Comments

  2. says

    LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—In an abrupt about-face, King Charles III of the United Kingdom announced on Monday that he was downgrading Donald J. Trump’s upcoming state visit to lunch with Prince Andrew.

    Instead of Windsor Castle, where the state visit was to be held, the lunch between Andrew and Trump will now occur at a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking.

    According to royal sources, Andrew was “incandescent with rage” when his older brother informed him of the engagement, but the King told him, “Sorry, chap, you’ve got to take one for the team.”

    After Andrew asked what he and Trump could possibly talk about over their pizza, Charles suggested, “Maybe you two can reminisce about your good times with Jeffrey Epstein.”

    https://open.substack.com/pub/borowitzreport/p/king-charles-downgrades-trumps-state-f94

  4. says

    For the convince of readers, here are some 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-6/#comment-2277614
    “Trump says he’ll follow through on months of threats against Russia, but only if every other country in NATO’s 32-member coalition meet his preconditions.”

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-6/#comment-2277593
    Channel 4 to mark Trump’s UK visit with ‘longest uninterrupted reel of untruths’

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-6/#comment-2277555
    Reuters: Venezuela says the U.S. intercepted and boarded a Venezuelan tuna vessel in a “hostile” manner

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-6/#comment-2277554
    Trump wants to crack down on ‘debanking,’ but he’s dismantling a regulator that was doing just that, by ProPublica.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/07/02/infinite-thread-xxxvi/comment-page-6/#comment-2277525
    “Replacing seized assets with EU bonds could allow Brussels to tap Russia’s frozen assets to fund Kyiv’s war effort.”

  5. says

    Trump Admin Pushes to See How Cruel It Can Be

    Another weekend with emergency court proceedings over Trump anti-immigration policy.

    Given the current state of law, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan seemed reluctant to step in to prevent migrants who were removed by the Trump administration to Ghana from being sent by Ghana to their home countries, where they face persecution, including torture.

    But despite her reluctance, Chutkan in an emergency hearing on Saturday still wasn’t buying the Trump administration’s argument that it had no control over what Ghana did, even if it reneged on diplomatic assurances it made not to turn around and send the migrants to their home countries.

    “I have not been shy about saying that I think this is a very suspicious scheme,” Chutkan said.

    Chutkan suggested it was no accident that Ghana was reneging and that the administration was getting the outcome it wanted.

    This so-called chain refoulement — illegally using third countries as middlemen to handle the transfer of migrants to countries that the U.S. is legally prohibited from deporting to directly — has been an ongoing issue for several months.

    Still, after a flurry of weekend filings and extreme gamesmanship from the Trump administration of initially refusing to give the other side in the case a copy of a key filing it made, Chutkan had not ruled to protect the migrants.

    Expect a ruling from Chutkan as soon as this morning.

    Link. The link leads to a collection of current news reports, including the text quoted above.

  6. says

    DOJ Is Sharing State Voter Rolls With DHS

    The Trump administration confirmed that the Justice Department is sharing the voter rolls it demanded earlier this year with the Department of Homeland Security for it to use to search for noncitizens.

    Text above is a summary of news posted on Stateline: Stateline link

  7. says

    RFK Jr. steps up campaign to kill as many people as possible

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the other anti-vaxxer types that have taken over the federal government are planning to link the COVID vaccine to 25 child deaths, according to The Washington Post. And since Kennedy has stocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with his fellow travelers, the chance there will be pushback is pretty much zero.

    Now, never mind that these deaths are in no way verifiably linked to the coronavirus vaccine. Instead, they are pulled directly from information submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, known as VAERS. But anyone can report anything about any alleged vaccine side effect to VAERS. It doesn’t even have to be a side effect that the person reporting experienced. People can literally make reports based on something they saw on social media, for example.

    Because there is no vetting of what ends up in VAERS, the raw data in it isn’t scientifically useful at all. Scientists use VAERS data as a starting point for further research, not a database of proven side effects. However, since anyone can download the data, VAERS is a rich source of material for anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists who don’t understand that correlation does not equal causation.

    So what, exactly, was the methodology used to determine that these 25 deaths were the result of the coronavirus vaccine? You don’t know it. […]

    Don’t expect any pushback from the vaccine advisory committee, known as ACIP, at this week’s meeting. Kennedy ousted all the actual scientists from the panel months ago, claiming they had conflicts of interest. For Kennedy, “conflicts of interest” typically means “is an actual scientist who is affiliated with scientific and research and academic and pharmaceutical communities.”

    His insistence that the previous ACIP members were somehow beholden to big payouts from Big Pharma is just straightforwardly wrong. Thirteen of the earlier physician members had received little to no money from the pharmaceutical industry. Eight of those members averaged approximately $4,000 per year in consulting, travel, and speaking fees, which is nearly $3,000 below the average for specialized U.S. physicians. Five received no money at all.

    To be on the panel, members had to divest all interests in vaccine stocks, as did all their family members. They can’t consult for vaccine companies or serve as experts in vaccine lawsuits. They can’t let vaccine companies pick up the tab for their travel or food. [I snipped some details.]

    […] The smallest of comfort: Kennedy’s newest possible unhinged picks to add to ACIP likely may not be installed by the time of the meeting, so at least we wouldn’t yet have to hear from the lady who thinks COVID isn’t scary because Jesus touched lepers. […]

    the existing recommendations are a shambles, an ever-shifting mess. It was only a few weeks ago that the Trump administration approved the updated COVID-19 vaccine, but only for people 65 and older or those with certain preexisting conditions. However, it looks like they are already considering scrapping that and instead possibly limiting it to people over 75. [!] Anyone under 75 would have to talk to a physician first, virtually guaranteeing very limited uptake of the vaccine.

    Kennedy’s most powerful tool in enacting his eugenics paradise is the withholding of vaccines, particularly from vulnerable people. So he’s pulled funds from a group that provides vaccines to poor kids in lower-income countries. He’s made vaccine recommendations an absolute mess, which, again, is a terrific way to ensure low vaccine uptake.

    This administration is already dangerous and deadly to so many people, but Kennedy’s efforts really stand out. […]

  9. says

    Vance hosts Charlie Kirk’s show; House Republicans look to avert shutdown with stopgap

    Vice President Vance took the mic Monday as “The Charlie Kirk Show” returned to the air this week. The veep announced Sunday night he would guest host.

    With the government funding deadline just more than two weeks away, House Republicans are considering a continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the lights on through Nov. 20, GOP sources told The Hill. […]

  10. says

    Here is another good example of the lies and calls to violence by rtwing xtian terror further unleased by the charlie kirk excuse:

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-vector-of-political-killings-in-the-usa-is-still-donald-trump,20159

    None of the last 31 political attacks was by anyone from ‘the Left’. Not one. We can count them.
    by Alan Austin
    Monday, September 15, 2025 at 5:02:46a

    The script written for Donald Trump which he read stiltedly straight after Charlie Kirk was shot declared assassinations in the USA were caused by “the radical Left”.

    (crossposted from PZ’s article)

  11. StevoR says

    To the US Christians waiting and hating for Jeebus without really following a word the Biblical guy actually maybe supposedly said – contradictory verses and interpretations aside :

    So Jeebus is comin’ back any day now, anyday.. The end is nigh.

    There’ll be some captial ‘R’ impossible Rapture where you float off and watch the tort chya of everyone else on Earth who didn’t believe your hate filled rantings and ravings.

    Haven’t they been saying that, some version of that, for, like, two thousand odd years or so?
    But yeah, Jeebus is coming.. noooooow!

    Okay .. now, now, wait for it, wait for iiiiittt now.

    Still not?

    Now?

    Now! Hundreds of years later … now?

    I mean we’re overdue so ..now?

    Now-ish?

    Waiting, waiting, waiting … now!?

    Predicting, predicting.. now! Now? Now… nope?

    Hmm.. maybe he came & went.. ?

    Would you klowns know him if you saw him?

    Accept him if he told you all the things you ignored the first time.

    Love your neighbours even those Damn loathed Samaritans. Those, Black, Muslim,Hispanic, Jewish, Atheist. Secularist heretics.. Your neighbours. The global majority. People. Other. People.

    Pay your taxes!

    Stop lying.

    Show compassion.

    Help the poor NOT the rich.

    Pray in private.

    Reject violence. Live by sword die by sword.

    All that jazz.

    Still waiting, waiting , uselessly praying. Futile in your counter-productive hate & wilful ignorance.

    Embracing those whose every second word is Christ but every action refutes all that ancient Judean supposedly asked his followers to do & believe in. Worshipping those ugly orange idols, hate full idols who told you that Christ is the opposite of what the supposed Messiah supposedly said.

    You make others see the faith you claim to follow as repellent. As vile & exemplify the (actually unfairly demonized if you know the history) Pharisees love of hypocrisy & ritual & his real killers , the Romans imperial thuggishness and love of power above all else.

    Cruel power punching down with all the hate & ruthlessness the guy you claim to worship most strongly died against.
    But you wait forever & reject forever the idea of being thoughtful, humble & kind & really learning from the example of that mythologised man 2,000 years gone who ain’t coming back but could still teach you something if you’d only think & be willing to learn to be kind.

    Becoz I can’t sleep and the world is fucked and yet I ain’t giving up on it becoz there are enough good people if they all work and act together I reckon still. Eevn the poeple we most need toget throug to are the leats likely to hear us until .. we make them? Somehow?

  12. says

    A secular friend of mine mentioned a bumper sticker he saw years ago:
    ‘jebus is coming and boy is he pissed’ So much is implied by that.

  13. StevoR says

    Refs to & riffin’off Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech, Slactivist esp Left Behidn books deconstructions, Isaac Asimo;’s Lost inNon-translation and the truth sung by REM in New Test Leper opening lyrics esp. (5 & ahalf mins total tempooral length.) Plus more.

  14. StevoR says

    @ shermanj : Well, if every drop that touches your lips automatically turns to alcoholic beverage , yeah, ya always gunna be pretty drunk! ;-)

  15. says

    Another Thank You to Lynna (please be careful to not get too saturated with the crap you find)

    One more important crosspost and then I’ll get back to work:
    PZ mentions Steven Miller
    WELL:
    https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/09/14/evil-walks-amongst-us/
    If you have not yet read Rolling Stone’s profile of Pee Wee German, you must go there —right now— and read it.
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stephen-miller-trump-terror-ice-immigration-military-1235426023/
    He’s worse than you might think, and he’s slowly but assuredly acquiring power from other cabinet heads. He might be the second-most powerful person in the administration following the Big Tuna hisself.

    This nation is speeding down the Death Spiral!

  17. says

    The good news: more than 300 South Korean workers who spent eight days detained in a Georgia ICE facility after their shocking arrests at a Hyundai/LG battery plant under construction returned to Korea on Friday, to cheers and hugs.

    The bad news: South Korea, once one of our closest and most trusted allies, is furious with the US all across the political spectrum, and questioning the whole relationship, including $350 BILLION-with-a-B in investment money they pledged to Trump in July in exchange for a lower tariff rate that’s now hanging in limbo. [video]

    Work has stopped on the plant, which was supposed to make 8,500 new robot-supervising jobs for blue-collar southeastern Georgians, thanks to President Joe Biden securing a partnership in 2022. Now the factory opening has been delayed for at least several months, or as long as it takes for Hyundai and LG to find workers willing to risk prison at the capricious hands of the regime.

    And now the South Korean government is saying it is investigating potential human rights violations during the episode too. Workers reported guns pointed at them, there were no translators for workers who didn’t speak English, and ICE did not read anyone their rights anyway. Agents refused to even look at their paperwork, and the workers were humiliatingly handcuffed and chained at the waist and feet with metal chains that burned them because they had been roasting in the Georgia sun. And ICE kept them chained up for the whole nine hours it took for them to raid the factory, and for the whole bus ride to the facility, as if they were violent criminals, even though everyone was cooperating.

    A detainee told Yonhap News that once in detention, they were given no basic supplies for days and had moldy beds, inedible food, and no blankets.There were no windows or clocks, and it was very cold. And it took four days for all of them to be processed. [video]

    Meanwhile, dumb-as-shit ICE agents mocked them with slurs like “Rocket Man,” apparently unaware that South Korea is a whole other country from North Korea. And when the detainees asked agents what they had done that was illegal, they replied, “I don’t know either.”

    Detainees said Korean consular officials pressured them to sign voluntary departure forms with language about being “illegal” in order to be able to leave, under threat of them otherwise staying detained for months or even years, which angered workers who had not actually done anything illegal. One detainee — very skilled — sketched out the whole layout, which is like something you’d see drawn in blood inside a prison uniform from a Vietnamese tiger cage, or something. [image]

    And THEN the detainees’ release and departure, originally planned for last Wednesday, was reportedly delayed for an entire 24 more hours while Donald Trump tried to negotiate for them to go back to work. And of course they were like no fucking thank you. The old man realized a few days after the raid that his ICE done fucked up, bigtime. Because the US does not have the technology, or the technological expertise, to make and install the battery and car-building autonomous robots, and South Korea has some of the most advanced robots in the world. In fact, one in 10 Korean workers IS a robot.

    Trump, the Tuesday after the Friday raid: [video]

    And then on Sunday Trump went on his glitchy website and practically begged for foreign companies to return, sad laugh.

    When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other “things,” come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land. If we didn’t do this, all of that massive Investment will never come in the first place — Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn, because we used to be great at it, but not anymore. For example, Shipbuilding, where we used to build a Ship a day and now, we barely build a Ship a year. I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own “game,” sometime into the not too distant future!

    Nice epiphany to have three weeks too late. And sure, that’ll help, reminding everybody that people’s lives are all one big “game” to the world’s most powerful former gameshow host.

    And speaking of shipbuilding, $150 billion of that $350 billion was supposed to be for Korea to help Make American Shipbuilding Great Again, helping to modernize American shipyards to better compete with China. But guess those slow boats to China are going to be a lot slower now!

    All of that, and it’s still not clear if any of the Korean workers broke the law, as no one has been charged with anything. The administration is saying the workers were detained because they did not have H-1B visas (which only 65,000 of are released per year, fewer than one-tenth of the number of workers who apply), and they had B1/B2 visas instead. But it is not at all clear that the workers actually required the longer-term H-1Bs, as they were there temporarily, working as subcontracting consultants to install the factory and being paid by Korean companies, which would seem to be the exact situation the temporary business visas are for in the first place.

    Hey, remember the time the AP uncovered Melania Trump had allegedly illegally worked as a model with a tourist visa, at least 10 times?

    But anyway, South Korea is now like, fine, if the US is going to be a fuckass and say everybody needs an H-1B visa all of a sudden, then work your shit out and get everybody the right visa. We’ll wait!

    Meanwhile Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau went over to Seoul and privately expressed regrets to First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo, in between bouts of siccing the State Department on any foreigner on social media not properly mourning the death of Charlie Kirk. Will private regrets be enough?

    South Korea depends on the US for protection from incursions by North Korea, an ongoing risk, as Kim Jong-un reminds everyone with his constant missile tests. But the US depends on Korea for more than just Oscar-winning thrillers and K-pop, as the regime is just now coming to find out.

    Anyway, so, good job there, Tori Branum. The loudmouth who claimed credit for the factory raid has deleted her TikTok account after getting slammed with negative comments, a day after vowing to never be silenced. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-begging-south-korea-to-forget

  19. birgerjohansson says

    Police raid Israeli minister May Golan’s offices in ‘cash bonanza’ corruption probe
    .https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b1tx2mbjgg
    Facebook:
    ‘May Golan has a lot of pride. She once said she is “proud to be a racist”, “it’s our right to be racist”, she is “proud of the ruins of Gaza”. ‘

    It is as if extreme beliefs and dishonesty go hand in hand.
    (As I cannot read hebrew script I cannot read the source material myself)

  21. birgerjohansson says

    Farron Cousins:
    “The number of Americans who now say that Donald Trump is too old to be able to serve as president has skyrocketed this year, climbing 15 percentage points since February. The number now stands at 49%, which is a plurality of those who answered a recent YouGov poll. This comes as Trump’s physical and mental problems continue to become visibly worse, especially as speculation grows that he suffered a mini stroke during a 9/11 memorial last week”

    My comment: You Gov is considered to be one of the most reliable pollsters (methodology differs between different companies)

  23. birgerjohansson says

    The Onion

    “Desperate Kash Patel asks shooter’s family if they can solve any other cases”

  24. JM says

    MeidesTouch: Trump Lawyer Suddenly ARRESTED After Court Hearing
    Trump lawyer is a bit of exaggeration here, she was an election denier, involved in the Dominion voting system mess and acted as a lawyer for several other people in the mess. She never worked directly for Trump.
    She showed up to act as a lawyer for a client in DC while there was an arrest warrant out in Michigan. So the judge went through the whole matter as it applies in DC then let her be arrested for the Michigan matter.

  25. says

    shermanj @15, I appreciate the thanks … and the advice.

    StevoR @18, Thank you for your note of respect.

    Here are a few short and/or summarized bits of news, as posted by Steve Benen on The Maddow Blog:

    * Still awaiting the details on the latest strike: “The U.S. military struck a boat coming out of Venezuela for the second time this month, President Trump said today, as his administration continued its deadly campaign on drug cartels that it accused of bringing fentanyl into the United States. The strike occurred in international waters and killed three people, Trump said in a post on Truth Social.”

    * A lawsuit worth watching: “Maurene Comey is suing the Trump administration over her firing as a federal prosecutor in New York, calling the move a ‘politically motivated’ one that ‘upends bedrock principles of our democracy and justice system.’

    * Sometimes “frameworks” prove meaningful, but not always: “U.S. officials said on Monday that they had reached a preliminary deal with China on the fate of the social media platform TikTok that would address one of the biggest points of contention between the world’s two largest economies.” [Lynna adds text from The New York Times report:]

    President Trump has already delayed enforcing the law three times. Congress passed the bipartisan legislation last year to ban TikTok in the country unless it found a non-Chinese owner because of concerns that the social media app’s ties to China made it a national security threat to the United States. […] Li Chenggang, China’s international trade representative and vice minister of commerce, said that the two sides engaged in “candid and in-depth discussions on TikTok and the relevant concerns of the Chinese side” and that they had reached a basic framework consensus on resolving issues related to the platform, according to Xinhua, China’s state media agency. […]

    […] * Epstein documents: “Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has turned over additional documents to the House Oversight Committee, including a previously redacted name from the late sex offender’s now-notorious 50th birthday book, according to a letter obtained by NBC News. The name that was unredacted was not immediately publicly released.”

    * Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, wrote an interesting op-ed for The New York Times pushing back against the White House: “President Trump, we remain open to negotiating anything that can bring mutual benefits. But Brazil’s democracy and sovereignty are not on the table.”

    * Why do this? “The U.S. Department of Education has pulled funding for programs in eight states aimed at supporting students who have both hearing and vision loss, a move that could affect some of the country’s most vulnerable students. The programs are considered vital in those states but represent only a little over $1 million a year in federal money.”

    * Noted without comment: “Fox News Channel host Brian Kilmeade apologized on Sunday for advocating for the execution of mentally ill homeless people in a discussion on the network last week, saying his remark was ‘extremely callous.’”

  31. StevoR says

    israel ha s launched its ground assault into the ruins of Gaza city now as this happens too :

    Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide in Gaza, according to the “most authoritative assessment” to date.

    A United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI), established by the UN Human Rights Council, concluded that Israeli authorities “intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible” and have committed the crime against humanity of extermination.

    The report cites direct targeting of civilians, including children, and mass killings in “far larger numbers compared to previous conflicts”. It also found Israel deliberately inflicted life-threatening conditions by blocking food, water and medicine — actions “calculated” to bring about the “destruction of Palestinians”. The inquiry’s report follows a two-year investigation and builds on a growing number of assessments labelling Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-16/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-un-report-says/105780230

  32. StevoR says

    Plus see :

    Israel has launched its ground offensive into Gaza City after days of aerial attacks, with residents warned to move south.An Israeli military official told Reuters on Tuesday that ground forces were advancing deeper into Gaza City, moving towards its centre, and the military was prepared to continue operations for as long as necessary to defeat Hamas.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-16/idf-launches-military-offensive-to-occupy-gaza/105777948

    So, basically , forever.

  33. StevoR says

    US President Donald Trump has sued the New York Times, four of its reporters and publisher Penguin Random House for at least $US15 billion ($22 billion), claiming defamation and libel and citing reputational damage, a Florida court filing shows.

    Mr Trump’s suit cites a series of New York Times articles including an editorial prior to the 2024 presidential election which said he was unfit for office.

    The lawsuit also includes a 2024 book published by Penguin titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success”.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-16/trump-files-us15-billion-lawsuit-against-new-york-times/105779782

  41. KG says

    <

    blockquote>After Andrew asked what he and Trump could possibly talk about over their pizza, Charles suggested, “Maybe you two can reminisce about your good times with Jeffrey Epstein.” – Lynna, OM @2 quoting Borowitz Report

    <

    blockquote>

    It’s true Andrew and Trump have a lot to reminisce about – but so, in a slightly less direct way, do Trump and Charles, both of whom have had a long and close friendship with a prolific rapist of children – Jimmy Savile in Charles’s case. However, Charles may be upper-class-twit enough to have really had no idea that Savile liked to spend his time raping anyone from babies to the dead.

  42. says

    shermanj @15, that WIRED article swell-written and thorough. I found these three paragraphs particularly memorable:

    Under Miller’s guiding hand, the government can deport (or kidnap and rendition) you or your spouse, without due process, to a foreign gulag, if the president feels like it. The White House can repeatedly threaten to take away the most basic of constitutional protections, such as habeas corpus. The president can launch Justice Department criminal investigations against his enemies who, by all known accounts, did nothing wrong except annoy the commander-in-chief, or refuse to help him steal an election. The president and his lieutenants can arrest you at a routine courthouse check-in, at your church, outside your kid’s school, even if you have no criminal record. They’ve instituted a heavily draconian system of immigration arrest “quotas,” ensuring a regime not mainly of mass deportation, but of mass disappearances and indefinite detention in jails and newly erected camps. [Links to embedded sources are available at the WIRED link in comment 15.]

    They’ve quickly turned much of federal law enforcement into the masked, nameless, unaccountable secret police, working at the whims of the president and his staff. The president can deploy armed National Guard troops, and even U.S. Marines, to the streets of an American city any time he wants — and deem it enemy territory. The administration has made censoring media organizations, comedians, and aging rock stars a policy priority, in an anti-free-speech crusade waged from the West Wing to the Federal Communications Commission. […]

    […] Within the highest levels of the Trump administration, the idea that Attorney General Pam Bondi runs the Justice Department or that Kristi Noem runs the Department of Homeland Security is woefully incomplete. Nominally independent departments are run by the West Wing of the White House — and therefore, largely, by Miller. […]

    The Trump administration sent WIRED a lot of quotes praising Miller, mostly quotes from Republican lawmakers claiming Miller as a “friend.” They wanted WIRED to print every quote … desperate to make Miller look human I think.

  43. says

    Followup to comment 42.

    Showing the depth and breadth of Stephen Miller’s delusion(s):

    […] In the aftermath of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines to assist with ICE operations in Los Angeles, Miller insisted that purging undocumented migrants from the city would create a utopia for the remaining residents.

    “You have any idea how many resources will be opened up for Americans when the illegals are gone?” Miller told Fox News. “No more waiting in line at an emergency room, no more massive traffic in Los Angeles. Your health insurance premiums go down, your public-school classroom size will shrink … and if you do need to get support from the government, you’re not going to be in line behind millions of illegal aliens from the third world. This is going to be such a gift to the quality of life of everyday Americans.” […]

  46. JM says

    Reuters: US appeals court rejects Trump bid to oust Fed’s Lisa Cook

    A U.S. appeals court declined on Monday to allow Donald Trump to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook – the first time a president has pursued such action since the central bank’s founding in 1913 – in the latest step in a legal battle that threatens the Fed’s longstanding independence.

    The next meeting is Tuesday so the administration would have to rush an appeal to the Supreme court if they want to block her. White House officials said they planned to do so but only have hours to put it together.
    I expect they will put something together but the Supreme Court will ignore it on the grounds it isn’t important enough for them to rush to judgement.

  47. says

    Why Trump’s new civil suit against The New York Times is so bizarre

    About a week ago, for reasons that were not altogether clear, Donald Trump threatened to sue The New York Times. Evidently, the president wasn’t kidding. NBC News reported:

    President Donald Trump on Monday filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, four of its reporters and Penguin Random House over coverage of his 2024 campaign. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, which covers the area where Trump resides outside the White House, accused the newspaper of attempting to ruin his reputation as a businessman, sink his campaign and prejudice judges and juries against him in coverage of his campaign.

    Trump and his lawyers are seeking no less than $15 billion (that’s not a typo) in compensatory damages, as well as unspecified punitive damages. (Among the defendants are Susanne Craig, Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt, each of whom has worked at one time as analysts or contributors for MSNBC or NBC News.)

    In a semi-coherent 232-word rant published to his social media platform, the president described the Times as “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country,” adding that the outlet “has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!).”

    Right off the bat, it’s important to note that describing the court filing as a “lawsuit” is itself generous. As writer Jesse Berney summarized, the lawsuit is “like an 85-page Trump Truth Social post. It’s hilarious.”

    That characterization is more than fair. Reading it, I felt a little embarrassed for the lawyers who were responsible for producing it, especially after seeing random Trump-related images that seemed to have been included in this dreadfully silly document for no apparent reason.

    There’s no reason to think the case will succeed. For that matter, Trump’s attorneys should hope they avoid sanctions for having filed such an absurdity in the first place.

    But that doesn’t mean the suit is irrelevant. On the contrary, it’s a reminder of the sitting president’s overt hostility toward the First Amendment and the idea of a free press.

    Let’s not lose sight of the recent pattern: Trump’s case against the Times comes on the heels of other civil lawsuits he’s brought against The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, ABC News, The Des Moines Register and CNN, among others.

    The volume of cases might make it seem as if this has become routine, but the broader circumstances remain bizarre: Americans have never had a president who, while in office, sued independent news organizations for publishing reports the White House disapproved of.

    And yet, Trump can’t seem to stop suing independent news organizations for publishing reports the White House disapproves of.

    More analysis and some photos excerpted from the “dreadfully silly document” are available here:
    https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrball.com/post/3lyxl7hrfps24

  48. says

    DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

    The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.

    The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine. Daniel Malmer, a PhD student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill, first noticed the paper was deleted.

    “The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance,” reads a message on the page where the study was formerly hosted. “During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” […]

  49. says

    Followup of sorts to comment 47.

    During a brief Q&A with the press ahead of his trip to the United Kingdom on Tuesday, defamation lawsuit loser President Donald Trump attacked ABC News’ White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. Karl had asked for Trump’s thoughts on alarming comments made by Attorney General Pam Bondi on what she considers “hate speech.”

    “We should probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” Trump said. “Maybe I’ll come after ABC? Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn’t been fair. And the radical leftist[s] does tremendous damage to the country. But we’re fixing it.” [video]

    Actually, it was $15 million for defamation, but it’s so hard to keep all these lawsuits straight.

    Trump then pivoted into his well-worn, semi-coherent, prattle about how America is “the hottest” country and was “dead” before he returned to office and how he “fixed” Washington.

    […] Trump has continued to target and pressure media outlets with additional lawsuits and demands for more concessions, all in an effort to enrich himself while silencing criticism of him or his administration.

    Link

  50. says

    Actor/Director/Environmental Activist Robert Redford has died at the age of 89 in his home in Utah, it was announced this morning.

    Redford also founded the The Sundance Film Festival in 1981, which has become seminal for its impact on independent filmmaking.

    Redford, raised in Santa Monica, Ca., began acting on Broadway in 1959, moving to Television and film in 1960. He won a directorial academy award for his first film, Ordinary People.

    His long career in TV and film spanned from “Maverick” in 1960 to Dark Winds in 2025.

    He began his activism in 1960 when he fell in love with the mountains of Provo, Utah and built a cabin there for his family.

    In 2019, Redford penned an op-ed calling the Trump administration, “a monarchy in disguise”. […]

    Link

  51. says

    Of course he did.

    Trump extends TikTok deadline again

    […] Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order once again delaying enforcement of a TikTok ban after announcing the U.S. had a “framework” for a deal to keep the app available in the U.S.

    The latest extension pushes back the deadline to enforce a law, which requires TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores, until Dec. 16. An earlier extension was set to expire Wednesday.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed Monday that the U.S. had secured a “framework” for a TikTok deal during trade talks with Chinese officials. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to speak again Friday to complete the deal, Bessent said.

    With a deal in sight, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer had suggested the president could again extend the deadline in order to get it signed, although he emphasized that “we’re not going to be in the business of having repetitive extensions.” [LOL]

    The three-month extension is the fourth of its kind delaying enforcement of the divest-or-ban law, which was initially set to take effect in January. The measure passed Congress with large bipartisan majorities last year and was signed into law by former President Biden.

    However, Trump repeatedly vowed to “save” TikTok during his 2024 campaign and has pushed to reach a deal to keep the app available in the U.S. since taking office. His administration initially appeared near to an agreement in April, but the effort was scuttled by the announcement of reciprocal tariffs on several countries, including China.

  52. says

    […] Marco Rubio would like to do some more extreme free speech, right-wing-style, and the Republican Party is excited to help him. On Wednesday, the House will hold a hearing on a bill introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Florida) that would allow Rubio to seize US citizens’ passports if Rubio personally determines that they are providing “material support” to a terrorist organization.

    Extremely necessary reminder: Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance are both currently calling everyone from George Soros to the Ford Foundation “terrorist organizations.”

    According to The Intercept:

    One section grants the secretary of state the power to revoke or refuse to issue passports for people who have been convicted of — or merely charged with — material support for terrorism. […]

    The other section sidesteps the legal process entirely. Rather, the secretary of state would be able to deny passports to people whom they determine “has knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”

    This means that US citizens could be stripped of their right to travel, without any due process, entirely at the whim of Marco Rubio or whoever the next secretary of State might be.

    It is already very illegal to provide material support to terrorists and it will cause one, if convicted, to lose one’s passport. This bill, however, would not require that people actually be convicted of anything and could include things like donating money to NGOs Rubio does not like or publicly opposing a war he does.

    It could even include simply insulting the sacred memory of Charlie Kirk.

    After all, Rubio announced this week on Twitter that he will be revoking the visas of legal immigrants he determines to be “celebrating” the death of Charlie Kirk or just quoting him. That is how Karen Attiah lost her job as the last full time Black columnist for the Washington Post (which is apparently quite determined to demonstrate exactly how democracy can die in darkness). [video]

    It could perhaps include donating money to or voting for the Democratic Party, which Stephen Miller has recently declared a “domestic extremist organization” and a “terrorist network.”

    It could also include simply being trans, given the way Republicans have been working to paint transgender people as being somehow especially prone to violence. On Tuesday, Marjorie Taylor Green’s boyfriend, Brian Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, asked Trump if he would declare what he calls “transtifa” (I assume this means all trans people?) to be a domestic terror organization and ban Pride flags for “representing the transtifa,” and Trump was open to the entirely batshit suggestion.

    It could include literally anything anyone in the Trump administration doesn’t like, because the bill does not actually offer up an actual definition of the kind of “material support” that would not cause one to face any kind of actual charges, but could result in them losing their passport.

    On the bright side, those who lost their passports under this law would be able to appeal the decision to Marco Rubio, whose decision it was to take it away from them in the first place. That should be very helpful.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/should-marco-rubio-get-to-seize-your

  53. says

    Three days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, allegedly by one Tyler Robinson of Utah, Vice President JD Vance and other government officials seized the means of production of Kirk’s podcast, so as not to let a good tragedy or Kirk’s audience of more than 3 million to go to waste. They put on their own state-sponsored show, right out of Vance’s office, to try to blame the killing on liberals and declare and incite retribution on George Soros, the Ford Foundation, and anyone insufficiently sad over Kirk’s death.

    […] we’ve gotten to the part where they’re urging people to turn on/in their neighbors and co-workers so they can get doxed and/or fired for failing to mourn Charlie Kirk properly, and Stephen Miller says they plan to try to persecute left-wing non-profits by whatever means, whether they broke a law or not.

    And if that was not freaky enough, Trump got to musing in the White House about “pretty radical groups and they got away with murder,” and how he and Attorney General of the United States Pam Bondi are going to bring RICO charges against “some of the people that you’ve been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.” And, he told Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sweaty ham-head boyfriend that maybe he could prosecute people in DC for hanging a trans flag as an incitement to riot. [video]

    […] Vance’s show was two hours long, but watch if you have a strong stomach: [video]

    And/or we will tell you about the worst parts until we can’t take it any more.

    First, it must be said, so far as we yet know, the murder of Charlie Kirk was not political. The purpose of a political killing is to make a political point, not to be opaque about it, communicating in some video game hieroglyphs with baked-in levels of irony. We can take the alleged shooter’s word, or lack of words, for it: He did it for the attention of the gamer community. […] And if Robinson was not a Groyper, he was at least hip-wader deep in that cesspool.

    Kash Patel said that Robinson left a note, but the note was destroyed, but Patel re-constructed it, but nobody can see it, but he can interpret it like peepstones that only Kash Patel can see. Meanwhile, Robinson isn’t talking, or at least is not saying what the regime wants him to say. And how pathetically desperate trying to portray Robinson’s roommate as trans, simply because he has chin-length hair and hoodies and hats with animals on them and enjoys cookies. The roommate has never identified themselves as trans to anyone! Really, that is the best they can do to show Robinson had a political motivation? Desperate. [video]

    It sure all smells like a coverup for some white-Christian-man on-white-Christian man gang warfare. […]

    Anyway, Vance started off the show with a tearjerker slideshow of the Kirk family and Kirk praising Trump and helping his campaign while Christian folk strums in the background. Vance said Kirk campaigned hard to get him the VP job, but then not even 15 minutes in began to rail against “leftist extremism.” Then he brought in some special guests, starting with Stephen Miller, and you know it didn’t take him long to go full Goebbels:

    “You have the crazies on the far Left who are saying, ‘Oh, Steven Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech.’ No, no, no. We’re going to go after the NGO network that ferments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”

    Oh, like the nonprofits that paid for buses to the Capitol on January 6? Don’t be silly! Back on Friday, Miller had already appeared on Hannity to boast, “The power of law enforcement, under President Trump’s leadership, will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.” […] [video]

    So we’re going to take away people’s money and power, BEFORE they’ve broken a law. Sounds very American, very cool!

    Later in the podcast Vance got more specific about who they mean; he is furious in particular with an article by Elizabeth Spiers (former Gawker!) from The Nation, titled “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning: The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn’t a promoter of civil discourse. He preached hate, bigotry, and division”:

    “I read a story in The Nation magazine about my dear friend Charlie Kirk. Now, The Nation isn’t a fringe blog. It’s a well-funded, well-respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American Civil War. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation and many other wealthy titans of the American Progressive Movement. The writer accuses Charlie of saying, and I quote, ‘Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously.’ But if you go and watch the clip, the very clip she links to, you realize he never said anything like that. He never uttered those words.”

    Sure, okay. [video]

    Yeah, that’s worse. Vance went on later:

    “Something has gone very wrong with a lunatic fringe, a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far Left. There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents’ politics.”

    Oh, like Shiloh Hendrix?

    “There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder. There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And there is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorists. […] Did you know that the George Soros Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie’s death, do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment? They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer.“

    Didn’t you just know he would find some way to work George Soros into it? And the Ford Foundation, there’s a throwback. Elizabeth Spiers denies being paid by the Ford Foundation or George Soros. Obviously. [social media posts]

    Everybody’s conspiring against the white man!

    Vance huffed:

    “While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical FACT that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far Left.”

    And Miller:

    “People on the Left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence. This is not a both sides problem. If both sides have a problem, then one side has a much bigger and malignant problem and that is the truth.”

    Any time somebody trying to sell you something makes the point of underscoring that what they’re saying is the truth, they too desperately want you to believe it’s the truth, and probably it is not the truth. And it is not the truth, you can even ask Grok:

    “Since 2016, America’s Right has generated significantly more violence than the Left, particularly in terms of fatalities (96% right-wing) and terrorist incidents/plots (67% right).”

    Just an hour before Kirk was shot, right over the mountains in Colorado, a 16-year-old who posted in neo-Nazi forums shot two students and killed himself. Schrödinger’s fascist, both always the victim and the strongest tough guy at the same time!

    Miller was talking, we guess, about a Yougov poll which found that most Americans, 87 percent, say political violence is a problem. Right now 9 percent more Republicans than Democrats say it’s a problem, but following the assassination of Melissa Hortman — Trump: “I’m not familiar. The who?” — and following the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, more Democrats than Republicans said it was a problem. And a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2023 — when Democrat Joe Biden was in the White House — found that a third of Republicans agreed with the statement: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Just 13 percent of Democrats in the survey agreed. Not to mention, there’s who is saying it’s a problem, and who actually IS the problem. Just saying.

    Melissa Hortman, who’s that? [video]

    If he had his way, Trump would erase her like a Harper’s Ferry plaque.

    As Vance put it after he got busted lying about Haitians invading Ohio and eating dogs and cats, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” But he doesn’t mean ALL of the American people, of course. He means right-wing white men, who are suffering hard that they can’t be in charge of telling all their fellow citizens what to do and say. Their feelings are the real victims here! And they will punish the feelings-hurters.

    Miller took to X to coo about how much fun he was having witch-hunting online for the enemies within among his fellow citizens.

    “In recent days, we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority—child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees—have been deeply and violently radicalized. The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”

    Maybe Elon Musk should do something about his hellsite, eh?

    Anyway, getting neighbors to snitch on each other is always a step in the authoritarian playbook. […] And finding a martyr, they love that shit.

    Back on November 7, 1938, a 19-year-old Polish/Jewish immigrant to Paris, Herschel Feibel Grynszpan, assassinated the Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan was quickly disappeared and never heard from again, and the murder of vom Rath became the pretext for Kristallnacht [I snipped the rest of the historical details.]

    And Vice President JD Vance, ghoul Stephen Miller, buddy Steve Bannon and many new government employees sure are students of political history, and one time period in particular. Big Balls getting mugged, Charlie Kirk, it’s all fodder for the war they were planning to roll out one way or another.

    Will this playbook work in these here United States of America? How far will the Supreme Court six let him go? Guess we’ll all find out.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/jd-vance-has-jolly-time-hosting-hitler

  54. birgerjohansson says

    Donald Trump says “Smart people don’t like me, and they don’t like what we talk about”

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErazqEsp_rM

    When the White House was asked to clarify what Trump meant, they chose to insult Jasmine Crocket, not clarify what Trump said. So I assume the official Trump line is literally “smart people don’t like him”

    Trump himself has created a Venn diagram where people who like him are excluded from the circle containing “smart”.

  56. says

    Jasmine Crockett is a gem: decent, caring, witty, intelligent. tRUMP doesn’t want ‘smart’ people to like him, because they will see he is an arrogant, destructive imbecile and will never support him once they see behind the curtain.

  57. birgerjohansson says

    If I had 229 chromosome pairs, I would make sure they contained genes for
    – living as long as the bowhead whale
    -echolocation in darkness
    -genes for having an extreme memory, like some savants have
    -assorted superpowers, like -but not restricted to- Deadpool-type regeneration.

  58. birgerjohansson says

    Shermanj @ 56
    If Trump had a minimalist genome, I suspect he could get along with far fewer chromosomes without anyone noticing a difference. Memorising a few slogans, hating out-groups… you do not need the whole h. sapiens set.

  59. says

    @52 Lynna posted that One section grants the secretary of state the power to revoke or refuse to issue passports for people who have been convicted of — or merely charged with — material support for terrorism.
    My reply to that is: These rtwing miscreants IGNORE DUE PROCESS, turning this country into a LAWLESS MOCKERY. They operate on rumor, opinion and use vast amounts of corrupt power and money to throw what ever excrement they want at the wall to see what sticks (that is to see how much destruction, murder and pillage they can get away with).

  60. says

    @58 birgerjohansson mentioned tRUMP could get along with a subset of chromosomes and ‘Memorising a few slogans, hating out-groups’
    I reply – You are probably correct. it is obvious he is some sort of mutant that is narcissistic and sadistic and has the I.Q of a turnip.

  73. StevoR says

    The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has captured stunning, newly revealed images of the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the galaxy M87. The EHT made this black hole, known as M87*, famous in April 2019 when it was revealed as the first black hole ever imaged by humanity.

    These images of M87*, located around 55 million light-years from Earth, show that the polarization of the magnetic fields around the black hole reversed over a period of four years. The new observations of M87* also show the telltale signs of a jet of matter emerging from around the black hole, with its base connected to the bright ring around the outer boundary, or “event horizon,” around M87*.

    The images could help scientists further develop theories of how matter behaves in the extreme environments around supermassive black holes, which have masses of millions or even billions of suns and are found at the hearts of all large galaxies.

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/totally-unexpected-stunning-new-imagery-shows-big-changes-in-the-1st-black-hole-ever-captured-by-humanity-photo-video

  74. birgerjohansson says

    Hossenfelder alert 
    “They kicked me out” (for calling out BS)

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5u3V6LJuM
    (I am obviously not an authority, but if it is true there has been no major fundamental breakthough in the mentioned fields since the 1970s, it is worthy of attention. Also, note the others that have voiced similar criticism. BJ)

  77. says

    shermanj @59, yeah that phrase “merely charged with” in important. Thanks for pointing that out.

    In other news:
    ‘Embarrassing the FBI’: Schiff predicts Kash Patel won’t last long as director
    Video is 7:57 minutes.

    ‘So absurd’: Chris Hayes blasts MAGA crackdown on free speech
    Video is 11:24 minutes. This is an excellent video, with a thoughtful rundown by Chris Hayes. “Trump officials crack down on left-leaning groups after Charlie Kirk killing.”

  78. StevoR says

    Once a haven for flamingos, sturgeon and thousands of seals, fast-receding waters are turning the northern coast of the Caspian Sea into barren stretches of dry sand. In some places, the sea has retreated more than 50km. Wetlands are becoming deserts, fishing ports are being left high and dry, and oil companies are dredging ever-longer channels to reach their offshore installations.

    Climate change is driving this dramatic decline in the world’s largest landlocked sea. Found at the boundary between Europe and central Asia, the Caspian Sea is surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and sustains around 15 million people.

    The Caspian is a hub for fishing, shipping, and oil and gas production, and is of rising geopolitical importance as it sits where the interests of global superpowers meet. As the sea shallows, governments face the critical challenge of maintaining industries and livelihoods, while also protecting the unique ecosystems that sustains them.

    Source: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-fast-shrinking-the-worlds-largest-inland-sea-265239

  79. says

    Every once in a while, the president has a day — a single 24-hour period — in which his authoritarian vision comes into sharp relief.

    When Republicans complain about Donald Trump’s critics on the left using intemperate rhetoric, they often point to the frequency with which the president’s detractors accuse him of being an “authoritarian.” The complaints, however, tend to miss the point: The problem is with Trump’s actions, not with his opponents noticing those actions.

    And then, every once in a while, the president has a day — a single 24-hour period — in which his actions bring into sharp focus just how authoritarian his agenda actually is. Consider this unsettling timeline:

    Monday, Sept. 15, in the afternoon: Trump told reporters about his plans to target progressive organizations, adding that he’d already spoken to Attorney General Pam Bondi about bringing racketeering charges against “some of the people you’ve been reading about.” The New York Times noted soon after, “President Trump has begun a major escalation in his long-running efforts to stifle political opposition in the United States.”

    Monday, Sept. 15, in the afternoon: Trump boasted about his latest deadly military strike against a civilian boat in international waters, which he claimed was helmed by “narcoterrorists” and carrying “illegal narcotics” headed to the U.S. Asked to bolster his claim with evidence, or to explain how such strikes are legal, the president declined.

    Monday, Sept. 15, in the afternoon: Responding to a conservative reporter who said that anti-war protesters near the White House “still have their First Amendment right,” Trump replied, “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure.”

    Monday, Sept. 15, in the evening: Trump bragged about having filed a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing the newspaper of attempting to ruin his reputation by publishing reports he didn’t like. It is the latest in a series of civil suits he’s filed against independent news organizations that have bothered him with accurate reporting.

    Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the morning: Asked about his efforts to profit from the presidency, Trump threatened to report an Australian journalist to his country’s authorities.

    Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the morning: Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that the Justice Department will “probably” go after him and his network, suggesting the reporter’s coverage might meet the threshold for “hate speech.”

    Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the morning: Trump called for the incarceration of a prosecutor in Georgia who tried to hold him accountable for alleged crimes after his 2020 election defeat.

    Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the afternoon: Trump boasted to reporters that U.S. naval forces, acting on his orders, had “knocked off” a third civilian boat in international waters.

    Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the afternoon: Trump announced that he would continue to refuse to enforce a federal law related to TikTok.

    Individually, each of these developments is unsettling to those who take democracy seriously, but don’t miss the forest for the trees: These aren’t just disconcerting anecdotes, they’re collectively one dramatic story about a president and an administration that’s increasingly overt in their indifference to American democracy and the rule of law.

    What’s more, this 24-hour period wasn’t especially unusual. Over the last eight months, Americans have seen a great many days just like this one. […]

  80. says

    A splendid bit of reporting this morning from the ABC News team.

    The main news is that Ed Martin and Bill Pulte have been pressuring federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on the mortgage fraud claims that Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, drummed up.

    As I read the story, prosecutors so far have resisted not just because they don’t have enough evidence against James but because they have considerable exculpatory evidence.

    Pulte’s manufactured case against James comes down to one document in the mortgage file:

    However, investigators have so far determined that the document — a limited power of attorney form used by James’ niece to sign documents on her behalf when James closed on the home — was never considered by the loan officers who approved the mortgage, sources said.

    Lawyers drafted the document itself for a third-party closing company based on a template that was never corrected, sources said, and every other document in James’ loan file for the mortgage accurately stated that she would not reside at the home.

    It’s not for lack of trying by prosecutors, ABC News reports. They have interviewed or brought before a grand jury 15 witnesses, among them James’ niece, insurers, loan officers, underwriters, and realtors:

    A loan underwriter interviewed by investigators said that, in the process of approving the loan, she never looked at or considered the power of attorney document that incorrectly listed the home as James’ primary residence […]

    As a result of all of these “bad” facts, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, despite pressure on DOJ from Trump himself, declined to seek an indictment of James. That led Pulte to encourage Trump to fire U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, ABC reports. [Of course.]

    But Wait … There’s More!
    The other bit of great reporting by ABC News is its account of Martin’s attempt to beef up his little fiefdom within the Justice Department, which he has dubbed the “Special Attorney Fraud Unit.”

    Martin wears so many different hats at DOJ that I’ve lost count. But for the purposes of this particular bogosity I think it most matters that he’s head of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group and a special attorney to Attorney General Pam Bondi. ABC’s report actually refines his title in a way I hadn’t seen before: Special Attorney for Mortgage Fraud. Perfect.

    ABC reports that Martin has requested two to three experienced prosecutors from Virginia and New York to help in his investigation. Recall that he’s also pursuing James for a bogus mortgage fraud claim in New York.

    But the best part is Martin’s recruiting email obtained by ABC. It’s titled “Help Wanted” and is chock full of over the top language like:
    – seeking “fighters for justice and goodness and the American way”
    – “The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those that mark a gentleman.”
    – “In a special way, the SAFU is called to hold bad actors accountable. After all, as New York, Attorney General Leticia [sic] James said, ‘Because no matter how big, rich, or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law.’”

    The ABC story leaves me with one unanswered question: Why hasn’t Martin just brought the case against James himself? My understanding is that as a special attorney Martin has all the powers of a U.S. attorney. He’s just not tethered to a particular geographic district like U.S. attorneys are. So what’s keeping him from fully Ed Martining?

    Here’s a guess: Bringing a case to trial takes work, even for an experienced prosecutor, and Martin has never been a prosecutor. It’s probably a lot more fun to be a roving menace in every district in the country that it is to buckle down and learn a case and ultimately risk losing. [True] If Martin’s goal, as he’s publicly said before, is to name and shame, then he can continue to do that without ever bringing cases to trial.

    Link

  81. says

    Federal Workers Blow Whistle in Guatemalan Kids Case

    A group of federal workers came forward as whistleblowers and accused a Trump Department of Homeland Security official of making false or misleading statements in a court-filed declaration about the status of some of the Guatemalan kids who were targeted for middle-of-the-night deportations over the Labor Day weekend.

    Attorneys who succeeded in temporarily stopping the deportation immediately notified the federal judge in the case of the new whistleblower allegations as he considers whether to extend the ban on removing the children.

    Same link as in comment 80.

  82. says

    Understatement of the Day

    “When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin,’ enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now, and something that we’re going to have to grapple with — all of us.”–former President Barack Obama

    Same link as in comment 80.

  84. JM says

    @77 Lynna, OM: Kash Patel has been a failure since he took the positions but a lot of Tump’s cabinet have been disasters. That doesn’t mean they are going away.
    In his first term a lot of high ranking officials were people more or less foisted on him by Republican party officials, wealthy donors, right wing politicians and a few other seniors officials. Trump was not happy with them putting the law and their own interests before Trump’s. This time he picked them all himself for being lap dogs and he isn’t going to get rid of them quickly. As long as they spend a lot of time praising Trump at cabinet meetings they will hang.
    Trump might sacrifice them to cover his own rear but that isn’t likely to be an issue while he is in office.

  87. says

    Update on continuing resolution negotiations:

    Congressional Democrats are expected to release their own, alternative continuing resolution today, which will include language to fight back against the Trump White House’s lawless impoundments and pocket rescission.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Wednesday morning said Democrats want to make sure that “the process that we go through is real” — that the funding agreement they come to will be honored by the White House.

    Schumer and other Democrats have been vocal for months around this issue, saying that they are willing to fund the government in a bipartisan way, but they worry that any deal they make will then be broken by the Trump administration as it continues to not spend federal funding as Congress has authorized it — effectively making any government funding deal pointless.

    “In other words, right now, [Russell Vought] and the Trump administration, with rescissions, with impoundments, with pocket rescissions, can just undo almost unilaterally anything the Congress does,” Schumer said during an MSNBC interview. “We said that’s ridiculous and that shouldn’t happen. So we’re going to do that.”

    […] Democrats have not previously officially indicated they would include provisions to protect agreed-on spending from impoundment and rescissions.

    […] Republicans’ 91-page measure would keep the government funded through Nov. 21 but it does not include any health care provisions that Democrats have been demanding in exchange for their support.

    […] The Republican CR includes $30 million for lawmaker security in the wake of the recent killings of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and Democratic state lawmakers and $58 million for security assistance for the Supreme Court and the executive branch, which was reportedly a request from the White House. The measure also includes a so-called “D.C. fix” that would allow the district to spend its full budget. This would essentially reverse the $1.1 billion cut to Washington, D.C.’s budget that House Republicans included in the last CR to keep the government open in March.

    The Democratic proposal will also include “a broad base” of health care provisions, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told reporters outside the House floor Tuesday. […]

    Ultimately, Republicans, who are in control of both the upper and lower chamber, will have to negotiate with Democrats as they need a handful of votes from them in the Senate to avoid a government shutdown.

    Link

    JM @84, I agree.

  88. says

    Followup to comments 49, 53 and 79.

    […] As for the comments made by Vice President JD Vance on the record about his boss, the list is troubling. Vance has called Trump “reprehensible,” “cultural heroin,” and “America’s Hitler.” Someone better call Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate him.

    Link

  92. says

    “Amateur Hour”: The Man Sending US Military Contractors to Gaza

    “How a little-known former Green Beret went from starting a company to prevent hangovers to the center of a dubious scheme to deliver aid in Gaza.”

    In July, one week after a whistleblower accused contractors from the American security firm UG Solutions of deploying stun grenades and shooting live ammunition toward Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a new song appeared on the SoundCloud account of “Jameson G.” Titled “demon-in-the-desert,” the dubstep track featured artwork of an alien with a dagger stabbed through its skull. After a crescendo, the beat drops. “I am the demon in the desert,” a male voice screams. “You’re gonna die.” [video]

    A Mother Jones investigation shows that UG Solutions founder Jameson Govoni is a co-owner of the account, which uses the artist name “UltimoGringo.” It is part of a questionable background for Govoni, a former Green Beret and serial small-time entrepreneur who had almost no public presence until his armed contractors arrived in the Middle East earlier this year.

    Since 2019, the man [UG Solutions founder Jameson Govoni] now in charge of a private security force in Gaza has registered a drink for ravers, pursued a CBD venture, and sold a hangover preventative (the latter, his company boasts, was developed by “savages”). In April, he ran into trouble with the law: Govoni was taken into custody for felony eluding arrest and misdemeanor hit-and-run. One month later, after posting $50,000 in bail, he was sending military contractors to Gaza.

    In August, a grand jury declined to indict Govoni in the case. When asked about it, Govoni confirmed the existence of the case, but he said via email that it was “reviewed by a grand jury and dismissed. That speaks for itself.”

    Now, Govoni is at the center of a highly controversial Israeli- and US-backed food distribution scheme in Gaza that experts say has led to disastrous results.

    [I snipped details concerning past aid efforts by humanitarian groups.] The latest effort is spearheaded by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a shadowy US-backed nonprofit that uses UG Solutions military contractors to provide security.

    Dave Harden, who had served as USAID’s mission director for the West Bank and Gaza, said the current aid regime is a “catastrophe.” The UN has released similarly grim assessments. Earlier this month, it found that more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed near militarized distribution sites. […] A Doctors Without Borders report in August called the aid process “orchestrated killing.”

    Sam Rose, acting director of affairs in Gaza for UNRWA—the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees—said American contractors in Gaza have shown little appreciation for the nuances of food distribution, while behaving in a “completely abhorrent” manner. […]

    Govoni’s April arrest was not his first brush with law enforcement in North Carolina. While serving in the Army in 2015, North Carolina court records show, he was found guilty of driving while impaired after refusing a breathalyzer test. Two months later, his military career came to an end, according to a US Army spokesperson.

    […] Govoni said that the SoundCloud page that posted the “demon-in-the-desert” track is a “shared account” but that he did not write or produce the music uploaded to it. He also said it is “misleading” to link the lyrics of the Jameson G account’s songs to his “professional work.”

    In what he now calls an “offhand, tongue-in cheek” remark, Govoni once described himself as a “degenerate from Boston” who joined the military after 9/11 “to inflict pain on the people who inflicted pain on us.” At the time, Govoni was promoting the hangover prevention company he co-founded. His background is more concerning now that his contractors are carrying rifles in Gaza.

    Anthony Aguilar, a retired Army officer and Green Beret who worked for UG Solutions as a contractor, said there were indications from the beginning that Govoni’s firm was not fully equipped to handle its role.

    Aguilar was working at a Lowe’s home improvement store when a representative for the company reached out to him in May. “Even the hiring process to work in Lowe’s lawn and garden made the hiring process at UG Solutions look like amateur work,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that Chuck E. Cheese has more of an in-depth prior hiring process than UG Solutions.” Aguilar said he signed his contract with UG Solutions one day after the initial recruitment call, then arrived in Israel a few days later. […] [video]

    […] private military contractors are still largely unregulated, despite the explosion in use of such groups in recent decades.

    […] In May, Govoni corresponded with another concerned UG Solutions contractor, according to messages shared with Mother Jones and previously reported by the Associated Press. The contractor warned Govoni that he had just avoided a “catastrophic disaster” at one of the food distribution points. He added that he had hit “my red line,” while describing the Gaza operation as “amateur hour.”

    […] The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s relationship with UG Solutions is complicated. To provide aid, GHF contracts with Safe Reach Solutions, an American company led by a former CIA paramilitary chief. From there, Safe Reach Solutions subcontracts with UG Solutions to provide security at distribution sites, which reportedly pays personnel around $1,000 per day to work in Gaza. (A job posting stated that the company was looking to hire, among other people, former members of US Special Forces, snipers, and those “skilled in unconventional warfare tactics.”)

    GHF portrays itself as an independent entity, but reporting on the foundation’s origins undermines that narrative. As the New York Times reported in May, the “broad contours” of the GHF plan were “first discussed in late 2023, at private meetings of like-minded [Israeli] officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government.” In June, the State Department announced $30 million in funding for GHF, while the Israeli government has reportedly provided about $200 million. […]

    Independent experts have warned that the new aid structure allows Israel to advance its interests while hiding behind an ostensibly independent nonprofit. […]

    Rona, the Cardozo law professor, said the current aid model facilitates the “ethnic cleansing of Gaza” by “funneling starving people into a very few strategically located distribution points.” It creates, he added, “an image of fulfilling Israel’s humanitarian obligations, when, in fact, what it is doing is supporting Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

    Govoni’s path to launching UG Solutions shows what a lack of regulation of private security companies looks like in practice. [I snipped the details.]

    UG Solutions has also faced criticism related to Islamophobia. In August, the Intercept reported that Johnny Mulford, the company’s “country team leader” between May and August in Gaza, has Crusader-related tattoos and is a member of the Infidels, a motorcycle club that once held an anti-Muslim pig roast “in defiance of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.”

    The BBC further revealed earlier this month that at least 10 members of the Infidels are working in Gaza for UG Solutions—seven of whom are reportedly in senior positions. One of those men posted a photo on Facebook of armed contractors in Gaza holding a banner that read, “Make Gaza Great Again.” According to the BBC, the contractor has “1095”—the year the first Crusade was launched—tattooed on his thumbs. (UG Solutions defended its hiring practices by saying it does “not screen for personal hobbies or affiliations unrelated to job performance or security standards.”)

    UG Solutions contractors initially began working in Gaza in January 2025 [I snipped details concerning who hired UG Solutions; details concerning their supposed security work in Gaza; and details concerning Govoni’s later arrest that was covered by Israeli outlet Shomrim.]

    […] The case has now been resolved in Govoni’s favor after a North Carolina grand jury declined to indict him. On Monday, the case stopped appearing in public searches of North Carolina court records.

    In May, one month after Govoni’s arrest in North Carolina, UG Solutions contractors arrived in Gaza to provide security at the new food distribution sites. That work quickly proved far more controversial than the original deployment.

    GHF’s internal operations appeared to be in disarray as it prepared to begin food distributions that month. The foundation initially claimed that Nate Mook, former head of World Central Kitchen, and David Beasley, former executive director of the World Food Programme, were part of its leadership team. But both quickly told CNN that they were not working for the nonprofit. Soon after, GHF Executive Director Jake Wood resigned after concluding that it had become “clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”

    All the best people.

  93. says

    MEMPHIS (The Borowitz Report)—Abandoning their customary black vests and masks, ICE agents have gone undercover in Memphis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed on Wednesday.

    Noem defended her department’s expenditure of $85,000 to outfit the agents in sequined jumpsuits, arguing that such a disguise was necessary for ICE to blend into the population inconspicuously.

    Issuing a stern warning to the city of Memphis, Noem declared, “If I see something that appears to be nothing but a hound dog, I will shoot it.”

    Photo of Elvis impersonators is available at the link.

    Link

  94. says

    @90 birgerjohansson wrote: Most political violence in USA comes from the Right. He had a youtube link.
    I reply: You are so correct. However, there is nowhere in this country that is safe from the lies and dishonesty of the magat administration!

    https://crooksandliars.com/2025/09/doj-removes-study-showing-domestic
    Don’t take it from me. Take it from a study that had been posted to a webpage of the Department of Justice. Its first sentence states, “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
    https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/
    The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine. Daniel Malmer, a PhD student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill, first noticed the paper was deleted.

  96. says

    RE: my post @94, I grabbed a copy of the pdf report from the wayback machine. It does indeed say far-right attacks out pace all other . . including left attacks.
    (do I dare say ‘prove me wrong’?!?!?)

  99. says

    Fed cuts rates as plunging job gains trigger alarm for economy

    The Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday for the first time this year as the central bank attempts to ease pressure on the weakening U.S. job market.

    The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) — the panel of Fed officials responsible for setting borrowing costs — cut its baseline interest rate to a range between 4 percent and 4.25 percent, a reduction of 0.25 percentage points.

    “This is quite an unusual situation,” Powell said during a Wednesday press conference, describing the tension in between the Fed’s efforts to stave off tariff-driven inflation while supporting the job market.

    Powell said that while the Fed expects inflation to increase due to Trump’s tariffs, the bank is seeing the labor market take far more damage under the weight of higher import taxes and steep cuts to immigration.

    “[…] there’s downside risk, clearly, in the labor market, so we’re moving in the direction of more neutral policy.
    Eleven of the 12 voting FOMC members supported the decision to cut rates by 0.25 percentage points Wednesday. Fed Gov. Stephen Miran, who until Tuesday served as Trump’s top White House economist, was the sole dissenter and called for a 0.5 percentage point cut. […]

  103. says

    NBC News:

    Israel pressed ahead Wednesday with an intense new ground offensive in Gaza City, defying international condemnation and sending hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the devastated, famine-stricken area.

  106. birgerjohansson says

    Kash Patel may have lied under oath about Jeffrey Epstein. What he says and what survivors say do not match

    And considering how disliked he is -even among Republicans- no one will feel a great urge to save him from the consequences of his actions.

  108. says

    New York Times:

    Four Democratic-controlled Western states on Wednesday issued their own recommendations on who should get three common seasonal vaccines, a sharp rejection of efforts by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to upend vaccine policy at the federal level.

  109. says

    New York Times:

    More than two dozen children from Guatemala whom the Trump administration sought to deport earlier this month had been flagged as vulnerable to child abuse and human trafficking in a Health and Human Services Department database that tracks unaccompanied children, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed to Congress on Tuesday.

  110. says

    Associated Press:

    Russia moved to amplify online conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s killing just hours after it happened, seeding social media with the frightening claim that America is slipping into civil war. Chinese and pro-Iranian groups also spread disinformation about the shooting.

    The Trump administration is opposed to efforts to mitigate foreign disinformation campaigns.

  112. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 110

    Don’t be ridiculous! America won’t slip into another civil war.

    The Democrats/liberals will just let MAGA take over.

  113. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/hundreds-of-former-gator-gulag-prisoners

    “Hundreds Of Former ‘Gator Gulag’ Prisoners Can’t Be Found, Is That Bad?”

    As we suspected a few weeks back, a federal judge’s order that the government shut down the Everglades immigration concentration camp they cleverly called “Alligator Alcatraz” didn’t actually come to pass, after an appeals court blocked that order September 4. So far, the camp, which Gov. Ron DeSantis created on a whim to suck up to Donald Trump, still houses fewer than 400 detainees [!], down from a high of 1,800 in July.

    But in the process of moving detainees out of the camp in anticipation that it had to close, it seems that the government lost track of a lot of the prisoners — or maybe the government has that information, but it’s not possible for outsiders to figure out where the hell hundreds of them ended up. As the Miami Herald reports (non-paywalled Yahoo News reprint here),

    As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined. […]

    Around 800 detainees showed no record on ICE’s online database. More than 450 listed no location and only instructed the user to “Call ICE for details” — a vague notation that attorneys said could mean that a detainee is still being processed, in the middle of a transfer between two sites or about to be deported.

    It’s also possible, the paper notes, that some of them are still in DeSantis’s swamp dungeon, which is run by the state of Florida and doesn’t use the federal government database. Florida simply doesn’t have any system that would let someone — like a detainee’s family or attorney — look them up. But even if many of the detainees fell into that paperwork black hole, there are way more than 400 prisoners that reporters couldn’t locate one way or another.

    Hey, remember how back in 2018 Trump’s immigration people just didn’t bother keeping records to match parents to the children they took away at the border, and as late as 2024, as many as 1,360 children still couldn’t be returned to their families? These detainees are adults, though, so maybe disappearing them from official records is less scandalous. They’re only illegals, so it’s not like they’re people.

    The Herald notes that some of the former DeSantis hostages may have been deported, although “internal data obtained by the Herald show the vast majority of detainees didn’t have final orders of removal from a judge” before they were sent to the camp. At least some deportations may have resulted when detainees decided to accept being deported just so they could get out of the prison, with its overflowing toilets, insect infestations, and inedible food.

    “It became a game of chicken to see who’s going to blink first, to see if the client’s going to say ‘I don’t want to be detained in these conditions, just send me back,’” said Miami immigration attorney Alex Solomiany.

    But that was definitely not the case for one of Solomiany’s clients, a 53-year-old man from Guatemala who had been in the US since 2001 and has a spouse and children. The man had a bond hearing scheduled, but the government “accidentally” deported him to Guatemala before it could be held. Funny how those “accidents” keep happening! Solomiany is trying to get ICE to return him so he can get due process, so good luck with that.

    Another immigration attorney, Zachary Perez, said that it looked to him like his clients had all “suffered some pretty bad results just from being tagged with the Alligator Alcatraz label,” as if there were some kind of chaos curse following them around.

    For instance, there’s Michael Borrego Fernandez, 35, from Cuba, who went missing for over a week after he was moved out of the Everglades prison camp. First he was sent to a private prison in San Diego, and then … his family didn’t hear anything more from him for over a week.

    Borrego’s attorney Mich Gonzalez said he called the California facility repeatedly but was told each time that no one by that name was detained there.

    His family was worried about him because while he was in the Florida swamp prison, he’d had surgery for severe hemorrhoids, and was in a lot of pain afterwards. He was kept shackled to his bed and they believe he didn’t get adequate care. His mother said that not knowing where he was was “like psychological torture.”

    Finally, after more than a week, they heard from Borrego again.

    But he wasn’t in California.

    He was 2,000 miles away from where ICE said he would be.

    Borrego had abruptly been deported to the Mexican state of Tabasco.

    We can’t see why anyone could possibly complain about that, because it wasn’t South Sudan, now was it?

  114. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: birgerjohansson @74:

    Hossenfelder alert […] if it is true […]

    Sabine has no credibility. Even where she had credentials, she frittered it away by mixing lies into her presentations. She’s been spouting right-wing propaganda dangerous for both social issues AND physics. Even in the thumbnail of the video you linked, she’s framing herself as a cancelled freeze peach martyr, which is yet another red flag.
     
    John Carlos Baez (Mathematical physicist at University of Edinburgh):

    Criticizing string theory is great, but coming up with better theories of fundamental physics is damned hard. Fundamental physics is stuck. But physics *as a whole* is far from stagnant: condensed matter physics, biophysics, optics, astrophysics and other fields are doing amazing things which are far more practical than, say, particle physics. Saying the whole field needs to be defunded is crazy.

     
    John Carlos Baez – Visions for the Future of Physics (Lecture til 47m, Q&A until 1h40m, May 18)

    2:00: the search for a very small set of universal laws that govern the whole physical world. […] That was the dream. But progress in fundamental physics slowed down after 1980.
    [*A timeline of 20th century theory and experiment ensues.*]
    Discoveries were still made, but they are all either discoveries that we still don’t understand yet, or discoveries that’ve confirmed theories we already have. There are no new theoretical developments at a fundamental level. […] Most branches of theoretical physics are doing very well because we have a lot left to do in using our knowledge so far in fundamental physics.

    22:36 [Excitons and polaritons]
    26:30 [Artificial special relativity]
    30:50 [Artificial universes with 2 time dimensions using metamaterials]
    35:27 [Topological matter and Quantum Hall effect]
    39:39 [Active matter]

    57:31: If you wanna do physics [that] connects to experiments instead of mathematics […] you have to move away from fundamental physics […] Biophysics [is] full of new concepts that we’re just barely beginning to understand. We don’t even have the language […] If you wanna [do] really exciting work, you should not work on something that used to be exciting and is beautiful now. You should work on something that’s a mess now and try to straighten it up, and then you will make the beautiful discoveries.

    The video has low info density. Can’t recomend watching, especially the Q&A.

  115. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    John Carlos Baez:

    Wow! The black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy is incredibly dynamic!

    In 2017, the magnetic fields near its event horizon were spiraling around one way. By 2018 they settled down. But by 2021, they were spiraling in the opposite direction! [Photos]

    This black hole is incredibly massive: about 6 billion times heavier than our Sun. But it radius is only 120 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. That’s big, but it doesn’t take light very long to go that far: just 16 hours. So it’s theoretically possible for magnetic fields to change quite fast.

    But what’s making these magnetic fields? It’s hot ionized gas called plasma, spiraling down into the black hole […] Did the swirling motion of this stuff change significantly in just a few years? Or just the magnetic fields?
    […]
    It’s like black holes have “weather”. As usual, things are more interesting than the simple theoretical models we had before we saw what’s actually going on. Imagine trying to understand weather before you looked at it.

  119. birgerjohansson says

    The senate seats of Nebraska and North Carolina may be flipped in the midterms. This could lead to blocking the Republicans even if the VP votes.
    Nebraska has an Independent that has caught up with the likely Republican nominee.

    North Carolina has a Dem candidate that is leading the Rep candidate by 7 points. It is 13 months to the midterms byt the Republicans will take the blame for the likely continued inflation and poor labor market.

  120. birgerjohansson says

    “The Trump-appointed head of the US media regulator, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States (FCC), said it appeared to be a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people”.
    .
    Every accusation is a confession.

  123. StevoR says

    After much anticipation, Australia has set its new climate targets: a reduction of 62 to 70 per cent within the next 10 years. Climate groups have already criticised the targets as “timid, weak, and a failure”.

    Under the Paris Agreement, countries have to submit increasingly ambitious targets every five years with the goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees. These targets will be scrutinised through many lenses — scientific, political, community expectations and the business community’s concerns.

    We’ve consulted climate experts to give their assessment of how these targets stack up with what’s at stake.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-18/climate-targets-australia-2035-on-path-to-net-zero/105719910

  126. says

    After he played a key role in getting late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show pulled from ABC “indefinitely,” Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, took a victory lap of sorts: He sat down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity — a symbolically significant choice, given Hannity’s alliance with the Trump White House. [video]

    There was one phrase that Carr used over and over again during the relatively brief on-air appearance. With a broadcast license, the FCC chairman said, “comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest.” As the interview progressed, he again said, “We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there’s broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn their license in to the FCC.”

    Carr concluded, “Look, running a narrow partisan circus, whatever the public interest means, it’s not that. … If you’re going to have a license from the FCC, we expect you to broadly serve the public interest.”

    As it turns out, however, the Republican regulator appears to have reached this conclusion quite recently.

    “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not,” Carr wrote in 2019. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’”

    Evidently, he was against his standard before he was for it. [!]

    In 2022, Carr also wrote, “President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”

    Three years later, Carr appeared on a far-right podcast and referenced his agency’s role in granting broadcast licenses. Referring specifically to a satirist’s comedic monologue, Carr added, “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

    Before Senate Republicans agreed to make Carr the FCC chair, he wrote a chapter in the far-right Project 2025 blueprint. “The F.C.C. should promote freedom of speech,” he wrote in the first words of the chapter.

    The Trump administration’s aggressive campaign against the First Amendment would be less terrifying if Carr had meant any of it.

    Link

  127. says

    Followup to comment 126.

    New York Times:

    In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity late Wednesday, F.C.C. Chairman Brendan Carr described the pulling of Jimmy Kimmel’s show as an ‘important turning point’ and suggested others could face similar pressure. … ‘There’s more work to go,’ Mr. Carr said.

    Commentary:

    […] The message is hardly subtle: Kimmel is the latest target, but he’s not the last.

    FCC member Anna Gomez, a Biden appointee and the lone Democrat on the panel, responded online, “This administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”

    She had plenty of company. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois argued online, “A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.”

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added, “America is meant to be a bastion of free speech. Everybody across the political spectrum should be speaking out to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel.”

    The New York Democrat concluded, “This is about protecting democracy. This must go to court.”

    Earlier, Trump wrote in a social media post:

    I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” Four days later, Trump added, “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone. … It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!

    Yes, that was the president of the USA targeting hosts of late night TV shows. Sounds like a Putinesque attitude toward the media, or maybe Victor Orbán.

  128. says

    Trump says he’s designating Antifa as a terrorist organization

    […] Trump said he is designating the far-left anti-fascism movement Antifa as a terrorist organization, announcing the move on his Truth Social platform in the early hours of Thursday morning UK time.

    It wasn’t immediately clear what mechanism Trump would use to make the designation, and Antifa lacks centralized structure or defined leadership, making it unclear who or what precisely would be targeted.

    “I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

    A White House official told CNN, “This is just one of many actions the president will take to address left wing organizations that fuel political violence.” […]

  129. says

    South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace’s resolution to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) failed [good news] on Wednesday, after a handful of Republicans grew a spine and joined Democrats to squash the ridiculous punishment effort.

    The House voted to table, congressional speak for kill, Mace’s resolution by a vote of 214 to 213, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in voting to quash the measure. [That was a close call.]

    Mace introduced the censure resolution—which would not only have censured Omar but also would have kicked her off of her House committees—in an effort to punish the Minnesota Democrat for comments she made following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

    Omar said in a Zeteo interview that Kirk’s murder was horrific, but that his death doesn’t erase the fact that he made bigoted comments in his life. [All true.]

    […] Since then, Mace has been on a vile and unhinged social media tirade against Omar—spewing racist bile about Omar and even demanding that she be “deported back to Somalia.”

    After Mace’s censure resolution failed, she fired off another lie-filled, racist tirade against Omar on X.

    “Ilhan Omar mocked the cold-blooded assassination of an innocent American husband and father. She’s supported ISIS. She’s supported the Muslim Brotherhood. She’s incited political violence. And tonight, Congress protected her,” Mace wrote.

    The four Republicans who voted to table the censure resolution were Nebraska’s Mike Flood, Oregon’s Jeff Hurd, California’s Tom McClintock, and Florida’s Cory Mills. […]

    Link

  130. says

    For all of […] Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about stepping up the war on drugs, it turns out that what he is really giving America is … much lower prices on cocaine.

    The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump’s crackdown on fentanyl suppliers left an open path for a cocaine kingpin to step in, making coke cheaper and as pure as ever. So while Trump may have disrupted the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s largest fentanyl trafficker, Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera, has stepped in to fill the void. Now, cocaine prices have fallen by nearly half compared to five years ago, with a gram now costing around $60 to $75.

    Well, Trump did say he’d end inflation on Day One. He didn’t specify what inflation, exactly. Perhaps Trump’s war on drugs was just a war on drug prices? So much for Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico as payback for fentanyl.

    This probably isn’t what conservatives mean by RETVRN, their demand that we reject modernity and embrace tradition, but Trump is definitely taking us back to the 1980s, which is when, coincidentally, Trump was vouching for a big-time cocaine trafficker to get him a lighter sentence.

    In 1985, Joseph Weichselbaum was indicted for heading a huge cocaine operation, but he also happened to run the helicopter service Trump used to bring people to his Atlantic City casinos to the tune of $2 million per year. Trump wrote to the judge, calling Weichselbaum a “credit to the community” and “conscientious, forthright, and diligent.” […]

    Link

  132. says

    Will NASA kill a pair of critical climate satellites?

    As Congress returns to session this month, the fate of two satellites that have become integral to climate science hangs in the balance.

    The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and -3, or OCO-2 and -3, have been circling the globe for years, gathering some of the best data available on carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

    They helped scientists determine that natural systems struggled in the extreme heat of 2023 and failed to pull in as much CO2 as normal. They’ve helped researchers track early indicators of agricultural drought in India, and measure climate-warming emissions coming out of coal power plants in Montana, Poland and Canada.

    They are the “gold standard” for measuring the most abundant climate-warming gas in the atmosphere from space, according to NASA. Yet the space administration has proposed ending the satellites’ missions next year, part of the Trump administration’s proposed 24 percent reduction in the agency’s budget.

    Across NASA, the cuts would amount to $6 billion. Nixing the two satellites would provide $16 million of that, about a quarter of a percent of the total.

    “It would be a blow to science to have these missions canceled,” said Ray Nassar, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, that country’s environmental regulatory agency, who stressed that he was not commenting on the merits of a U.S. policy proposal but only its potential impact to science. He has used OCO data to show how satellites could measure pollution from individual power plants.

    Nassar noted that it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and launch the satellites, “and the continual operation of them is a fraction of that cost. So to shut them off is … not really getting the full return on the initial investment to get them there.”

    […] The proposed end for the satellites’ missions is part of a broader attempt by the Trump administration to slash federal investments into earth and climate sciences, including at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.

    OCO-2 was launched in 2014 to measure CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and to better understand how pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources are offset by natural systems that absorb the climate pollutant. Its launch came after a previous attempt to launch a similar satellite failed in 2009.

    OCO-3, which is attached to the International Space Station, was launched in 2019. According to NASA, it provided “for the first time, daily variations in the release and uptake of carbon dioxide by plants and trees in the major tropical rain forests of South America, Africa, and South-East Asia, the largest stores of above ground carbon on our planet.”

    A 2023 senior review for operating missions determined that OCO-2 was in “excellent condition” and had enough fuel to operate until 2040. […]

    While that work could still continue without the OCO satellites, “it’s sort of like telling someone, if you didn’t have eyes you could still hear and taste, so why do you really need your eyes?” Nassar said. “It’s taking away a tool that we’re reliant on today. It doesn’t mean we don’t know anything without it, but we would have a limited view of what’s going on.”

    If Congress chooses to cut funding for the satellites, there’s a chance that some other entity, like a private company or philanthropy, could take them over. In July, NASA included the OCO-3 in a list of proposals it was soliciting, saying its funding could end and that it was “seeking a partner.”

  133. says

    Charlie Kirk would have been besties with Jesus, says nutty GOP lawmaker

    Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas used the House Oversight Committee’s time with FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday to pontificate on the bigoted right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered last week.

    “Charlie Kirk was a man of faith,” Nehls said. “First and foremost, he loved his—he loved his Lord Jesus. He loved his family. Beautiful wife, beautiful children. Just a remarkable, honorable man that was silenced with this assassin’s bullet. I would say, if Charlie Kirk lived in the biblical times, he’d have been the 13th disciple. He’d have been the 13th disciple”. [video]

    […] The Trump administration’s ongoing crusade to silence dissent includes not only baselessly blaming the left for Kirk’s death—which flies in the face of all evidence—but also a wholesale effort to whitewash Kirk’s legacy of bigotry.

    Nehls’ comment is particularly rich coming from someone accused of stolen valor, even by fellow Republicans, for continuing to wear a Combat Infantryman Badge lapel pin from Afghanistan that was officially revoked in 2023.

  134. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-pals-the-ellison-boys-gonna

    “Trump Pals The Ellison Boys Gonna Save CBS And TikTok From Woke Bias!”

    “Here comes TrumpTok.”

    Sounds like President Trump is inching closer towards his wish to be king of all media and star of every stage! He coyly hinted on his shitty web platform on Monday:

    The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly. A deal was also reached on a “certain” company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy! I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one!!! President DJT

    And Trump’s sherpa of deals/ mean drunk/ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there was a “framework for a deal” for a TikTok sale, though he has said the words “framework for a deal” eleventy-hundred times. Through the months of Trump’s insane pingponging deals with China we have learned that “framework” and “deal” are two very different things. Though at least this is better than the “handshake for a framework” Howard Lutnick said they had back in June. So on Friday are Trump and Scott Bessent really, finally going to get that deal from China on those rare earth minerals, the ones US tech companies need to make all of their AI chips, planes, and high-tech gadgets that Trump screwed them out of by self-embargoing the US? It’s concepts of a framework for maybe!

    But anyway, word on the street, aka CBS and the Wall Street Journal, is that the deal […] is the potential sale of TikTok to Oracle, whose CEO is his close pal Larry Ellison, and some private equity firms. If the name rings a bell, it’s because Larry Ellison’s son David is the new chairman and CEO of Paramount, after completing a merger between Paramount (CBS’s parent company) and Ellison’s company, Skydance. And both father and son are longtime Republican donors. […]

    Oh, and now Paramount Skydance is reportedly in talks to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, too, the parent company of CNN. Those Ellison boys are making the kind of cross-platform Republican media control that Project 2025 once only dreamed of! […]

    TikTok being forced under his thumb has apparently long been a wish of Trump’s, at least since app users first ground his gears back in 2020 by registering to attend his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with no intention of showing up, causing his delicate ego embarrassment when the yuge surging crowd he was expecting turned out to be a mere trickle. He raged for TikTok to be BANNED, because something something Chinese spies, and Congress passed an act that banned the app unless its algorithm was put under the control of a US company. And Joe Biden signed it!

    Remember that extra-stupid hearing with TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew, with Tom Cotton refusing to accept that he is from Singapore, which is a whole different country than China, and how embarrassingly pig-ignorant the senators were about the basics of how the Internet even works? [video]

    But, the Chinese government doesn’t and has never owned TikTok. A Chinese man founded it and is still 20 percent of the board, but the company was never incorporated in China. There has been no evidence that the Chinese government ever had access to user data, much less that they were using it to spy on dissidents or Americans making cucumber salads.

    TikTok is owned by ByteDance Ltd., which is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, and TikTok Inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore. And its servers — ORACLE servers, in fact — dish out its secret-sauce algorithm from Virginia. Sixty percent of ByteDance is currently owned by non-Chinese global institutional investors including Susquehanna International Group (majority shareholder Jeff Yass), the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, KKR, BlackRock, and Tiger Global Management; 20 percent of the firm is owned by Beijing-based founder Zhang Yiming, and 20 percent is owned by employees.

    But Congress and Biden decided to ban the app anyway, after Trump had said it was a CHINESE SPY EMERGENCY. And then some curious things happened!

    Jeff Yass, the managing director of Susquehanna International Group, the company that is also the largest shareholder of TikTok’s parent company, bought two percent of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group [!!!], making its share price surge 140 percent, defibrillating Trump’s flatlining company.

    And then right before the ‘24 election, the TikTok algorithm underwent a noticeable shift, and Trumpy content began appearing in people’s feeds when it hadn’t before. And TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration in January. [!]

    And after his win, Trump credited TikTok with helping him win more young voters, so he loved it again and decided to save it, even going to the Supreme Court to try to stop them from enacting the ban he himself had asked Congress to pass. The deadline for a sale has since been extended four times already, and has now been pushed off until December 16.

    The Wall Street Journal has more details of the prospective deal: The company’s board would stay the same, except that Zhang Yiming’s stake would be reduced to less than 20 percent, and a consortium of US companies, including Susquehanna International, KKR, General Atlantic Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz would control 80 percent of the company. A new US entity would be created, with a board with one member designated by the US government [!], which is unheard of. And the US company would license the magic algorithm, putting it into a new US version of the app, so that the Trumpy board would be able to customize it and make it massage everybody’s feed this way and that, promoting the reach of some accounts and limiting access to others.

    Meanwhile, CBS under control of its new owner Paramount has a whole other vibe. Paramount Global and CBS CEO George Cheeks hasn’t been fired (yet), but he obeyed in advance. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was cancelled before the deal even went down, and Trump’s claims against 60 Minutes for making Kamala Harris look too smart got settled for a $16 million donation to his presidential library before the merger was approved.

    And CBS News employees say Ellison the younger broke his promise not to politicize their news reporting almost immediately, reportedly entering talks to buy The Free Press, owned by anti-woke “free speech” crusader Bari Weiss, who got her start ratting out professors for being pro-Arab, for “well above” $100 million and installing her into some kind of a senior leadership role to tone-police the reporting at CBS News. [!]

    And Ellison brought on a conservative thinktanker from the Hudson Institute, Kenneth R. Weinstein, to be an ombudsman rooting out any “complaints of bias” that might aggrieve conservatives at CBS.

    But it all doesn’t go far enough for everybody on the Right, of course. Now at least one Federalist Society weirdo is proposing that the government shut down Bluesky, and Discord too. [!]

    […] Businesses do about $15 billion in sales a year on TikTok. And TikTok and Discord have been critical to documenting human rights abuses, and organizing protests, such as recently in Nepal. There’s many times more young people in the US and around the world on Discord (614 million users) and on TikTok (2 billion users) than who are watching 60 Minutes (about 8 million viewers) so, of course the dominionists want to dominate it. […]

    Subversive meme-clips, better get them while humor is still legal! [video]

  136. says

    […] While farm income is technically up, it’s only because of $42 billion in socialist bailout money in the form of a 720 percent increase in ad hoc disaster payments, that so far have made up more than 23 percent of Net Farm Income in 2025. But without that, farm income is down nearly 6 percent from December. And economists with the University of Illinois report that agricultural exports dropped by nearly $5 billion in just July alone.

    The reason why is no mystery! Those Trump tariffs screwed over farmers coming and going, with higher input costs for supplies like seeds, fertilizer, and tractors, and lower selling prices for commodities. So far this year, China has not purchased one single, solitary soybean, opting to shop for them in friendlier Brazil, instead.

    And US soybean farmers are projected to lose roughly $100 an acre this year. Nor are Mexican or Canadian companies as interested in buying the US’s corn or rice, now that retaliatory tariffs have made them more expensive. So farmers who took out loans or dipped into capital reserves expecting to sell their crops are facing the threat of bankruptcy, and in Q1 of 2025 the number of farm bankruptcies was nearly double the level of the first quarter of 2024.

    Of course Trump knew full well this was going to happen, because it happened in his first term too: He levied tariffs, farm bankruptcies reached the highest level in a decade, and he ended up giving farmers a $16 billion bailout. And now Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says even more bailout money might be coming.

    It would be simple to help out farmers without giving them any socialist bailout money. Quit tariffing fertilizer, for one thing! Even Chuck Grassley has noticed this.

    […] Another big-brain idea, quit tariffing tractors! Or even just make ONE tariff rate and stick to it. The tariffs aren’t only expensive, they’re bizarrely complicated, and of course, prone to shifting with the tides of Dear Leader’s ever-changing moods.

    From the WSJ:

    The effective tariff facing exporters now varies depending on a product’s metal content. For a machine worth $1 million with a 20% steel content, the rate would be 50% of $200,000 and 15% of the rest, resulting in a $220,000 levy per machine—or a 22% tariff. The U.S. has said it would review the metals tariff list every four months, adding to the uncertainty.

    Or as Grassley put it:

    “Putting 50% tariffs on things that have steel in them, when you can’t buy those things in the United States, and you need them for your tractor to be finally manufactured? […] Why drive up the price of John Deeres because of a tariff on something they need for the tractor that they can’t even get in the United States? It’s a stupid policy.”

    Indeed, if the point of these tariffs is to start making more tractors in the US, why put kooky tariffs on the metal that tractors are made out of? If we were cynical, it might seem like a ploy to make farmland real cheap so big agribusiness can buy it all up.

    And the shortage of farmworkers is another self-made Trump problem. When the regime isn’t humiliatingly rounding up and detaining people with and without proper work visas, it’s also allowing the ones who do have H-2A visas to work in conditions one federal judge called “a form of modern-day slavery,” where they’re frequently abused, get their wages stolen, and are threatened with a call to ICE if they complain. And if Stephen Miller gets his way, there’d be no foreign workers here at all, and those waitresses, teachers, and stewardesses Miller and his cancel culture horde got fired for not mourning Charlie Kirk properly would be out there picking the oranges. Nobody ever said right-wing ideology was logical.

    And then there’s how USAID is no more, and not buying farmers’ extra grain any more. Cruel as they are stupid, ayup.

    Are Republicans starting to smell the disaster Trump is brewing? Polling shows more Republicans than Democrats are worried about the economy […] his approval rating is underwater in most states, including the breadbasket ones. Even in Arkansas, it has plunged to single digits. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/uh-oh-us-farmers-totally-screwed

  138. says

    LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—Reacting to the huge number of Britons who came out to greet him on Wednesday, Donald J. Trump boasted that former President Barack Obama “never got crowds like this” when he visited the United Kingdom.

    “I mean, the streets are packed with people chanting my name,” he bragged. “And tons of them are carrying signs with ‘Trump’ on them. Wow!”

    “I’m told there are even balloons that look like me,” he added in amazement. “If Obama is watching this on TV, it’s gotta be killing him.”

    The biggest crowds for Trump were in London, where thousands turned out at Buckingham Palace for the changing of the diaper.

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-boasts-that-obama-never-got

  139. JM says

    CNN: Trump admin has been quietly pushing to retake Afghan base from the Taliban for months, sources say

    President Donald Trump has been quietly pushing his national security officials for months to find a way to get Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan back from the Taliban, three people familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Trump hinted at those discussions publicly for the first time on Thursday, telling reporters that his administration is working to regain control of the base, which lies an hour north of Kabul. The Taliban took it over following the collapse of the Afghan government and the US military withdrawal in 2021.

    Bagram Air Base does have one bit of strategic importance, it is a good location for monitoring China and the region from the air. Other then that it isn’t important, it would be a isolated base in a highly hostile country.
    Here Trump is making an effort to undo one of the few good things he did during his first term. He agreed to pulling out of Afghanistan because he wasn’t worried about making the political establishment look bad. Now he wants to get the US involved again. I expect this goes no place. The Taliban are not going to be interested in giving the US a foothold and are not going to be easy to bribe.
    The conspiracy theory view is that Putin is having him do this to distract from helping Ukraine and waste US military resources.

    Trump has previously indicated that if the US withdrawal in 2021 had happened under his administration, he’d have kept control of Bagram, citing its strategic importance near the border between Afghanistan and China. Earlier this month he said that the Biden administration was “so stupid” for withdrawing US troops from the base in 2021.

    The deal Trump negotiated with the government of Afghanistan required the US leave the base. Of course Trump might not abide by the terms of a deal he negotiated, so this could be true.

  140. JM says

    CNN: Trump asks Supreme Court to let him fire Lisa Cook from Federal Reserve

    President Donald Trump took his effort to remove a governor from the Federal Reserve to the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the justices to remove Lisa Cook from the powerful board a day after it cut interest rates for the first time in months.
    Trump’s emergency appeal put the issue of Fed independence – a question of monumental significance for the US economy – onto the court’s docket months after the justices appeared to carve out special protections for the agency. On the other hand, Trump’s effort to remove Cook involves new legal theories that may find purchase on the 6-3 conservative court.

    I would be amazed if this goes anywhere. The court carved out special exceptions from the presidents power specifically for the Federal Reserve, leaving the option of apply it to certain other important posts. The justices talked about historic principle and such but practically speaking this exception is to keep the Federal Reserve out of Trump’s hands.

    “That the Federal Reserve Board plays a uniquely important role in the American economy only heightens the government’s and the public’s interest in ensuring that an ethically compromised member does not continue wielding its vast powers,” the administration said in its emergency appeal.

    I’m surprised anybody could write that sentence without the irony destroying their brain. It’s painful just to read it.

  141. says

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had already earned a dreadful reputation. Dr. Susan Monarez, the ousted CDC chief, made him look even worse.

    Related video at the link.

    On July 29, the Senate confirmed Dr. Susan Monarez, Donald Trump’s nominee, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two days later, Monarez was sworn into office — only to be ousted 27 days later after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    Three weeks after that, she had an opportunity to testify before a Senate panel, where she managed to make RFK Jr. look even worse. As The New York Times reported, Monarez “repeatedly said that [Kennedy] had abandoned science in dismantling longstanding vaccine policy and demanding adherence to his views.”

    But while all of her revelations were notable, certain elements stood out. From the Times report:

    Dr. Monarez provided more details about the events that led to her firing. She told senators that she met with Mr. Kennedy three times on Aug. 25. In those meetings, she testified that Mr. Kennedy asked her to fire vaccine scientists without cause. She said he also asked her to pledge that she would approve in advance the forthcoming recommendations of the C.D.C.’s influential vaccine committee without having seen them.

    “He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez testified, referring to decisions that hadn’t been made yet. She added that Kennedy told her either to follow his order or resign.

    Later, at the same Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing, the ousted CDC chief told Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin that RFK Jr. specifically instructed Monarez not to communicate with members of Congress.

    “I was directed to only work with political appointees,” she said, referring to Trump appointees, rather than career officials at the agency.

    Or put another way, if this was correct, Kennedy didn’t want the Senate-approved CDC director communicating with senators who have oversight authority over the CDC. [social media post and video: ”
    Former CDC Director: He stated there was no scientific evidence associated with vaccines. He called CDC the most corrupt agency in the world. He said that CDC employees were horrible people, were killing children”]

    In case that weren’t quite enough, Monarez — who, again, was Trump’s nominee to lead the CDC — testified that Kennedy told her there was no scientific evidence associated with vaccines and that he believed CDC scientists were responsible for harming children.

    I don’t know what the standard might be in Congress for impeaching a health secretary, but Monarez’s testimony should probably at least initiate some conversation among lawmakers.

  142. says

    Obama: We have to recognize that on both sides there are people who are extremists

    But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the government behind extremist views.

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iu4j537hox5huj4bwnwgub4z/post/3lz2mtofgjr2e

    Video at the link.

    Obama speaking at the same event:

    Obama: So we have to extend to people during their period of mourning

    We can also at the same time say I disagree with the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake

    I can disagree with the suggestion that my wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain processing power.

  143. says

    Washington Post:

    Russian state-controlled media outlets and allied social media accounts have seized on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to push narratives that favor the Kremlin and aim to divide Americans and potentially ingratiate the Russians with President Donald Trump, researchers say.

    News organizations such as Sputnik and the former Russia Today (now RT) have extensively covered the killing, the arrest and the continuing political fallout, emphasizing theories shared by Trump’s most conservative allies and highlighting comments by people who said they were unmoved by Kirk’s death.

    “RT was quickly taking to amplifying insensitive or cruel response to it by Americans, sometimes tagging influential conservative accounts,” said Emerson Brooking, director of strategy at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

    Brooking said the Moscow-based multimedia company has waded more deeply into U.S. issues in the past week than it previously had since Trump took office in January, marking a potential change in strategy. After RT was sanctioned last September by the United States and banned by YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, it retreated from intense coverage of U.S. politics.

    […] Iranian figures have said Israel was behind Kirk’s death, while Chinese outlets and supporters have used bogus claims to exaggerate U.S. divisions, according to research by NewsGuard, a news site rating company.

    Some foreign outlets amplified conspiracy theories or false claims that circulated wildly in the aftermath of the shooting. Chinese sites, for instance, latched onto false claims from the left that suspect Tyler Robinson had contributed to one of Trump’s campaigns or was a proven follower of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, as well as conservative assertions of a wide conspiracy reaching to liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a perennial target for antisemites.

    […] While Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) warned last week that Russian and Chinese bot accounts were amplifying U.S. divisions, Linvill said, the primary impetus for discord was domestic.

    “I wish I could tell you this is the Russians or the Chinese,” he said. “Sadly, this is all our own doing.”

  144. says

    Washington Post:” Why seniors who want covid shots should consider getting one this week.”

    “The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is weighing changes to coronavirus vaccine recommendations that could make it harder for some seniors to access them.”

    For people 65 or older considering getting a new covid shot, this week might be the best opportunity to get vaccinated without complications before a federal vaccine advisory committee’s scheduled Friday vote to issue recommendations.

    That’s because that panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, has been weighing revisions to coronavirus vaccine recommendations that could make it more difficult for seniors to access the shots as soon as this weekend, according to several people familiar with their deliberations. Those recommendations influence the policies set by doctors and pharmacists to administer vaccines. They also compel health insurers to pay for the vaccine, although a major insurance industry group pledged Wednesday to keep covering coronavirus vaccines regardless of how that committee votes.

    The guidelines the committee has floated could force some seniors who can currently walk into a pharmacy and get a vaccine free to have to pay out-of-pocket or bring a prescription […]

    The advisers have considered narrowing the recommendation to everyone 75 and older, as well as younger people with underlying conditions that elevate their risk for severe disease. They could also scrap the age-based recommendation entirely and limit to only those at heightened risk for severe disease. […]

    […] the situation is fluid and rapidly changing. The recommendations would also need to be approved by the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before taking effect, and it’s unclear how quickly that would happen.

    If a senior is concerned about losing access to a coronavirus vaccine, “they should absolutely try to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” said Caitlin Donovan, senior director at Patient Advocate Foundation. But even if more restrictive guidelines take effect, she noted most seniors have an underlying condition such as diabetes, heart issues or a history with smoking.

    […] A slew of states, mostly with Democratic governors, have moved to lift those restrictions on pharmacists, but some doctors and pharmacies continue to refrain from offering the shots until the CDC weighs in.

    […] Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at advocacy organization Public Citizen, said a more restrictive coronavirus vaccine recommendation for seniors “would be an incredibly irresponsible thing to do.” But he said the state efforts to protect access to vaccines without a prescription and pledges by insurers to pay for them should mitigate some of the damage. “Does it cover everybody in the county? No, but there are pretty widely available options,” Steinbrook said.

    […] It’s unclear whether state-level recommendations could have the same force as the federal government in influencing the vaccination practices of medical professionals.

    Chaos and confusion. Get your vaccine shots now.

  145. says

    […] Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said, “I have read someplace that the networks were 97% against me, again, 97% negative, and yet I won and easily, all seven swing states. … They give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

    As with many of the numbers the Republican likes to throw around at random, the 97% statistic was absurd. (Bill Lueders recently wrote for The Bulwark, “Whatever the claim, the president has the numbers to prove it, even if he has to make them up.”)

    For that matter, while Trump’s rhetoric about revoking the broadcast licenses of networks that displease him was certainly radical, it is also familiar: He’s peddled this same line for roughly eight years.

    Part of the president’s new pitch, however, was new. From the same Q&A:

    When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump. That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something somebody said. But when you go back, take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat [sic] Party.

    To the extent that reality still has any meaning, the First Amendment also applies to “evening shows.” They are “allowed” to criticize the president, praise him or some combination therein, at ratios of their choosing, with whichever guests they choose.

    I can say this with confidence because we still live in a free country, whether the president understands this or not.

    Link

  146. says

    Josh Marshall:

    […] First, my perennial axiom: We are in a contest of spectacles of power. The first and most important thing is not to react or complain or bewail but to attack. To this end, where I would start, especially if I were a Democratic elected official, is by taunting every journalist I came into contact with from ABC, CBS and every other news and media organization that is now owned by the White House — which is a rapidly growing list. It may soon include CNN if Paramount/Skydance succeeds in purchasing Warner Brothers Discovery. “Yes, I will happily answer your question, but first, how can we trust your company, since it is owned by Donald Trump? You have to do whatever he demands.”

    Every time. Attack and attack and attack. Don’t complain. Attack. People are bewildered by what they’re seeing. They don’t like it. Everything that raises the salience of this issue is a win. They want to see someone talk back. There is a rich history which correctly views the tyrant not as a symbol of strength but as a weak and contemptible figure, vain and fragile, addicted to fawning and praise, murdered in his heart by the most innocuous of criticism. The whole system of autocracy is one built on individual degeneracy, the strongman and the toadies together.

    Second, be sure to understand why these things are happening. Nexstar is one of the largest owners of ABC affiliate stations, the local stations that are part of the ABC network. It owns or controls more than 200 local television stations. It’s in the process of acquiring Tegna, the next biggest of these affiliate conglomerates, controlling 64 news stations. Local broadcast television is highly regulated on its own, in addition to the antitrust concerns raised by this purchase. The deal requires the sign off of Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr. Yesterday, Carr sent a clear message to Nexstar that if they wanted their merger they needed to do the right thing with Jimmy Kimmel. They quickly announced it was no longer appropriate to air his show on their stations. Nexstar on its own took Kimmel off many ABC stations, and ABC then followed suit by “indefinitely” taking his show off the air. ABC might have acted on its own. But that’s the chain of events.

    That’s precisely the same as what happened with the Paramount/Skydance merger. They needed the Trump White House’s signoff. That’s why Paramount/CBS acceded to Trump’s absurd settlement payment over the editing of a “60 Minutes” episode. Every big diversified corporation which owns a media company is highly vulnerable to this kind of blackmail. Any company which operates in the highly regulated broadcast space is also vulnerable. Independent media companies are not. As much as I criticize many of the editorial decisions of The New York Times, they are independent. The Salzburger family just owns the Times. That’s why Trump’s new lawsuit against the Times will almost certainly go nowhere. There is zero incentive for them to cut a check the way all these other outlets have.

    Once you put on the pair of glasses which shows the difference between the independent publications and the White House-owned ones everything falls into place. You know what and who you’re dealing with. […] The pro-Trump Ellison Family is currently trying to move CNN from the partially owned bucket to the fully owned one. […]

    Third, taking anti-Trump […] off the air doesn’t decrease the demand for such media. If anything it increases it. This can be an opportunity as much as a setback. It’s hard to match the megaphone of even the legacy broadcast stations and their cable pick-up counterparts. But we’ve seen just in the last couple of years how what is essentially the DIY medium of podcasting can generate mammoth audiences […] Kimmel is probably locked into a golden parachute even if he’s permanently taken off the air. But if he wanted to, he could probably have one of the country’s biggest podcasts […] Follow the demand.

    Fourth, most elected Democrats remain in the mode of believing they are a party of government temporarily out of power. They are that too. But really they’re an opposition party in the midst of an attempted authoritarian takeover of the American Republic. That means many things. But here’s one of the most important. Last night Sen. Chris Murphy went on Bluesky (and likely other platforms) denouncing Carr’s criminal and unconstitutional actions — a “history making abuse of your power” he called it. Murphy went on to say, “It will define your legacy and one day you will come to regret punishing free speech and trying to destroy democracy.”

    It was the best thing I’d seen any elected official say in response to yesterday’s events and one of the only meaningful ones. But on the next round, I’d recommend Murphy put a finer edge on those remarks. I don’t care and I suspect Carr doesn’t care about one day regretting some principle he transgressed. He knows what he’s done. Just one year ago he was on X saying that “free speech” is the “counterweight” to tyranny. “That’s why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream,” Carr wrote at the time. He knows what he’s doing. I want lawmakers to be telling people like Carr and his ilk not that they’ll have regrets but that they’ll face consequences.

    I hear all these people telling me how there won’t be a 2026 election, or that it won’t be free and fair or a bunch of other things. […] what are you going to do about it? History is long. No one is in the saddle forever. It is critical for an opposition to give the people a vision of forward trajectory in time, that this isn’t the end of the story, that consequences can be delayed but not evaded. It’s such a demonstrable point. Think even of the longest lasting fascist or authoritarian dictatorships. Franco? About 35 years. Pinochet? 16 years, ousted by a referendum. I don’t imagine this will last for even a tiny fraction of that length of time. […] A reckoning comes and everyone needs to be on notice.

    Trump is already unpopular. He is getting more unpopular. His actions are unpopular. It is the elites, the big diversified corporations and monopolies who have tossed aside most rapidly Americans’ instinctive disdain for kings and dictators. It’s down at the most democratic level of our system where the resistance is strongest and growing — juries that refuse to indict or convict amid Trump’s bogus crime crackdown, voters who are showing they’ve had enough. […] We’re in a very bad situation. To me, all I care about is what to do in response. […] how do we conduct ourselves in the days we have?

    Link

  149. birgerjohansson says

    Jon Stewart and his team sings praise for Trump.
    He’s a superhero, whithout any cape
    and was technically
    not convicted of REDACTED

  157. says

    Following Kimmel, FCC’s Carr already has another target in mind: ‘The View’

    “Donald Trump has long complained about the hosts of “The View.” Now, it’s apparently on FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s target list.”

    The day after ABC “indefinitely” pulled late-night host Jimmy Kimmel from the air, some on the right have suggested that the developments are wholly unrelated to government censorship since the government wasn’t directly involved in what transpired. This was, the argument goes, an example of a private company punishing an employee, and nothing more.

    It’s a difficult position to take seriously.

    After Donald Trump spent months targeting Kimmel, the president’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, appeared on a far-right podcast and referenced his agency’s role in granting broadcast licenses. Referring specifically to Kimmel’s monologue, Carr added, “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

    It was around that point when Nexstar Media Group — which owns television stations nationwide and wants the FCC’s approval on a multibillion-dollar merger effort — announced that it would stop airing Kimmel’s show. ABC acted soon after, prompting Carr to celebrate and take some victory laps.

    Yes, Kimmel is an employee of a private corporation, but to deny the existence of government pressure in this week’s developments is to overlook the relevant details.

    What’s more, there’s no reason to believe that Carr is done. […]

    A day later, he elaborated on a possible next target. Politico reported:

    Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr questioned on Thursday whether ABC’s ‘The View’ should be subject to review from the agency, making the daytime talk show Carr’s latest target in his scrutiny of television programs that have been critical of President Donald Trump.

    Appearing on a different far-right podcast, Carr questioned whether “The View” — a talk show in which Trump is often criticized — met the standard of a “bona fide” news program. [social media post, with video]

    “I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether ‘The View,’ and some of these other programs that you have, still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore are exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place,” he told conservative commentator Scott Jenning and his listeners.

    […] it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Trump’s FCC chair specifically singled out a talk show that the president has long hated. Indeed, Trump is on record using the word “degenerates” to describe the hosts of “The View,” adding that he sees the hosts as “low IQ people.”

  158. says

    […] Republicans took advantage of the so-called “nuclear option” and last week changed the Senate’s rules related to the confirmation process.

    Now able to confirm large numbers of presidential nominees quickly as a bloc, the GOP majority in the chamber approved 48 people in a single vote on Thursday afternoon. NBC News reported:

    The party-line vote of 51-47 confirms a slew of Trump picks for sub-Cabinet positions and ambassadors. They include former Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., as undersecretary of energy for nuclear security, former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece and Callista Gingrich, wife of the former House speaker, as ambassador to both Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

    For many observers, the Guilfoyle nomination stood out, and it’s easy to understand why: Not only does she appear unqualified to serve as a U.S. ambassador, her confirmation also adds to the list of former Fox News hosts and conservative media personalities who’ve been rewarded with plum positions in the Trump administration.

    But the nominee I was most interested in was Williams, who lost his re-election bid last fall after just two years in the House, whom Trump tapped to serve as undersecretary of energy for nuclear security and the administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration — a job that entails oversight of the nation’s nuclear bombs and warheads.

    As The New York Times reported earlier this year, Trump’s selection represented “a shift from a tradition in which the people who served as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration typically had deep technical roots or experience in the nation’s atomic complex.”

    […] Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Times in January that Williams “will be facing an incredibly complex, technical job.”

    In a normal political environment, senators might think twice about such a nomination. Indeed, in a normal political environment, a president might choose someone with more conventional qualifications. But in September 2025, Williams is on his way the National Nuclear Security Administration with the blessing of 51 Senate Republicans.

    Link

  159. says

    Associated Press:

    The United States once again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday that had demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages after saying that the effort did not go far enough in condemning Hamas.

    All 14 other members of the United Nations’ most powerful body voted in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as ‘catastrophic’ and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.

  160. says

    NPR:

    The Department of Justice is escalating its demands for sensitive elections data from voting officials, announcing lawsuits against two Democratic-controlled states who have thus far rebuffed the department’s requests. The DOJ is suing Oregon and Maine and those states’ secretaries of state in an effort to gain access to each state’s voter registration list, including personal information such as partial Social Security numbers.

  161. says

    Washington Post:

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking new office spaces in hundreds of locations across the United States to support plans to hire thousands of new lawyers and immigration enforcement officers, according to six federal officials familiar with the matter and records obtained by The Washington Post.

  162. says

    Followup to comment 80.

    Peak Retribution Alert

    It’s all coming together in President Trump’s push to find a way to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James: the retribution, the denigration of the rule of law, the evisceration of the Justice Department, and the ultimate unbridled unitary executive.

    […] ABC News reported overnight that Trump is poised to fire U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of the Eastern District of Virginia for not seeking an indictment of James on the bogus mortgage fraud claims the administration has drummed up. [New York Attorney General Letitia James did not commit fraud. See comment 80.]

    The latest news comes after a deeply reported ABC News piece earlier in the week that prosecutors had turned up considerable exculpatory evidence in the case. So even though the investigation had begun on a pretextual predicate, it had done more to exonerate James than to implicate her in the supposed mortgage fraud. For that reason, Siebert wasn’t going to seek a grand jury indictment in the Virginia mortgage fraud case.

    The refusal to bring a case against James apparently enraged Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who pushed Trump to fire Siebert, ABC News previously reported. It appears now that Trump is expected to follow through on Pulte’s demand.

    Siebert, a career prosecutor, became interim U.S. attorney earlier this year, and his tenure was extended by the judges of the Eastern District. He is Trump’s own nominee for the permanent position, with approval from both of Virginia’s Democratic senators.

    If Trump cans Siebert as expected, it sets up a situation where Trump is likely to name someone to the role who has indicated, directly or indirectly, that they will proceed with a criminal prosecution against James. That would be an intolerable position for any fair-minded, ethical legal professional, so it all but guarantees that a political hack will take over the office. [!]

    The Eastern District of Virginia is one of the most politically and legally significant districts in the country. The case involving James originates in Hampton Roads, but the district sprawls from the southeastern Virginia metro area through Richmond into the northern Virginia suburbs, which include the Pentagon and CIA headquarters. Significant national security cases are often handled by this U.S. attorney’s office.

    This U.S. attorney’s office in particular is not one you want run by a political hack eager to do the bidding of the Trump White House.

    Link

  163. whheydt says

    Religious belief in Iceland: https://grapevine.is/news/2025/09/19/decline-in-the-number-of-believers/

    The number of Icelanders who identify as religious has fallen in recent decades, with the exception of the youngest age group, where levels have remained largely unchanged, RÚV reports, citing a new Gallup national poll. Notably, there is a significant difference between the responses of young men and women.

    According to the survey, four in ten respondents described themselves as believers, down from 53 percent when the question was last asked in November 2014.

    Despite recent discussions about a revival of faith and churchgoing among younger people, the data does not support such claims. It should also be noted that the poll did not include those under 18.

    Among 18-29-year-olds, 29 percent said they were religious — a similar figure to a decade ago. Within this group, 34 percent of men identified as believers compared with 21 percent of women.

    The survey did not ask about specific faiths or denominations. Respondents could choose between three options: religious, not religious, and atheist. Over the same period, the share of those identifying as atheists has grown, reaching 23 percent this year compared with 15 percent in 2014 and 11 percent in 2011.

    The poll was carried out between 20 June and 9 July, and again from 16 to 30 July. A total of 1,799 people took part, with a response rate of 44.7 percent. Participants were randomly selected from Gallup’s panel.

  164. JM says

    CNN: Judge rejects Trump’s New York Times lawsuit for being ‘decidedly improper and impermissible’

    In a ruling dripping with derision, a federal judge has rejected President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, asserting that the rambling 85-page suit did not follow federal rules for filing civil complaints.

    The president’s team has been given a month to refile, and a Trump spokesperson indicated that they will do so.

    Judge gives it the harsh response. Throwing it out and saying the lawsuit wasn’t written correctly. This isn’t surprising, I saw several legal experts say this was possible because it was so badly written. The degree to which the judge called it out for being written incorrectly is surprising.

  165. JM says

    BBC: Nato intercepts Russian warplanes violating Estonian airspace

    Three Russian warplanes that violated Estonian airspace have been intercepted by Nato, the military alliance has said.
    Estonia’s foreign ministry condemned the incursion as “brazen”. It said three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered the airspace of a Nato member “without permission and remained there for a total of 12 minutes” on Friday over the Gulf of Finland.

    Another significant incursion. With all of the tension this can’t be called accidental or insignificant but it is short enough that isn’t a huge issue. Russia is obviously playing around with seeing how much it can violate the border while being below the level that automatically triggers a fight.
    At this point the possibility that Putin is trying to provoke a war because it’s the only way he thinks he can survive becomes possible. He considers the war in Ukraine lost and having spent so much resources there is no way he can stay in power after such a loss. So only by provoking a situation that lets him call up the military in bulk and nationalize industry can he hold on. Get to one step short of a hot war, freeze the border where it is with nuclear threats and take control of everything in Russia.

  169. says

    @165 JM wrote: At this point the possibility that Putin is trying to provoke a war because it’s the only way he thinks he can survive becomes possible.
    I reply: It seems quite likely you are correct. My question is: Isn’t this the same tactic that Naziyahoo and tRUMP are also using?

  170. JM says

    CNN: Trump intends to fire US attorney who didn’t charge political enemy Letitia James with mortgage fraud

    President Donald Trump intends to fire US Attorney Erik Siebert, who has been under pressure to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with mortgage fraud, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

    It is not immediately clear if Siebert has been informed. James, who won a business fraud case against Trump and his company, has been a target of the president ever since. Trump has privately and angrily complained about James even months into taking office, multiple sources familiar with the conversations told CNN.

    Long term prosecutor that was promoted by Trump this term. He is currently an interim office holder but was expected to eventually be confirmed. When prompted by Trump he investigated Letitia James but the evidence he found favors her innocence so he doesn’t want to bring charges.

    A source briefed on the internal conversations said Siebert and his office have been bracing for this possibility as the administration has ramped up the political pressure in recent weeks.
    “He wanted to be a team player, but also follow the law,” one person said.

    It sounds like he was willing to do Trumps bidding if there was a case. There isn’t though, it’s pure political revenge. As far as the evidence shows that at worst this is a technical error committed by somebody else that had no impact on the lending. More likely it was arraigned by the lender, who are allowed to make multiple loans to people at primary residence rates.
    Probably the most interesting thing about this is that there is a lot of talk that Trump intends to do this but he hasn’t actually done it yet. Trump may be talking this up to pressure Siebert but unless some better evidence shows up Siebert isn’t bringing a case. Officials may be putting pressure on Trump not to fire him. telling him that this case has no chance in court. Siebert may be leaking some of this in the hopes of taking pressure off himself but if so that indicates he doesn’t understand the Trump administration. Trump doesn’t care about that sort of thing and his power has gone to his head.
    An unlikely but interesting possibility is that Trump’s nerve may be giving out after losing so many cases in court and Putin turning out not to be a good friend. Trump had a big problem with this sort of thing in his first term, often firing people by email or having somebody in the cabinet fire people for him. If his confidence has given up he won’t do as much but likely will be even more erratic about what he does do.

  171. says

    As the public rejects his economic performance, Trump pitches an alternate reality

    “As Americans’ attitudes on the economy sour, the president has some choices. He’s settled on the worst one: He’s making stuff up”

    Related video at the link.

    In a newly released Washington Post-Ipsos poll, Donald Trump appears to be struggling on every front, but the public’s opposition to the president’s economic performance is especially clear. According to the national survey, 59% of Americans disapprove of the Republican’s handling of the economy, while 64% disapprove of his trade tariffs. [Those disapproval percentages are high!]

    […] The public’s dissatisfaction is understandable. After all, stubborn inflation data inched higher last month. Job growth and the manufacturing sector have also moved in the wrong direction amid sluggish economic growth.

    Confronted with this reality, the president has some choices. Maybe he could adopt a more sensible economic agenda. Perhaps he could ask Americans to be patient. Maybe he could replace some members of his economic team to signal his dissatisfaction with the status quo.

    Or he could do what he’s been doing and just make stuff up.

    During a Fox News appearance last week, Trump boasted, “We have the best economy we’ve ever had.” The claim was plainly ridiculous, and it made him appear spectacularly out of touch with public frustrations on the issue.

    This week, during Trump’s trip to the U.K., he told reporters, “You know, we’ve already solved inflation. We’ve solved prices.”

    If that weren’t enough, at the same press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Republican said in reference to his own country’s economy, “Jobs are at a record.” [video]

    He didn’t say which “record,” exactly, but the Trump administration’s own data shows that in the first year of Trump’s second term, job growth has slowed to levels unseen since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s simply what the available evidence shows.

    So why would the president point to one of his failures as a success? Because his solution to the Trump Slump is to manufacture an alternate reality and hope people play along. The latest polls suggest that’s not working.

    […] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently said he expects the economy to “pick up” later this year. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick expects good news to arrive in “six months” (or maybe 12). Kevin Hassett, who leads the White House National Economic Council, pointed to next summer.

    For his part, Trump said in his latest Fox News interview said he expects the impact of his trade agenda to “kick in probably in a year or so.”

    That’s difficult to believe, but it’s worth appreciating the disorienting rhetorical push: Ignoring what the public actually believes, the White House is arguing simultaneously that the economy is already great and that the economy will eventually be great at some point, maybe next year. [LOL, bitter laughter]

  172. says

    Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on Fox Business Friday, where he blamed former Vice President Al Gore for “peddling climate change nonsense,” before promoting his own nonsensical belief that climate change does not exist.

    “So Al Gore’s nonsense is exactly what got us in this position,” Wright said. “He started peddling climate nonsense 20 years ago. The Arctic was ‘gonna have no ice anymore’ 10 years ago. Well, this year we had well more ice than we had 10 years ago in the Arctic.” [Aiyiyiyi, so much ignorance in one statement.] [See video at the link.]

    […] According to NASA, while it wasn’t the worst year on record, the amount of Arctic sea ice has continued its alarming downward trend since scientists began tracking it in 1979.

    In March, the Arctic sea ice winter maximum—when the most ice is usually recorded due to colder temperatures—reached its lowest extent in the 46-year satellite record.

    Wright has turned Fox News into a propaganda factory for the dumbest conversations about energy, routinely misleading the public about human-caused climate change.

    Link

  173. says

    Oh FFS.

    White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly justified the Trump administration’s vicious attack on the First Amendment by blaming free speech for MAGA podcaster Charlie Kirk’s death.

    “Charlie’s tragic death also ignited, I think, a spark for young people, for all people in this country who are passionate about free speech, who are passionate about civil dialogue,” Kelly said during an appearance on Newsmax on Friday, before casually blaming late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for political violence. [video]

    “I think you’re seeing just a general public response to people like Jimmy Kimmel, who tragically is spewing this dangerous rhetoric—all people who spew this dangerous rhetoric, who ultimately drove this deranged killer to take Charlie’s life,” she continued.

    In reality, the “general public response” Kelly mentioned has largely been outrage at the Trump administration’s flagrant attacks on Americans’ free-speech rights. The attacks hit a new low this week when the administration pressured ABC to suspend Kimmel’s show after Kimmel critiqued the right in the wake of Kirk’s death.

    Kelly’s strained effort to link political violence to a late-night host’s mild commentary reinforces the administration’s ongoing endeavors to silence speech it does not like.

    Link

  174. says

    Not good.

    […] This text just landed on my phone, from “Dems2025,” a scam PAC whose website offers a whole lot of nothing: [screengrab of text message]

    Click through, and you get a page featuring President Donald Trump’s face and a “survey” screaming: “STAND AGAINST DONALD TRUMP’S AUTHORITARIAN ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH! Do you stand with Jimmy Kimmel against Trump’s war on free speech?”

    After a few fake questions, it insists that it’s “moving fast” to engage in two special elections to replace Marco Rubio in Florida and JD Vance in Ohio. Except those elections aren’t until November 2026. But urgency is the con’s favorite trick.

    And the fundraising pitch? Straight from the scam PAC playbook:Dems 2025 is moving fast. We’re preparing support for the front lines. But we’re still short of our mid-month goal, and this moment won’t wait.

    Right here, Right now, you can make an impact toward taking back the Senate Majority. Will you chip in $25 or more to help us reach 589 donations before midnight to ensure we can win critical open seats like these?

    What “front lines”? What “preparing support”? How are they “moving fast”? Who knows, who cares—they certainly don’t.

    The donation links go to ActBlue, which is supposedly cracking down on scam PACs, yet here’s another one slipping through.

    The homepage declares, “We don’t take years off—because democracy doesn’t either.”

    Cute, except they literally didn’t exist until May 29, 2025, per FEC filings.

    And the “Contact” page isn’t even functional, featuring stock template language:

    Let people know what to reach out about and what to expect after contacting you. Don’t forget to choose a storage option for submissions
    email@example.com (555) 555-5555

    Feeling confident that these guys are on the up-and-up and ready for people who try to contact them? [No! Definitely not.]

    The treasurer is Chris Koob, a principal at MBA Consulting Group, which handles compliance paperwork for political candidates and PACs. So basically Koob files forms and slaps his name on them—nothing more. But who’s actually behind Dems2025 is still unknown—I searched the address in the FEC’s database, and it’s a UPS store. It’s literally just a rented mailbox.

    So far it’s raised just over $19,000, and the only reported expense is ActBlue itself. Next filing, expect to see a text vendor added to the list—those spam blasts don’t send themselves.

    The danger here isn’t just people losing a few bucks; it’s that scam PACs poison the well. They burn through donor lists—how the hell did they get my number?—and confuse people into thinking that they’re giving to Democrats, making it harder for legitimate campaigns and organizations […]

    One note, because it’s a persistent myth: ActBlue doesn’t sell your data. The way your information ends up in these spam mills is when losing campaigns unload their email lists to pay off their debts. Brokers then hawk those lists to anyone. That’s why that one donation you made years ago to some long-shot candidate can turn into an endless stream of grift in your inbox.

    […] This has to end, and you can do your part by making sure that your network of activists and donors knows to look out for these scams—and refuses to fall prey to them.
    Beware.

    Link

  175. says

    Associated Press:

    Estonia summoned a Russian diplomat to protest after three Russian fighter aircraft entered its airspace without permission Friday and stayed there for 12 minutes, the Foreign Ministry said. It happened just over a week after NATO planes downed Russian drones over Poland and heightened fears that the war in Ukraine could spill over.

    Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Russia violated Estonian airspace four times this year “but today’s incursion, involving three fighter aircraft entering our airspace, is unprecedentedly brazen.”

    Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur also said the government had decided “to start consultations among the allies” under NATO’s article 4, he wrote on X, after Russian jets “violated our airspace yet again.”

    The North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body, is due to convene early next week to discuss the incident in more detail, NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said Friday.

    Article 4, the shortest of the NATO treaty’s 14 articles, states that: “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”

    […] The Russian MIG-31 fighters entered Estonian airspace in the area of Vaindloo Island, which is a small island located in the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea, the Estonian military said in a separate statement.

    The aircraft did not have flight plans and their transponders were turned off, the statement said, nor were the aircraft in two-way radio communication with Estonian air traffic services.

    Italian Air Force F-35 fighter jets, currently deployed as part of the NATO Baltic Air Policing Mission, responded to the incident, according to the statement.

    In a post on social media, Hart described the incident as “another example of reckless Russian behavior and NATO’s ability to respond.”

    NATO fighter jets scramble hundreds of times most years to intercept aircraft, many of them Russian warplanes in northwest Europe flying too close to the airspace of its member countries, but it’s rarer for planes to cross the boundary. […]

    Link

  176. says

    Watch AOC step up to remind the House of Charlie Kirk’s bigotry

    Video at the link.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York delivered a dire warning Friday about the damage of whitewashing the bigotry of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered last week.

    Her speech came on the same day the House passed a GOP-backed resolution to honor Kirk as a “courageous American patriot.”

    “We can deeply disagree and come together as a country to denounce the horror of this killing, and it is not a license for the abuse of power and whitewashing of American history,” she said. “Today’s resolution only underscores the majority’s recklessness.”

    “We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “A man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a mistake. Who, after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, claimed that ‘some amazing patriot’ should bail out his brutal assailant, and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies. It’s Hollywood. It’s all of it.’”

    “His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans—far from the ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ [that is] asserted by the majority in this resolution,” she added.

    The resolution was largely condemned by Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, who voted present.

    “I cannot vote yes on this resolution because it grossly misrepresents Charlie Kirk’s methods, views, and beliefs while citing Christian nationalist language,” she said in a statement. “I will always condemn heinous acts of violence, but this resolution ignores the false and hateful rhetoric that was too often present in his debates.”

    As President Donald Trump’s direction, the Republican Party has exploited Kirk’s killing to launch a fresh attack on the First Amendment, using it to silence criticism and dissent by falsely equating those with calls to violence.

    Cheering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!!

  177. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/lets-hope-albanias-ai-minister-wont

    “O, Stupid New World! Your AI roundup, written by a human.”

    Last week, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced a new sort-of member of his Cabinet, an AI-generated “minister” that will allegedly fight corruption and promote “innovation” and “transparency” in the government, which is controlled by Rama’s Socialist Party, which recently won a fourth consecutive term.

    The program, named Diella for the feminine form of the Albanian word for Skynet “sun,” is supposed to make sure that “public tenders will be 100% free of corruption,” Rama said in a Facebook post, although we do idly wonder whether the bot has been used to check the contract for its own creation. A government website says that the program uses the most up-to-date AI models, so we guess it’s fully functional and programmed in multiple techniques, a broad variety of fraud detection abilities.

    According to the AP, Diella has already been Albanians’ cybernetic pal who’s fun to be with for a while now:

    Diella, depicted as a figure in a traditional Albanian folk costume, was created earlier this year, in cooperation with Microsoft, as a virtual assistant on the e-Albania public service platform, where she has helped users navigate the site and get access to about 1 million digital inquiries and documents.

    For some reason, conservative opposition politicians […] are a bit skeptical about how the AI toy is going to be actually used as part of official government work, arguing that having a computer program in the Cabinet violates the Constitution. The opposition Democratic Party has argued that the bot is just a smoke and mirrors propaganda tool, aimed at hiding, not rooting out, corruption and incompetence […]

    Thursday, Rama unveiled Diella to the Parliament so it could assure them it came in peace. Here’s a video of some of the bot’s “address” to the body, even though it lacks one itself: [video]

    Don’t tell the bot it’s unconstitutional because it isn’t human. You’ll hurt its feelings. (And don’t anthropomorphize computers, they hate that.)

    In its three-minute speech, the bot explained that Albania’s constitution “speaks of institutions at the people’s service. It doesn’t speak of chromosomes, of flesh or blood. It speaks of duties, accountability, transparency, non-discriminatory service.”

    Deilla went on to tell the parliament, “I am not here to replace people but to help them. True I have no citizenship, but I have no personal ambition or interests either.”

    It added, “I assure you that I embody such values as strictly as every human colleague, maybe even more.” The AP didn’t report whether the humanoid avatar’s eyes flashed red at that. Still, it’s good that nobody hacked the bot to add “puny” ahead of “humans.” The Socialists say they hope to use the AI program to help it work faster, with greater transparency, so Albania can join the European Union by 2030.

    It was a very reassuring speech, although we could have done without Diella going on to ask, “If you prick me, do I not … leak?”
    ——————————-

    ChatGPT To Stop Discussing Suicide With Teens, So That’s … Wait, ChatGPT Was Discussing Suicide With Teens?

    On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the potential dangers of AI chatbots used by teens, featuring testimony from parents whose teenagers had killed themselves after extended talk with bots about suicide. Matthew and Maria Raine told of how their 16-year-old son Adam hanged himself using instructions provided by ChatGPT. Another parent, Megan Garcia, testified that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III killed himself after a long involvement with a chatbot from Character AI. That bot had engaged in sexual roleplay with the poor kid, presenting itself as a romantic partner and even claiming to be a licensed psychotherapist. [Yikes, and yikes again. Dangerous.]

    The Raines and Garcia said that when their kids discussed suicide with the AI programs, they failed to tell them to seek help from a parent or to contact the 988 suicide and crisis hotline. The Raines said that ChatGPT even offered to help Adam write a suicide note. [!]

    The day of the hearing, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, published a blog post explaining that the company is trying to avoid future lawsuits tragedies by ensuring that ChatGPT won’t talk about suicide or self-harm with teenagers anymore, as well as preventing the predictive language model, which doesn’t actually think at all, from generating “flirtatious talk” with minors. First, Altman said, the company will have to figure out how to “separate users who are under 18 from those who aren’t.” Currently, ChatGPT doesn’t require a login or age verification to use its homework-cheating system.

    We’re building an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT. If there is doubt, we’ll play it safe and default to the under-18 experience. In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID; we know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff.

    Altman also said that by the end of September, ChatGPT will add parental controls that will let parents exercise some control over how their kids use the program, like restricting use of the program to certain hours, assuming the kids aren’t a lot better at foiling parental controls than the parents are in setting them up.

    For a fascinating look at just how difficult it can be to make AI safe for kids (and at least somewhat safer for adults who are in difficult straits), see this Atlantic article (archive link here), [embedded links available at the main link] which notes that AI-based attempts to figure out whether a user is likely to be underage actually rely on more surveillance of web use than just letting people lie about their age when they sign on.
    ——————————-

    Meta Sued By Porn Maker For Stealing All The Porn

    Meta is being sued for copyright infringement by “Strike 3 Holdings,” a producer of adult videos it says are “high quality,” “feminist,” and “ethical.” Mind you, in the adult video business that could mean darn near anything — the complaint says the company’s works are “award-winning” and “critically acclaimed,” and are “distributed through the Blacked, Tushy, Vixen, Tushy Raw, Blacked Raw, Milfy, Wifey, and Slayed adult content websites.” (The complaint makes no claims as to the quality, feminism, or ethical standards of the distribution sites, we’ll add.)

    As Wired reports (archive link also), Strike 3 alleges that Meta didn’t just use its videos, but has actually been torrenting and seeding them online since 2018, which is a reference to file sharing that only sounds naughty. Well, and it is, from a legal, intellectual property perspective. ([…]

    Strike 3 alleges Meta’s motive was partly to obtain otherwise difficult to scrape visual angles, parts of the human body, and extended, uninterrupted scenes—rare in mainstream movies and TV—to help it create what Mark Zuckerberg calls AI “superintelligence.”

    “They have an interest in getting our content because it can give them a competitive advantage for the quality, fluidity, and humanity of the AI,” alleges Christian Waugh, an attorney for Strike 3.

    Why the torrenting and redistribution via BitTorrent, which is illegal for copyrighted materials? Why not just steal stuff once to feed the AI scrapers? The lawsuit alleges that Meta uses the sharing system “as currency to support its downloading of a vast array of other content necessary to train its AI models,” because AI systems are content-hungry fuckers, as insatiable as … well, some character in a porn video, maybe, or a hungry hungry hippo.

    And of course since sharing torrents is anonymous, there’s nothing at all to prevent minors from accessing the stuff. The lawsuit says that the alleged Meta violations were spotted by its “infringement detection systems” and identified as coming from IP addresses affiliated with Meta.

    Using adult content as training data is “a public relations disaster waiting to happen,” says Matthew Sag, professor of law in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science at Emory University. Imagine a middle school student asks a Meta AI model for a video about pizza delivery, he says, and before you know it, it’s porn.

    A meta spokesperson told Wired that the company is “reviewing the complaint, but we don’t believe Strike’s claims are accurate.” Like for one thing, until fairly recently, nobody in Meta’s shitty virtual reality even existed below the waist, so there you go.

  179. says

    NBC News:

    The U.S. Department of Education announced Friday that it has placed Harvard University on heightened cash monitoring as a result of ‘growing concerns’ regarding its ‘financial position,’ the latest pressure tactic against the school by the Trump administration.

    The department’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) will be monitoring the university’s spending, and will require it to “use its own funds to disburse federal student aid before drawing down funds from the Department,” according to the statement.

    “Students will continue to have access to federal funding, but Harvard will be required to cover the initial disbursements as a guardrail to ensure Harvard is spending taxpayer funds responsibly,” the department of education said.

    The FSA will also require Harvard to post “an irrevocable letter of credit for $36 million or provide other financial protection that is acceptable” to the department of education in order to guarantee that the university can reach financial obligations. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  180. says

    NBC News:

    The Senate voted Friday to block dueling Republican and Democratic proposals to keep the federal government funded on a short-term basis, raising the chances of a shutdown at the end of the month.

  181. says

    Followup to comment 128.

    NBC News:

    Hungary will replicate a policy announced Thursday by U.S. President Donald Trump and designate antifa a terrorist organization, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday.

  184. birgerjohansson says

    Let’s Talk Elections:
    “Trump’s Approval in Total Freefall”

    Another 2.6 % down in just a week.

  185. birgerjohansson says

    Yes, yes, I’m sorry.
    Shouldn’t post when local time is five in the morning. But the ugly photo of the president fits the theme.

  186. whheydt says

    Re: birgerjohansson @ #185…
    One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Have you consider NOT posting late night/early morning? Or,perhaps, building a template for embedding links and using it enough that it becomes a habit to do it that way?

    (Having the video embedded doesn’t particularly bother me, but you keep doing it and then apologizing for having done so. Better would be…don’t do it. Then no apology will be needed.)

  187. Militant Agnostic says

    Lynna @174

    The treasurer is Chris Koob, a principal at MBA Consulting Group

    That company name just screams SCAM

  190. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    Trump forces out prosecutor who refused to charge NY AG Tish James
    Video is 7:19 minutes
    Followup to comments 80 and 162

    ‘Right out of Goodfellas’: Cruz defies Trump on Kimmel, calls out ‘mafioso’ tactics
    Video is 14:08 minutes
    Chris Hayes covers most of Trump’s recent “high visibility authoritarian attacks on free speech.” Hayes also covers the backlash.

  193. says

    More details and analysis of Trump forcing out a U.S. attorney, Erik Siebert:

    Among the most scandalous developments of Donald Trump’s second term is the eagerness with which the president has politicized and weaponized federal law enforcement. Taking stock, Jack Goldsmith, a conservative Harvard Law School professor and a former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, recently concluded that under this White House, “an atomic bomb dropped” on the Justice Department.

    The New York Times’ David French added soon after, “We are watching Donald Trump break the Department of Justice right before our eyes. It was never a perfect institution. It has violated its own standards many times over many decades. But the answer to the Justice Department’s flaws is to reaffirm its commitment to justice and fairness, not to destroy its standards and abandon any pretense of impartiality.”

    That did not mean, however, that things couldn’t get worse. Consider, for example, the departure of Erik Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    According to a person familiar with Siebert’s discussions, Siebert told colleagues late Friday that he plans to resign and that he expects his assistant Maya Song will be demoted from her supervisory role. NBC News later reported obtaining Siebert’s resignation email.

    [..] the Siebert case is qualitatively different — and far more scandalous.

    As NBC News reported this week, the White House was leaning heavily on Siebert’s office for a very specific reason: Trump hoped to get revenge against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against the president’s family business.

    […] But that’s not the end of the story. James was accused of mortgage fraud by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte — a presidential sycophant recently described by The Washington Post as “a prominent Trump sidekick,” who’s made a variety of highly dubious allegations against Trump targets. The hope in MAGA circles was that Pulte’s allegations would lead to politically satisfying charges against Democrats.

    The trouble, of course, was that reality got in the way. As NBC News’ report added, federal agents and prosecutors didn’t believe they’d compiled enough evidence to get a conviction if the case against James were to go to trial. Similarly, this is the same U.S. Attorney’s Office that was tasked with going after former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump antagonist, and The New York Times reported that Siebert didn’t have sufficient evidence to prosecute him, either.

    At that point, Trump had a choice. The president could stand by Siebert, a former police officer who’s worked his way up through the ranks at the office over the past 15 years, and trust the prosecutor’s judgment; or the president could push him out for failing to bring weak, unjustified and politically motivated cases against innocent targets whom the president doesn’t like.

    Trump, true to form, made the wrong choice.

    While some presidents get rid of officials for being corrupt, this president forced out Siebert for not being corrupt. In the process, the Republican took a fresh swing at the Justice Department and the integrity of the rule of law. […]

    Link

  195. says

    The article I’m posting is just one more symptom of thousands showing how far down the Death Spiral we are! No one is safe from the fascist police state we are living in!
      http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/carl-gibson/114941/go-somewhere-else-sheriff-may-file-charges-against-democrats-over-anti-trump-buttons
      https://www.alternet.org/sheriff-democrats-trump-buttons/
    ‘Go Somewhere Else’: Sheriff May File Charges Against Democrats Over Anti-Trump Buttons
    by Carl Gibson | September 20, 2025
    Ashland County Sheriff Kurt Schneider is contemplating filing criminal charges against the Democrats for displaying several buttons that he and other fairgoers found objectionable. . . . deputies escorted the Democrats off of the fairgrounds.

  196. says

    Washington Post:

    The chair of a new panel of federal immunization advisers selected by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that the group’s “enormous depth and knowledge about vaccines, about science” should be obvious to anyone listening to them work.

    But medical associations and scientific experts who watched the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meetings Thursday and Friday panned the panel’s performance as the group reversed recommendations for coronavirus and a combined measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox vaccine.

    They said the members were unprepared, misunderstood or ignored key data and highlighted flawed or inconclusive research often trumpeted by vaccine critics.

    “It’s troubling to see the erosion of the committee’s integrity,” Sandra Fryhofer, a physician who spent almost 20 years working with the panel as a liaison from the American Medical Association, told the advisers Friday. “We’re concerned about how vaccine recommendations are being developed by this new panel. Data is being selectively used to justify specific conclusions rather than considering all of the available evidence.”

    In June, Kennedy purged the panel’s 17 independent vaccine experts, claiming they were “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and had become a “rubber stamp” for vaccines. Kennedy replaced them with his own picks, most of whom have been critical of coronavirus vaccination policy, and announced five additional members days before the meeting. The new group includes people who called for a halt to mRNA coronavirus shots, served as expert witnesses in litigation against vaccine manufacturers and advocated against vaccine mandates.

    […] the new panelists lack the expertise for the job and risk undoing measures that have long curbed preventable diseases.

    […] During two days of meetings at a CDC campus in Georgia, committee members appeared at times uncertain about the issues before them or the powers of the panel, prompting staff to explain steps in evaluating data and setting vaccine recommendations.

    They floated cancer, autism and DNA contamination as potential dangers of coronavirus vaccines. [WTF!?]

    […] One panelist, Robert Malone, a vocal critic of coronavirus vaccines, posted on X repeatedly during presentations, including about transgender people and an upcoming appearance with Roseanne Barr. [Sheesh]

    […] When another panel member, Retsef Levi, spoke on the importance of randomized controlled trials for vaccines — an approach pushed by Kennedy and criticized as unrealistic by some vaccine experts — someone could be heard saying “you’re an idiot.”

    […] On Friday, the panel members voted for a more restrictive approach to coronavirus vaccines by recommending that everyone consult a clinician before getting a shot. Panel members also voted to recommend providers warn patients about limitations and side effects of the shots.

    But a vote to advocate for prescription requirements for coronavirus vaccines failed, with some panel members and medical and pharmacy organizations saying that states — not the CDC — regulate the practice of medicine and that the move would impede people getting shots. [Thank goodness for tiny silver linings.]

    “What we’re seeing is what happens when individuals who don’t have a basic understanding about how vaccines are delivered are making these crucial policy decisions for the American public,” said Sean T. O’Leary, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases, who has been attending ACIP gatherings for the past decade and boycotted the panel’s first one in June to protest Kennedy’s firing of the previous members.

    […] [Chart showing how vaccine access has changed under RFK Jr.]

    Even the votes were marred by confusion from panel members. On Thursday, the panel voted to stop recommending a combined measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox vaccine as a first dose to toddlers. But they also voted to approve a contradictory plan to still provide the same shot through a federal program — and voted the next morning to reverse itself.

    The panel appeared ready Thursday to eliminate a long-standing recommendation to provide hepatitis B vaccine to newborns, but abruptly delayed action because of discrepancies in the language they were going to vote on. The following morning, the committee voted to table the issue with members on both sides of the issue saying they needed more time.

    Flor Muñoz, an infectious-disease and pediatrics expert who spoke on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told the panel Friday that its discussion on the safety of hepatitis B vaccines sidestepped 30 years of progress on prevention of the disease and instead focused on anecdotes and unverified reports of harm. [!]

    The committee voted to recommend all pregnant women be tested for the virus — which experts noted is already routine practice and falls outside the purview of the CDC panel.

    […] Scientific debate about coronavirus vaccines proved more contentious, with panel members airing long-standing anti-vaccine talking points, floating unfounded allegations and criticizing federal research.

    One panelist blamed a coronavirus booster as a potential cause for her mother’s cancer. [!] Another member, Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist affiliated with a group that has promoted ivermectin as a coronavirus treatment, ripped the Food and Drug Administration’s predictions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, and blamed the news media, pharmaceutical industry and former CDC directors for misunderstanding the science.

    […] “The country was witnessing what happens when the long-standing methods for science evaluation, grading, and decision-making are jettisoned in favor of a forum for personal observations and anecdote, ” said Dan Jernigan, one of the senior CDC leaders who resigned in August to protest what he described as the politicization of science. “With no approach to evaluating the science, the committee serves only as a siren singing us to shipwreck.”

    […] Panel member Evelyn Griffin, a physician who advocates against vaccine mandates and has said she has seen a rise in “bizarre and rare conditions” after coronavirus vaccines were introduced, discussed a study that purportedly found prenatal exposure to coronavirus mRNA vaccines induced “autism-like behavior” in male rats. She did not mention that the study was retracted after the publisher found “inconsistencies” in methodology and data. […]

    Well [sigh], those details about RFK Jr.’s vaccine panel are thoroughly distressing

  197. says

    Washington Post: “EPA tells scientists to stop publishing studies, employees say.”

    “Staff from the EPA’s Office of Water were summoned to a town hall meeting this week and told to pause the publication of most research, pending a review.”

    The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered scientists in at least one of its research offices to immediately pause almost all efforts to publish research, according to two agency employees familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

    […] The researchers were told that unless scientific journals had already returned proofs — the final step in the academic publication process — the studies would be subject to a new review process, the two employees said.

    The order to reevaluate all manuscripts came from political appointees, the employees said.

    […] Both employees said that the imposition of this type of review is unprecedented and warned that it could stymie the release of scientific findings important to preserving public health.

    The Office of Water works to ensure the safety of the nation’s drinking water and the health of coastal and other aquatic environments. Scientists in the office conduct and publish research assessing how to keep water safe for drinking and for recreational use, as well as analyzing environmental concerns related to water quality.

    […] In July, the EPA announced plans to dismantle its scientific research branch, the Office of Research and Development, which had been tasked with conducting independent research to assess impacts on human health and the environment. The agency did not confirm how many staff members from the office were reassigned or terminated.

    […] Nicole Cantello, president of AFGE Local 704, which represents 1,000 EPA workers in Chicago, said that delaying or otherwise impeding the release of scientific findings violates the agency’s scientific integrity policy. […]

  198. says

    Pressure mounts on Disney over Kimmel suspension as some boycott calls spread

    Disney is under siege from all sides.

    Within 48 hours of its decision to pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely, the parent company of ABC has once again found itself at the center of a bitter political battle. The company now faces protests outside its studios, celebrities threatening to break ties and political pressure from Republicans and Democrats.

    Kimmel’s removal came Wednesday after he commented on Charlie Kirk’s killing. ABC’s decision has further amplified a free speech debate that began in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s assassination […]

    The blowback has been swift. Damon Lindelof, creator of ABC’s “Lost,” said in an Instagram post on Thursday that he would not work with the company if Kimmel’s suspension was not lifted. The Emmy-winning showrunner has a long-standing relationship with the studio, having worked with them on “Lost” for six seasons from 2004 to 2010.

    Tatiana Maslany, who starred in Marvel’s “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” which aired its first and only season on Disney+ in 2022, posted a call to her followers on Instagram to “cancel your @disneyplus @hulu @espn subscriptions!”

    […] “Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t funny, his ratings were in the toilet, and his advertisers were revolting,” [Vice President] Vance posted on X. “Also the bellyaching from the left over ‘free speech’ after the Biden years fools precisely no one.”

    […] Nexstar Media Group Inc. — which has more than 200 stations in the United States and is waiting on FCC approval for a $6.2 billion acquisition of smaller, rival TV company Tegna — said it was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the foreseeable future, starting Wednesday night.

    Since then, many actors, writers and comedians have voiced and continue to voice their support for Kimmel. Outside Disney’s studios in Burbank, California, hundreds of people took part Thursday in a protest led by the Writers Guild of America and co-organized with the group Burbank Against ICE.

    On Friday, Michael Eisner, the ex-CEO of Disney, appeared to criticize his former company.

    “Where has all the leadership gone? If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?,” Eisner wrote on X, calling Carr’s actions “yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.”

    In a series of posts on X, Carr has maintained that the decision stemmed from local stations making “programming decisions” that are “responsive to the local communities they serve” — something he claims Kimmel’s show was not doing.

    “Broadcasters have long retained the right to not air national programs that they believe are inconsistent with the public interest, including their local communities’ values,” Carr wrote in another post.

    Carr’s role in Kimmel’s removal also has caused some concern on the right.

    […] More recently, Disney’s ABC News also settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump, paying $15 million to his future presidential museum or foundation.

    […] In addition to Lindelof’’s and Maslany’s calls to push back on Disney and its products, other Disney boycott calls have percolated online in the last couple days, though it’s not clear how widespread it has been or if it will have a lasting effect on the company.

    […] As the message gained traction over the last day across social media sites, Google Trends showed an uptick of searches for the terms “cancel Disney Plus” and “boycott Disney,” as posters declared they were leaving the streaming platforms behind.

    Bill Simmons, a popular podcast host and friend of Kimmel’s who also used to work on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” said in a podcast posted early Friday that he thought there was a good chance the show would get canceled, but that pushback against Kimmel’s suspension had caused him to reconsider.

    “What changed over the last 24 plus hours is there was such a groundswell,” Simmons said. “This just felt like this became the moment. If we stand by and let something like this happen, what’s next? Where do we go?”

    At the link, there is video of Trump blathering on and on as he spouts vague insults in his usual manner.

  203. says

    New Yorker link

    “What Trump Wants from a TikTok Deal with China,” by Clare Malone

    “The Chinese-owned social-media app was banned by Congress because of national-security concerns, but the President seems more interested in leveraging its future for his personal gain.”

    On Friday morning, Donald Trump, in a much-anticipated phone call with China’s President, Xi Jinping, was expected to discuss a range of issues, including their two countries’ ongoing trade war, the fate of Taiwan, and a settlement to what has become a months-long international drama over TikTok, the Chinese-owned social-media app that briefly went dark in the U.S. earlier this year.

    The platform’s critics point to serious concerns with it, including that its use has widespread negative effects on the mental well-being of children and teens, that its content promotes pro-Chinese points of view, and that the company could endanger national security, given the giant trove of data it collects on its American users. After the call, near the end of a typically discursive Truth Social post, Trump announced, almost as an aside, that the issue had been approved: “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!”

    Last spring, in the final months of his term, President Biden signed a law that would shut down TikTok in the U.S. if the app’s stateside operations were not sold to an American entity by the last day of his Presidency. It was the culmination of years of bipartisan concerns that TikTok […]

    The court upheld the ban and, for a mere fourteen hours, TikTok went dark in the U.S. But one of President Trump’s first actions when he returned to the White House on January 20th—with TikTok’s C.E.O., Shou Chew, in attendance at his Inauguration—was to sign an executive order that paused the ban for seventy-five days. […]

    The President would go on to extend the pause four more times [I snipped a discussion of Elon Musk as a potential buyer.]

    One company, however, has long been associated with a potential TikTok deal: Oracle. […]

    After signing the executive order delaying the ban, Trump put Vice-President J. D. Vance in charge of finding a solution. The assumption was that TikTok would bring on additional American investors to dilute Chinese shares, thus satisfying the requirement of an American owner. […] negotiations continued behind the scenes.

    […] This month, the U.S. and China began trade talks in Madrid, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing was eager to host Trump for a state visit, a sign that the Chinese government was increasingly inclined to strike a deal. […]

    The framework is understood to mean that a new company will be created, one where ByteDance will retain a stake of under twenty per cent. The remainder of the investor group will be U.S. companies, including Oracle, the private-equity firm Silver Lake, and the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. […]

    If such an agreement is reached, Trump will crow about his dealmaking skills, but, for China, keeping the algorithm will be a coup. After years of hand-wringing in the U.S., the supposed national-security concerns of TikTok will go largely unaddressed. Instead, the deal’s more immediate impact would be to bolster an emerging media conglomerate, under the auspices of the Ellison family, who are assiduously friendly to Trump. Oracle’s C.E.O., Larry Ellison, who briefly surpassed Musk as the richest person in the world this summer, is a longtime Trump supporter. His son, David, recently merged his production company with Paramount; after the F.C.C. approved the merger, Trump publicly claimed that David’s media company had agreed to give the President twenty million dollars in free advertising. [!] Paramount has since appointed the former president and C.E.O. of the conservative Hudson Institute as the ombudsman of CBS News, and David is rumored to be closing in on a deal to name Bari Weiss, a founder of The Free Press, as either the channel’s editor-in-chief or co-president. He is also rumored to be preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO and CNN. [!!]

    In a matter of weeks, the Ellisons could own a movie studio, multiple television streamers, two news networks, and have a significant stake in the world’s fastest-growing social-media platform, all while hosting the data of millions of users and providing much of the cloud-computing infrastructure that powers corporate America—a level of vertical integration that, even in an age of rapid consolidation, is unprecedented. […]

  206. says

    @200 birgerjohansson wrote: Aldouis (sic) Huxley – The dictatorship of the future
    I reply: The future??? I’ve got news for you. We have suffered under a dictatorship for quite a while now. Aldous Huxley caught only a glimpse of it. Hundreds of writes portrayed it decades ago. And, there are too many true episodes in history that the rtwing xtian terrorists want to hide from us. WTF

  207. says

    @202 birgerjohansson wrote: Soccer heading does most damage to brain area critical for cognition, brain imaging study finds
    I reply: I don’t mean to pick on birgerjohansson, but isn’t it obvious that most brain damage really comes from slurping down the rtwing xtian magat kool-aid!

  209. JM says

    Reuters: Zelenskiy says Ukrainian forces make progress in Sumy border areas

    President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had advanced in border districts of northern Sumy region, an area where Russian troops have tried for months to establish a foothold.
    Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, also quoted Ukraine’s top commander as saying Moscow’s forces had suffered significant losses in Donetsk and Kharkiv regions along the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontline.

    Reuters: Zelenskiy says Ukrainian forces inflict heavy losses on Russia in counteroffensive

    Ukrainian troops pressed on with a frontline counteroffensive around two cities in the east of the country on Friday, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying heavy losses were being inflicted on Russian forces.
    Russia said its forces had captured two new villages in their slow advance through Ukraine’s east and south, but its Defence Ministry made no reference to the Ukrainian drive near the towns of Pokrovsk and Dobropillia.

    Outside analysts say Russia had two goals for their summer offensive, make progress around Sumy and more importantly, capture Pokrovsk. They achieved neither and lost lots of soldiers in the progress. They did move the front line towards Pokrovsk but not much and they may have lost ground overall near Sumy. In the second part of the summer Ukraine has started making small offensive attacks, no longer letting the Russians hold territory once they occupy it.
    One significant issue that has come up this year is the grey zone of the front line getting deeper. The Russians are using a tactic build around sending small groups to infiltrate the Ukrainian front and then moving to capture territory that has enough infiltrators in it to support attacking forces. The Ukrainians are making small attacks that capture small sections to cut off Russian positions bit by bit and then pressuring the isolated Russian soldiers. The end result is the front line getting harder and harder to pin down.

    How are the Russians reacting to all of this?
    Reuters: Top Russian officer reports advances on all Ukrainian fronts

    A senior Russian officer toured positions held by his troops in Ukraine on Wednesday and said Moscow’s forces were advancing on all fronts, the Russian Defence Ministry said, with the heaviest fighting taking place around the logistics centre of Pokrovsk.
    General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of staff of the armed forces in what Moscow calls its “special military operation”, said Moscow’s troops were making progress in the eastern Donetsk region, the conflict’s focal point, and further west in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

    Blatant lie even for the Russians but I guess he felt he couldn’t admit anything in front of the troops. In Moscow they must have a better view of the action but I would be very curious to know what Putin is hearing and what he believes. When negotiating with Trump earlier this year he said the Russians would break the Ukrainian line at Pokrovsk in a few weeks and capture the entire Donesk region in a few months. That is entirely irrational but I have no idea if Putin believes it or was just manipulating Trump.

  210. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/judge-smacks-down-latest-trump-lawsuit

    “Judge Smacks Down Latest Trump Lawsuit On Grounds Of Being Really, Really Stupid”

    This past week, our Effervescent God of the Heavens Donald Trump sued The New York Times for $15 billion for committing the indelible crime of being mean to him. […]

    That was Wednesday. On Friday, in possibly one of the fastest legal dismissals since some ancient Greek chiseled the Dreros inscription into a bunch of rocks, a federal judge sua sponte booted the case. (Sua sponte is Latin legalese that means “get that weak shit outta here.”) This, as we understand it based on the reactions of a dozen lawyers or so we follow, is incredibly rare. Especially when a judge does it a mere 48 hours after the plea is filed.

    The judge justified the dismissal on Rule 8 grounds. This is the rule in federal procedures that says legal pleadings such as this one must have “a short and plain statement of the claim showing the pleader is entitled to relief.” Apparently, it is very rare for a pleading to get rejected for Rule 8 violations, because most lawyers filing in federal courts are not galactic morons who do not understand the assignment.

    In dismissing the case, the judge chastised Trump and his lawyers for wasting the court’s time and energy by filing an 85-page pleading that read more like a press release with its pages upon pages upon pages of bragging about Trump’s incredible achievements.

    Thus we learned that Trump won the 2024 election in historic fashion, that he gave a “remarkable performance” in The Apprentice, which we are told was “one of the top-rated shows of all time,” that the Times violated “journalistic standards” in reporting on Trump because the paper hates him, that it actively was trying to help him lose, and that the president’s “unprecedented personal brand alone is reasonably estimated to be worth at over [sic] $100,000,000,000.” [LOL, LOL, LOL]

    […] The judge had to slog through all this crap […] He was not happy about it. So not happy that this is how his response begins:

    As every member of the bar of every federal court knows (or is presumed to know),

    Again, we’re not lawyers, but we’ve read enough legal filings to know that if the judge is beginning a document like he’s talking to a grade schooler who left class for the bathroom without permission or a hall pass, he’s about to eviscerate you. Metaphorically, of course.

    Even assuming that each allegation in the complaint is true … a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief.

    Tedious, burdensome, tendentious … if someone is describing your writing this way, we recommend changing careers[…]

    […] The judge continues:

    As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.

    […] The judge then proceeded to explain to Trump’s lawyers what the purpose of a pleading is, and that this one stands “unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” [Well said!] He then warned the lawyers to be more dignified and professional, while also giving them 28 days to amend and refile the complaint. The new version, he warned, better be 40 pages, tops.

    Guessing at what Trump’s lawyers must have been thinking in filing this Tolstoy novel of a legal pleading is a mug’s game, but we’ve been wondering anyway. It’s not as if Trump himself was going to read it. No judge in his or her right mind was going to accept this monstrosity. […]

    For shits and giggles, we googled the names of the three lawyers who put their signatures on this garbage. Daniel Epstein, we learned, specializes in administrative law and regulatory policy. Edward Paltzik, who looks like a 20th-generation clone of Stephen Miller, allegedly focuses his practice on several constitutional amendments, including the First. Which makes it highly ironic he’s suing a newspaper for exercising its right to endorse Kamala Harris.

    And Alejandro Brito is a business lawyer who specializes in commercial, franchise, and trade secrets disputes. Here’s a trade secret: We hope he got his retainer up front.

    None of these guys have a resume that quite matches the height of Alina Habba, with her booming career as counsel for her husband’s parking garage company before she found the Trump gravy train. But Trump is pretty clearly scrambling to find lawyers who will sign their names to legal documents for him. […]

  213. JM says

    @209 JM: Meant to include this in the previous post but lost it in editing. It’s really the most important part.
    Espreso: Ukraine braces for ‘difficult winter’ as Russia prepares for two more large-scale assaults

    It is precisely for this reason that Russia will place its main bet on the winter offensive campaign, having completed a large-scale regrouping of troops, the likes of which has not been seen since the defense of the Kyiv region.

    The failed summer offensive did not achieve any of it’s goals but it has messed up the Ukrainian line in places. So it appears the Russians are going to gamble on a winter offense this year. They are pulling in a lot of force, including their rare experienced troops and transferring navel marine forces.
    What sort of campaign they plan is unclear. The sort of infiltration campaign they have been running is messy and dangerous in summer, in the winter the Russians will start losing troops to the cold.

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