions because, in theory, the equipment becomes less valuable each year.

    For example, oil companies typically can take depreciation deductions for much of the expensive equipment they buy to construct and operate their wells. Those deductions in turn shield profits from tax. If a company spends, say, $1 billion on steel pipes to line its oil wells, it could deduct nearly $150 million annually for seven years.

    But at a certain point, the deductions run out, which may mean the profits generated by the oil wells are no longer sheltered from tax.

    The basis shifting transactions targeted by the I.R.S. effectively create a whole new series of deductions from thin air, permitting the companies to start sheltering the profits from tax all over again — without spending any new money.

    These schemes are “very aggressive,” said Peter Barnes, a veteran lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale, a Washington, D.C., law firm specializing in taxes. “Some tax advisers are not only pushing the edge but even stepping over it.” He called Treasury’s plans to pull the regulations “very unfortunate.”

    The shelters exploit the complex world of partnership tax rules, a subspecialty of the law little understood by I.R.S. examiners and even many experienced tax lawyers.

    In 2021, The New York Times reported that a lack of expertise at the I.R.S. meant the agency was largely incapable of auditing large partnerships, like private equity firms, oil and gas enterprises, real estate businesses, and venture capital firms. The I.R.S. soon set up a unit to scrutinize the area. […]

    “Nobody has stood up and said, ‘These are good transactions. All they are really trying to do is get a window in which these transactions will continue to not be audited.” […]

    New York Times link

    More at the link.

  288. says

    Head/Desk

    Judge Lets Michigan Fake Electors Walk Because They ‘Sincerely Believed’ 2020 Big Lie [aiyiyiyi]

    A group of Michigan fake electors learned on Tuesday that believing the 2020 election was stolen can still pay off: a state judge dismissed a criminal fraud case against them after finding that they “sincerely believe” there were irregularities in President Trump’s defeat that year.

    The ruling brings the last criminal case against the 2020 fake electors to an end.

    Judge Kristen D. Simmons found in a hearing that prosecutors had failed to produce “evidence sufficient to prove intent” in bringing fraud charges against 15 people who agreed to submit fake certificates saying that they were Michigan’s electors.

    Simmons added at the hearing that “right, wrong, or indifferent,” many in Michigan “sincerely believe, for some reason, that there were some serious irregularities with the election, or with the voting, and that somehow their candidate didn’t receive all the votes that was intended to for them.” Without intent to break the law, Simmons said, there could be no further prosecution on the fraud charges.

    The fake electors scheme was a keystone in the 2020 Trump campaign’s attempts to keep Trump in power after losing the election that year to Joe Biden. The idea was largely formulated by attorney Ken Chesebro. Trump campaign officials later assigned him to help manage the implementation of the plan.

    The idea was quite simple: as the Trump campaign continued to feign confusion at whether it had lost the 2020 election, its electors would sign “alternate” certificates. That, the thinking went, would allow their electoral votes to be submitted to Congress on January 6 for legislators to approve instead of the real Biden electors.

    The plan involved a complete subversion of the will of the voters in each state that participated. It also took the Trump campaign’s extensively debunked claims of voter fraud as grounds for participants to act as if the election result was, in fact, disputed.

    Chesebro himself told TPM in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview in 2022 that he had been “identifying possible strategic options” for the campaign, and added that this is “what lawyers do.”

    Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel criticized the judge’s dismissal of the case as “wrong” and called it a “slippery slope for American democracy.”

    “I am terrified for the 2026 elections,” she said. “If they can get away with this, what can’t they get away with next?”

    Prosecutors in the case had said that the group of fake electors gathered in December 2020 to sign documents falsely stating that they were the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Michigan. The consequences of that were severe: the fake certificates in Michigan and other states allowed Trump to maintain that he retained a path to stay in office through January 6, while giving him and his acolytes yet another way to claim that the result was in real dispute.

    That all blew up in a paroxysm of violence on January 6. The storming of the Capitol disrupted the vote count and prompted a wave of accountability directed at the fake electors, attorneys who worked on the plan, the Jan. 6 rioters, and Trump himself. The president has cast it all as yet another example of unfair treatment, and, in office once again, used it as part of his campaign to undermine the state and mold what’s left to his personal benefit.

    The same process has played out with his die-hard supporters, which include the Michigan fake electors: Meshawn Maddock, a fake elector and former Michigan GOP Co-Chair, told the AP that “there needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this.”

    The entire plan relied on taking MAGA claims of voter fraud at face value: if someone disputed the election, then it was legitimate for others to act as if it was, in fact, in serious dispute, regardless of the details.

    Judge Simmons pointed again to the 2020 GOP electors’ belief in the voter fraud claims as a reason to dismiss the prosecution.

    “I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” she said at one point in the hearing.

  291. JM says

    Busy night in Poland.
    Reuters: Poland to close Belarus border due to Russia-led military exercises, PM says

    Poland is closing its border with Belarus on Thursday at midnight local time as a result of Russia-led military exercises taking place in Belarus, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, amid escalating tensions between Minsk and Warsaw.

    This was already planned. The combined Russian and Belarus military exercise is annoyingly close to the border.
    BCC: Poland shuts main airports after reports of Russian drones

    Airspace ‘repeatedly violated by drone-type objects’ from Russia – Polish armed forces

    Multiple violations of Polish air space by Russian drones. No reports of hits yet, this is far more likely to be an annoyance event and a response test then anything. Over the course of the war several Russian drones have ended up in Polish air space by some combination of accident and testing Polish response. The common Shahed drone is not very smart and does not have good guidance, they can wander easily. Multiple drones over the course of one night make it being intentional more likely.

  293. StevoR says

    Good.

    Earlier, in a hastily convened press conference in Perth, Senator Nampijinpa Price said she “won’t be silenced” on the issue of migration and again refused to apologise for claiming in an interview on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing last week that the Albanese government was prioritising migrants likely to vote Labor and naming Indian-Australians as an example.

    Asked twice about Ms Ley’s leadership, the senator said it was “a matter for our party room”.

    Ms Ley told reporters on Wednesday evening that the failure to declare support for her leadership made Senator Nampijinpa Price’s position untenable.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-10/jacinta-nampijinpa-price-refuses-to-apologise-sussan-ley/105758494

    Although sad & notable that it was refusing to support the current opposition leader rather than blatant racism that got her sacked.

  295. johnson catman says

    re Lynna @288: It seems as if Judge Simmons disregarded the fact that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. So I guess if someone “sincerely believes, for some reason” that they must rob a bank to support their family, she will dismiss that case as well, right? Such bullshit. Republicans continue to tie themselves into knots to excuse The Orange Turd and his minions.

  298. whheydt says

    Re: johnson catman @ #295….
    Some crimes require that there be “intent” to violate the law. While I agree with you that, in this case, that’s ridiculous, if it is part of the statute, then the prosecution has to show that intent.

  299. JM says

    NBC News: Poland says it shot down Russian drones that violated its airspace during attack on Ukraine

    Poland said a number of Russian drones entered its airspace during an attack on Ukraine early Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO allies, a first since Moscow’s full -scale invasion of its neighbor.

    Its defense ministry said it had attacked the “military-industrial complex of Ukraine” in a “large-scale strike” but that “there were no targets envisioned for destruction on the Polish territory,” pointing to the flight range of the drones it said it used against western Ukraine.

    Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country had dealt with “a large-scale provocation,” and that his military recorded 19 drone incursions overnight, four of which he said were shot down.
    Tusk added that a significant number of the drones flew in from Belarus, an authoritarian ally of Russia used as a launching pad for attacks on Ukraine.

    Lots of missiles and they came directly from Belarus not coming out of Ukraine. Russia is obviously trying to establish that they can target Ukraine through Poland. They know they would be rejected if they ask so they are violating Polish air space in increasing numbers to see if they can get Poland to ignore it. Getting NATO used to Russian drones crossing the border will also be useful long term.
    If you look at a map there really isn’t much territory in Ukraine that is easier to target with a straight flight plan crossing Poland. If they can get Poland let them take long trips to send drones around the back they will be able to force Ukraine to stretch out it’s air defense.

  300. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    Gaza boy reportedly killed near humanitarian aid site is alive
    Video is 2:26 minutes

    ‘Unconscionably irreconcilable’: Justice Sotomayor rips colleagues in fiery dissent
    Video is 7:18 minutes

    ‘Joke’ about Epstein selling a woman to Trump for $22,500 EXPOSED in birthday book
    Video is 8:50 minutes

  301. says

    Biden Appointee [Lisa Cook] Reinstated … For Now

    In a late-night ruling, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of Washington, D.C. blocked President Trump from firing Lisa Cook as a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

    In the closely-watched case over whether Trump’s jihad against independent agencies will take down the Fed, too, Cobb ruled that his purported “for cause” firing of Cook was unlawful.

    Trump used bogus mortgage fraud allegations from a toady of his as a pretext to fire Cook and undermine the Feds’ independence. While the statute gives the president the power to remove Federal Reserve Board members for cause, Cobb concluded that Trump likely violated the statute:

    The best reading of the “for cause” provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties. “For cause” thus does not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.

    Cobb also found that Cook was likely denied due process. Cook had argued she was entitled to notice and a hearing before she could be removed for cause.

    Cobb ordered the Fed to reinstate Cook and prohibited it from treating her in any way as having been removed. The next Fed meeting is Sept. 16-17, which made a timely decision from Cobb urgent.

    In granting Cook’s request for an order blocking her firing, Cobb issued a preliminary injunction that is immediately appealable. Expect the Trump administration to immediately appeal on an emergency basis and for this case to remain on a fast track until the Supreme Court weighs in.

    Link

  302. says

    Trump Agreement With El Salvador for AEA Detainees

    The agreement between the United States and El Salvador for it to accept the Alien Enemies Act detainees who ended up at CECOT was made public this week for the first time, in litigation over the controversial arrangement.

    Among the terms of the agreement:

    – The Trump administration gave El Salvador a grant of $4.76 million for “law enforcement and anticrime needs.”

    – That money could be used to cover the “costs associated with detaining the 238 TdA members recently deported to El Salvador.”

    The agreement was dated March 22, about a week after the administration rushed the Alien Enemies Act removals to avoid court scrutiny.

    Same link as in comment 301

  303. says

    For decades, Doug Wilson was a relatively unknown pastor in Idaho, relegated to the fringe of evangelicalism for his radical teachings.

    Now he’s an influential voice in the Christian right. That shift in clout was apparent this past week as he took a victory lap through Washington, sharing a stage with Trump administration officials and preaching at his denomination’s new church.

    “This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now,” Wilson told The Associated Press in August.

    Wilson and his acolytes within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches still teach that empathy can be a sin, that the U.S. is a Christian nation, that giving women the right to vote was a bad idea. But as evangelicalism has aligned more closely with President Donald Trump’s Republican agenda, these teachings have a larger and more receptive audience.

    […] Wilson’s Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, opened a church blocks from the U.S. Capitol this summer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, member of a CREC church in Tennessee, attended the opening.

    […] Wilson said they started the congregation to serve church members who relocated to work in Trump’s administration.

    At the National Conservatism Conference days earlier, Wilson was a featured speaker along with members of Congress and Trump’s Cabinet, including border czar Tom Homan, budget director Russell Vought and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Two more CREC ministers were on the program to give an opening prayer and speak on a panel.

    From the lectern in his affable baritone, Wilson gave a full-throated endorsement of Christian nationalism.

    […] Wilson’s vision for a renewed Christian America calls for the end of same-sex marriage, abortion and Pride parades. He advocates restricting pornography and immigration.

    […] He questioned, in particular, Muslims’ ability to assimilate: “There’s only so much white sand you can put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t the sugar bowl anymore.” [Sheesh]

    Wilson […] puts a heavy emphasis on an all-powerful God with dominion over all of society.

    Since the 1970s, Wilson’s ministry and influence have grown to include the Association of Christian Classical Schools and New Saint Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson is a prolific writer and content creator, and he and his ministry have a robust media presence, including a publishing arm, Canon Press.

    […] he co-authored a 1996 book that downplayed the horrors of slavery […]

    Wilson’s hard-line theology and happy-warrior ethos have attracted a cadre of young, internet-savvy men to his ministry. They help make slickly produced hype videos to circulate online, like one in which Wilson uses a flamethrower to torch cardboard cutouts of Disney princesses.

    CREC leaders like to use humor to poke fun at their reputation.

    “We want our wives to be barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen making sourdough,” joked Joe Rigney, one of Wilson’s Idaho pastors, at the church conference.

    “Of course, this is a gross slander,” Rigney said. “We are more than happy for our wives to wear shoes while they make the sourdough.”

    CREC practices complementarianism — the patriarchal idea that men and women have different God-given roles. Women within CREC churches cannot hold church leadership positions, and married women are to submit to their husbands. [!]

    […] Wilson has argued sex requires male authority and female submission, a point he acknowledges is “offensive to all egalitarians.”

    “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes in “Fidelity.” “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” [!!]

    Former CREC members have accused Wilson and the denomination of fostering a theological environment ripe for patriarchal abuse of women and children.

    […] a former CREC member alleges Wilson’s writings on marriage and patriarchy provided a theological justification for her ex-husband’s violence toward her.

    […] Wilson said its goal is to have thousands of churches, so most Americans can be within driving distance of one.

    Wilson often says his movement is playing the long game, that its efforts won’t come to fruition for two centuries.

    “Doug loves to play humble,” Levings said, “that his vision is going to take 250 years to manifest. That’s actually not the case when we look at the results of what his ministry has done.”

    After all, it took him only a few decades to get this close to the White House.

    Link

  305. says

    RFK Jr.’s plan to ‘Make Our Children Healthy Again’ is another miss

    n his official bid to “Make Our Children Healthy Again,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falls short of any solid game plan.

    Released Tuesday, Kennedy’s report—detailing how the Trump administration plans to tackle things like food marketing to children, pesticides, and food dyes—seems to lack any actual roadmaps, only promising to “explore” these issues.

    […] according to Marion Nestle, New York University professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health, the report doesn’t have much substance.

    “The report seems to twist itself into knots to make it clear that it will not be infringing upon food companies,” Nestle said in an email to NBC News. “MAHA has so much bipartisan support. This was the time to regulate food marketing to kids — not ‘explore.’”

    She went on to say that the report is “short of specifics and weak on regulatory actions,” echoing a similar sentiment from professionals when the preliminary report leaked.

    Kennedy was given flack for his flip-flop approach to common food pesticides like glyphosate and atrazine. While he used to refer to pesticide giant Monsanto—now owned by Bayer—as his “Lex Luther,” the new report suggests that these chemicals might live to see another day.

    “EPA, partnering with food and agricultural stakeholders, will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s pesticide robust review procedures and how that relates to the limiting of risk for users and the general public and informs continual improvement,” Kennedy’s report said.

    And while the report doesn’t explicitly discuss SSRIs, which are used to treat depression, Kennedy said during a press conference Tuesday that the National Institutes for Health intend to explore the right-wing theory that they play a role in the rise of school shootings.

    “We had lots of guns when we were kids,” Kennedy said. “Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so. And nobody was walking into schools and shooting people. There are many things that could explain this. One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs.” [JFC]

  306. says

    New York Times:

    How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein

    A Times investigation found that America’s leading bank spent years supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender, ignoring red flags, suspicious activity and concerned executives.

    Now Stephen Cutler, a former federal securities regulator and the bank’s general counsel, had added his voice to the chorus.

    Epstein’s chief defender at the bank was Jes Staley, a top contender to one day succeed Dimon as chief executive. Staley persuaded Cutler to sit down with Epstein and “hear him out.” It was a high-stakes meeting for Epstein; his close ties to JPMorgan had been invaluable in his quest for money, influence and legitimacy. The bank lent him money. Staley dished confidential information to him. At Epstein’s behest, JPMorgan set up accounts — into which he routinely transferred huge sums — for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. It wired his funds overseas. It even paid him millions of dollars.

  307. JM says

    Daily Beast: National Guard Accidentally Reveals How Much People Hate Trump’s D.C. Crackdown

    The National Guard mistakenly sent an internal sentiment analysis to a newspaper, showing that most reactions to Trump’s D.C. takeover are adverse and risks widening a rift between troops and civilians.
    Internal documents assessing news coverage and social media describe residents’ alarm, being a “wedge between citizens and the military,” according to The Washington Post, which inadvertently received them.

    The level of the impact is surprising, only around 2% of the population supports the National Guard on the streets. The general effect is right where you would expect though, only a few people are OK with the military acting as police. The US government is setup to avoid that for very good reasons.
    CNN: DC crime falls, but tourism takes a hit too as Trump’s federal surge reaches one-month mark

    One month after President Donald Trump’s administration effectively took over Washington, DC’s police department, surging federal law enforcement and troops across the capital, crime in the city is down, homeless encampments have been cleared, and hundreds of people accused of being in the US illegally have been detained.

    But those changes have come at a price. Tourism numbers have declined, some restaurants in the District are hurting for customers, an already maxed-out court system has been pushed closer to the brink with new cases, and millions of dollars have been spent daily on National Guard deployments.

    As expected, Trump has flooded DC with enough National Guard that crime is down a bit. The level of effect varies by crime, it doesn’t seem to be having an effect on violent crime but property crime is down.

    Though Trump’s takeover of the DC police department technically ends Wednesday, the administration hasn’t put an end date on the surge of federal law enforcement and National Guard troop deployment.

    The timing between the accidental leak to the press and the formal control of the DC Police makes me suspect it was a well planned accident.

  308. says

    […] One ordinarily expects to see the White House come up with ideas, at which point presidential aides reach out to allies to help get the word out and advance the message. In 2025, however, it’s become increasingly common to see the model reversed: Influencers are helping steer federal agencies, as opposed to the other way around.

    Late last week, for example, far-right influencers targeted a Navy commander. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired her soon after.

    A few days earlier, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner was supposed to participate in a classified oversight meeting at an intelligence agency, but the meeting was canceled after right-wing activist Laura Loomer launched public attacks against the agency and its director. (How Loomer learned of the scheduled gathering is still unclear.)

    “This is the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian regimes,” the Virginia Democrat told reporters soon after.

    Two weeks earlier, CBS News reported that online conservatives played a key role in helping oust FBI officials who’d been deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.

    That news coincided with the White House publishing a list of Smithsonian exhibits that Team Trump found objectionable, failing to note that the list appeared to be largely copied from a recent online report from a far-right influencer. [!]

    In July, the Army rescinded a job offer to a top cybersecurity expert in response to complaints from a far-right influencer. A few weeks earlier, Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, a F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, was poised to become a vice admiral and take command of the Navy’s 7th Fleet. Then far-right influencers complained. Then Hegseth blocked the Navy admiral’s promotion, which had already been approved by Trump. [!]

    And these are just some of the recent examples. Over the last eight months or so, there have been a great many other instances in which prominent conservative activists and media personalities have played a direct role in shaping policy, blocking personnel, orchestrating firings and even forcing resignations.

    It’s a problem that there are so many amateurs in the White House and throughout the administration. But it’s just as big a problem that they’re taking direction from other amateurs with conservative media megaphones.

    Link

  309. says

    Some campaign and political news, summarized by Steve Benen from various sources:

    * In Virginia’s congressional special election, Democrat James Walkinshaw cruised to a landslide victory, prevailing by roughly 50 points, and will soon succeed his former boss, the late Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly. Once Walkinshaw is sworn in, there will be 213 House Democrats to 219 House Republicans, with three vacancies remaining.

    * As expected, the Republican-led state House in Missouri advanced a partisan scheme to eliminate one of the state’s two Democratic congressional districts. Donald Trump wrote via social media soon after, “The Missouri Senate must pass this Map now, AS IS, to deliver a gigantic Victory for Republicans in the ‘Show Me State,’ and across the Country. I will be watching closely.”

    * With 55 days remaining before Election Day in Virginia, the latest Virginia Commonwealth University poll found former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger leading Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, 49% to 40%. […]

    * Appointed Sen. Ashley Moody will seek a full term of her own next year, but the Florida Republican won’t run unopposed: Jennifer Jenkins, who unexpectedly scored a 10-point victory in a school board race in a conservative-leaning southeast Florida county a few years ago, is moving forward with a Democratic Senate campaign against the incumbent.

    * As a rule, congressional leaders on Capitol Hill nearly always support their own members’ re-election efforts. This year, however, the White House is desperately trying to bring down Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky, and House GOP leaders are apparently fine with that. […]

  310. says

    Oh FFS. Trump’s vague threats are irritating. And the Trump administration’s subservience to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is mind-boggling and dangerous. Also, this tactic may be just another grift on Trump’s part (see the last paragraph of the report).

    Trump to Big Pharma: You’re all in trouble—but I won’t say how

    The Trump administration is touting letters the Food and Drug Administration just sent to 100 pharmaceutical companies, accusing them of misleading direct-to-consumer advertising. Would you like to know which ads are misleading, how they are misleading, which companies received letters, and which drugs are at issue? Lol, you cannot, because while the FDA and the White House are proudly waving these letters around, they contain literally no details.

    The letters order pharmaceutical companies to cease and desist their misleading ads and “remove any noncompliant advertising and bring all promotional communications into compliance.” There’s also some fearmongering about social media and some vague threats about how “going forward, FDA intends to take aggressive action and ensure conformity with the law.”

    What the letters don’t include is any explanation of what constitutes “noncompliant advertising,” either generally or specifically. There’s no reference to any laws or regulations, nor are the letters tailored to specific companies and specific advertisements. Pharmaceutical companies are apparently just supposed to guess at what they’re doing wrong and fix it, or face some as-yet-unknown consequences.

    While you do not, under any circumstances, have to give the benefit of the doubt to Big Pharma, Trump’s attack has nothing to do with actual, genuine concerns about deceptive advertising. Rather, this is about forcing pharmaceutical companies to treat Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theories as if they were science.

    In the FDA’s press release about the ads, Kennedy complained that “Pharmaceutical ads hooked this country on prescription drugs” and that “only radical transparency will break the cycle of overmedicalization that drives America’s chronic disease epidemic.”

    Hmm. Apparently “radical transparency” does not involve telling the pharmaceutical companies or the rest of the country what the problems are.

    Kennedy, who is genuinely unhinged about this sort of thing, has said he wants to ban pharmaceutical advertising altogether. There is certainly a case to be made that direct-to-consumer advertising is problematic, but these letters don’t even pretend to make that case.

    In part, that’s because these chest-thumping letters look nothing like actual regulations that companies are obliged to follow. During the Biden administration, we got things like this 84-page rule about “Presenting Quantitative Efficacy and Risk Information in Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Promotional Labeling and Advertisements.” It included references to the governing laws, lengthy definitions, multiple examples of compliant and noncompliant advertising, disclosure requirements for social media influencers, and more. Or here is a lengthy guide for pharmaceutical companies about “Presenting Quantitative Efficacy and Risk Information in Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Promotional Labeling and Advertisements.”

    The problem here is that Kennedy doesn’t believe in science. He’s an ideologue hell-bent on blaming every childhood illness, every chronic health condition, on the evilness of Big Pharma, and he’s absolutely furious that no actual scientists agree. Kennedy’s “Make Our Children Healthy Again” report meanders from complaint to complaint about fluoride, vaccines, and prescription drugs, but without any studies or references to governing laws. It’s just a laundry list of Kennedy’s favorite conspiracies.

    Science, under Kennedy, consists of demanding that major medical publications retract a study he doesn’t like, even when that study was conducted outside of the United States and did not receive U.S. government funding. This is comic book villain stuff, not actual regulation.

    What these fact-free letters are really about is signaling to pharmaceutical companies that they are in for the same treatment as universities and media companies: vague, unsupported assertions of wrongdoing that can only be resolved by giving the administration millions of dollars. And that sure doesn’t look like science.

  311. says

    In the span of just a few months, not only did Elon Musk lose his role as Donald Trump’s co-president but he may have also lost his title as world’s richest man.

    According to Bloomberg, Musk was dethroned from his position on Tuesday by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose cloud computing company saw its stock soar thanks to the artificial intelligence boom. Ellison’s net worth skyrocketed by over $100 billion on Wednesday morning due to Oracle’s soaring stock price when the market opened. Ellison is now worth $393 billion, surpassing Musk’s $385 billion, according to Bloomberg.

    There is some conflicting data here, though. Forbes, which tracks net worths of the richest people in the world in real time, still shows Musk leading Ellison by a little over $35 billion as of Wednesday at 12 PM ET.

    Either way, this is nothing to celebrate.

    Ellison is a nefarious Trump-supporting business mogul who has donated tens of millions to Republicans over the years. No person needs even a tiny fraction of the wealth Ellison possesses.

    However, it’s fun to point and laugh at Musk, who has hurt millions of people both in the U.S. and abroad with his Department of Government Efficiency cuts. Trump seemingly ended his buddy-buddy relationship with Musk after polling showed Musk’s popularity plummeting after his DOGE disasters.

    […] Musk was not at a dinner Trump hosted last week with tech-bro CEOs. He claimed he was invited but could not attend. Sure.

    Meanwhile, Musk’s Tesla company is floundering because the company’s wealthy and educated consumer base appears to be turning away from Tesla over its distaste with Musk.

    Now he may not even be the world’s richest man anymore.

    Of course, Tesla’s board on Friday laid out a series of benchmarks for Musk to meet that, if Musk is successful at, will make him the world’s first trillionaire, The New York Times reported this past Friday. The Times reported, however, that it would be “extremely hard” for Musk to meet some of those targets.

    Sad!

    Link

  312. says

    ‘They’re not going to stop us’: Border thug threatens another city

    President Donald Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan appeared on Fox News Wednesday, where he dismissed the idea that sanctuary city proponent Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s landslide victory in the preliminary election should concern his Immigration and Customs Enforcement troops.

    “I don’t care who the mayor is,” Homan said in his trademark, semi-decipherable way. “We’re going to do our job. If mayors and governors don’t want to help, then get out of the way.” [video]

    “They’re not going to stop us. They can stand aside and watch us do their job. However, they better not step over the line. They better not impede our efforts. But there’s going to be consequences,” Homan threatened.

    Wu, a vocal opponent of Trump’s authoritarian deportation tactics, dominated Tuesday night’s preliminary election, with over 70% of the vote. Her challenger, Josh Kraft—son of billionaire New England Patriots owner and Trump supporter Robert Kraft—received 23% of the vote. While Kraft has expressed support for Boston’s sanctuary city status, he has recently dipped his toe into GOP-style fearmongering about rising crime.

    Wu is one of many Democratic officials across the country girding against the White House’s attempts to turn major cities into police states.

  313. says

    Breaking: Drug-smuggling boat turned around before being hit by American aircraft

    Those defending last week’s military strike against a Venezuelan boat flagged for smuggling drugs say that drug smuggling suspects are no different from combatants in a war. Well, in the last half-hour, The New York Times tore that defense to shreds. According to officials close to the situation, the boat had turned from its previous course when it detected that it was being bird-dogged by a naval aircraft.

    A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it, according to American officials familiar with the matter.

    The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, added that the military hit the vessel repeatedly before it sank.

    When a number of military lawyers learned about this development, they were stunned—and with good reason.

    Many legal specialists, including retired top military lawyers, have rejected the idea that Mr. Trump has legitimate authority to treat suspected drug smuggling as legally equivalent to an imminent armed attack on the United States. Even if one accepted that premise for the sake of argument, they added, if the boat had already turned away, that would further undermine what they saw as an already weak claim of self-defense.

    “If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” said Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002. “Where’s the ‘self-defense’? They are gone if they ever existed — which I don’t think they did.”

    Rear Adm. James E. McPherson, the top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2004 to 2006 who later served in the first Trump administration in several prominent civilian military roles, including general counsel of the Army, agreed.

    “I would be interested if they could come up for any legal basis for what they did,” he said, adding, “If, in fact, you can fashion a legal argument that says these people were getting ready to attack the U.S. through the introduction of cocaine or whatever, if they turned back, then that threat has gone away.”

    […] If I’m reading this right, this is no different from shooting someone in the back who is running away. Even if the person being shot committed a crime, if you shoot someone in that situation, you’re the one going to prison.

    Regardless of what you think about the drug threat, there’s no defending this move by Trump. This was done in our name.

  315. John Morales says

    StevoR @296: https://app.mybirdbuddy.com/birds/pfrimers-parakeet/099eb90e-4e5b-4ce7-8cc6-f67c4c0c0c0f

    “The name 'Pfrimer's Parakeet' is derived from the bird's scientific nomenclature, Pyrrhura pfrimeri. This was named in honor of Reinhardt Pfrimer, a German-born pharmacist and ornithologist known for his contributions to the study and conservation of Brazilian fauna. His efforts in collecting and cataloguing species in the region granted him a significant mention in the bird's name.”

  316. says

    Steve Benen summarizes news about Charlie Kirk being shot:

    “Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot at an event he was hosting at Utah Valley University in Orem, just north of Provo. President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that Kirk is dead.”

    * Around the time of the Kirk shooting, there was an unrelated shooting at a suburban Denver high school: “At least two students have been wounded in a shooting at a suburban Denver high school, authorities said Wednesday. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said the students were injured in a shooting at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, about 30 miles west of Denver, and taken to the hospital.”

    Source: Two reports on NBC News.

  318. says

    NBC News:

    A Russian glide bomb killed at least 21 people as they lined up to receive their pensions in a Ukrainian village Tuesday, the Ukrainian government said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike on Yarova, in the key battleground region of Donetsk, ‘brutally savage.’ His foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, labeled it a ‘barbaric’ ‘heinous crime’ that ‘demands worldwide condemnation and action.’

  319. says

    Talking Points Memo:

    Conservative movement influencer and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk has died after being shot during an event Wednesday.

    Kirk, 31, was taken to a hospital after the shooting and was initially listed in critical condition, per the AP. Utah Valley University, where he was speaking, said that it was evacuating in a terse message, instructing people to “leave campus immediately.”

    His death was announced by a spokesperson and by President Donald Trump.

    Figures from across American politics immediately condemned the shooting and political violence more broadly. Kamala Harris said that “political violence has no place in America;” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said “there is no place in our country for political violence. Period, full stop.” Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) said “we must never allow America to become a country that confronts [political] disagreements with violence;” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) said “political violence must be called out, and it has to stop.” The House of representatives held a moment of silence.

    That’s the tone from the majority of elected officials and others with a public presence in American politics.

    Some on the far-right fringe have already departed from that, appearing to view the tragedy as a potential catalyst for a retribution campaign. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, suggested as much by boosting a post from Andrew Tate calling for “drastic action.” [Social media post]

    Others, with more influence in the mainstream of the right, immediately blamed Kirk’s murder on their political opponents.

    “The Left is the party of murder,” tweeted Elon Musk. [Despicable]

    Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo and former Senate candidate Blake Masters, suggested that the shooting should prompt a law enforcement crackdown on the left. Rufo recalled former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and said that it was time to “infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Masters wrote that “left-wing violence is out of control, and it’s not random” before saying that the “NGO-donor patronage network” that supposedly supports the opposition should be destroyed.

    Flags are to be flown at half-staff until Sunday for the conservative activist, Trump wrote on Truth Social.

    As of this writing, no suspect is in custody.

    Link

  320. says

    Trump ally Charlie Kirk’s shooting death prompts all kinds of reactions

    […] Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna blamed people who called MAGA politicians like herself “fascists” for the shooting.

    “You were too busy doping up kids, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence by supporting orgs that exploit minorities, protecting criminals, and stirring hate,” she wrote on X. “Your words caused this. Your hate caused this.” [social media post]

    […] Right-wing activist Laura Loomer added to the inflamed rhetoric, saying that “every single Leftist organization” should be shut down and prosecuted. [social media post]

    Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote, “Political violence has no place in this country. We must condemn this horrifying attack. My thoughts are with Charlie Kirk and his family.”

    Vice President JD Vance posted a picture of himself along with Kirk and Donald Trump Jr., writing “Dear God, protect Charlie in his darkest hour.”

    Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters he felt that political violence “has ramped up,” along with charged rhetoric from Republican leaders like Trump. [social media post, with video]

    “We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” wrote former Presidenr Barack Obama. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.

    […] “The scourge of gun violence and political violence must end,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. “The shooting of Charlie Kirk is the latest incident of this chaos and it must stop. We cannot go down this road. There is no place for it in America and we wish for his recovery.”

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the attack on Kirk “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.”

    […] ”Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence,” Giffords wrote.

    In 2023, Kirk said that gun deaths are a worthwhile price for gun ownership.

    “You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense,” he told the crowd at another TPUSA event. “It’s drivel. But I am — I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

  322. says

    Lax security at the site where Kirk was shot:

    […] Tyler McGettigan, another attendee, told NBC News he was surprised that he wasn’t asked to go through security to get in.

    The event required a ticket with a scannable code, which McGettigan printed out and brought with him, he said in an interview. But he did not need the ticket to get into the amphitheater where Kirk spoke, McGettigan said.

    “No one checked the barcode or the QR code. There was no checkpoint to get in. It was literally, anyone could walk in if they wanted,” McGettigan said.

    Hickens and a third attendee also said there were no metal detectors posted outside. […]

    Link

  323. StevoR says

    Good question – they or groups like them are gunna keep getting new recruits for while now tho’ I suspect : :

    While the full impact of the Qatar attack is still unclear, the political and military leadership of the group had already been decimated by Israeli strikes and assassinations.

    Israel is presumed to have killed the chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Tehran last year, while it killed the group’s Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, in southern Gaza in October.

    The killing of Hamas’s top ranks leaves Izz al-Din al-Haddad, a reported hardliner who favours continuing the war, as the surviving military commander in Gaza.

    Al-Haddad has warned Hamas fighters that the upcoming battle for Gaza City “could last for months,” promising Hamas was mobilising to deliver “severe blows” to Israeli troops.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-11/what-is-left-of-hamas-after-nearly-two-years-of-fighting-israel/105759734

  324. StevoR says

    On Wednesday (Sept. 10), researchers presented a study that describes how Perseverance found intriguing minerals on the western edge of Jezero Crater, in the clay-rich, mudstone rocks of a valley called “Neretva Vallis.”

    “When we see features like this in sediment on Earth, these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter,” Joel Hurowitz, a planetary scientist at Stony Brook University in New York and lead author of the new study, said during a NASA press conference held on Wednesday.

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/did-nasas-perseverance-rover-find-evidence-of-ancient-red-planet-life-the-plot-thickens

  326. John Morales says

    Seriously, StevoR!

    “The odd dwarf planet Quaoar might have a brand-new moon.” is phrased so that it suggests a new moon that was not there before has appeared.

    I don’t need to read the article to know it supposedly means that it’s now been realised that it was there all along, but not detected. Obs.

    Still. I hate clickbait, especially this sort.

    Like, you know how you put things up to destress? Well, this sort of thing irritates me.

  328. says

    Right-wing organizer Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood Wednesday.

    The weapon wasn’t a handgun or hunting rifle. The single, long-distance shot appears to have come from a military-grade rifle. And that matters—because if it were up to liberals, weapons like that would be illegal to own.

    If it were up to us, gun violence wouldn’t only matter when conservative royalty is killed. It would also matter when Democratic legislators are murdered, and especially when schoolchildren are slaughtered.

    But it’s not just the guns. It’s the climate that President Donald Trump and his allies have built. Scholars call it “eliminationist rhetoric”: the idea that political opponents aren’t simply wrong, but evil, dangerous, and must be eradicated. It’s language that leaves no room for disagreement or coexistence, only destruction.

    GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna gave us a perfect example with her post on X. In her first breath, she claimed she was sick of the rhetoric. In the next, she insisted that liberals and the media were to blame for Kirk’s murder—that by calling Republicans fascists, we “caused this.” She piled on grotesque charges that liberals were “doping up kids, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence,” and “protecting criminals.” [social post, already highlighted in comment 320]

    So much for lowering the temperature. Conservatives like to spout that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” But according to Luna, the shooter didn’t kill Kirk—liberals did. That’s not calming the fire. That’s pouring gasoline on it.

    And this isn’t the first time she’s done it. When one Democratic Minnesota legislator and her husband were murdered and another legislator critically injured in June, Luna blamed Gov. Tim Walz for planning to speak at an anti-Trump “No Kings” rally, which was canceled in the wake of the shootings. In her world, “hate” means nothing more than daring to disagree with Trump.

    But disagreement is as old as America itself. Our country’s founding was based on an argument: federalists vs. anti-federalists. We’ve fought bitterly over slavery, civil rights, the Vietnam War, women’s rights, marriage equality—the list is long. Democracy has always been messy and loud.

    Most of the time, conflict is channeled into more speech, more organizing, more politics. But history also shows the danger when one side decides that disagreement is intolerable. Slavery didn’t just divide us—it tore the nation into civil war. The Vietnam War triggered deep domestic unrest and violence. The lesson should be crystal clear: Once politics give way to eliminationism, the result is bloodshed.

    That’s what makes this moment so dangerous. We are going to disagree—fiercely—especially with a government that is actively dismantling itself, sending military forces to invade American cities, and shredding democratic foundations. But the answer cannot be to silence opposition with threats of more violence. That isn’t democracy. That’s literally fascism, plain and simple.

    Luna is right about one thing: Kirk’s family and his children didn’t deserve this. No child who loses a parent to gun violence deserves it. No parent who loses a child to it deserves it. And that is why liberal policies—like universal background checks and bans on weapons of war—would save lives. Maybe they even would have saved Kirk’s.

    But instead, the right is already escalating. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is demanding political opponents be jailed under the pretext of “chaos” that conservatives themselves are fomenting—criminalizing dissent until nothing is left but obedience.

    This isn’t calming anything down—it’s intensifying. With Trump incapable of even a shred of moral leadership, the ugliest impulses in our society are rewarded, and the flames fanned hotter. And history tells us where this road leads: When violence replaces politics, the body count climbs.

    […] stop blaming liberals. We hate this shooting as much as conservatives do. The difference is we hate all the other shootings, too.

    Link

  329. says

    Death toll from 2 attacks by Islamic State-affiliated rebels in Congo climbs to 89

    “The attacks, carried out by the Allied Democratic Force, were the latest in a series of mass attacks on civilians in the troubled region.”

    The death toll from two attacks on civilians in eastern Congo by an Islamic State-affiliated rebel group has risen to 89, Congolese authorities said.

    Officials said late Tuesday that 71 people were killed at a funeral in Nyoto on Monday, and 18 others were killed in Beni in a separate attack on Tuesday. Both attacks took place in the North Kivu region of the country.

    The attacks, carried out by the Allied Democratic Force, or ADF, were the latest in a series of mass attacks on civilians in the troubled region.

    The region is beset by a set of complex conflicts, including an increase in attacks by the ADF, which operates in the border region between Congo and Uganda.

    The ADF pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2019 and has carried out large-scale attacks on civilians in recent weeks. The Congolese and Ugandan militaries have been conducting a joint operation against the group.

    The government said in a statement that it has provided support to “the North Kivu Provincial Government in managing the humanitarian consequences of these terrorist acts.”

    […] Onesphore Sematumba, a Congo analyst at Crisis Group International, said the military operation against the ADF has only scattered the group and attacks by smaller units have continued inside communities and forests.

    “It has caused what I can call the phenomenon of kicking the anthill. This group has scattered in the area with all the anger possible, and they act in murderous groups,” Sematumba said.

  330. says

    Karoline Leavitt floats threats of ‘military might’ over Bolsonaro coup trial

    “The press secretary suggested the administration could use its “military might” in response to a conviction of Brazil’s former MAGA-friendly leader.”

    Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, once known as the “Trump of the tropics,” appears to be on the verge of a conviction for his role in a failed coup attempt launched after he lost his last election. And on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to threaten Brazil with “military might” if Bolsonaro should face repercussions.

    Leavitt’s eyebrow-raising remarks came Tuesday at a White House press briefing, after she was asked a meandering question related to two Brazilian judges who voted this week to convict Bolsonaro. (The final verdict is expected Thursday, after the other members of Brazil’s five-person Supreme Court have weighed in.) Conservative content-creator Michael Shellenberger — who was tapped in 2020 by Elon Musk to push the since-debunked “Twitter Files” conspiracy that alleged censorship by the U.S. government — suggested Bolsonaro’s likely conviction is related to “censorship” and asked Leavitt if the administration would respond if that prevented him from running for office in the future.

    Leavitt’s response tried to portray the administration as a bastion of free speech and touted its tariffs against Brazil as a response to the case against Bolsonaro.

    “I don’t have any additional actions to preview for today, but I can tell you this is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world,” she said.

    Trump is actually waging an open assault on free speech in the United States (famously, part of “the world”). So Leavitt’s spin here is detached from reality. But her reference to “military might” in the context of defending an ousted authoritarian ruler is noteworthy. Not only does such a threat run counter to the president’s campaign vow to avoid launching new wars, but it also arguably puts Brazil on notice that the U.S. may consider using force to prevent the country from holding Bolsonaro accountable.

    […] Leavitt’s remarks are undeniably ominous. The administration’s missile strike on a civilian boat off the coast of Venezuela arguably demonstrates its willingness to use military force with South American nations that run afoul of its agenda or misalign with its politics.

    And in the case of Brazil, many Americans may have concerns about the prospect of the U.S. military being used just to protect one of the president’s authoritarian allies.

  331. birgerjohansson says

    Anton Petrov:
    “Incredible Discoveries From TRAPPIST-1e – Earth Sized Habitable Zone Planet”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=004QfJeb7Z8
    My comment; It is still not certain an atmosphere exists, and the world probably points the same side towards the star all the time due to tidal friction.

  332. John Morales says

    fine.

    dial it back — do not say what you mean to say.

    OK.

    I shall nevermore darken your halls, Lynna.

    It is unfortunate, but it is how it is.

  333. whheydt says

    Re: John Morales @ #332…
    (Apologies in advance to Lynna…for whom I have great respect for doing the job of herding cats.)

    Is that a large, cream-colored Huff you’re leaving in, John?

  334. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Context for Nepal @282.

    APNews – Nepal’s army tries to restore order

    The overall death toll in the violence has reached 25, […] with 633 people injured. The protests prompted Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli to resign Tuesday […] Oli fled from his official residence, and his whereabouts were not clear.
    […]
    The demonstrations—dubbed the protest of Gen Z—began after the government blocked social media platforms, including Facebook, X and YouTube, saying those companies had failed to register and submit to government oversight. The social media ban was lifted on Tuesday, but the protests continued, fueled by rage over 19 deaths of protesters blamed on police
    […]
    Videos shared on social media show protesters beating up Nepali Congress party leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Arzu Rana Deuba, the current foreign minister.

    TheConversation – Deadly Nepal protests reflect a wider pattern of Gen Z political activism across Asia

    For the first time in the country’s history, a protest of this size has been entirely led by young people from Generation Z (born roughly between 1997 and 2012). Out of nearly 30 million people in Nepal, about 40% belong to this generation.

    Growing up in a digital culture shaped by internet and social media platforms, this generation has lived through Nepal’s worst years of political instability and frequent government changes. There have been 14 governments in the past 15 years. In 2008, Nepal declared a shift from its constitutional monarchical system to a federal republic system, but the new federal constitution was only passed in 2015.
    […]
    The protests in Nepal mirror similar movements led recently by young people elsewhere in Asia, especially Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
    […]
    The army chief is now coordinating with Gen Z activists to set up an interim civilian government that will prepare for fresh elections. This is a remarkable shift: the youth who shook the streets are being asked to help shape the country’s political future. […]

    The young protesters are still a loose, leaderless network lacking the experience to run a state system. After an online meeting September 10, the protesters reportedly agreed to propose former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, now in her 70s, as a leader of the interim civilian government.

    Nepal’s key institutions, such such as the courts, bureaucracy and security forces, are still largely dominated by older elites, as well. Any attempt to shift power may face resistance.

  335. birgerjohansson says

    Something to distract you from the misery.

    “Bad Taste” is a classic I watched when it came out. “Targets” (1968) is a gem that contrasts gothic horror with the triviality of real evil.

    “9 Horror Gems from Directors Who Later Went Big”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=uz8OTKgbwGA

  336. birgerjohansson says

    Anime: Subtlery 

    “The secret to Frieren’s worldbuilding”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=1Zw3hmNry-s

    A YouTube comment: “I felt like Frieren was just flexing on other anime: ‘Oh,  you have issues with boring parts? Character development? Pacing? How about action animation? Yeah I don’t have those problems,  thanks.”

  338. KG says

    An amusing outcome of the release of the infamous “Birthday Book”: Peter Mandelson has been sacked as His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the (increasingly dis)United States of America. The Right Honourable Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham may not be familiar to many outside the UK, although Americans may in recent times have wondered who the toadying Brit even slimier than the object of his toadying could possibly be. Mandelson was a Bliar crony, and had to resign government posts twice over dodgy financial dealings. He has long been known to have been a longtime friend of Epstein. Despite all that, and warnings from all directions, Starmer appointed him ambassador, the consummate numpty. Admittedly he seems to have slithered his way into Trump’s favour, but there was always the probability that sooner or later he would have to go.

  339. StevoR says

    @326. John Morales :

    Seriously, StevoR!

    “The odd dwarf planet Quaoar might have a brand-new moon.” is phrased so that it suggests a new moon that was not there before has appeared.

    I don’t need to read the article to know it supposedly means that it’s now been realised that it was there all along, but not detected. Obs.

    Still. I hate clickbait, especially this sort.

    Like, you know how you put things up to destress? Well, this sort of thing irritates me.

    Okay, no one is going to force you to read these comments let alone click ontehlinked articles if you want to skim past them and this blog isn’t your personal one or just about you.

    I don’t think I’m the only person who wants to balance the grimmness of politics with stuff that isn’t grim and is hopefully I think intresting to others.

    As you note the meaning of “Quaoars new moon” here is clear* and it is apopular science news story on what is also among other thinsg a sceicne blog read by people witha wide range of intrests and preferences.

    .* It might, indeed, be new in three senses its astronomical phase ie the dark new moon vs the bright full one or intermediate waxing and waning phases, the sense that it ‘s newly discovered by earthly astronomers & its age if , admittedly improbably it has only just formed either ourt of ring particle sor being literallya chip knocked off by a recent impact. Who knows?

    If intrested you could read the article or if not you could, y’know, not. Readers choice. Really a big issue here?

  344. says

    Stubborn inflation inches higher, despite Trump’s false claims about the economy

    “Just one day after the president boasted, ‘No Inflation!!!’ Americans were confronted with fresh economic evidence that showed just how wrong he was.”

    Related video at the link.

    On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump used his social media platform to share some good economic news with the public. “Just out: No Inflation!!!” the president wrote.

    The claim was false but familiar. In fact, the Republican has spent recent weeks and months insisting that concerns about inflation are a thing of the past. “You know, if you think, inflation, I’ve already taken care of,” the president told New York Post columnist Miranda Devine last month. “Prices are way down for everything — groceries, everything.”

    Unfortunately, reality continues to point in the opposite direction. Not only have grocery prices gone up, not down, but inflation obviously hasn’t been “taken care of.” CNBC reported Thursday on the latest data, which found inflation inching higher once again:

    Prices consumers pay for a variety of goods and services moved higher than expected in August while jobless claims accelerated, providing challenging economic signals for the Federal Reserve before its meeting next week. The consumer price index posted a seasonally adjusted 0.4% increase for the month, the biggest gain since January, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.9%, up 0.2 percentage point from the prior month and the highest reading since January.

    These results were worse than forecasters’ expectations. While the White House practically begs the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, the central bank’s inflation target is 2% — and with the latest report at 2.9%, the economy appears to be moving in the wrong direction.

    Or put another way, I have some bad news for those who accepted Trump’s “Just out: No Inflation!!!” declaration at face value.

    Making matters worse, this wasn’t the only piece of discouraging economic news. From the CNBC report

    On employment, the Labor Department reported a surprise increase in weekly unemployment compensation filings to a seasonally adjusted 263,000 for the week ended Sept. 6, higher than the 235,000 estimate and up 27,000 from the prior period’s revised figure. The claims level marked the highest in nearly four years.

    What we’re left with is a broader picture that shows sluggish economic growth, a badly faltering manufacturing sector, the worst job market since the Great Recession and stubborn inflation that appears unlikely to improve so long as Trump’s trade tariffs remain in place.

    The president recently boasted, in reference to economic data, “We’re seeing phenomenal numbers. … I mean, really phenomenal numbers.” […]

  345. says

    On mRNA vaccine research, Congress is prepared to work around RFK Jr.

    “After Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut off funding for mRNA vaccine research, lawmakers advanced a spending plan that would work around him.”

    Singling out Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s worst decision is difficult, because the competition is fierce, but near the top of the list was his decision to terminate a series of federal contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines. RFK Jr. also said he’s winding down additional federal investments in mRNA technology.

    The condemnations from reality-based observers soon followed. Mike Osterholm, a University of Minnesota expert on infectious diseases and pandemic preparations, told The Associated Press, “I don’t think I’ve seen a more dangerous decision in public health in my 50 years in the business.”

    Around the same time, Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as the surgeon general during Donald Trump’s first term, added via social media, “I’ve tried to be objective [and] non-alarmist in response to current HHS actions — but quite frankly this move is going to cost lives.”

    A variety of prominent administration officials, including the president, tried to defend the move. They failed.

    But now members of Congress appear eager to make new investments in mRNA research anyway. Stat News reported:

    House appropriators have snubbed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by including an amendment in their 2026 spending bill that specifically funds continued messenger RNA vaccine research, despite his effort to roll it back.

    Last month, the conspiratorially-minded Cabinet secretary specifically said that the Center for Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (generally known as BARDA) would no longer finance mRNA research. To that end, Kennedy’s department terminated nearly $500 million in grants. [!]

    The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee is nevertheless advancing a revised spending package that would invest $1.1 billion for “advanced research and development” at BARDA, including mRNA vaccines. [Potentially very good news.]

    This doesn’t guarantee that the federal funds will go to the research, in part because the appropriations process is still underway and in part because the administration has demonstrated a radical habit of not spending money in the ways Congress has directed.

    This is, however, fresh evidence that Kennedy’s move was not the final word on the subject.

    […] at issue is a game-changing and lifesaving scientific breakthrough. “To scientists who study it, mRNA is a miracle molecule,” The New York Times reported in May. “The vaccines that harnessed it against Covid saved an estimated 20 million lives, a rapid development that was recognized with a Nobel Prize.”

    The same Times report added that mRNA research has raised hopes of possible treatments — perhaps even cures — for deadly cancers and a host of genetic and chronic diseases.

    Even Trump himself has celebrated mRNA vaccines — the president explicitly referred to them as a “modern-day miracle” — before he put the nation’s public health infrastructure in the hands of a guy who has claimed, among other things, that Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.”

    The more lawmakers take steps to circumvent RFK Jr., the better.

    I agree.

  346. says

    Chuck Schumer surprises colleagues, forces Senate vote on disclosing the Epstein files

    “Senate Republicans have largely been able to steer clear of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The Democratic leader, however, unexpectedly forced the issue.”

    In recent weeks and months, congressional efforts to force disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files have largely concentrated in the House, where there is a bipartisan discharge petition seeking signatures. But as it turns out, the upper chamber can tackle the controversy, too, despite the Republican majority. NBC News reported:

    The Republican-led Senate narrowly voted Wednesday to defeat an amendment introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to compel the Justice Department to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The vote was 51-49 in favor of tabling the amendment. Two Republicans — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri — joined all 47 Democrats in voting against tabling the amendment.

    For much of the year, GOP senators have been content to avoid the Epstein scandal, which made it all the more notable when Schumer surprised his colleagues. Taking advantage of senators’ work on a sweeping defense policy package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (or NDAA), the New York Democrat teed up a procedural vote on an amendment to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to make public any available documents that the Justice Department possesses related to Epstein and his associates.

    “There’s been so much lying, obfuscation, cover-ups — the American people need to see everything that’s in the Epstein file,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday.

    Not surprisingly, the effort fell short, but the fact that two Senate Republicans voted with Democrats on this was a timely reminder about the divisions within the GOP over an issue that Donald Trump can’t make go away. [True!]

    What’s more, the minority leader is hardly the only Democrat working on the Epstein controversy. The New York Times reported:

    Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who has led an investigation into some of Jeffrey Epstein’s financial dealings, introduced a bill to compel the Treasury Department to turn over copies of all suspicious activity reports filed by banks for thousands of transactions by Epstein and dozens of his associates or business partners. Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking member, previously sent letters to Treasury officials demanding copies of the reports but was rebuffed.

    Among the banks whose reports Wyden is trying to obtain is JPMorgan Chase, which served as Epstein’s primary banker for many years and has been accused of helping to enable Epstein’s activities. (The bank has denied any wrongdoing.)

    As for the other end of Capitol Hill, Congress’ newest member, Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw of Virginia, was sworn in the day after winning this week’s special election, and he promptly signed the pending discharge petition related to disclosing the Epstein files.

    As Politico reported, the bipartisan duo spearheading the effort — Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California — now need only one more House member’s signature to clinch 218 signatures, which would trigger a process House GOP leaders would be powerless to stop.

    Proponents are expected to reach the benchmark later this month with a Sept. 23 special election in Arizona to replace the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, although it’s possible that some of the Republicans who’ve already signed onto the discharge petition could be pressured to change their minds. Watch this space.

    At least the Republicans had to show what side they were on by actually voting … on the record.

  347. says

    Insiders Describe the Trump FBI Clown Show in Vivid, Buffoonish Detail

    A new lawsuit containing devastating allegations about the clownish politicization of the FBI calls into serious question whether the bureau — under the nominal control of Kash Patel — is up to the task of investigating a major case like the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

    Hours before Patel befooled himself by live-tweeting the serial apprehension then release of two different people mistakenly believed to be Kirk’s assailant, three fired senior FBI officials described in vivid detail a bureau nearly crippled by the social media obsessions of Patel and his top deputy Dan Bongino.

    The three men — former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll Jr., Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans — sued in federal court in D.C., claiming their terminations were political retaliation in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments and unlawful under other various protections for FBI employees. The named defendants are Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Executive Office of the President, and the United States.

    The entire complaint is worth a read to appreciate the buffoonish of Patel and Bongino, but also of a White House that variously:
    – used an inexperienced 29-year-old staffer to vet candidates to lead the FBI;
    – refused to fix a clerical error that made Driscoll the acting director instead of the acting deputy director.

    But the overall impression left by the lawsuit is far worse: an FBI supine to the Trump White House, led by feckless loyalists who easily wilt under pressure from the likes of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

    With striking specificity that suggests Driscoll kept contemporaneous notes, the lawsuit recounts numerous episodes in which Patel and Bongino claimed they were under pressure from the White House […]

    “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President,” the lawsuit alleges. […]

  348. says

    Trump Threatens Broad Retaliation for Kirk Killing

    The mix of public and social media reaction to the Kirk assassination is nearly unbearable to observe. Outside of the hotheaded reactions, it was striking that some mainstream news outlets veered into lionizing Kirk despite his extreme politics. At MSNBC, commentator Matthew Dowd was fired for inartful on-air comments that noted Kirk’s extremism, despite his apology that he hadn’t intended to blame Kirk for his own shooting.

    All of that, though — even the wave of right-wing threats of retaliation — paled next to the president of the United States making a televised address from the Oval Office attacking the “radical left” and suggesting he would use the power of the federal government to go after his political foes as payback for Kirk’s death: [video]

    One Trump dynamic on display here is that when bad things happen on his watch he reasserts some semblance of control by raging louder. […] he projects power with anger, reactivity, and threats. Even when he is the one in charge, he becomes the complainer-in-chief, Karen-ing his way to the front of the line to see the manager. It suits the media of TV and social media, even if in the real world it tends to emphasize weakness and ineptitude.

    Same link as in comment 347.

  349. says

    “THIS IS WAR”: Some Right-Wing Figures Call for Retribution Following Kirk Killing

    “More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

    […] while many simply expressed their grief for Kirk and his family, and politicians on both sides of the aisle condemned the killing, some public figures used the moment to make incendiary claims.

    On Wednesday evening, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on X that “[t]he subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” (By that point, far-fetched conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death were already emerging, including claims that Kirk was assassinated by the Israeli government.) But Patel subsequently posted that the person in custody had “been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.”

    This did not stop some figures from stoking outrage, particularly against “the left,” whom—despite lacking any evidence as to the shooter’s identity and motive—they blamed for the killing. [I snipped Elon Musk’s comments which were already noted up-thread.]

    Conservative activist and Trump confidant Laura Loomer sent a barrage of posts to her 1.7 million followers. In one, she called for the Trump administration to “shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” adding, “The Left is a national security threat.” After Kirk’s death was confirmed, she wrote: “They sent a trained sniper to assassinate Charlie Kirk while he was sitting next to a table of hats that said 47.” It is unclear which “they” she was referring to.

    “More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state,” Loomer added.

    Even President Donald Trump blamed the shooting on “radical left political violence” in an Oval Office address Wednesday night.

    Former White House staffer and current podcast host Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, wrote on X that liberals “have blood on your hands.” And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) went so far as to blame the killing on the Democrats. [video]

    Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, an influential conservative publication, posted on X: “I hope that Trump also orders the extermination of the entire anarcho-terrorist network that has been terrorizing Christians in this nation unabated for more than a decade.”

    […] Andrew Tate, the British-American masculinity influencer turned far-right culture warrior, kept his message simple: “Civil war,” he wrote. Anti-abortion activist and president of Students for Life Kristan Hawkins also invoked civil war and seemed to imply that Kirk’s killing was a result of his opposition to abortion. “We all know the work we do to protect Life comes at a cost,” Hawkins said. In another X post, she wrote: “This is a new civil war. One that we must fight with love to restore a Culture of Life.”

    Chaya Raichik, the creator of the far-right Libs of TikTok Twitter account, quickly began sharing posts that were meant to show left-wing and progressive people, including many who aren’t public figures, celebrating Kirk’s killing. In her own post on X, she wrote: “THIS IS WAR.”

    […] Texas firebrand pastor Joel Webbon, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, told his 51,000 followers, “The Left will not stop until they are forced to. The Right must gain power, keep power, and wield power righteously. @realDonaldTrump, you have been appointed by Providence. You are commanded by Scripture to be a TERROR to those who do evil. Give them hell.”

    William Wolfe, another Christian nationalist and a former Trump administration official, posted a video of the shooting with the comment: “The. Left. Must. Be. Destroyed.” In a separate tweet, he wrote, “The Democrats and the Left must be crushed. The goal for Republicans in the next ten years shouldn’t just be to win elections, but to destroy the Democrat Party entirely and salt the earth underneath it.” […]

  358. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Bloomberg – Epstein’s Inbox

    from Epstein’s personal Yahoo account […] The emails, part of a cache of more than 18,000 obtained by Bloomberg News, show that Maxwell and Epstein were closer, in many respects, than either publicly admitted. Maxwell opened at least one foreign bank account using one of his addresses, was a named director on one of Epstein’s main revenue-generating companies and traded stock in a company they were both invested in […] The pair discussed undergoing a shared fertility procedure, long after Maxwell claims she largely disassociated from him. They corresponded about discrediting women who raised allegations against them, including in one exchange where Maxwell said she planned to circulate compromising information on one of Epstein’s sexual-abuse victims.

    The emails include a spreadsheet itemizing nearly 2,000 gifts, luxury items and payments totaling $1.8 million, with notations indicating they were intended for Epstein’s friends, business associates and victims. The spreadsheet, which was created by one of Epstein’s accountants, includes a $35,000 watch that was earmarked for [Doug Band] a former Bill Clinton aide […] it doesn’t specify whether the intended recipients were ever offered or actually accepted the gifts. [Band said he never received a watch.]

    Maxwell has maintained she was kept in the dark about details of Epstein’s initial sexual abuse case in the mid-2000s. Yet the emails demonstrate her deep knowledge of the legal jeopardy he faced and show how she helped him strategize […] “Question,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell on May 23, 2008. “Which one do you prefer,,, lewd and lscivious conduct,, or procuring minors for prostituion.”
    […]
    Epstein’s inbox, which contains messages from 2002 through 2022 but is most active between 2005 through 2008 […] There are indications that many of the emails were deleted. Also, this Yahoo account is one of multiple email accounts Epstein used for different purposes. […] Except for three minor instances, the emails do not mention President Donald Trump
    […]
    In her interview with [Deputy AG Todd Blanche] she described her role in his life as “very, very diminished” by the time he went to jail in June 2008. Yet, an analysis of the emails shows that the pair exchanged at least 203 messages in the first six months of that year, at a rate of more than one a day.
    […]
    One of the emails’ few references to Trump came on Sept. 14, 2006, two months after Epstein was charged in Florida with solicitation of prostitution. It includes a list of 51 politicians, business executives and Wall Street powerbrokers. The list includes people who’ve previously been linked to Epstein […] “Plse review list and add or remove peeps,” Maxwell wrote. “Remove trump,” Epstein responded. […] Bloomberg was unable to determine the meaning of this list. The email has no subject line or additional commentary, so it’s impossible to know whether they were planning an event, preparing a holiday card list or something else.

    Trump’s name surfaced again around the time Epstein was making an intense backchannel lobbying effort to get federal prosecutors to drop their case against him. It was in an email dated Aug. 23, 2007 [“You have to assume they went to donald trump then, gossman, the docs in wpb, paschow etc.”] Maxwell may have been referring to a team of reporters covering Epstein who she expected would be seeking information from Trump; from Abe Gosman, […] whose palatial property sold to Trump […] after a heated bidding war with Epstein; from court documents in West Palm Beach; and from Joel Pashcow, the Palm Beach police and fire foundation board member who’d traveled on Epstein’s private jet.
    […]
    Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private jets several times and that Epstein made donations to both Bill and Hillary’s election campaigns. The emails include references to three meetings Maxwell had with “Clinton” between 2006 and 2008. They also show that Maxwell promoted her own ocean conservation nonprofit, TerraMar Project, through the Clinton Global Initiative; and maintained close connections with the family’s inner circle, including [Doug Band], the architect of Clinton’s post-presidency.
    […]
    As Epstein prepared for his time behind bars, Maxwell helped wind down his empire. Should they sell his Bentley? His Sikorsky helicopter? Who on staff should she fire? What about the apartment in Paris? Maxwell also sought advice on how to handle her shares in Bear Stearns

  359. says

    American taxpayers are still footing the bill for DOGE disaster

    The entire reason the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was allowed to rampage through the government was that it would save literal trillions in taxpayer money. But for an entity supposedly set up to root out fraud and waste, run by baby IT geniuses, somehow the federal government is on track to spend more on IT contracts than ever before.

    […] Federal agencies are set to spend $50 billion in the fourth quarter alone, with overall IT spending pushing $130 billion for FY 2025, a $4 billion jump from the previous year. DOGE was literally created for “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity.” The administration has insisted it was crucial that DOGE’s tween fascists be granted access to databases containing the most sensitive information about Americans, all in the name of cost cutting.

    Remember when Elon Musk was boasting that DOGE was going to save the taxpayers $2 trillion? And then maybe it was going to be $150 billion? At best, DOGE maybe saved the government $1.4 billion, a number that is more than offset by the cost of DOGE itself, which somehow managed to burn through $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars in just six months.

    One of the most likely reasons DOGE’s cost-cutting spree didn’t result in government IT contracting taking a hit is that the administration continues to spend extremely freely with technology companies, including sweet no-bid contracts. Peter Thiel’s Palantir has made out like a bandit, with the company’s government revenue up $370 million over this time last year.

    Remember when Elon Musk was boasting that DOGE was going to save the taxpayers $2 trillion? And then maybe it was going to be $150 billion? At best, DOGE maybe saved the government $1.4 billion, a number that is more than offset by the cost of DOGE itself, which somehow managed to burn through $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars in just six months.

    One of the most likely reasons DOGE’s cost-cutting spree didn’t result in government IT contracting taking a hit is that the administration continues to spend extremely freely with technology companies, including sweet no-bid contracts. Peter Thiel’s Palantir has made out like a bandit, with the company’s government revenue up $370 million over this time last year.

    In case that wasn’t wasteful enough, the Department of Defense has awarded those same three companies up to $200 million each to support warfighters and leverage technology and a bunch of other buzzwords. Elon Musk’s xAI got the same sweet deal.

    And let’s not forget no-bid contracts worth millions to smaller technology companies. The government gave Workday, which provides cloud-based human resources platforms, a sole-source contract, saying only Workday could meet the government’s needs. Of course, the Office of Personnel Management already had a successful in-house HR platform, but why would you want to use that when you could pay a private company instead? And of course, it is kinda weird to give a sole-source contract to Workday instead of open bidding when there are giant companies, like ADP, that also provide these services.

    Meanwhile, while Trump is shoveling government cash out the window to private companies as fast as he can, we also get the privilege of paying top-dollar government salaries for the little DOGE creeps who remain in the government. Did you know that Edward “Big Balls” Coristine is making at least $125,000 a year to do whatever it is he is still doing?

    It was never about cutting spending, and it was always about transforming tax dollars into private profits. And apparently it’s going to keep getting more expensive.

  360. says

    A summary of violence-related news reports, as posted by Steve Benen:

    * Charlie Kirk’s killer is still at large: “The FBI today asked the public for help in identifying a person of interest in the shooting and released photos. It is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the individual(s) involved.”

    * In related news: “Hopes for the fast capture of the person who fatally shot the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah evaporated on Wednesday when Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, announced that the authorities had released a man he had described as a central subject of a multiagency manhunt.”

    * It’s also worth noting that Patel, just a few weeks ago, fired the highly regarded head of the FBI field office Salt Lake City for reasons that have not yet been explained.

    * Wednesday’s other school shooting: “The 16-year-old who shot and wounded two students at his high school in Evergreen, Colorado, before turning the gun on himself was ‘radicalized by an extremist network,’ the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.”

    * Lockdowns: “At least five historically Black colleges locked down campuses, canceled classes or ordered students to shelter in place after receiving ‘credible threats’ of violence on Thursday. Many of the precautionary measures are no longer in place. Alabama State University, Clark Atlanta College, Hampton University, Southern University and Virginia State University were among those impacted.”

    * In D.C.: “U.S. Capitol Police searched Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on Capitol Hill on Thursday after a bomb threat was received and then found to be ‘not credible,’ the party said.”

    Link

    Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.

  361. says

    New York Times:

    Lawyers from the Justice Department on Wednesday abandoned a claim they had made in court as they sought to deport dozens of unaccompanied Guatemalan children over a holiday weekend: that they were doing so at the behest of the children’s parents. In federal court in Washington, government lawyers conceded that they had no evidence to support the contention that the children or their families had hoped to reunite in Guatemala, a claim that had been repeated by senior Trump administration officials last week.

    Yep. The Trump administration and their lackeys in the Justice Department straight up lied about those Guatemalan children.

  362. says

    The Atlantic:

    George Retes is a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran who served a tour in Iraq. On July 10, while on his way to work as a security guard at a Southern California cannabis farm, he was detained by federal immigration agents, despite telling them that he is an American citizen and that his wallet and identification were in his nearby car, Retes told me.

    While arresting him, the agents knelt on his back and his neck, he said, making it difficult for him to breathe. Held in a jail cell for three days and nights, he was not allowed to make a phone call, see an attorney, appear before a judge, or take a shower to wash off pepper spray and tear gas that the agents had used, according to the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that is representing Retes.

    ICE detained a U.S. citizen, and then they treated him very badly.

  363. says

    Josh Marshall:

    […] We don’t need to elevate someone or pretend they were something they weren’t to express our opposition to political assassination. And we shouldn’t. Kirk was a hyper-aggressive partisan who advocated a lot of deeply retrograde beliefs. That is just a fact. Let’s not pretend otherwise. His murder is at the same time deeply wrong and a disaster for the country. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  364. says

    New Yorker link

    “The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize”

    “Reading the two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page document from start to finish is like examining a crudely illustrated contract with the devil.”

    […] “The idea behind this book was simply to gather stories and old photographs to jog your memory about places people and different events,” Maxwell writes in the prologue. […] She seems so pleased with herself, for what’s about to unfold. And what a team she’s put together: the business executive Leslie Wexner, the private-equity investor Leon Black, the venture capitalist William Elkus, the Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, and Alan Dershowitz—among many other friends and associates—are all named as contributors, gathered here in honor of the birthday boy.

    You have likely heard about the Presidential submissions to this anthology, which the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform obtained from Epstein’s estate and released to the public this week. A vapid, near-illegible note attributed to Bill Clinton salutes “all the years of learning and knowing” that Epstein has logged, and praises his “childlike curiosity” and his “drive to make a difference.” The entry attributed to and apparently signed by Donald Trump invents an innuendo-heavy conversation between himself and Epstein, who was later revealed to be a serial rapist of girls as young as fourteen. […] the author fits the lines of dialogue inside a female silhouette, adding pen strokes that represent breast buds. He alludes to a shared love of secrets. Epstein, Trump once observed, likes women “on the younger side.” (The White House has denied that Trump contributed the drawing or signed it.)

    The second Trump Administration has been dogged by a somewhat amnesiac fixation on the President’s long-established ties to Epstein, whom Trump once described as “a lot of fun to be with,” and who died in a jail cell under bizarre circumstances during Trump’s first term, in 2019 […] This summer, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, reversed her promises to release new investigative files related to Epstein. Maxwell, who is appealing her conviction and seeking a pardon, met for two long sessions with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as part of what my colleague Ruth Marcus called a “damage-control operation.” (As ABC News put it, “It is almost unheard of for a convicted sex trafficker to meet with such a high-ranking Justice Department official, especially one who used to be the president’s top criminal defense attorney.”)

    […] most of the media response to “The First Fifty Years” has focussed on a couple of pages of Trump-related content. But this framing may actually undersell the book’s hideous, maggot-crawling depravity. Reading it from start to finish—there are two hundred and thirty-eight pages, with redactions throughout, in the PDF that the House committee released—is to immiserate oneself in a uniquely cheap and idiotic genre of degeneracy. [I snipped a list.] Sometimes it’s like you’ve discovered a rich man’s contract with the devil […]

    Epstein’s air of mystery is a refrain among the admirers who made contributions to his birthday book. He has both a “Mona Lisa smile” and a “Cheshire cat grin”; he is “always grinning” like a “mischievous lad”; his friends “think he works for the CIA.” (Maybe?) He is surrounded at all times by gorgeous babes. He “can create them out of thin air,” one pal writes. The section “Girl Friends” includes two pages of densely collaged snapshots of young women, predominantly in bathing suits or lingerie, all with their faces blacked out. […]

    The Epstein of the birthday book is charming and suave but also menacing. He looms. […] A friend imagines threatening girls at knifepoint to strip off their bathing suits. In another snapshot, Epstein is masked and holding what appears to be a gun; the caption refers to a “first victim” who will “be attacked and brutally plundered.” Everyone surrenders to him. It’s wonderful and terrible. […]

    It is unknown what instructions Maxwell gave her contributors, but the book privileges a bespoke intimacy, a singular kind of personal touch—handwritten, hand-drawn, and unrelentingly venereal. A before-and-after diptych in bright colors shows Epstein approaching some little girls with balloons and a lollipop; two decades later, he is reclining on a beach, receiving massages from four blondes in bikini bottoms, one of whom has his initials tattooed on her ass, in front of a building not unlike Mar-a-Lago.

    […] “I was Porking Some girl in Bed + Jeff Brings in the maid to make Bed She Left screming + never came Back.” Or: “Jeff would call the house Rabbis voice + say this is [redacted’s] father. I would Bring her up to your mothers house + make her take her top off so we could touch her boobs.” Many cults gain hold over their members by eliciting and recording their most closely held secrets. The birthday book is cultish in this way, and in its tautological reverence for a strange and twisted man.

    […] Some of the richest and most influential men on the planet—billionaires and leaders of the known world—helped out with Maxwell’s book, which includes a section titled “CHILDREN.” It appears to have four entries (and is significantly redacted). One kid contributed what amounts to an extended poop joke. There’s a colorful drawing of sad-faced little girls out of a Henry Darger nightmare, with accompanying text that reads, “here comes the bride all dressed in whit were is the grom he’s in the lady’s room.” There’s a photo of a toddler-age child holding a stuffed toy. And there’s a group of photos of what appears to be a prepubescent girl. She wears a camisole and matching pajama bottoms; in one of the images, her top rides above her belly and she puts a hand on a jutted hip. The lead caption, in handwriting that resembles Maxwell’s, is, simply, “A new series of pictures.”

  366. StevoR says

    The bastards have approved the Woodside project. Climate criminals and just infuriating :

    Australia’s biggest gas project, Woodside’s North West Shelf, has received final approval to extend operations through until 2070. Environment Minister Murray Watt has placed 48 additional conditions on the project, aimed at protecting nearby ancient Indigenous rock art. These include reducing certain gas emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050. The announcement comes almost four months after the minister provided Woodside 10 days to respond to his provisional approval for the extension. As part of court action brought by traditional custodian Raelene Cooper, the minister also made a partial declaration to protect a significant heritage site adjacent to the Karratha Gas Plant containing the ancient Murujuga rock art.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-12/woodside-north-west-shelf-decision-murray-watt-pilbara/105758850

    I do NOT trust them to keep those conditions and the implications for our planet are dire.

  367. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Onion – Witnesses assumed Charlie Kirk shooter was just ordinary gunman

    “It’s chilling that a person we thought was a normal, unhinged campus shooter was actually a political assassin. You see a deranged guy with a rifle on the quad every day. I suppose it was a little suspicious that he wasn’t shooting droves of students.” At press time, the FBI announced that the gunman had escaped by blending into the heavily armed crowd.

  370. birgerjohansson says

    Norway is in the process of building a 27 km road tunnel under the sea. At the deepest point, it is 400 m beneath sea level. This allows the coastal traffic to pass underneath a fjord and drastically cut travel times.

  372. says

    The current top one on that list reads, quote-tweeting themselves:

    I don’t believe violence is ever the answer. It just makes everything worse.

    That was my point with this post. I don’t want to live in a world where this is how we resolve disagreements. This event risks bringing that world closer to reality.

    I hope Charlie survives.

    Terrified to think of how far-right fans of Kirk, aching for more violence, could very well turn this into an even more radicalizing moment

    The only way that can be construed as calling for his murder is “not bawling your eyes out for our slain warrior” is equated with bloodlust. It’s not even rejoicing, as some of the others on the list do.

  376. birgerjohansson says

    The horseshoe crab has been around for 83.5% of the time since the Cambrian Expolsion. Our cousin the amphixous chordate has been around slightly longer, but looks far less impressive. Stephen Jay Gould was right: at the beginning there was no indication which phyla would come out on top.

  379. birgerjohansson says

    Me @ 378
    The lesson is to avoid following a pattern. When I write ransom notes or death threats, I always include bogus grammar & spelling errors, and avoid re-using the same words.

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