Haven’t you heard? DJT has outlawed bad weather. No more blizzards. No more hurricanes. No more tornadoes. No more atmospheric rivers. They make him look bad. Similar to the way he has outlawed diseases and pandemics.
“C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela”
“The attack last week, on a dock purportedly used for shipping narcotics, did not kill anyone, people briefed on the operation said. But it was the first known U.S. operation inside Venezuela.”
The C.I.A. conducted a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela last week, according to people briefed on the operation, a development that suggests an aggressive new phase of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Maduro government has begun.
The strike was on a dock where U.S. officials believe Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, was storing narcotics and potentially preparing to move the drugs onto boats, the people said.
No one was on the dock at the time, and no one was killed, they said. But the strike is the first known American operation inside Venezuela.
The details of the strike, which were reported earlier by CNN, fleshed out an attack that President Trump had already discussed openly, despite the secrecy that typically surrounds C.I.A. operations.
[…] The New York Times reported earlier this year that Mr. Trump had authorized C.I.A. operations in Venezuela and ordered them to plan for a variety of potential missions.
The C.I.A. regularly conducted drone strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere during the Obama administration. But the agency is not known to have conducted strikes recently, leaving operations to the U.S. military.
It is not clear if the drone used in the mission was owned by the C.I.A. or borrowed from the U.S. military. Military officials declined to comment on Monday. The Pentagon has stationed several MQ-9 Reaper drones, which carry Hellfire missiles, at bases in Puerto Rico as part of the pressure campaign.
Russia claimed that Ukraine targeted Putin’s private home with a drone attack. Ukraine strenuously denied it. Trump accepted Putin’s story as true anyway.
Related video at the link.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine were made even complex this week when Vladimir Putin alleged that his rural home had been targeted by a failed Ukrainian drone attack. Russia offered no evidence to substantiate the claims, and as The New York Times reported, Ukraine strenuously denied that such an operation took place:
Ukraine immediately denied any such attack, accusing the Kremlin of inventing a pretext to undermine the peace talks being orchestrated by the Trump administration. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who met with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Sunday to discuss a possible deal, called the Russian allegation a ‘complete fabrication.’
[…] Donald Trump, however, apparently accepted Putin’s claims at face value.
“I learned about it from President Putin today,” the American president told reporters. “I was very angry about it.”
Asked whether Putin’s claims had been verified by evidence collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump initially replied: “Well, we’ll find out.”
Or put another way, the American president became “very angry” about claims, despite not knowing whether they were true or not.
In case that weren’t quite enough, moments later Trump told the reporter who asked the question, “I mean, you’re saying maybe the attack didn’t take place. It’s possible, too, I guess, but President Putin told me this morning it did.” [social media post, with video]
The comments reflected a simple truth that too often goes unmentioned: Trump simply trusts Putin. Trump has never explained why, but the Russian leader has the American president’s ear, and Trump appears eager to accept Putin’s claims at face value — despite everything he really ought to know about the former KGB agent’s record and obvious lack of credibility.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has consistently been critical of the White House’s weakness toward Moscow, wrote via social media, “President Trump and his team should get the facts first before assuming blame. Putin is a well-known boldface liar.”
The fact that Trump will likely ignore the retiring congressman’s good advice speaks volumes.
“As electricity costs climb, Trump could try to avoid blame for the problem. He prefers to push an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist.”
Related video at the link.
[…] “Electricity is down. It’s way down,” Trump said. “You know, when the gasoline goes down and when the oil and oil and gas go down, the electricity comes down naturally. But it’s all coming down. It’s all coming down. It’s coming beautifully.” [Lies]
American consumers would surely be delighted if their president were telling the truth, but he’s not.
As the editorial board of The New York Times recently explained, “Electricity prices are almost 10 percent higher than they were a year earlier, according to the most recent numbers.” [!]
[…] the Times’ editors added that the Republican administration’s energy policies “are not helping — and will soon make matters worse.”
A new report in The Wall Street Journal pointed in the same direction.
Most Americans are paying more for electricity — and need to prepare their wallets for further pain ahead.
Data centers are getting much of the blame lately for rising power costs, but they aren’t the only catalyst and don’t always cause increases. The reasons our bills are rising are complex and varied. Hurricanes, wildfires, state renewable-energy plans and the replacement of aging or damaged grid equipment are all playing a role.
[…] “We intend to slash prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” Trump said in August 2024. He went on to claim, “We’re looking to cut them in half, and we think we’ll be able to do better. … You will never have had energy so low as you will under a certain gentleman known as Donald J. Trump. Have you heard of him? So we think your energy bills will be down by 50% to 70%. How good would that be?”
[…] the president has failed spectacularly to deliver on his promise.
The curious thing about these developments is that Trump could plausibly explain why rising electricity prices are not entirely his fault. But instead of making the case to the public on why he doesn’t bear full responsibility for the problem, the president has decided to manufacture an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist, and electricity costs are “way down.”
That the president is the nation’s most prolific liar is nothing new, but I continue to believe there’s a qualitative difference between regular ol’ lying and self-defeating lying. Often, when Trump peddles nonsense, the American mainstream isn’t immediately sure what to believe, and it falls to media fact-checkers to offer the public guidance on what’s true and what’s not.
But when the president tells Americans that electricity prices are “coming down … beautifully,” no one needs a fact-checker; they just need a bill from their local power company.
“Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen is back—even though the illegal-influence and money-laundering investigation remains open.”
[…] Lauren Chen left the United States in July in disgrace. Her Tenet Media YouTube channel, which positioned itself as a sort of MAGA supergroup bringing together such popular commentators as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, had been exposed in 2024 by the FBI as a Russian media front illicitly taking money from pro-Putin propaganda outlet RT.
[…] In the wake of the indictment, Chen lost her work visa and was forced to leave the country. She also vanished from social media. It seemed unlikely she would return to the United States anytime soon.
But this holiday season, Chen and her husband were back in Nashville, where she lived while running Tenet. She broke the news herself, by announcing on Instagram and X on Christmas Day that she could now return to the United States, and specifically thanking the State Department’s Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs and former Trump presidential campaign worker, for his help.
[…] Chen also thanked Customs and Border Patrol, the FBI, and “the administration” broadly.
[…] Rittenhouse does appear to be a fan of right-wing media. In August, he posted a picture with his feet up on a desk in what appeared to be a government office building, watching a video from right-wing British YouTuber “Sargon of Akkad.”
[…] the administration has not shied away from throwing bones to right wing media figures—prioritizing them at White House functions and elevating them at the briefings. As for Russian interests, the president has long been outwardly comfortable associating with them.
[…] According to court records, the federal case against Tenet’s funders is still open. But with the Russian operators who allegedly facilitated the money-laundering scheme still at large, the investigation hasn’t gone anywhere in the year since the indictments were filed.
The right-wing commentators who posted on Tenet have maintained their innocence about the nature of the operation, with Johnson, Rubin, and Pool all claiming that they were “victims” of Chen’s company—duped, as it were, by the Russian government into taking tens of thousands of dollars for making a single YouTube video.
[…] The one person who did face some fallout was Chen, whose visa situation with the American government was dire. This past September, she complained that the Biden administration had “nuked my visa” after Tenet’s funding was exposed. […]
The Trump administration’s intervention on Chen’s behalf comes as it has moved to dramatically restrict visa rules more broadly—even denying visas to activists opposed to disinformation. […]
Imagine a nation, a major world power, where people are being persecuted, erased, snatched off the street and dumped in faraway countries to which they have no connection, because the nation is run by bigoted nationalists who are led by a dementia-addled ball of shrieking, hot rage. Where open corruption flourishes at the highest levels of a government stocked soup to nuts with some of the most feral, vicious, incompetent dipwads that nation has ever produced
And yet you are stuck pretending those are the good guys, because the bad guys have spent almost four years bombing your nation to smithereens while displacing and murdering hundreds of thousands of your citizens, and you need the dipwads’ help to get them to stop.
Such is the plight of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president came to Florida this weekend, to Donald Trump’s bargain-basement Xanadu that he thinks is on par with the greatest buildings ever created by Western civilization, to present a 20-point peace plan for ending Russia’s invasion of his country. This was a counter to the 28-point plan that the US floated a few weeks ago that read as if it had been dictated by Vladimir Putin himself. Which it probably was.
Remember back in August, when Trump flew to Alaska to meet Putin, going so far as to have a red carpet rolled out when Putin deplaned so that his fancy-soled shoes would not have to suffer the indignity of touching an airport tarmac? The two leaders met on that carpet and shook hands while grinning broadly, Trump because there is nothing he admires more than a ruthless dictator he can suck up to, Putin because Donald Trump is such a sucker.
There was none of that for Zelenskyy. There was not a single American official waiting on the tarmac to greet him, just Ukraine’s ambassador and some other personnel. Trump could not be bothered, even though the Miami airport is slightly closer to Mar-a-Lago than Alaska. This struck us as quite the diplomatic snub, one that sent a message that very clearly told the Ukrainians who America finds important and worth listening to here. […]
“How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump”
“Customer service deteriorated by key measures as the agency enacted sweeping cuts in Trump’s second term, internal data and interviews show.”
The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover.
It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews.
Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath.
Exaggerated claims of fraud, for example, have led to new roadblocks for elderly beneficiaries, disabled people and legal immigrants, who are now required to complete some transactions in person or online rather than by phone. Even so, the number of calls to the agency for the year hit 93 million as of late September — a six-year high, data shows.
The troubled disability benefits system is also deteriorating after some improvement, with 66 percent of disability appointments scheduled within 28 days as of December — down from nearly 90 percent earlier in the year, data shows. [Graph]
[…] Commissioner Frank Bisignano has authorized millions of dollars in overtime pay to employees in a race to clear the bottlenecks, which worsened dramatically after nearly 7,000 employees — 12 percent of the workforce — were squeezed out early in the year. The agency said it has made improvements: It reduced the processing center backlog by 1 million cases this fall, cut pending disability claims by a third and kept the website live 24/7 after a series of outages earlier this year.
The current crisis follows years of disinvestment by Congress […]
This account of the crisis at Social Security is based on internal documents and interviews with 41 current and former employees, advocates and customers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about their concerns.
[…] The table was set in February by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which installed a loyal, mid-level data analyst with no management experience to lead the $15.4 billion agency.
[…] Regional offices abruptly disappeared in a rushed reorganization. New policies to fight fraud were rolled out only to be canceled or changed, prompting confused customers to jam the phones and the website, which crashed repeatedly. Daily operations in some respects became an endless game of whack-a-mole as employees were pulled from one department to another.
Along the way, Social Security also became ground zero in the administration’s quest to gather Americans’ personal data — largely in service of its mass deportation campaign. […]
Much more at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
A Different Bias
“The truth about Putin’s Belarus nuclear gambit”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DqIr1FF9nK0
I am picturing Russians placing an old tactical nuke on a trebuchet. Because Russian military tech is rusting away.
NASA is sending four astronauts on a ten-day journey making an U-turn behind the moon. This is less ambitious than the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and closely mimic the Soviet Zond missions.
The Soviets were planning to send two cosmonauts around the moon about the same time as Apollo 8, but decided it would look too unimpressive after NASA beat them.
mizzisays
@birgerjohansson
Thank you for those interesting science links, especially the Mouseheimer one.
“We’re going to probably bring a lawsuit against him,” the president said, referring to an unlikely civil suit against the Federal Reserve chairman.
Related video at the link.
[…] The president has pressed the Fed chair to lower interest rates with heavy-handed tactics, and the more Powell ignored him, the greater the fury from the Oval Office.
Indeed, the president has resorted to juvenile taunts and name-calling, publicly condemning Powell as, among many other things, a “moron” for failing to follow the White House’s misguided demands.
But Trump apparently still has another tactic in mind that he hasn’t yet pursued. The Washington Post reported:
President Donald Trump on Monday said he might sue Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell for what the president called ‘gross incompetence,’ injecting new tension into the already strained relationship between the White House and the independent central bank.
[…] As part of the same exchange, Trump said he hadn’t ruled out trying to fire the Fed chair he personally chose for the job, overlooking the inconvenient fact that he doesn’t have the authority to do so, and he publicly vowed not to after markets fell in response to related rhetoric in April.
But putting that aside, it’s important to emphasize that the White House, as part of an apparent intimidation campaign, has been making related threats for months. In August, Trump wrote online that he was “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed,” and press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted he was serious about this.
Like many of the president’s other threats, nothing came of this. And though Trump apparently hasn’t given up on the idea, it’s unlikely that he’ll follow through.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume that such a civil suit would even be possible. “It wasn’t clear what specific claims Trump was referring to Monday, or how or when a suit could be brought,” the Post’s report added.
But I’m also curious about the implications of such an effort. If litigants can file civil suits against government officials over perceived “gross incompetence,” wouldn’t that lead to an avalanche of such cases?
Given Team Trump’s brazen and routine incompetence, it isn’t difficult to imagine the president and administration officials facing a whole lot of lawsuits along these lines if he were to open such a door.
A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the United States. [!]
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Tennessee to charges of human smuggling. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive—a way for the Trump administration to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.
To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order under seal that compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys. That order was unsealed on Tuesday and sheds new light on the case.
Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.
Rob McGuire, who was the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.
In the newly unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.” [1]
[…] The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee where Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and state troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records. [!]
The order does not give a lot of detail on what is in the documents that were turned over to Abrego Garcia, but it shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.
On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 15, McGuire emailed his staff that Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later, [!]” Crenshaw writes.
On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it.
“The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.
A hearing on the motion to dismiss the case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.
[…] Trump has repeatedly promoted conspiracies and smears posted online by a parody account that encourages followers to rate press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s butt.
The account, @WHLeavitt, pretends to be Leavitt asking followers to share their thoughts.
“What do you think of my backside? Watch the video—it’s featured in the final 3 seconds,” one post said, alongside a video of Leavitt traveling with Trump and Elon Musk.
Despite the ridiculously sexist content—or perhaps because of it—Trump himself has promoted it on his own social media feed. [I snipped examples that included promoting “restitution” for Rudy Giuliani; and examples showing Trump sharing racist smears like ““75% of Somalis in Minnesota are on WELFARE.” ]
[…] What makes Trump’s amplification of the account even more odd is that data from X reveals that it’s based in Taiwan and has only been active since November 2024, making it just one more pro-MAGA account promoting disinformation from overseas.
It’s unclear if Trump realizes that the account is fake or if he truly believes that it’s the official account of his press secretary, especially considering that he’s demonstrated signs of cognitive decline over the last few years.
[…] The account’s content is consistent with Trump’s sexist objectification of Leavitt, who announced a few days ago that she’s pregnant with her second child
“She gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don’t stop,” Trump said to reporters in early December. [Ick]
Leavitt has spent her time in the White House pushing obvious lies and bigoted falsehoods in service of Trump.
[…] the account is fake [however,] the sentiment is in line with the Trump team’s past actions.
Right before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to the US for talks with Trump, Russia held a meeting with its General Staff leadership on 27 December.
During the meeting, General Valery Gerasimov and Russian military commanders made a series of hyperbolic claims about Russian successes, including the alleged complete capture of certain cities in Donetsk and Huliaipole settlement in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. However, this information was not true.
ISW estimates that in 2025, Russian troops advanced an average of 14.4 square kilometers per day. This means that capturing Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts at the same pace would take about 1,190 days, until 1 April 2029.
Analysts emphasize that this calculation does not account for crossings over the Dnipro River, water obstacles, or large cities like Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. […]
“As Russia’s war grinds on, its society is fraying”
“The Kremlin presents the country as strong, united and on an inevitable path to victory, but as peace negotiations drag on, Russian society is deteriorating.”
The bus from the front lines ground to a halt outside the roadside kitchen, and the soldiers on board limped out into the winter mud. [I snipped details of wounds.]
“I would never have signed a contract if I’d known what it’s like out there. Our television is lying to us,” said Fyodor, a young soldier from Siberia. Like others in this article, The Washington Post is not identifying him by his full name to protect him from any repercussions for criticizing the war. [rare video showing wounded Russian soldiers]
[…] “We’re fighting for fields that we cannot even take,” interjected a fellow soldier, Kirill, also in his 20s, laughing wryly. “This war will never end. … It feels like it’s only just begun.”
Scenes like this one remain invisible to most Russians, erased by state propaganda and glossy government projects supporting returning veterans. But inside the country, fatigue and resentment are festering beneath the suppression of dissent.
[…] a nearly four-year-long war is corroding the country from within and making society more dysfunctional, broken and paranoid, according to observers and those interviewed for this article.
Over the past year, the Russian economy has lurched from spectacular growth to near stagnation. Russia’s digital repression and isolation are deepening as more apps and platforms are banned. According to Western intelligence, more than a million Russian fighters have been killed or wounded — many in battles for marginal gains. And as Moscow’s search for internal enemies intensifies, its machine of repression is turning on its own children and patriots.
[…] A former senior Kremlin official told The Post that he was “very worried” about the “dark picture inside Russia.”
“We can’t turn the clock back easily; political will is needed to reverse this, and it simply does not exist,” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss sensitive matters. [map]
In Belgorod, a Russian border city that once enjoyed close links to Ukraine’s Kharkiv — just 46 miles to the southwest — the price of this war is particularly tangible.
Daily drone attacks have long become part of the routine here. Mud-spattered ambulances and camouflaged air-defense units tear through the center of town. The city’s volunteer networks — an integral part of the war effort that has supported the troops with clothing, food and equipment where the government has failed — continue to work around-the-clock, with retirees sewing anti-drone netting and 3D-printing plastic bomb casings for drones.
[…] On a cold November afternoon, a group of volunteers helping deliver supplies to the army huddled around a table to eat soup. They told The Post that they felt abandoned by Moscow.
“They have absolutely no idea what is going on here!” exploded Edik, 52. “In Moscow there are parties, people having fun, going on vacations. How is that possible? Here blood is being spilled, and there they’re celebrating. How can they reconcile that?”
[…] Yevgenia Gribova, 35, who coordinates a center in Belgorod, said the volunteer movement is facing a crisis. In the first year, she said, people were spending the last of their rubles to support the troops, working constantly, without days off or vacation.
“Now people want to rest. They want to spend money on themselves rather than on materials for the front lines,” she said.
[…] “Everyone still wants to take Odesa. It’s a common opinion: People want to go to Odesa on vacation again,” Gribova said. “For us, this is a civil war between Russians and Russians who have forgotten a bit that they are Russians, that’s all.”
Belgorod and residents of Russia’s regions bordering Ukraine form part of what pro-Kremlin sociologist Valery Fyodorov, the director of VCIOM polling institution, has defined as “warring Russia”: a minority of the country — roughly 20 percent — consisting of soldiers, their families, patriotic volunteers and workers in military factories who consider the war vital for Russia’s survival and who are pushing for victory. The rest, he says, are either passively loyal, indifferent to the war, opposed to it but taking refuge in their private lives, or living in exile. […]
Veterans also have access to round-the-clock support from psychologists, doctors, caregivers and volunteers; they are given tax breaks and secure employment, even with disabilities. Belgorod’s program is even offering veterans free land on which to build a house.
Middlebury College professor Will Pyle, who studies Russia’s economy, has found that in some regions a larger share of Russians report being satisfied with their lives than at any time during the decade preceding the February 2022 invasion. The finding is based on analysis of data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which is maintained by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
According to Pyle’s research, conducted with the Bank of Finland, the increase in reported life satisfaction is especially pronounced in regions whose economies have benefited from wartime and military-adjacent industrial production.
This mirrors Fyodorov’s research. “The more depressed the region, the more people have noticed their improvement in life,” he said.
But underneath the lionizing of the soldiers and this temporary uptick in prosperity is the darker impact of returning veterans and the longer-term social consequences of the invasion. Already, horrific murders, rapes and crimes have been committed by returning soldiers, and many of the convicted criminals who signed contracts to win their freedom have returned home to commit more crimes.
“Every governor in Russia knows that a wave of problems is coming with the soldiers returning home from the front with serious post-traumatic stress disorder,” said a Kremlin insider […]
The vocal, ultrapatriotic “Z” military bloggers, initially a backbone of support for Putin’s invasion, have gone on to criticize corruption and shortcomings in the army. The most radical of their leaders, such as ultranationalist hawk Igor Strelkov, were initially jailed. But this fall, they saw their ranks swept by an unexpected purge as the whole movement became the focus of repression.
In September, authorities branded Roman Alyokhin, a prominent blogger with 151,000 subscribers on Telegram, a foreign agent, a label usually reserved for liberal opposition figures. In October, blogger Tatyana Montyan was declared a “terrorist and extremist.” Another, Oksana Kobeleva, was detained by the police. All had publicly criticized senior officials or other propagandists. The Z community has since turned on itself, with bloggers racing to denounce one another.
“The moment of unity did not last very long, and after almost four years, we are seeing how people begin to oppose each other as well, deciding which of them is more patriotic,” said military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel, which has links to the Defense Ministry.
[…] In Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg, security services have found a different target: teenagers.
At the Izmailsky courthouse last month, masked police officers escorted two teenage musicians from their hearing to the secret service cars waiting outside. The pair, 18-year-olds Diana Loginova and Alexander Orlov — from the street band Stoptime — had just had their arrest extended for a third time. Orlov, the guitarist, fist-bumped one of his friends as he exited the courthouse. Officially, they stood accused of blocking the entrance to a metro station during an impromptu street concert this autumn, but their true crime was their viral performances of anti-war songs.
[…] the young musicians’ case sent a chill through this still-liberal Baltic city, where street performances are an integral part of local culture. [I snipped details recounting arrests of other teenagers and musicians in general.]
China fired rockets, massed assault ships and flew bombers around Taiwan on Tuesday, simulating a military blockade in an apparent warning to the United States against supporting the Beijing-claimed island. The second day of the large-scale war games, called ‘Justice Mission 2025,’ saw the Chinese military encircle Taiwan in its biggest such exercise in eight months.
The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted another strike against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people. The strike, which was announced by U.S. Southern Command on social media, has brought the total number of known boat strikes to 30 and the number of people killed at least 107 since early September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
The Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs at the nation’s capital on Jan. 5, 2021, is requesting a conditional release from jail as his attorney cites his autism diagnosis.
Federal prosecutors allege that Brian Cole, 30, is the man who planted explosive devices at the Republican and Democratic national party headquarters the night before rioters swarmed the Capitol. He has been in custody since he was arrested Dec. 4, when he was charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials.
Cole has not yet entered a plea.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh declined to rule on whether Cole would be released Tuesday, telling both parties there were “important arguments under consideration.” Neither Cole nor the several members of his family at the hearing reacted to Sharbaugh’s announcement.
Cole, wearing a khaki jumpsuit, spent much of the hearing sitting quietly and attentively as the parties argued, occasionally adjusting his glasses or fidgeting slightly in his chair. His attention was on the judge throughout the proceedings.
In a federal court filing Tuesday morning, Cole’s attorneys said he has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The filing described his diagnosis as a mild form of autism.
[…] Cole has kept the same job with his family’s bail bonds business over several years and hasn’t moved or tried to flee, his attorneys said.
“The government argues that Mr. Cole spent nearly five years trying to evade detection,” the filing said. “Not true: Mr. Cole lived with his parents the entire time, never moved, and followed his same routine daily.”
In a motion filed Sunday, the government alleged that Cole wore a mask and gloves the night he planted the bombs and that he wiped down the bombs with disinfectant. The government said Cole also performed factory resets of his phone more than 900 times from December 2020 to the day he was arrested.
Federal prosecutors have urged a judge to keep Cole in detention, alleging that Cole felt “extreme acts of violence” were justified because of his dislike of both political parties. The motion said the man told FBI agents that “something just snapped” after he had watched “everything getting worse.”
He directed his ire at the Democratic and Republican parties because “they were in charge,” Cole told agents, according to the government filing.
NBC News previously reported, based on sources familiar with the matter, Cole confessed to having planted the pipe bombs in an interview with FBI agents and that he believed in conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Prosecutors confirmed in the filing Sunday that Cole told agents he thought it looked like “something was wrong” with the election and that Trump supporters who believed the election was being “tampered with” shouldn’t be called “conspiracy theorists,” “bad people,” “Nazis,” or “fascists.”
He is alleged to have told agents that he didn’t align politically with his family members and that he didn’t tell them he was “going to a protest in support of [then President] Trump.” […]
An acclaimed jazz group has canceled two New Year’s Eve concerts at the Kennedy Center, joining a growing list of artists who have scrapped plans to perform at the famed arts institution since President Donald Trump’s handpicked board of directors voted to add Trump’s name to the center.
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot lapse, a blow to the Trump administration, which had declared the agency’s cash stream illegal. In her motion, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the C.F.P.B. could continue to receive funding from the Federal Reserve even though the Fed had been operating at a loss since 2022.
President Trump just said that no hostages were released from Gaza during the Biden administration. That’s not true. In the 2023 cease-fire, 105 hostages were released.
President-elect Trump initially balked at submitting names of likely nominees to the FBI for background checks, a basic step intended to flag possible financial conflicts or ethical problems.
Justice officials felt sure Homan would not be able to obtain a security clearance based on the evidence gathered in the corruption probe, which they and FBI agents believed had shown Homan unsuitable for a trusted senior role in government service, according to the sources. It remains unclear how Homan was eventually granted a security clearance, or whom Bove alerted after being briefed on the Homan probe.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson declined to answer MS NOW’s questions about the Trump transition official being briefed on the Homan probe and how Homan was able to obtain his clearance, but accused MS NOW of seeking to “resurrect a story that has already been thoroughly debunked.”
White House spiked the investigation into Homan and it isn’t clear if he had any background check at all. Trump had already picked Homan and the transition team knew their role was to figure out how to get Homan thru the process, not to determine if he should have the job.
Militant Agnosticsays
A great Red Blues performance by Blue Moon Marquee and Northern Cree
retaliation against Colorado for keeping his ally Tina Peters in prison. Peters was convicted on state charges for a scheme to tamper with voting systems in a search for election rigging in the 2020 presidential race. The pipeline is in Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district. Boebert recently stood up to the Trump administration to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
[…]
Trump is killing the bill to finish […] a decades-long project to bring safe drinking water to 39 communities on the Eastern Plains between Pueblo and Lamar. The groundwater there is high in salt, and wells sometimes unleash radioactivity into the water supply.
[…] there could be wide margins to overturn his veto if Republican leaders in the House and Senate allow an override vote. It’s rare for presidential vetoes to be overridden by Congress, but also rare for a president to veto a bipartisan, unanimous bill as he promises retaliation against a specific state.
Rando: “Let’s see if congress has any spine at all.”
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #32…
At least in the House, it looks like a good place to use a discharge petition.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of almost 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288074
Did the president boast about a foreign strike that didn’t happen, or did he disclose a strike he wasn’t supposed to talk about? Now we know the answer.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288044
Nicholas Grossman: “The US wasn’t attacked by Venezuela, someone based in Venezuela, or anyone else. There’s no self-defense argument, and the US didn’t even try for UNSC authorization.”
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2288037
Latest government inflation, GDP figures are worthless, and will be for months
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-7/#comment-2287999
US offered Ukraine 15 years of security guarantees, Zelenskyy says
Haven’t you heard? DJT has outlawed bad weather. No more blizzards. No more hurricanes. No more tornadoes. No more atmospheric rivers. They make him look bad. Similar to the way he has outlawed diseases and pandemics.
New York Times link
“C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela”
“The attack last week, on a dock purportedly used for shipping narcotics, did not kill anyone, people briefed on the operation said. But it was the first known U.S. operation inside Venezuela.”
Trump wastes little time embracing Putin’s latest dubious claim
Russia claimed that Ukraine targeted Putin’s private home with a drone attack. Ukraine strenuously denied it. Trump accepted Putin’s story as true anyway.
Related video at the link.
The more Trump focuses on electricity prices, the more rising costs matter
“As electricity costs climb, Trump could try to avoid blame for the problem. He prefers to push an alternate reality in which the problem doesn’t exist.”
Related video at the link.
Trump Admin Scores Visa for Founder of Russian Propaganda Outlet
“Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen is back—even though the illegal-influence and money-laundering investigation remains open.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ukraine-russia-war-still-going-despite
Washington Post link
“How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump”
“Customer service deteriorated by key measures as the agency enacted sweeping cuts in Trump’s second term, internal data and interviews show.”
Much more at the link.
A Different Bias
“The truth about Putin’s Belarus nuclear gambit”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DqIr1FF9nK0
I am picturing Russians placing an old tactical nuke on a trebuchet. Because Russian military tech is rusting away.
Meidas Touch :
Fox News has problems spinning Trump’s health as ‘good’.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=D2gsZcapCv8
Men embodying women in VR report strong emotional reactions to verbal harassment
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-men-embodying-women-vr-strong.html
Researchers develop efficient, reusable compound for capturing carbon dioxide from air
.https://phys.org/news/2025-12-efficient-reusable-compound-capturing-carbon.html
Naturally occurring molecule (CaAKG) shown to restore memory function in Alzheimer’s models
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-naturally-molecule-shown-memory-function.html
Inhibiting PGAM-Chk1 binding in the senescent cells of mice appears to slow aging
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-inhibiting-pgam-chk1-senescent-cells.html
NASA is sending four astronauts on a ten-day journey making an U-turn behind the moon. This is less ambitious than the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and closely mimic the Soviet Zond missions.
The Soviets were planning to send two cosmonauts around the moon about the same time as Apollo 8, but decided it would look too unimpressive after NASA beat them.
@birgerjohansson
Thank you for those interesting science links, especially the Mouseheimer one.
Trump eyes outlandish lawsuit against the Fed’s Powell, alleging ‘incompetence’
“We’re going to probably bring a lawsuit against him,” the president said, referring to an unlikely civil suit against the Federal Reserve chairman.
Related video at the link.
DOJ pushed to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia only after mistaken deportation, judge’s order says, by Associated Press
Trump’s weirdness about his press secretary gets ickier
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dsssax6ne5ghruk6velxnbp4/post/3mb5ow3u2kl2v
See also: Russia exaggerates war progress to sway Trump’s peace plan, ISW reveals.
Washington Post link
“As Russia’s war grinds on, its society is fraying”
“The Kremlin presents the country as strong, united and on an inevitable path to victory, but as peace negotiations drag on, Russian society is deteriorating.”
NBC News:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Link
Related video at the link.
MS NOW:
New York Times:
Good news.
New York Times:
MS Nows: Border czar Tom Homan didn’t receive normal background check during bribery probe
White House spiked the investigation into Homan and it isn’t clear if he had any background check at all. Trump had already picked Homan and the transition team knew their role was to figure out how to get Homan thru the process, not to determine if he should have the job.
A great Red Blues performance by Blue Moon Marquee and Northern Cree
Rollin’ and Tumblin’
Lynna @19
Beyond satire: “Why Right-Wing ‘Thought Leaders’ Think it’s “Gay” to Have Sex with Women”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=knPgR8zQYRE
Trump is using his first veto of his current term to kill funding for a major drinking water project in Colorado.
Rando: “Let’s see if congress has any spine at all.”
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #32…
At least in the House, it looks like a good place to use a discharge petition.