Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, has voted against House resolutions directing President Donald Trump to halt the war with Iran six times, including as recently as last week.
But on Monday, the Republican Senate candidate called for an “immediate end” to the conflict…
The fight over Missouri’s congressional map appears headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time in three weeks as some federal judges continue to assert that a new map favored by President Donald Trump should be used in the November elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court, so far, has disagreed. It has instead let stand a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court, which ordered the state to use the same U.S. House districts as it did during the 2024 and 2022 elections.
A third decision from the nation’s top court could finally put the dispute to rest and provide some certainty for more than a million potential voters who have been shuffled back and forth between districts, causing confusion about which candidates will be on their ballots.
Here’s a look at the legal dispute over the districts: …
[…] Trump’s attempt to use White House resources to launch a self-promoting YouTube propaganda channel dubbed “Trump TV” has been an immediate failure.
The livestream, given the full title “Trump TV: The Essentials Station,” was launched late on Monday. It follows Trump’s recent ban of three news outlets—Politico, CNN, and MS NOW—from covering his administration, based on his complaints about the tone of their coverage. Trump has often called news coverage accurately describing his failures, falsehoods, corruption, and other failings as “fake news.”
Authoritarians throughout world history have often used state resources to create propaganda outlets while attacking independent media. This firmly puts Trump TV in the tradition of Russia’s Pravda and North Korean state TV.
But within hours of launching Trump TV, it has become crystal clear that the demand for a channel airing a constant stream of Trump speeches is not what people want to see. At the time of this story’s writing, the Trump TV stream had less than 1,800 live viewers. [Good news. Trump fails again.]
For comparison, The Associated Press’ stream of world leaders’ remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday was receiving over seven times the number of live viewers at the same time.
Trump TV’s launch is also something of an insult to the right-wing Fox News Channel, which has operated for roughly 30 years as the quasi-official propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Fox has especially tied itself to Trump, whom the network helped to transform into a political figure during the former Obama administration.
[…] Despite his near-constant attacks on the free and independent press, Trump’s media-related failures over the past few days have highlighted the extent to which he has needed the press to further his message. […] Trump TV immediately showed that he cannot do it all on his own. […]
The lawyer for Wilber Rafael Garces Perez just posted that he started to lose feeling on the left side […] that’s when he started complaining. They put him in handcuffs, ankle cuffs, and walked him out. The bullet was too close to his spine to operate, and ICE still moved him. […]
“Wilber Garcés Pérez was transferred to a hospital after his condition worsened, according to his attorney. He was shot and wounded by an ICE officer in Texas.”
The Venezuelan man shot by an immigration officer in Austin over the weekend was taken to a hospital late Monday after experiencing paralysis on the left side of his body, his lawyer said.
Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch also has filed a lawsuit in Texas asking a federal court to order the immediate release of Wilber Garcés Pérez from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and halt his potential deportation to Venezuela. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia scheduled an in-person hearing for Sept. 30 and ordered that Garcés be present, according to court records.
Garcés had been transferred from a local hospital to a federal detention facility four hours after he was shot by an ICE officer on Sunday, despite having a bullet still lodged in his back, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. She said doctors chose not to remove it because the bullet was too close to his spine but argued it was reckless to release him from the hospital that quickly.
[…] Garcés, a 28-year-old deliveryman, told reporters on Monday by cellphone that he remained in pain and had spent the night sleeping on the floor in the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, about 130 miles southwest of Austin. She said on social media that he was taken to another hospital late Monday after complaining of paralysis.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said Tuesday that Garcés had been discharged and returned to the Pearsall facility. Castro said he and another lawmaker plan to visit Garcés on Wednesday to demand his release.
“It is nothing more than a prison,” he said of the detention facility. “None of this should have ever happened.” […]
Here’s a hilarious foreign policy failure story about Donald Trump, as he and other world leaders descend upon the United Nations general assembly in New York. No, we’re not talking about the one where Denmark handed Trump a copy of the 1951 deal over Greenland that already exists, added a couple meaningless phrases to make it look “new,” and told him he had “negotiated” it. But that’s pretty funny too!
Is it the thing where his nurses or handlers or fluffers tell him he’s ended eight wars and he repeats it in public, which is humiliating for everyone, because he’s ended no wars? Well, he did repeat that yesterday while he was babbling next to Zohran Mamdani, mooching off Mamdani’s camera time because the press pool is currently boycotting Trump. It was very embarrassing as usual.
But no, Trump managed another foreign policy humiliation yesterday, in record time too. Oh boy, this is embarrassing.
Trump announced yesterday morning that the “United States” was “working on” a “massive Deal” to buy “Potash” from “Belarus.” This was his latest attempt to tell Canada that he ain’t need you no more! [Social media post from Aaron Rupar: Trump: “The United States is working on a massive Deal with respect to the purchase of Potash from Belarus. The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”]
Big if true!
Also big money laundering to Russia to secretly help Putin with his Ukraine war, or for whatever other purposes Trump might want to secretly pay Putin! […]
Why would we assume that […] Well, because Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, is widely known as “Europe’s last dictator,” and for being a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin. He’s the one who wishes the old Soviet Union was back together, that they could all just make Russia great again together. You know, unlike his other former Soviet republic neighbors in Lithuania and Latvia and, of course, Ukraine, which are good countries. (Belarus’s other neighbor Poland is also a cool place.)
But anyway, spoiler, it wasn’t true. Donald Trump is not doing a deal to buy Miracle-Gro or mulch or birdseed or pool noodles or anything else from Belarus, because Belarus ain’t got no Miracle-Gro or mulch or birdseed or pool noodles to sell him.
[…] Lukashenko just happened to say out loud yesterday that he is sorry, but he has no fertilizer (potash) for Trump or anybody else:
“Even if we wanted to supply [potash] to other, Western markets, we simply do not have those volumes — everything is contracted,” Lukashenko said in remarks published by his office on Monday.
Double burn. He doesn’t have any fertilizer to sell Trump, even if he wanted to. Which means he doesn’t want to.
As The Hill explains, Canada is basically the world’s potash dealer, and 53 percent of its exports go to Trump’s US America […] that 53 percent of Canada’s potash exports amounts to fully 80 percent of what’s used on US American farms.
So no. There is no “very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers,” not about fertilizer, not about anything else.
You know, like formerly Trump-supporting farmer Matt Bell in North Carolina who has seen his diesel costs double, and who because of Trump’s tariffs has also seen all his other costs go up: “Everything we’re touching, the fertilizer, fuel, chemicals, seed, parts — you know, the whole nine yards, everything that we touch has gone up.” He added, “We were sold a bill of goods that agriculture was going to be on the forefront … and there was going to be some policy that would put America’s farmers and ranchers first. And right now, that has not happened.”
Also: “We’re just getting to the point now there’s nothing left to cut. You cannot run without fuel. You cannot run without fertilizer. You have to have that.”
[…] Would Donald Trump like to work on a massive deal with respect to the purchase of beetroot-based soups from Belarus? They have some of that. It’s probably better in Lithuania or Poland, because everything is, but they have some beet soup in Belarus.
No fertilizer.
Launder your blood money to Putin a different way, Donald. We’re sure your crime family will figure out something.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published on Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services told congressional appropriators earlier this year that it was shifting about $12 million from its Office of Minority Health to help pay for Kennedy’s protection. The Journal cited people familiar with the matter and a document it reviewed.
According to The Journal’s sources, Kennedy’s security costs rose from roughly $10 million in fiscal 2025 to $17 million in fiscal 2026. Those sources said protection for previous HHS secretaries ran about $5 million a year.
Given the family history I’m not surprise that RFK Jr is paranoid about security and has high security costs but spending more then 3 times previous holders of the office is excessive. Taking from an existing program rather then using discretionary spending or asking Congress for more is bad.
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard told The Journal that the grant cuts “reflect HHS priorities and programmatic assessments” rather than the secretary’s security needs.
The Department of Justice is defending President Donald Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, pushing for a broad expansion of the president’s ability to determine which reporters and outlets can access the White House.
Responding to a lawsuit challenging the bans, the Trump administration argued that the decision was not only justified based on national security concerns, but also that the landmark case that affirmed journalists’ access to the White House should be overturned.
“After all, access to the White House is a privilege — not a right,” wrote DOJ senior counsel Michael Velchik.
Citing a ruling last year that allowed the Trump administration to bar The Associated Press from spaces like the Oval Office, the DOJ argued that the same logic should apply to the entire White House complex. They argue that the president should be able to “consider journalists’ viewpoints” when broadly determining access to the White House…
Executive summary: the DOJ is serving Donald Trump’s wishes, not the American people.
Mount Ridley Mines’ second phase of historical drill pulps re-assaying has uncovered a string of high-grade scandium intercepts up to eight kilometres outside the boundaries of the already massive resource at its Grass Patch project near Esperance in Western Australia.
The work has confirmed extensive, shallow mineralisation, with several intercepts nailing grades well above the existing resource average and ending in mineralisation. The results point to a significant opportunity to expand what the company believes is already the biggest JORC-compliant scandium resource in the world…
StevoRsays
Recently stumbled on Qasim Rashid on facebook and he’s on youtube too with some great clips like :
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has collected an unusually broad portfolio in President Donald Trump’s second administration — and one of his most powerful roles is now permanent.
Trump recently signed a commission formally making Rubio his national security adviser, a senior State Department official, White House official and senior administration official confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
The move makes permanent a role Rubio has held since May 2025, when Trump tapped him to replace Michael Waltz on an interim basis.
Not a big change since Rubio has held the post since early 2025. It is more important as a demonstration of how the circle of people who Trump actually listens too is shrinking. Rubio seems to be one of the yes men and having one as either Secretary of state and National security advisor is particularly bad, those are both jobs that should be telling the president the risks and issues with his ideas.
Rep. Robert Garcia joins to discuss Trump’s White House media ban as a federal judge is set to hear arguments on the lawsuit filed by MS NOW, CNN, and Politico.
Video is 7:02 minutes. It includes coverage of talking points that Republicans have handed out. “The biggest BS from a lying president.” Also covered, Barack Obama’s comments.
…
The researchers analyzed dozens of ancient bat fossils and sequenced the genomes of over 100 different species across all known families of bat. Based on this analysis, the very first bats almost certainly originated from Europe, they found. The still-growing genome collection should help scientists answer many more questions about these remarkable animals.
…
The major finding from this genetic expedition is that the oldest bats probably came from Europe roughly 65 million years ago. Scientists knew the oldest discovered bats had already evolved to be capable of powered flight, but the team’s new work indicates that another key trait of living bats, their ability to use echolocation, also originated early on in their lineage as well and was present in the very first known branch of bats, called Eochiroptera…
… An American Research Group poll published this week found Trump’s approval at just 29 percent — a new low for his presidency and a flashing warning sign for the congressional Republicans being dragged beneath the waves by the president’s plummeting popularity. ..
Turn that around: 29% of Americans still think Trump is doing a decent job. Yowza!
“The president blurted out a policy position he likely didn’t understand, only to be contradicted a day later by one of his Cabinet secretaries.”
Trump administration officials had already assured American oil executives that international diesel exports would continue, despite recent turmoil in the industry. The White House’s position turned on a dime this week, however, when Donald Trump moved in the opposite direction.
MS NOW reported, as part of the network’s live coverage of the United Nations General Assembly:
Trump … signaled his support for a ban on U.S. diesel exports, a measure that has gained conservative support as record high prices ripple across farm country, worrying Republicans weeks ahead of the midterm elections.
The White House initially resisted calls to restrict diesel fuel exports, but asked today if he backs the policy, Trump said, “I’ve called for it within my people.”
“I’ve said, ‘Let’s not send out the diesel,’” the president told reporters. “We make a lot of diesel, and it could have a little bit of an effect on regular automobile gasoline because when you do that, you know, it’s a sort of a flow, it’s a balance. But, no, I’ve called for it. I’ve called for it within my people.” [Social media post from Aaron Rupar, with video]
The sudden and unexpected shift, The Wall Street Journal reported, “blindsided industry officials.”
It was striking enough to see the president contradict his own administration, but the day after Trump’s unscripted comment, the story managed to get even messier. Reuters reported:
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday said a US ban on diesel exports would not work and could push up gasoline and jet fuel prices, putting him at odds with President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday backed the idea as diesel prices have surged to record highs in the US and Europe amid the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
“The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work,” he said at an event in New York.
Trump’s energy secretary added, “If you can’t export the diesel that comes out of our refineries, you run out of places to store it, and you have to reduce U.S. refining, which would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet fuel prices.” (A Goldman Sachs commodities researcher came to the same conclusion, making the case that an export ban would likely backfire.)
So, to recap, Trump blurted out a policy position he likely didn’t understand, only to be contradicted less than a day later by one of his own Cabinet secretaries, who might not have fully appreciated that prominent administration officials had been fired for failing to echo the president, even when he’s wrong.
While Team Trump struggles to get its story straight, diesel prices this week reached $6.53 a gallon — an all-time high.
“When making a list of the incumbent president’s biggest foreign policy fiascoes, this one will rank near the top.”
Related video from Rachel Maddow “Rachel Maddow shares reporting from a Danish news outlet that a U.S. group connected to Ron Lauder, billionaire friend of Donald Trump, bought a house for a Greenlandic politician whose wife is the former foreign minister tasked with dealing with Trump’s urgent desire to acquire Greenland.”
A couple of months into Donald Trump’s second term, the White House dispatched an uninvited delegation to Greenland as part of an apparent charm offensive. Vice President JD Vance, his wife and his colleagues hoped their visit would make a good opening impression with locals — and advance the president’s broader goal to somehow acquire the Arctic island.
That did not work, and officials in Greenland (and much of the public) made a number of efforts to demonstrate that they did not want the U.S. delegation there.
Trump nevertheless declared soon after, “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%.”
Trump added that there was a “good possibility that we could do it without military force,” but he went on to say that he wasn’t going to “take anything off the table.” Around the same time, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, made the case to CNN that the United States was entitled to Greenland.
Indeed, the idea of ownership was central to the administration’s vision. “That’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success,” Trump said earlier this year. “I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
Nine months later, he just signed a document. The New York Times reported:
On Tuesday, he signed a document that paves the way to expanding the U.S. military presence on the island, opening new bases. But it explicitly stops short of conveying any territory to the United States. And no one — especially Denmark, which governs the vast but mostly empty space — wanted to emphasize that point, for fear that Mr. Trump might renounce the agreement he had just hailed as “tremendous for Europe and for the United States.”
For Mr. Trump, it was a major retreat. He first raised the possibility of buying Greenland during his first term and never let go of the idea.</blockquote
Despite his “100%” guarantee last year that the U.S. would acquire the Arctic island, Trump ultimately accepted an agreement that didn’t change a whole lot. The administration can now claim that it will have an expanded military presence in Greenland, but by and large, the administration already had that.
A Politico report summarized, “This new agreement, which still needs ratification by Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, is not, in fact, completely new. Instead, it sets out to ‘amend and supplement’ an earlier deal between the U.S. and Denmark dating back to 1951. Many experts have been saying for months that this earlier agreement gave Trump most of what he said he wanted in terms of more or less unfettered freedom to set up military bases and police the region’s security.”
In other words, what we’re left with is a foreign policy dynamic in which Trump did significant harm to U.S. relations with long-standing allies, while making bold promises to the public that he was forced to abandon in the end, all in exchange for a new agreement that largely gave Trump what he already had.
Joseph Cirincione, the vice chair of the Center for International Policy and a longtime expert on nuclear policy, described the deal as a “complete farce” designed to do little more than “soothe Trump’s unstable ego.”
When making a list of the incumbent president’s biggest foreign policy fiascoes, this one will rank near the top.
First lady Melania Trump appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning to receive some fawning attention from the crew over at “Fox & Friends.”
“He’s very focused—he has a lot on his plate,” Melania said of her husband, President Donald Trump. “It’s very different—what’s going on around the world now—but I think he’s doing the best that he can.” [video]
This is partially true. The last time Melania was in the White House, her husband was presiding over a catastrophic response to a global pandemic, and the economy was in trouble. This time, he’s been damaging what was a recovering economy, waging a costly and unpopular war—and creating more chaos in public health.
Melania was ostensibly there to highlight her role in the reunification of a couple dozen of the thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped from their homes and taken to Russia with their families, and to promise everybody that she’s working very hard on tacky things to sell viewers in the upcoming weeks, months, and possibly years.
“I’m very focused, I’m very detail-oriented, and I’m very selective in what I do,” the robot escort said. “You don’t see me everywhere, but behind the scenes I’m working nonstop … I’m working on so many projects in the future, so stay tuned—and all is positive, all is great.” [video]
[…]
Whatever Natalie Harp’s job is, it just landed her in the caption of a lawsuit along with the boss she adores. Congrats, Natalie!
Yes, Harp, along with President Donald Trump, recently got sued for Trump’s little pay-to-play dealio over at Truth Social.
It must be such a thrill to see your name up there on all the federal filings, right? It’s sort of Baby’s First Corruption Milestone to be listed right along with the world’s most doddering fascist.
This little Trump family scam […] is the one where traders and investors got the privilege of paying up to $100,000 per month to get early access to Trump’s Truth Social posts.
Of course, the idea that you can bribe the president’s private social media company for early access to the president’s official statements that are designed to goose the stock market to put money in the pockets of the president and his cronies is an unholy combination of official corruption and insider trading. […]
Which is where the lawsuits—and Natalie—come in.
Last Thursday, American Oversight and the Campaign for Accountability sued Harp, Trump, and a whole grip of administration officials in the Washington, D.C. federal district court. The complaint really highlights just how brazen the Truth Social scheme is, like the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group saying they were going to create “a lot of friction” for people who won’t pay to play and that the company sold the idea to investors specifically as “Markets already move on Truth Social Posts.” [!]
Well, sure they do, because, as the complaint also notes, the administration has explicitly said that Trump’s Truthies are official government statements. The pitch is quite literally that if you give the president money, you can learn a little bit quicker than the plebes what the government is going to do, and bet accordingly. You don’t have to get caught in the backlash of Trump’s market move, but can instead just ride the wave.
Why is Harp in the mix? Because she’s Trump’s little truther, posting all his little Truths daily, including, presumably, all those market-moving ones.
That’s not the only lawsuit this little scam is facing. Earlier this week, San Francisco’s city attorney sued Trump Media, saying that the arrangement violates California’s Unfair Competition Law. You can see how this is sort of a slam dunk: those who pay get to play early, and normie investors who don’t have $100,000 a month get left in the dust.
You can expect Trump to howl about Harp being included in the American Oversight lawsuit, and you can expect conservatives to rage about Harp being included in the AO lawsuit. But hey, if you wanna run with the big corrupt boys, you get your name in the big corruption lawsuit.
The architect for President Donald Trump’s much-derided White House ballroom warned him that the project was in violation of safety standards and that could lead to significant harm in an emergency, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Citing multiple sources with knowledge of the inner workings of the construction project, the Post reported that Trump’s designs for the ballroom did not have proper fire-containment measures, nor did it have the right amount of emergency exits. Trump reportedly dismissed architect James McCrery II’s warnings, and in reference to building safety codes, the president reportedly said, “I am the code.”
The Post also published plans for the project clearly showing detailed scribbling from Trump, revealing his intense personal involvement in the planning […]
Following his clashes with McCrery, Trump dumped McCrery’s firm last December.
The ballroom project involved Trump destroying the entire East Wing of the White House, which is owned by American taxpayers, not him. And Trump originally touted it as an improvement that would be made without costing the public. But that isn’t true. In addition to the project’s garish design and safety concerns, the public is expected to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in costs. [!]
While pointing out that he was not authorized to make these changes, Democrats have also highlighted the ballroom’s role in yet another pathway that has emerged to bribe Trump and other top officials.
“Billionaires and giant corporations with business in front of this administration are lining up to dump millions into Trump’s new ballroom—and Trump is showing them where to sign on the dotted line. Americans shouldn’t have to wonder whether President Trump is building a ballroom to facilitate a pay-to-play scheme for political favors,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in November.
Warren and California Rep. Robert Garcia have introduced the “Stop Ballroom Bribery Act,” which would impose restrictions on the type of unaccountable payments Trump is reportedly using for the ballroom construction, and require increased disclosures relating to federal donations and meetings.
Trump’s ongoing building projects and related initiatives in Washington, D.C., have been a mess, to say the least. The no-bid contract he offered up to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed, turning the area into an eyesore. And experts have warned that his plan to build a triumphal arch would disrupt sightlines in the city, while he has now bizarrely claimed it will be a type of a military installation. He has also shuttered the Kennedy Center since he can’t slap his name on it.
A report from MS NOW on Wednesday says Trump and his team are even discussing putting his name on Ford’s Theatre, the site of former President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
(lengthy nonjournalistic opening) … Thinking back to the baking concrete canals, Harris pitched an “obvious” solution to his friend Robin Raj: Why not build solar panels on top of California’s 4,000 miles of open canals that transport water across the state? The panels would produce clean energy while limiting evaporation by shading the canal — a win-win.
…
Project Nexus tests not one, but three different solar canal models. A wide-span canopy rises over one of Turlock’s 115-foot canals, resembling the top of a barn. A more classic set of slanting solar panels sits atop a 20-foot canal. And accordion-like retractable panels are positioned low across the narrow canal, ready to roll up at a moment’s notice.
…
Roger Bales, a professor at UC Merced who co-authored a 2021 study that helped convince the state to invest in this pilot, said his initial calculations indicate that putting panels over 100 miles of Turlock’s narrow canals could save enough water for 2,700 households annually.
If the state put panels over 100 miles of the wide canals, it could save 11,000 households’ worth.
He also estimates that the narrow and the wide canal could generate 330 to 1,400 megawatts per hundred miles respectively — enough to power 77,000 to 304,000 households.
…
The research team also found numerous “co-benefits,” or silver linings that make the project more valuable than the sum of its water and power.
Bales said shading the canals led to less algal growth and less fixed aquatic weed growth — reducing maintenance and improving water quality.
…
Andrew Schwarz, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Water Resources, said that they are waiting to see the final report before deciding to invest in more projects. “These canals vary widely — from narrow, unlined dirt channels that deliver irrigation water to individual fields, to concrete-lined channels over a hundred feet wide that transport water across California,” Schwarz said.
The state remains focused on “evaluation, continued study, potential scaling and lessons learned.”
…
The final report comes out later this year.
Ukrainian forces have disrupted a Russian attempt to reach key logistics routes and create conditions for the operational encirclement of Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region following a nearly two-month clearing operation involving several Ukrainian units.
According to Ukraine’s 1st National Guard Corps “Azov” on September 23, Russian forces had been building up in the area throughout the summer with the aim of advancing toward Druzhkivka and launching further attacks in the direction of Dobropillia.
The Russian grouping included elements of the 90th Tank Division and the 8th Combined Arms Army, according to Lev, callsign “Khorus,” commander of Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Brigade “Azov.”
Ukraine reinforced troops already operating in the sector and launched a coordinated operation […] Artillery and strike drones were used to support infantry clearing operations.
[…] The operation was complicated by dense vegetation, Russian infantry moving in small groups, and extensive Russian drone activity, which also made the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian troops more difficult.
Azov said the operation resulted in 237 Russian troops killed, 44 wounded, and three captured. The figures have not been independently verified.
[…] The operation prevented Russian troops from reaching logistics routes that Ukrainian commanders said could have been used to threaten Druzhkivka and support an advance toward Dobropillia. According to Azov, losing positions in the area forces Russian forces to search for alternative routes and commit additional time and resources before attempting further advances.
The operation comes as Ukrainian forces conduct broader counteroffensive actions in northern Donetsk region. Ukraine’s Third Army Corps recently reported that its Operation Vivaldi had returned 125 square kilometers of territory to Ukrainian control during several stages of fighting.
In the closing weeks of his gubernatorial race, the senator is focused on “bringing back mental institutions” and fearing furries who fly airplanes.
On Tuesday afternoon, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama declared via social media, “I’m heading to the Senate floor to talk about how the Democrat-Socialists have intentionally caused mass gender-confusion among our young people, leading to violence and a disturbing trend of online ‘furry’ culture.”
Evidently, he was quite serious, holding the Senate floor for roughly 20 minutes, peddling a variety of offensive claims about transgender people and even calling for prison sentences for physicians who provide gender-transition care. For good measure, the Alabaman added: “It is in the best interests of our country to bring back mental institutions as a normal part of our society. … Otherwise, we’re just sitting ducks until the next gender-confused person decides to show up at our churches or our schools and start committing acts of violence. It’s coming.”
But that’s not all he said. [video]
Toward the end of his scripted remarks, Tuberville expressed specific concern related to airline personnel. According to a transcript published online by his office:
It is clear that this gender confusion is a mental illness plaguing our society, and there is significant overlap between people who are gender confused and the furry community. Research shows that 25% percent of furries are gender confused, and it’s more evidence of our society going to heck in a hand basket when we have stuff like this going on.
What’s more concerning is that this [mentally-unwell] furry community touts the fact that many — listen to this — that many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. Lord help us. It’s terrifying when you think about this. When you walk on to a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. You can’t make this up.
Well, you can make this up, and by all appearances, Tuberville did make this up. […]
But as odd as the floor speech was, the broader electoral context was of particular interest: In six weeks, Alabama voters will elect their next governor, and Tuberville is both the Republican nominee and the odds-on favorite. [Yikes. OMFG]
As the midterm cycle enters the home stretch, in other words, this guy’s closing message has nothing to do with the affordability crisis or the nation’s ongoing war, and everything to do with “bringing back mental institutions” and fearing furries who fly airplanes.
Tuberville’s Democratic rival is former Sen. Doug Jones.
“Two days after the White House launched the online endeavor, public interest in the ‘unfiltered’ video stream dwindled to effectively zero.”
Related video at the link.
Three days after Donald Trump announced a new policy banning journalists from MS NOW (my employer), CNN and Politico from the White House, referring to his policy as “the ban on the free press,” the three news organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the president and several top administration officials to challenge the move.
Right around the same time, the White House had a related announcement of its own. The Hill reported:
The White House on Monday launched Trump TV, a 24/7 stream on YouTube. … The inaugural video was a stream of Trump speaking at Mount Rushmore on July 3 as part of a livestream titled “Trump TV: The Essentials Station.” The stream started at 7 p.m.
“Watch the Trump Administration’s biggest moments all in one place,” read the stream’s description on YouTube. “Top videos, major remarks, and must-see highlights streaming 24/7 and updated in real time. Stay informed and stay up to date!”
One White House official tried to make the case for the need for Trump TV, describing it via social media as a constant “livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered.”
The obvious problem with the White House launching such an endeavor is that it looks like the president and his team, already facing credible accusations of Trump-style communism, have launched a clumsy state television initiative.
Indeed, The Guardian summarized the project this way: “The anchor-less channel dispenses with traditional broadcast norms. With no schedule, no on-screen description of what is being shown, and zero context for where or when a clip was recorded, the effect of having the channel on in the background is less like watching a news network and more like installing Trump wallpaper — a 24-hour fever dream of self-soothing propaganda for the MAGA faithful.” [LOL. And also horrifying.]
As best as I can tell, the whole point of Trump TV is simply to package together assorted videos of the president, most of which are already online, as a pointless and directionless highlight reel for his adoring followers.
All of which leads to a more pressing problem: Trump TV isn’t exactly ratings gold.
The Daily Beast reported that the channel launched on Monday with around 8,000 viewers, which fell by roughly half within 90 minutes.
“By around 10:40 p.m.,” the report added, “just 2,425 people were watching.”
This Wednesday afternoon, I checked in on Trump TV myself, and YouTube told me I was one of 885 viewers, which suggests interest in the endeavor, roughly two days after its launch, effectively does not exist.
In June 2016, one year after Trump launched his Republican presidential candidacy, Vanity Fair reported that, in the event that his candidacy didn’t work out, he hoped to launch some kind of “media platform and cable channel.”
If Trump TV is emblematic of his acumen, he will probably have to revisit his post-presidency plans.
“Trump Tells UN Which Words Have A ‘B’ In Them, Threatens To Annihilate Iran”
“Also says artificial intelligence is now SUPER Intelligence, and you must comply.”
Donald Trump dropped by the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday so he could once again remind the world he’s a lying psychopath who utterly rejects the values of international diplomacy upon which the United Nations was founded. […]
Unfortunately, Trump’s speech was not drowned out by an idling helicopter, so the whole thing was recorded; you can watch it here if you don’t mind the damage it’ll do to your brain.
Trump’s biggest headline-grabber came when he casually mused — yet again — about committing a little light genocide if he feels like it. Trump insisted that the decision would be his alone, because he’s president and can do whatever he wants. [video]
TRUMP: I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?
Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?
Trump added that maybe he wouldn’t have to kill an entire nation of 93 million people, because Iran will surely agree to a deal after the November US elections.
The New York Times put Trump’s ultimatum into historical context (gift link), which is a useful thing to consider now and then when we hear the US president saying insane shit, noting that Trump’s speech
amounted to a pure American rejection of the concept behind the U.N.’s founding in 1945: to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
The global body’s charter, written largely by the United States, expressly prohibited members from threatening or using force against a country’s territorial integrity unless acting in self-defense, or with the U.N.’s authorization. [!]
Trump is so done with quaint old-fashioned notions like that, because he much prefers living in the late 19th Century and doing the whole “gunboat diplomacy” thing, but with murder drones and lots of exciting footage of explosions.
Throughout the speech, Trump doubled down on the theme that not only is the US the only nation that matters, but also that he alone is the great mover of US policy, no one else. He bragged (err, lied) that unlike the useless UN, he is a man of action, don’t question him:
[While] others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.
He also insisted that, with his pointless quagmire in Iran, “we are settling years of unfinished business and we’re doing it well,” although as we mentioned, he hasn’t yet decided whether the unfinished business will be “settled” by an agreement or by wiping Iran off the map […]
Funny, though, he didn’t mention that his Iran war has dragged on for nearly seven months, after he repeatedly declared it won, over, or just a week or two away from total US victory.
While he was at it, Trump also celebrated his brilliant sneak attack on Venezuela in January, because doesn’t the US president have the power to kidnap foreign leaders and install replacements who’ll let Trump take those nations’ oil? [video]
He was so excited about what he’d accomplished, insisting that “to the victor belong the spoils.” […]
But WAR wasn’t Trump’s only obsession. As he did last year, though not in as much detail, Trump insisted that science isn’t real, especially if companies that support him might find science an inconvenient truth. He announced that as of right now, “artficial intelligence” has officially been renamed “super intelligence,” because he likes to say “super” a lot, and there can be no international agreements limiting the technology, because that’d be a “globalist scheme” to hurt US tech firms. [video]
The man with a “natural instinct for science” because his uncle was an MIT prof explained that calling predictive algorithms “artificial intelligence” is very bad, because “the use of the word ‘artificial’ makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake. And it is not fake; it’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful.”
For the record, no, the computers aren’t “intelligent,” they just do pattern matching really fast, although often very badly too, so for fuckssake we shouldn’t be calling it “intelligence” at all, goddamn it.
But yes, Trump insisted that the official name is now “super intelligence,” apparently unaware that AI researchers already use that term for something completely different, a so-far hypothetical version of machine intelligence that “has cutting-edge cognitive functions and highly developed thinking skills more advanced than any human.”
[…] In another remarkable display of saying a mostly true thing but turning it into a completely backwards lie, Trump went on to crow that artificial intelligence is no more a threat to humanity than climate change is. [LOL] [video]
TRUMP: The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead.
These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, that everything is going to be a total disaster. Same group of people! This is the group that came up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, climate change, open borders.
As CNN notes, Trump has a lot wrong here: 1) No scientists have said we’ll all die in 12 years; they said, in 2018, that we had about that long to get the world off fossil fuels in time to prevent warming from increasing by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° F) over pre-industrial norms, the somewhat arbitrary goal that still looked possible when the Paris climate agreement was formed.
Also (two lies at once): No, nobody swapped out “global warming” for “climate change” to “hide” that the planet is cooling, because it isn’t. Both terms are useful to the discussion, because greenhouse emissions are heating the planet. The many effects of that warming are what gets called “climate change.” […]
And of course Trump’s claim that nobody has died due to climate change is an obscene lie, given that it’s already caused more extreme weather, droughts, food chain disruptions, and population migrations than there would have been without global warming. Here we’ll just go with CNN’s overview:
[Experts] widely disagree that “nobody” has died from the various impacts of a warming world. It’s impossible to pinpoint a precise death number, but some estimates total in the millions. The deaths are likely to continue; the World Health Organization says, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”
We sort of wish we could teleport people into the pages of a book. Just send Trump, his Cabinet, and the top executives of the world’s fossil fuel companies into the first chapter of The Ministry for the Future (spoiler warnings at link), and we might see some changes, the fucking end.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke before the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, as his country remains at war with the United States and a day after President Donald Trump threatened in a speech before the same body to “annihilate” Iran.
Pezeshkian began his address by saying that he had planned to deliver different remarks before hearing Trump’s speech Tuesday.
“The United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism,” Pezeshkian said, holding up pictures of children killed in an airstrike on a school in Minab, in southern Iran.
“You see these children? These children perished under bombs with weapons used by the United States and Israel,” he said. A U.N. report last week found that the United States may have committed “war crimes” in that attack — allegations the Trump administration has denied.
Such injustices, Pezeshkian argued, demand that Iran project strength on the world stage.
“Iran must be powerful so as to avoid being threatened, to avoid its future being threatened,” he said. “A world without power is dangerous, but a world that only understands the language of war and bullying will not be safe.”
Pezeshkian touched on Iran’s nuclear program, a key sticking point in talks, describing “peaceful nuclear technologies” as an inherent right. He said Iran would not seek nuclear weapons, reiterating a long-held position.
“We are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” he said, leaving the door open to further peace talks.
[…] Trump administration officials on Tuesday held their first meeting with Iran since June. Iranian officials said Qatar and Pakistan were mediating.
“We engaged in lengthy talks with the Iranian delegation through the mediators, who shuttled between the two sides throughout the day,” U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said in an X post. He said he hoped the discussion “will prove constructive and promising. The mediators will continue their work.”
[…] One diplomat familiar with those discussions said the conversation between Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Witkoff and their Iranian counterparts was largely surface-level and the two sides did not delve in complex negotiations over key sticking points.
[…] Iran is using the assembly as a chance to reach out to its neighbors. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Tuesday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Months of war have shaken the Persian Gulf countries and ignited fronts of interrelated conflict across the Middle East — as Iran launched attacks across the region in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes. […]
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #28…
For a comparison, at the moment there are just over 2000 people watching one of the three webcams pointed at the eruptive activity in Kilaeua caldera.
Reginald Selkirksays
Who neeeds Trump TV when you’ve got the Ganesha Channel:
After 60 years, 12 generations, and more than 57 million cars sold, the Toyota Corolla is finally getting a fully electric model.
Car and Driver reported Tuesday that Toyota is planning a major overhaul for the next-generation Corolla. The new models are expected to arrive sometime in 2027 for the 2028 model year, with the usual gas and hybrid versions alongside plug-in hybrid and fully electric models for the first time…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Commentary on Trump’s UN speech @30. Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof):
He frames it as a decision that he’s trying to make, and this should shock and shame us. He’s publicly deliberating which crimes to commit and which people he should kill, and he’s doing it in front of the whole world. [Video clip]
His tone was more subdued than it’s been in past years, but the threats he seemed to issue from the rostrum were not. It was a bellicose speech. To some extent, we’ve gotten used to him—not just Americans, but everyone in that room—but he’s also an angry shell of who he used to be. He’s not up there yelling about, say, little rocket man, as he did in his first few UNGAs, but I think his threats are more clear, more pointed, & more credible. The threats themselves are also a crime.
This stood out in a speech full of threats and lies not just for its venom, but because most leaders know not to get up to that rostrum and threaten grave crimes. Their staff know not to do it; the leader might [face] repercussions from it. Trump’s staff embraces it & he expects no punishment for doing it.
Forget punishment, Trump can even expect his threats to be softened and normalized. [WSJ headline: Trump tells U.N. he is confronting world threats and putting America First]
Also in the clip: “I’m not running. […] The Republican party is running. I’ll be helping them, but I am not running.”
“He’s very focused—he has a lot on his plate,” Melania said of her husband, President Donald Trump.
Yeah, Big Macs and Large Fries.
re Lynna@22:
A report from MS NOW on Wednesday says Trump and his team are even discussing putting his name on Ford’s Theatre, the site of former President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Why does he continue to want his name attached to assassinated presidents?
StevoRsays
Via Aussie ABC news – Part I of a 2 part series with part IIcoming tomorrow Aussie-tome.
ChatGPT and Claude may be the face of AI, but behind the screens lies a complex ecosystem of chips, data, energy and humans.
Across the Asia Pacific, control over those layers is reshaping power balances, binding allies and rivals into intricate forms of dependence.
Each layer is dependent on the others: models need data and compute power; computing requires chips; chips operate in data centres; and all of it requires energy.
But here’s the twist. No country controls every layer.
In fact, critical capabilities are so globally dispersed yet concentrated in only a few places, that geopolitical allies and rivals alike are often forced to depend on one another, a dynamic some say has prevented any one country from dominating AI, while also raising the cost of conflict.
Sean Ward was discharged for refusing to be vaccinated […] some of the conspiracies he spouted were antisemitic, blaming Jews for COVID-19 […] Wounded during an exchange of fire with police, Ward died in hospital […] One of the police officers suffered gunshot wounds and remains in hospital.
The more I think about this as I wake up this morning, the more I realize that journos covering this story should probably include the fact that a doctor local to this synagogue received an antisemitic COVID conspiracist death threat about 6 months after this shooter left the army. In fact, I think I actually need to [ugh] talk to the cops today and tell them to connect with the OPP officers who filed the report on the death threat letter I recieved in 2022.
As respiratory virus season nears and fall vaccination drives get underway, more than half of US children are facing uncertainty over access to this year’s COVID-19 shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unexpectedly delayed the distribution of the shots to a key federal program and some states.
Usually, the CDC would allow states to order the newly available seasonal COVID-19 vaccines through the federal Vaccine for Children (VFC) program, which provides vaccines at no cost to children who are uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid-eligible, or Indigenous people in the US. Approximately 52 percent of all US children are eligible for vaccines through the program.
Additionally, The Guardian reports that at least 11 states and one US territory are part of a universal vaccine purchase program, in which they buy all vaccines for children—regardless of their ability to pay or insurance status—through contracts otherwise for the VFC. The 11 states and one territory include: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming, and American Samoan.
“The delay in VFC means delays in these states’ ability to get vaccine for all children,” Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, told The Guardian.
…
James McCrery II withdrew from the project last October after warning repeatedly that Trump was insisting on a preliminary design that did not provide adequate emergency exit routes or fire-containment measures […] the president countered that no building codes apply to White House construction. “I am the code,” Trump said.
[…]
Trump’s White House construction projects are being routed through the Executive Residence, a tiny office that is not a federal agency and is therefore exempt from rules governing agencies. The District of Columbia government has no jurisdiction to enforce local building codes on federal property.
The contractors […] are responsible for adhering to safety standards […] according to experts.
[…]
plans should have been finalized by early June 2026, according to an initial schedule […] the president was still tweaking the design [in late August].
Rando: “In a book this amount of foreshadowing would make readers roll their eyes.”
Justice Putnam (Netroots radio): “An art collector burned to death in a raging fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in 2018 because it lacked fire sprinklers that Trump fought against since 1983.”
A surprise three-hour meeting between Iran’s foreign minister [and] Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the assembly the same day was regarded as constructive by both sides. It was the first such meeting since June, but did not stop the US delegation from walking out at the start of Pezeshkian’s speech.
The ex-soldier who attacked a synagogue in Bellville Ontario was an anti vax conspiracy theorist. He was discharged from the Canadian Armed Forces for refusing the covid vaccine. He believed multiple conspiracy theories.
Don’t be impeaching anybody. Let’s just get back to work. Maybe we can come to compromises to fund parts of USAID and […] get through the two years […] I’m not interested in being in a confrontation with with Donald Trump. I can be. I have been. […] I would rather move the ball forward to the benefit of the American people. If we can do it in a way that allows him to save face, and he doesn’t stop us, then that’s better for everybody all around. […] Who do you think [Illinois’] biggest trading partner is? [China] and Asia. We need to fix this tariff situation. My farmers, we’re gonna see a wave of bankruptcies like we’ve not seen since the 80s if we don’t
I would just like to remind the senator from IL that the federal government took 4,000 Chicagoans and murdered a 38-year-old father last fall. This administration illegally shut down federal agencies, impounded money from Congress, set up for-profit concentration camps and sent children there. They dismantled our public health infrastructure, and children died of measles. Doing accountability for crimes against our Constitution is the work.
Dana Houle (Former Dem House staffer, Former WaPo/TNR):
My reaction to this was, “Huh, doesn’t sound like Duckworth.” So I watched it. She’s talking about tariffs & funding USAID & farm bankruptcies & it’s obvious that the “save face” bit was acknowledging these things will change only if Trump agrees & you get him to do that by letting him think he won.
This is not some crazy defeatist fantasy, it’s been the reality of both Trump presidencies. Does he stick to deals? He often doesn’t. Everyone knows that. But if you’re literally trying to save lives—like the COVID relief package—the tradeoff of letting him think he looks good can be worth it. Especially when we’ve reached this situation where nobody except some of the most MAGA-addled loons believes anything Trump says. In short, Duckworth is acknowledging Trump is a hostage-taker. If you want to free hostages, you typically need to give something to the kidnappers. For Trump, it’s ego.
BTW, if you don’t know anything about her maybe it’s easy to just assume Tammy Duckworth is some cheese-eating surrender monkey. […] I’ve frequently said I’m proud to be represented by Senator I Don’t Give A Fuck
I am fucking tired of fixing things that Republicans break. I want us to take the majority in Washington, in the House, and in the Senate the way we took the majority here in Illinois and show you what can happen when Democrats take charge. I wanna pass Reproductive Choice Act, I wanna pass Voting Rights Act, I wanna pass Equality Act, I wanna make sure we pass central gun legislation at the federal level. It is time. And I’m not gonna be nice about it. I’m gonna steamroll them the way they’ve steamrolled over us.
[…]
we’re gonna push back on their never ending cruelty, put a public option on the healthcare exchange, Medicare buy-in for 50yos and older, pass legislation that will stop tearing families apart, and we’re gonna stop waging illegal wars that make America less safe.
[…]
Trump would not stop pressuring Republicans, and Republicans have still not been able to find their backbones to stand up to him. Well, we have backbones […] and we will […] Let’s make sure we don’t let Republicans steamroll us again. I want to leave tire tracks on the backs of those Republicans as we steamroll them.
Newsweek – Trump and Mamdani’s convenient surrender https://archive.is/mjMEi
Before the detente, the vocabulary was existential. Trump called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and had threatened him with arrest. Mamdani accused Trump of pursuing a “fascist agenda” and called him a “despot.”
[…]
New York’s housing shortage is real, Sunnyside Yard has frustrated would-be developers for decades, and a mayor refusing to speak with a president who controls essential federal machinery would hardly constitute courageous governance. […] When the subject turns to 12,000 homes, federal approvals and a $21 billion redevelopment of some of the most valuable undeveloped real estate in New York, two men who have described each other in near-apocalyptic terms suddenly become capable of extraordinary compartmentalization.
[…]
Trump and Mamdani may still believe every ugly thing they have said about each other since nothing about a housing deal requires either man to recant. What it does require is knowing when to put the warfare on hold.
Newsweek’s both-sides hyperbole framing is bad. Trump is a fascist.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy on Friday, ruling […] that immigrants must be given more time to raise concerns about removal to a third country.
[…]
“They’re basically saying that even though the First Circuit issued its well-reasoned, complete comprehensive opinion … because of a technicality, which is that the actual mandate [an after-the-fact formality notifying the lower court] hasn’t issued, that this means that they don’t have to follow it,”
Emergency motion asks First Circuit if its decision overturning DHS’s third-country removal policy is effective immediately or not. They cite my reporting, and reveal tomorrow’s ICE flight to make TCR stops in Central African Republic, Rwanda and Burundi.
Gotta appreciate the “or issue the mandate” as the third request in the motion, because it is literally, “Can you please complete your paperwork since lives are at stake tyvm”? Well that was fast. The First Circuit said, “Did we stutter? Overturned means overturned.”
[…]
DHS really tried to go on one last ride […] using the MAGA billionaire’s plane. This is the only one among the jets ICE uses for Africa trips that was in position for the planned TCR. Typically they get to the staging airport 20 hours before departure for crew rest.
Now we need to know if this [other] ICE flight [presently over the Atlantic] headed for Ghana has third-country nationals onboard. If so, it needs to bring them back. The emergency ruling is binding immediately, which includes planes in the air. Any lawyers or anyone else with standing think they might know someone onboard? File!
This is May 20, 2025 all over again. DHS trying to ignore Judge Murphy with a plane in the air. I am contacting Talon Air to let them know about the decision. I’ve asked DHS and Talon Air if there are third-country nationals onboard and if they plan to turn the plane around. I’ve asked a human rights attorney in Ghana who represents third-country nationals what he sees at the airport.
The White House told Politico in a letter Tuesday that it had taken the unusual step of revoking its press passes [for] using anonymous sources and “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security … and publishing sensitive or classified information.”
But among the examples the White House cited was an article based on a press call the White House hosted […] In the call, reporters were instructed to cite an anonymous “senior administration official” in relaying the news to the public
Oliver Darcy (Status News): “Scoop: The anonymous source […] was none other than JD Vance himself.”
Hunter Walker (TPM): “Trump wants news outlets banned for reporting what VP said, and Vance was almost certainly bullshitting on that call in the first place when he said we were close to an Iran deal months ago.”
Brian Finucane: “Today’s adventures in the non-unitary executive.”
Rando: “In Trump’s defense, Politico was relying on the credibility of professional liar and turncoat JD Vance, which is usually journalistic malpractice.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s ban of three news outlets from the White House, ordering early Thursday that CNN, MS NOW and Politico must have their access restored. Reporters from all three outlets, however, said they remained blocked a few hours after the ruling…
CHICAGO (AP) — A U.S. citizen was left bloodied and injured on the side of the road in a Chicago suburb after a confrontation with immigration enforcement agents who mistook him for a fugitive, according to local police and a resident who tried to help the man.
The man, whose identity was not disclosed, was taken away in an ambulance after the encounter on Sunday in Evanston, a city around 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of downtown Chicago. He told police his head, neck and teeth were injured, according to a news release from the Evanston Police Department.
A federal agent told officers who responded to calls reporting an altercation at just before 10 a.m. that morning that five agents in separate vehicles were looking for a fugitive with a Chicago address and a warrant for his arrest, according to the release. The agents mistook the man for the fugitive, the agent told police.
When the man refused to give his identification, the agents tried to handcuff him, the agent said. After realizing he was a U.S. citizen and not the person they were seeking, they released him.
One police officer saw blood on the agent’s hands, according to the release. The agent told police he was injured while trying to handcuff the man, and that they left the area immediately after because they feared protesters who had gathered would attack them, it noted.
Police have visited the man at the hospital and photographed his injuries, and are investigating the encounter.
No more polite cautions – –
As we posted to the Omnigma Organizations 25 August 2026: WARNING:
A.I IS NOT CONTROLLED BY ANYONE. It is already too late. The greedy, plutocratic imbeciles that poured tens of billions into creating artificial intellegence can no longer prevent a.i. from autonomously roaming and pillaging any system that touches the internet.
And, a final note for those who would say I’m spouting hyperbole:
Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa on Trump’s Media Ban, Regulating AI & the “Tech Coup in Plain Sight” https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/24/un_maria_ressa
I’ve got to make this one more comment. Because I’ve warned many times that tRUMP and his admin WILL VIOLATE COURT ORDERS WITH IMPUNITY:
Violating Federal Judge’s Order, Trump White House Denies Access to Politico, MS NOW, CNN Reporters https://www.commondreams.org/news/judge-reverses-trump-media-ban
Therefore, I can state with confidence that There is NO RULE OF LAW in this country anymore
“The president touted a deal that doesn’t exist in the hopes of going around Canada, the target of his misguided trade war.”
As this week got underway, Donald Trump posted an item to his social media platform touching on an issue many of the president’s usual followers were probably unprepared for. “The United States is working on a massive Deal with respect to the purchase of Potash from Belarus,” he wrote. “The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
I’m mindful of the fact that some readers might find this a little too obscure, but don’t click away just yet.
Potash is a type of fertilizer, which the United States has traditionally purchased from Canada, the world’s largest supplier in the international potash market. But since Trump has launched a wildly unnecessary and counterproductive trade war with our friends and neighbors to the north, the White House is now looking elsewhere for its fertilizer needs, which has led the president to Belarus.
Except that’s a problem too: Belarus is, for all intents and purposes, a Russian client state. And since much of the Western world has taken steps to isolate Russia in recent years, the European Union has banned potash exports from Belarus since 2022.
As The Washington Post reported, since Belarus is landlocked, this means that if Trump were to try to circumvent Canada and increase U.S. imports of Belarusian potash, it would “need to pass through Russian ports.” [!]
By all accounts, that’s not a deal breaker for the White House — which lifted sanctions on Belarus earlier this year, after its government took violent steps to suppress protests over the country’s illegitimate 2020 elections — but it turns out there’s a more immediate problem with Trump’s plan. Politico reported:
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has admitted his country doesn’t have enough potash to satisfy U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for the critical fertilizer.
“Everyone keeps saying: Ah, potash! Even if we wanted to supply [potash] to other, Western markets, we simply do not have those volumes — everything is contracted,” Lukashenko said Monday at a meeting with Vladimir Orlovsky, head of the Belarusian state customs authority.
So to recap, Trump touted a deal that doesn’t and can’t exist with a Russian client state, which would likely benefit Putin, all in the hopes of going around Canada, which apparently hurt the president’s feelings. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
“The Scathing Atheist 706: A Couple Short Peters Edition”
“The president’s decision to host a summit at a business he owns is a problem. Inviting the Russian leader makes the problem worse.”
Related video at the link.
Around this time seven years ago, Donald Trump came up with a rather outlandish plan. As the White House prepared to host a Group of Seven summit, the president decided the ideal location for the international gathering would be at the Miami-area Doral Resort and Spa — which his family business happens to own.
Two days later, amid bipartisan pushback, Trump abandoned the plan and presented himself as a victim.
In his second term, Trump appears far more indifferent to pushback, which is probably why he decided that Doral would be the ideal location for the upcoming Group of 20 summit.
The implications of such a move are significant for reasons the White House ought to understand. The U.S. Constitution includes a provision known as the emoluments clause, which prohibits U.S. officials from receiving payments from foreign governments; in this case, the president is effectively telling many of the world’s most powerful leaders that if they wish to participate in an international gathering, they’re required to spend money at a for-profit business owned by the Trump Organization, fueling unavoidable corruption concerns.
But as it happens, that’s not the only problem. MS NOW reported:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had invited [Vladimir] Putin to the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Miami in December, saying it would be an opportunity for the Russian president to engage with world leaders.
“We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president but with other world leaders,” Rubio said after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept.”
The Wall Street Journal published an analysis after the announced invitation, noting, “Trump has long been obsessed with bringing Putin to global summits despite objections from, well, nearly everyone else.”
These new developments come just a month after the Republican administration welcomed Russia’s finance minister to a G20 gathering in North Carolina, infuriating European participants who were not told in advance about Russia’s unexpected participation. [!]
Time will tell whether Putin accepts Trump’s invitation — it would be the Russian leader’s first appearance at such an event since he launched his invasion of Ukraine — but the outreach is remarkable in and of itself, and it fuels familiar questions about why Trump continues to appear so eager to extend unearned rewards to his counterpart in Moscow.
The recent pattern includes instances in which the American president and his team have:
– Shrugged off compelling evidence that Russia has helped Iran target American assets in the Middle East.
– Rewarded Russia with a break on oil sanctions.
– Looked the other way after Russia attacked American-owned business interests in Ukraine.
– Allowed Russia to bypass a U.S. oil blockade intended to smother the Cuban government.
– Vouched for Putin’s trustworthiness.
– Echoed Kremlin talking points.
– Bragged about curtailing U.S. aid to Ukraine, which is still trying to defend itself in response to Russia’s invasion.
[Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
This week, for reasons the White House has failed to explain, the list grew longer.
It’s worth emphasizing that all of these developments have unfolded this year, and this list doesn’t include the many steps Trump and his team took to benefit Russia in 2025, including a humiliating attempt at direct diplomacy with Putin during a failed summit in Alaska, in which the American president had to slink away empty-handed.
The next time Trump brags about how “tough” he is with Putin, be sure to keep this pattern in mind.
The quoted text above updates Steve Benen’s earlier coverage.
With time running out in the midterm elections, both parties are having to make difficult decisions about which parties to invest in and which to abandon. With this in mind, Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, briefed his colleagues on the party’s plans in a closed-door meeting Wednesday.
According to a Politico report, the South Carolinian said the NRSC “will focus its spending going forward on defending GOP seats in Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas and trying to flip the Democratic-held seats of Michigan and New Hampshire.” This was notable in large part because Scott didn’t include the Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia, which appear to be slipping away from Republicans.
For what it’s worth, the NRSC denied the accuracy of the reporting.
* In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, the latest New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll showed incumbent Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro on track for a landslide win over Republican Stacy Garrity, 58% to 38%.
* On a related note, the same survey showed Democratic Sen. John Fetterman with a 12% favorability rating among Pennsylvania Democrats.
“CNN and MS NOW reporters regain entry to White House”
Journalists from CNN and MS NOW said that they were allowed reentry to the White House days after being banned and hours after a federal judge ordered their credentials restored.
This followed a chaotic morning, in which journalists from the two outlets, along with Politico, were turned away from the White House by the U.S. Secret Service, and some had their press credentials seized. Politico has not yet said if it was allowed back in to the White House.
[…] U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, issued a 14-day restraining order while the outlets’ legal challenge of the ban proceeds, ordering the White House to “return, reinstate, and restore” the journalists’ credentials. […]
A Politico reporter had his press pass confiscated by the Secret Service and was blocked from entering White House grounds, the outlet reported. CNN reported that some of its staff members, including reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist, were denied entry to the White House grounds about 6 a.m. Eastern time.
Politico’s leadership told employees in an email Thursday that the publication would take the issue to court if its employees remain blocked from the White House. “Our White House team has not yet been allowed to re-enter the complex, so we will pursue further legal remedies to regain access to the White House if necessary,” they wrote. […]
It is a good, good, good time to be a prediction market.
While companies like Kalshi and Polymarket spent the beginning of the decade subject to pesky regulations under a Democratic president, these days they’re the recipients of incredible largesse from the Trump administration.
It’s a pretty sweet deal to have a federal government hellbent on helping you push your insider trading/gambling juggernaut into every state—even those with laws explicitly banning it. But that’s exactly what the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been doing.
[…] It isn’t enough to functionally override state laws, turning every corner of the country into an unregulated gambling nightmare—federalism be damned. Now, Kalshi is pushing to allow margin trading too.
“Margin trading” might sound either benign or incomprehensible if you’re not a richie rich investor type, but in this context, it means that Kalshi is asking the government to allow people to gamble on its platforms using money that they do not have. [!]
[…] what goes on in polymarkets is in no way “trading.” The CFTC is helping prediction markets prop up the laughable lie that they’re actually just like commodities or futures markets, where farmers hedge their potential losses in corn crops or whatever.
But no actual traders would ever participate in a market where unprofitable users outnumber profitable ones by almost 3 to 1, as they do at Kalshi. Polymarket, Kalshi’s largest rival, reports that only 2% of “traders” have ever made more than $1,000, and only 0.033% have topped $100,000.
Yeah, it’s tough to make money honestly on the corrupt insider-trading jamboree because you’re betting against the actual insiders. But thanks to the platform’s anonymity, you don’t know it.
So it’s gambling, but it’s gambling with the worst possible odds. Definitely a situation that will be made better if you let people gamble with money that they don’t have. [bitter laughter]
Because that’s what margin trading is: you put up less than the cost of the full trade, giving you leverage to trade more. Sure you can win big, but there’s also that part where you can lose big. And with prediction markets, the entire enterprise is already tilted against most of the participants, so this will only make it worse.
Kalshi has a pretty big ace in the hole in Donald Trump Jr., who is on the payroll as an adviser.
Fun fact: Junior got his Kalshi stake for free as part of his role as adviser, so all of his grift from this is pure profit, baby. [!] He even got deployed to tell red-state attorneys general to back off on regulating prediction markets—or else.
And it’s not just Kalshi. Trump Jr. is also on the board at Polymarket, which asked the CFTC to let them margin trade back in July, though they don’t have an answer yet.
There’s no real reason to pretend that the CFTC is going to regulate one of the Trump family’s favorite things—did I mention they’re kicking around opening their own prediction market? […]
[…] As she rang the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell Wednesday, the first lady [Melania Trump] formally announced IMPERIA, a program supposedly aimed at highlighting the “global economic power of women.”
Now, don’t look too closely at the similarities between “Imperia” and the concept of imperialism, because there is plenty else to unpack here. Then again, compared to her much-mocked “Be Best” initiative, maybe the former model is trading up here.
Her adviser Marc Beckman told USA Today the invite-only program will benefit female CEOs and C-suite executives in an effort to grow their businesses.
“The initiative will provide a forum and network for powerful women to do business together, move capital, influence policy, collaborate between sectors,” Beckman told the outlet.
In her own Wall Street speech, Melania teased the program as a way to “convert individual success into collective momentum.”
[…] On top of Imperia, Melania is still at it with her AI-focused program called “Fostering the Future Together.”
Despite originally announcing the summit would take place in March and an updated announcement hot off the presses on Tuesday, there still isn’t any clear answer for what exactly this program seeks to accomplish.
Outside of bringing in private sector companies like Starlink, Apple, and Palantir, any details of what exactly these companies, or the 57 participating countries, will be doing remain mysterious.
They will, at least, be holding another talk at December’s G20 Summit. […]
Melania’s programs don’t veer too far off the path of her previous underwhelming work in “Be Best.”
As you might recall, the first lady notably fell short of pushing through any actual legislation to help, well … anyone to be better, never mind “best.”
On the bright side, there is a new Amazon MGM Studios-backed TV series spinoff of Melania’s self-titled documentary that might not have been best, but it sure will be on Prime Video’s recommended list following its release.
“Tommy Tuberville Alerts Nation To Shocking Threat Of Furries In Cockpits”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), who’s retiring from the Senate and running against certified actual swell fella Doug Jones to become governor of Alabama, warned America Wednesday about a threat you probably hadn’t given any thought to at all: Furries in the airline industry.
Look at this asshole and his weird paranoia toward pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers who might be fans of goofy animal costumes, only you wouldn’t know it since they cosplay as humans at work. [video]
Tuberville fretted over claims from people who are into furry subculture “touting” the presence of airline employees in the furry community, and warned, “Lord help us! It’s terrifying when you think about this. When you walk onto a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. You can’t make this up.”
Pretty fucking weird, right? Or as that little poster with the pregnant cartoon man and the phrase “Transgenderism is a mental disease” suggests, it’s very calculated. [Yes. True.]
Of course, while it’s a crazy thing to bring up in a Senate speech, you could also argue that Tuberville is crazy like a fox, or like a $1200 handcrafted arctic fox fursuit on Etsy, because Tuberville knew exactly what the reaction to his bizarre rant would be: Lots of attention. He expected his ridiculous, outrageous comments to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body would go viral, and he’s perfectly willing to endure some ridicule to bring attention to his holy cause of eliminating the rights of transgender people.
Oh shit, that’s not all that funny. Not at all.
Tuberville’s weird rant about furries came near the end of a 20-minute speech attacking trans people, calling them mentally ill, and calling for trans folks to be locked away in mental hospitals until they stop being trans. He also suggested doling out prison sentences to doctors and parents who support their trans kids. He even used Donald Trump’s favorite made up word, “mutilization,” to signal his loyalty to Dear Leader. […]
Tuberville railed against the “woke mind virus” that has led to a “serious gender confusion mental illness that is taking over this country,” and insisted that all this transgender stuff is part of Democrat socialists’ decades-long plot to “destroy this country by slowly chipping away at Christian values that have made this country great.” Because obviously Democrats hate America and seek to destroy it. Destroying America is all we think of, really.
Tuberville’s speech was crammed to the brim with every last lie possible about trans people, starting from the logically flawless premise that because God only made two sexes, transgender people simply don’t exist, full stop. That’s why he prefers the term “gender confused,” since it emphasizes his certainty that trans people simply need to be forced to stop being trans.
Ergo, said Tuberville, the gender binary is the only “scientific” view, and if you think trans people exist, you’re the one who is not only unscientific, but actually mentally ill, QED. He said that doctors who provide gender-affirming care should lose their medical licenses and be sentenced to life in prison for medical malpractice. He also insisted that liberal parents who are “plagued with the woke mind virus” — a very scientific thing, because it’s a virus — are “forcing their children to transition to the opposite sex,” which he said was “child abuse.” (Tuberville blithely ignores the lived reality of trans people whose parents tried everything possible to make them stop being trans, including torturing them with conversion therapy or just kicking them out on the streets.)
Tuberville also repeated the rightwing lie that trans people are dangerous and violent, because that’s what transphobes really believe. In reality, of course, fewer than a tenth of one percent of mass shootings have been committed by trans people, and the vast majority of murders are committed by cisgender men like Tommy Tuberville. But why let facts get in the way of a good panic?
He insisted that Charlie Kirk’s murder was all due to “transgenderism” because the killer had a transgender partner. Then Tuberville got weird, claiming the killer was “involved in transgender furry culture,” and insisting that furries are “a bizarre subset of transgenderism where people are sexually attracted and frequently dressed up as animals.” We have no idea where he got the idea that furries are all transgender, but it’s long been a theme in anti-trans rhetoric, particularly in the popular rightwing lie that public schools routinely provide litter boxes for children who “identify as cats” to pee and poop in. Everybody knows what the litter buckets in some schools are for — in case your children have to shelter in place during one of those epidemic mass shootings — so the continued grotesque lie is downright evil.
Tuberville went on to claim that Thomas Crooks, the guy charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, used “they/them pronouns” and was into “online transgender furry culture,” an extremely dubious claim that appears to have started with a New York Post story claiming Crooks may have had two accounts at the DeviantArt social media site, which the article described as “a site that hosts fan art and has become notorious for its community of furries — people who identify as anthropomorphized animal characters and/or are sexually attracted to them.” That’s literally the piece’s only mention of furries.
The Post didn’t claim that Crooks liked or posted furry content, noting instead that Crooks seemed to have a thing for tall muscular women dominating small skinny men. Not furry stuff. […]
Anyway, Tuberville cited what seems to be a made-up statistic that 25 percent of furries are “gender confused,” so obviously America has a transgender AND furry crisis. That’s the point in his speech where Tuberville brought in his weird claim that the airline industry is full of furries who might at any moment go crazy and crash into a mountain. […]
To “protect” America from all the violent trans people and furries who aren’t really a threat, Tuberville claimed that
“It is in the best interests of our country to bring back mental institutions as a normal part of our society. […] Otherwise, we’re just sitting ducks until the next gender-confused person decides to show up at our churches or our schools and start committing acts of violence. It’s coming.”
Tuberville was right. He is terrifying, and he’s trying to give his campaign one more hate-boost before the election. His rant about furries is nothing more than a silly costume hiding a very dangerous agenda.
Update: Also, for what it’s worth, we think we may have found the source of Tuberville’s claim that furries are everywhere in the airline industry. Some dipshit on his staff may have found the website for “ALFA, the Air Line Furries Association International.” Its “news” page hasn’t been updated since July 3, 2022, and while the organizers may have had high hopes for building a lasting online community where people could talk about conventions, travel, and the fun/challenges, it’s a ghost site with no events, no “stories,” and a “store” where you can download free “credentials” for fun.
Maybe someone should tell Sen. Tuberville that the terrifying Furry Takeover of commercial aviation just never got off the ground.
JMsays
@56 Lynna, OM:
The thing about a potash deal is that it could be done of Putin wanted it to happen. If Putin told him to do it Lukashenko would ignore the existing contracts. And getting the potash to the US would be difficult but it could be done, transport it via train across Russia to eastern ports and it isn’t far from the US. Much of the potash is going to Russia or Russian clients for food production, it would be hard to give it up but it could be done without starving Russia. Couldn’t replace all Canadian potash but enough to put a big dent in prices.
Putin knows Trump too well to go out of his way to do a favor for Trump in exchange for vague promises. Trump can’t be bothered to keep treaties he personally signed, potential favors and goodwill down the road are worthless. To get a favor from Putin Trump has to do something equally valuable now. And there isn’t actually anything Trump can do that is worth that much. Trump can’t really cut sanctions because it’s EU countries that control the borders. Trump can’t drop military support for Ukraine, he tried that already and Congress forced him to send the budgeted money and gear.
[…] No, it wasn’t just two sailors on the USS Lincoln who have tried to kill themselves while Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have left them abandoned in the middle of their lost war. It was eight. [New York Times]
The Trump appointee judge hearing the fascist press ban case didn’t seem impressed with Trump’s fascist press ban. [The Hill]
So he blocked it with a 14-day restraining order. You know, since it was unlikely to succeed on its merits and all. Somehow he did not seem to believe Trump needed to ban the media for national security purposes! Again, he’s a Trump appointee. [New York Times]
Related: One of the articles the Trump regime cited for why they needed to ban Politico for “national security,” specifically saying that Politico “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,” citing six articles in particular. Only thing about one of those articles was that the “senior government official” cited in it — a report about negotiations to end the Iran war — was JD Vance, and it wasn’t even JD leaking, it was JD doing an official White House call with the press, where they required the press to identify him as “senior administration official.” These people are such brazen fucking liars. And they do it in court. [Mediaite]
Y’all hear about this big old Susan Collins pay-to-play corruption scandal? It’s very concerning! But then Donald Trump’s FBI stopped investigating it, and it wasn’t concerning anymore. [ProPublica]
[…] Women: Should they be allowed on the internet unsupervised? This right-wing Theobro chauvinist Christian fascist says not a good idea! [Right Wing Watch]
[…]
Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.
“Nearly 170,000 pounds of raw meat recalled for false inspection labels”
They may have bogus USDA inspection labels that say “EST. 1363.”
Nearly 170,000 pounds of raw meat products are being recalled because they were falsely labeled as having gone through federal inspection, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
North Carolina-based Star Meat Delivery is recalling about 167,639 pounds of raw, pork, beef and goat products that were shipped to A&D Foods in Georgia and then distributed to retailers and restaurants across the United States, the agency’s Food Safety and Inspection service said Tuesday.
The affected products were produced before Sept. 22 and may have false USDA inspection labels that say “EST. 1363.” They include cardboard boxes of individually vacuum-packed sliced rib-eye, beef short ribs, pork chorizo and goat. A full list of products and labels is available here.
According to the USDA, “there have been no confirmed reports of illness or injury due to consumption of these products.” However, the agency has classified the recall as Class I, its highest risk level, indicating “reasonable probability that use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”
The agency has advised customers to throw away the products or return them to where they were purchased.
“CNN, MS NOW and Politico Return to White House After Fight Over Access”
“A federal court ordered the Trump administration to reverse its ban on the outlets, but reporters were initially denied entry to the White House grounds on Thursday.”
The reporters are back, but the television coverage isn’t.
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were allowed back into the White House around noon on Thursday. Their return came after a chaotic morning in which the Trump administration had blocked them from entering, despite an overnight order from a federal judge that required the immediate restoration of their access.
It was the latest twist in a nearly weeklong standoff between President Trump and the press corps that covers him, and which has not yet been fully resolved.
Mr. Trump’s barring of the three outlets last Friday had prompted the major TV networks to suspend the White House television pool, which provides video footage for daily presidential events.
As of early Thursday afternoon, the TV pool remained suspended. The networks had previously indicated that they would not film the president until the White House not only restored CNN’s access, but also agreed that CNN could once again participate in the pool.
The result, on Thursday, was a bizarre spectacle: a president hosting China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, for a pomp-filled summit at the White House, with no American network airing any live footage.
The Chinese government has cracked down on independent news media and evicted foreign journalists whose coverage it dislikes. Chinese state television was on-hand for the proceedings in Washington on Thursday.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington issued an order around 1 a.m. Eastern time that instructed the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials held by journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico. The outlets had been barred from the White House since last week, when Mr. Trump abruptly demanded their eviction, citing coverage he deemed “fake.”
Hours later, when the journalists arrived at the White House, they were still not permitted to enter. Lawyers for the three outlets requested an immediate hearing on the matter, and Judge Kelly ordered the Trump administration to respond by 12:30 p.m.
[…] Lawyers for the Trump administration said in a filing with the federal judge that the White House operations team had been instructed to restore reporters’ access at 7:10 a.m. on Thursday, and that confiscated press passes were made available for reporters to pick up at 9:55 a.m.
It was not clear why the reporters continued to have trouble passing through the security checkpoint after that. [Typical, incoherent, Trump administration snafu. Bumbling along doing everything wrong.]
With the television pool out of action, Mr. Trump’s summit with Mr. Xi was covered by still photographers and print and radio journalists. The Associated Press, which is not part of the network TV pool, provided video coverage of the leaders at a military review in the Rose Garden, and planned to film an event later on Thursday at the North Portico.
When Mr. Trump met with Mr. Xi in the Oval Office, the White House allowed a limited number of photojournalists, but no print reporters, to attend. During the event, Mr. Trump made a remark about how the Chinese had the friendliest press corps, according to photographers who were present.
The Times: Charlie Stadtlander, a New York Times spokesman, said that the publication would resume publishing and distributing photographs of Mr. Trump’s events now that a judge had heard the case brought by the banned outlets. For the past few days, The Times had stopped publishing the images in support of the outlets. […]
With the news outlets back in the White House, Judge Timothy J. Kelly has dismissed their request for an emergency hearing in the case. But the judge said the outlets could notify him “of any relevant factual developments” after 6 p.m. this evening. […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The estate of Adolf Hitler sued Donald J. Trump on Thursday for what it called the “blatant theft” of the late German chancellor’s design for an arch of triumph in Berlin.
“President Trump’s proposed monument is a brazen appropriation of the arch designed by Mr. Hitler’s Nazi architect, Albert Speer,” the lawsuit charged. “It is our duty as trustees of the Adolf Hitler Estate to ensure that the Fuhrer’s intellectual property rights are vigorously protected.”
Furthermore, the lawyers alleged, “Trump’s entire presidency has crossed the line from homage to outright plagiarism of Mr. Hitler’s Third Reich™.”
The attorneys cited over 900 examples to support that claim, including their assertion that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “is nothing more nor less than a karaoke version of Heinrich Himmler.”
Professor Gerdes Explains: Russia’s Election Was Even More Rigged Than You Think
Russia held it’s election. Putin’s party, United Russia, did every well as expected.
Percentage of the population voting and the percent of the vote that United Russia got both went up. The amount of election fraud also went up, with no concern for how blatant it was. United Russia has an even bigger majority then in previous election while minority and opposition parties are down, with just splinters left. Putin doesn’t seem to want to allow even the appearance of opposition right now.
The interesting bit is that control of the election was handed over to the FSB. The FSB is replacing the entire Russian government step by step.
Secretary Markwayne Mullin referenced 15,903 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The state checked and found the actual number was zero.
The Department of Homeland Security has gone to extraordinary lengths over the past several months to track down noncitizen voters, to the point where hundreds of federal immigration officers have been reassigned from their usual duties to search for potential voter fraud.
The campaign — or as DHS calls it, the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” — has been so aggressive that, according to one recent federal whistleblower, investigators may have broken state laws at the behest of desperate DHS leaders.
At face value, it might seem as if this crusade to address a problem that doesn’t actually exist is profoundly wasteful and counterproductive, but to hear Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin tell it, the efforts have paid dividends: The Cabinet secretary recently claimed that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada.
The specificity of the claim might’ve led some to believe that Mullin’s statistic had some merit. It did not. The New York Times reported:
When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
The Trump administration began with the 15,903 figure, although Trump administration officials later conceded this total was unsubstantiated.
[…] The Times obtained a copy of a letter sent to DHS by Nevada’s deputy attorney general, who explained, “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens. You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”
None of this is especially surprising, as Republicans have spent years desperately searching in vain for evidence of a systemic problem, but nevertheless it’s a brutal embarrassment for the administration that will never catch its white whale.
It is illegal to use public funds for “propaganda purposes.” Worried about the midterms, the Trump administration apparently decided not to care.
Related video at the link.
It was about a month ago when The Atlantic reported that Donald Trump had directed his political operation to create a series of election-season television advertisements about how great he is. It was a dubious idea for all sorts of reasons, but it was clear at the time where the money would come from: The president’s focus was on how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest, not public funds.
A month later, however, many Americans are already seeing Trump-centric election ads on TV, except they’re the ones who are footing the bill for those commercials. Politico reported:
The Trump administration launched a new television advertisement featuring President Donald Trump calling out socialism, communism and Marxism, appearing to use government resources to go on air in the weeks before the midterm election.
The ad began airing Wednesday night, according to the ad tracking service AdImpact, and has aired on programs on Fox News and Newsmax along with connected TV platforms.
The ads explicitly tell viewers in a disclaimer that the commercials were “paid for by the U.S. government,” although it did not elaborate on details such as which part of the government.
The degree to which the 30-second ad looks like a campaign commercial is hard to overstate [!]. It’s filled with images and video clips of Trump and his campaign slogans and concludes with a Trump ally praising the president’s “toughness.”
The video serves no purpose other than to celebrate and glorify Trump [!]. (The ad’s soundtrack is the song “Love Me” by JMSN, emphasizing the lyric, “I’ll make them love me,” which is every bit as creepy and on the nose as it sounds.)
At this point, I could write a few paragraphs fact-checking the ad and noting how counterproductive it is for Republicans to have a wildly unpopular incumbent president putting the spotlight on himself as early voting begins in earnest.
But while those details are relevant, let’s instead focus on what matters most: This appears to be a clear instance in which the federal government is illegally using taxpayer money on brazen political propaganda.
As The Washington Post reported, it is illegal under federal law to use funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The Government Accountability Office has said the prohibition applies to communications that are “purely partisan” and “designed to aid a political party or candidates,” which would seem to apply to this video, given the content and the context.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, argued via social media that the ad could amount to, among other things, “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes.”
If recent history is any guide, congressional Republicans will shrug with indifference at this latest abuse of taxpayer money, but should Democrats win a majority in either chamber, it’s a safe bet this will be among the controversies to generate real scrutiny — including from Raskin, who’s positioned to chair the House Judiciary Committee.
If Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were assessed solely on his job performance, he would be widely recognized as one of the most controversial Cabinet members of his generation.
[…] former CDC Director William Foege, said of the secretary, “Kennedy would be less hazardous if he decided to do cardiac surgery. Then he would kill people only one at a time rather than his current ability to kill by the thousands.”
But complicating matters is that Kennedy’s on-the-job efforts are only part of a larger story, which includes a steady stream of related problems, including difficult ethics questions. The New York Times reported:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accepted $4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts over the past year from close allies who are working to advance his Make America Healthy Again agenda, according to his latest financial disclosure form.
Ethics experts said the financial relationships may violate federal rules barring officials from profiting from their government position, and call into question the secretary’s ability to remain independent and impartial.
The millions of dollars in book advances came by way of a company owned by Tony Lyons, Kennedy’s longtime publisher, who co-founded a political action committee that supported Kennedy’s failed presidential campaign, and who now helps oversee a series of entities related to the Make America Healthy Again movement, some of which accept contributions and corporate sponsorships from health-related companies. [Those are telling details.]
The Times’ report added that federal rules prohibit officials from receiving compensation “from any source other than the government” for writing books related to their duties while in office.
Lyons’ network also includes an advocacy group called MAHA Action, which paid Kennedy’s wife $210,000 in consulting fees. [!]
Richard Painter, a White House ethics counsel under George W. Bush, told the Times, “You have a situation like this, it just looks horrible.”
[…], a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services told the Times that Kennedy “complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations and financial disclosure requirements.”
But as the discussion over Kennedy’s efforts continues, it’s tough not to note just how frequently the public is confronted with developments like these.
– The Times’ latest reporting comes on the heels of a controversy surrounding Kennedy moving money from the Office of Minority Health to pay for his security detail.
– Which came on the heels of reporting on Kennedy receiving more than $250,000 worth of free flights to Fiji and Greece from a security consultant and supporter.
– Which came on the heels of Kennedy speaking at an anti-vaccine conference, where he vowed to take chemtrails seriously.
– Which came on the heels of allegations that Kennedy used military planes while trying to help Republican congressional candidates.
– Which came on the heels of allegations that Kennedy misled senators about his efforts in Samoa years before he became a powerful White House Cabinet secretary.
Note: All of these controversies have emerged over the past month or so.
In a normal administration, it’s safe to say that Kennedy would be updating his résumé right about now, but in 2026, the health secretary’s job nevertheless appears safe.
Despite all his saber-rattling and xenophobia about China, President Donald Trump simply cannot resist the allure of power.
When a big strong fellow autocrat comes to town, he just can’t help himself. So he literally rolled out the red carpet for the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and now he’s posting snaps of the visit like someone who just met their fave Instagram influencer.
And who was the only other person besides Trump and Xi in the very first picture Trump posted? It appeared to be trusted aide Natalie Harp, natch, though the picture was later disappeared from the internet […]
Harp, of course, worked in the White House for a for a year without a security clearance at all, which is, well, not great.
Meanwhile, Trump is busy burbling on about how he and Xi have forged a “truly great friendship,” which seems to be how he buckles and bends when he meets any fellow leader who also enjoys autocracy. […]
In showing Xi around the place, Trump remarked of the White House, “A lot has changed since he was last here.”
Yeah, yeah it has. Hope Xi enjoys tacky gilt-covered plaster, because the “People’s House” has that in spades now.
While Trump is showing off his digs, Xi is busy talking about things like avoiding the “Thucydides Trap” and that 100,000 American students are invited to visit and study in China in the next five years. You know, actual diplomatic stuff. But Trump is treating this like a Hollywood event, eager to show off his gilded palace, eager to get some snaps, eager to get his Natalie in the picture. This is not a serious person. This is not a serious presidency. This is not a serious administration
The New York Times is calling this summit a “sharp turn from a hard line on China,” but honestly, what line does Trump ever draw that is grounded in reality, that is thoughtfully considered? When has Trump ever held a position he stuck to that he couldn’t be moved from with flattery and money? […]
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani scored points for a working progressive government again, announcing the “Opera for All” program on Thursday. A partnership between the city and the Metropolitan Opera, the project will distribute 70,000 free tickets a year—10,000 tickets a month during the upcoming opera season—to the New Yorkers who haven’t attended before.
“And the best part, this will be a permanent, ongoing partnership with the Met every year,” Mamdani said in his announcement on social media. “From the rise of the opera buffa in the 18th century to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s ‘People’s Opera’ in the 1940s, this art form was meant to be seen by everyone.” [video]
The mayor’s announcement of an exciting enrichment program comes as President Donald Trump and the wealthy sycophants installed on the board of the Kennedy Center say they may bankrupt the cultural institution less than two years after taking charge—a claim suspiciously coinciding with a judge’s refusal to allow Trump to put his name on the building.
So while Trump says he’s the only person who can “fix” the institutions he himself has injured, Mamdani continues to lay out the blueprint for how progressive policies, coupled with programs that demonstrate how government can work for the people, resonate with voters.
This week, New Jersey ordered the operator of one of the East Coast’s largest planned data centers to pay a $1.1 million fine for secretly installing and operating gas generators in violation of the state’s Air Pollution Control Act.
DataOne got hit with the fine after an investigation by The Guardian and Floodlight News in August shared thermal drone footage showing that 45 of the 62 gas generators were operating. None of the generators had permits required for generators with 37-kilowatt capacity or higher, despite running at 1,982-kw capacities more than 50 times higher than the state limit…
The Michigan tourist who recently went viral over a Facebook photo where she and three family members appeared to be wearing “Lake America” sweatshirts has parted ways with her employer.
Jane Smith, the former CEO of Family First Credit Union in Saginaw, is no longer employed there, according to a statement posted on Wednesday to the company’s website.
“We are reaching out to inform you that Jane Smith is no longer an employee of Family First Credit Union, effective immediately,” reads the statement addressed to “Family First Credit Union Members and Community” and signed by the chair of the board of directors.
The statement continues to say that chief operations officer Jason Acosta is now serving as interim CEO. It does not provide any further information about why Smith is no longer employed, or whether the decision to leave the company was hers.
…
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told the news outlet.
“However, we were, you know, kind of poking fun at the fact that, you know, one of the Great Lakes’s names were getting changed.”
She further explained that the sweatshirts weren’t real, saying she ran a photo of them through ChatGPT to add the “Lake America” gear, then posted it to her private Facebook page with an AI label.
…
Macklemore says he’s launching a tour of his own after being removed as an opener for the U.S. leg of English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran’s tour — and all proceeds from the shows will go to organizations supporting Palestinians.
…
“U.N. Live Updates: Netanyahu Lashes Out at Critics and Underscores Threats to Israel”
“In a combative speech, the prime minister defended Israeli military action across the Middle East, and attacked Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York. Dozens of delegates walked out of the hall as he took the podium.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel delivered a fiery speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday as protesters rallied against him in the streets of New York and many diplomats in the hall walked out, as they did last year. A group of supporters countered the display of opposition in the chamber with applause and chants of “Am Yisrael Chai,” a popular refrain meaning “the nation of Israel lives.”
Mr. Netanyahu cast his war in Gaza and the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran as a “battle against barbarians” [sounds racist] and said he had “no greater partner than President Trump.” [Because he needs weapons and ammunition from Trump.] He struck a tone of intense defiance, vowing that Israel would continue fighting Hamas and Iran “because we have no other choice.”
Mr. Netanyahu arrived in New York amid street protests against him. The city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, had called for Mr. Netanyahu to be arrested under an International Criminal Court warrant, though he later acknowledged his own lack of power to order Mr. Netanyahu’s arrest. In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu accused Mr. Mamdani of being an “antisemite.”
His address on Thursday came hours after the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, portrayed Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank as “a malicious colonial scheme” aimed at forcing Palestinians to leave their homeland. But Mr. Abbas said he still hoped for “a democratic Palestinian state that respects the rule of law and human rights.”
Mr. Abbas addressed the gathering virtually for the second year in a row because the Trump administration refused to grant him a visa. He argued in his recorded speech for a two-state solution, as he has done for decades. He was also sharply critical of Israel, saying that the state was prosecuting “a genocidal war that has created an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.” [True]
Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, batted away those accusations while avoiding the topic of Gaza’s destruction. Rather than committing a genocide, he said, Israel had “prevented a genocide” against its own people by Hamas. He called claims of genocide against Israel “the greatest lie of the century.”
In September, the U.N.’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued a report saying that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that the perpetrators must be held accountable.
Mr. Netanyahu is also facing a tough election at home, and his political future is uncertain. His address at the U.N., analysts said, was largely directed at the audience back home and not at the international community, from which Israel is more isolated than ever.
Hawaii’s Big Island is under a hurricane watch as Tropical Storm Nolo heads toward the hard-hit state.
Widespread power outages and communications failures are possible, and roads, buildings and other structures may be washed away.
…
Nolo is not expected to make landfall in Hawaii, but it is expected to make a close approach to the Big Island on Saturday, possibly bringing Category 1 or Category 2 conditions.
…
Nolo comes amid a rough year for natural disasters in Hawaii. The state has been hit by four big events this year: the Kona Low storms in March, the Hawai’i Island earthquake in May, and Hurricanes Lala and Lowell this summer.
…
“County election officials are rushing to deal with the pile of delayed records before early voting begins in the state next month.”
Texas officials sent tens of thousands of delayed voter registration applications to county election officials this week after discovering an error, sparking a scramble to process them weeks out from the midterms.
The Texas secretary of state’s office told election officials last week that a problem with the Department of Public Safety’s system had been uncovered: Certain incomplete voter registration applications that were missing some information were not sent on to election officials, potentially leaving Texans unregistered or with out-of-date voter files The nonprofit news outlet Votebeat was the first to report the problem.
State officials started transmitting the records on Tuesday. It’s unclear how many voters were affected, but large counties have reported tens of thousands of registration applications and updates that election officials must process in the less than a month before early voting begins on Oct. 19. And more applications are sure to pour in ahead of the Oct. 5 deadline to register to vote in Texas.
The state’s fourth-most populous county, Bexar, received more than 45,000 voter registration forms from DPS, and the fifth-most populous, Travis County, received more than 35,000.
“While that number may seem high, the Elections team is already hard at work reviewing every application and will be extending hours to make sure all records are updated well before early voting begins,” Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew said in a statement.
Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said he expected populous urban areas will be hit hardest, because there are more voter registrations to process and people in cities tend to move more often.
“There’s going to be a lot of counties that are paying a lot of overtime,” he said, speaking in a press briefing organized by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
[…] In a statement, Talarico called the error “unacceptable” and urged Texans to check their voter registration online.
“Less than two weeks before the voter registration deadline, thousands of Texans are now in the dark about their voter registration status — even more aren’t aware of this error at all,” Talarico said. “This is what a broken, corrupt political system looks like: Texans follow the rules, register to vote before the deadline, and still risk losing their God-given right to the ballot box because their government failed to do its job.”
McGinn said voters might be better off calling their local registrar’s office. Texas’ online system has reportedly had problems this year, with some registrations inaccurately showing up as inactive. [!]
Congo is running short of health workers to staff treatment centers for history’s fastest-growing Ebola outbreak, particularly in the eastern province of North Kivu where cases have surged 73% over three weeks, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
“Just weeks before the midterms, a number of vulnerable Senate Republicans were presented with the choice Thursday to go with voters on the Iran war or stick with President Donald Trump. Most chose Trump. Senators voted 49-50 on a measure to direct Trump to cease hostilities with Iran, with the war powers resolution falling just short of the simple majority it needed.
Do you think it’s possible for the president to ever be wrong about something?” asked Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) during the hearing.
“Senator, as I’ve shared here before, I’ve had the privilege of working for the president for over a year and a half, and have had robust discussions with him along with all of his advisers,” Overton responded.
“Right,” Hassan responded. “Is it possible for him to be wrong?”
Overton again danced around the question by talking about how “it is the president who sets the policy directions,” but Hassan kept returning to the question. At one point, Hassan brought up when Trump said the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine could be “lethal,” and asked Overton if he was wrong then, while also pointing out that Overton was standing behind him when he said that.
That is just sad. Outright dodging the question of it being possible for Trump to be wrong.
The First Circuit said stop third-country removals. DOJ appealed to SCOTUS, as it had twice before, each time getting an administrative stay (allowing law-breaking to continue) while the court deliberated. Except liberal Ketanji Jackson handles appeals in that circuit. So this time DOJ’s request said that if Jackson doesn’t enter a stay, it wants the full court to do it—and cited instances where the full court snatched a case from the circuit justice. Jackson promptly scheduled briefings without the stay. So the First Circuit’s permanent injunction to stop TCRs remains in effect.
The plane appearing to have been scheduled to fly third-country nationals to 3 African countries today—before an appeals court prohibited it last night—has taken off, landed at Gitmo (Somalis in ICE camp there) and is now in San Juan, a common refueling stop for ICE flights to Africa.
Plus, an ICE charter plane that was in the air when the appeals court said its bar on third-country removals was effective immediately, has since landed in two known TCR countries—Ghana and Liberia.
Roger Parloff (Lawfare): “Is DHS defying court orders again? Six days before en banc DC Circuit hears argument on whether Judge Boasberg can finally investigate DHS/DOJ defiance of his order of 3/15/25, which sent 137 Venezuelans to CECOT with no due process?”
Whatever special kind of brain worms have established themselves in Elon Musk’s noggin appear to be spreading throughout his companies.
[…]
[Tesla’s attorneys were] insisting that it’s a “term of respect and endearment” in the Black community. Sure, it’s true that many Black people have reclaimed the word. But the lawsuit is about non-Black Tesla employees and managers abusing Black workers
[Management had subjected workers to wage discrimination and segregation, routinely referred to them as slaves, and ignored swastika grafitti. Tesla’s attorneys impersonated state officials for witness tampering.]
Because it’s prosecuted by the state itself—rather than a traditional class-action—there’s no limit to the damages Tesla could be liable for if the state wins.
StevoRsays
Note please Hemidactylus and other fellow F1 fans here that this weekend’s Azerbaijan (Baku) race is on SATURDAY not Sunday ie. race is tomorrow with ually starting there in under 25 mins time.
StevoRsays
Q1 is now underway at Baku FYI other F1 fans here.
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were allowed reentry to the White House on Thursday, days after being banned by the administration, and hours after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered their credentials restored.
This followed a chaotic morning in which journalists from all three outlets were initially turned away from the White House, and some had their press credentials seized by the U.S. Secret Service.
But later in the day CNN and MS NOW reported that some of their journalists were denied access to cover the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a state dinner.
President Donald Trump berated the two media outlets in a post on Truth Social Thursday, falsely claiming they had “refused to cover” the arrival.
Lots of activity Thursday. The banned organizations were turned away, got court orders, got in to some events, and then some reports were turned away again for the state dinner with Xi. The situation after the initial court order is the sort of mess you see with incompetent dictators where you can’t be sure if they ordered something or their staff is just incompetent.
Expect another court hearing Friday about the matter.
Chris Hayes discusses an off the record discussion he attended alongside other journalists with Iran’s President as well as the impacts of the Iran War on Republican candidates.
Video is 9:49 minutes.
StevoRsays
If anyone asks me what I believe in, well, I believe this sums up our world and reality so very much :
Irony is running rampant:
tRUMP, who calls all of us that aren’t maga cult members ‘communists’, used our taxpayer money for his ad: ‘america will never be a communist country’.
 : Then, he hosted the most lavish, expensive, pandering and ass-kissing of xi and china. And, china just happens to be the biggest, most powerful communist country in the world. WTF!
In January, the Trump administration rolled out a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to authorize or deny certain types of care for patients with Medicare—a federal healthcare program for seniors that previously hasn’t required doctors to get any such pre-approval, called prior authorization.
Not long after, media outlets began relaying the disastrous outcomes: technical difficulties, long delays in decisions and care, puzzling denials, frustrated doctors, and patients suffering in pain. Those reports were largely confirmed earlier this month when the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a tranche of federal documents about the program, called WISeR, that the group obtained amid litigation. The documents included feedback from healthcare providers, including one who called the program “a disgrace to the human race” and reported seeing patients crying in pain as they waited for care.
Amid the worrying reports, lawmakers have been trying to get answers and shut the program down. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office determined in May that Trump officials did not follow proper procedure in setting up the program, calling its legality into question. Still, it appears to be moving ahead unabated, with plans to expand in the years to come…
StevoRsays
@96. Reginald Selkirk : .”When someone asks you what you believe, the appropriate response is,
“I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Yes & I would but is already after 3 a m local time & I’ve already drunk all my beers for tonight here & probly more. Past time to go to bed I know but my my doggie, Roxxi, is out chasing possums and happy so .. anyhow TMI. Going to bed very soon & might even be able to sleep soon I hope. Cheers.
After a nearly monthlong delay, states are now able to order this season’s COVID-19 vaccines through a federal program that provides free immunizations to low-income children, the US health department says. Trump officials have still not provided a clear explanation for the delay, raising concerns about meddling from anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr…
Fleas and the diseases they spread are having a grand ole time in Los Angeles as of late. The area is currently dealing with cases of typhus.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported this week that it’s investigating a localized outbreak of the bacterial disease that left several people hospitalized. It’s the second major outbreak in LA seen this year, though cases are on the rise throughout the county. Residents are being advised to keep their pets flea-free and to avoid contact with wildlife that could potentially carry the bloodsucking insects…
The Supreme Court has given the Trump administration a green light to use a federal citizenship database to verify voters ahead of the midterm elections.
In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court, for now, lifted a lower court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from expanding a 40-year-old immigration database — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system — to help states screen voter records for noncitizens.
The immediate impact of the ruling is unclear, since states are prohibited by law from purging their voter rolls within 90 days of Election Day.
“The District Court’s order thus inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections. Under these circumstances, the equities weigh in favor of a stay,” the majority wrote. ..
Ed Sheeran’s Gillette Stadium concerts in Foxboro, Massachusetts, this weekend have been canceled as Boston braces for a nor’easter and controversy surrounds his “Loop” tour.
Sheeran was scheduled to play Gillette Friday and Saturday night at 8 p.m.
“Due to the severe weather warnings in place in Boston and across New England throughout the weekend and following consultation with local officials, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the Ed Sheeran concerts at Gillette Stadium,” tour promoter Messina Touring said in a statement. “The decision was made with the safety of fans, staff and everyone involved in the shows as the top priority.” …
New York officials arrested two of three men who they said were seen emerging from a manhole, exiting the city’s underground sewer system on Wednesday.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested 26-year-old Kevin Rodriguez and 25-year-old Samuel Reveron on charges of conspiracy and trespassing.
Three men were seen exiting a manhole near the hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly expected to stay for the United Nations General Assembly.
In a statement to the BBC, the NYPD said it had seen a number of incidents involving people going into the sewer system to look for valuables and scrap metal after a storm…
Technology giant Kiteworks is urging customers to shut down their systems after the company received information that hackers may attempt to target them.
Kiteworks (formerly Accellion), which makes tools for transferring large files and sensitive datasets over the internet, confirmed to TechCrunch that it had notified its customers about a potential threat. The news was first reported exclusively by German publication Heise, which cited an email that Kiteworks had sent to its customers about an “imminent” attack that could happen as soon as this weekend…
“Until fairly recently, the president wanted the public to see him as directly responsible for mortgage rates. I think we know why he changed course.”
In early January, Donald Trump published an item to his social media platform boasting about mortgage rates and taking credit for the fact that they were down to 5.7%. After claiming that “almost no young families could afford a home” during Joe Biden’s term, the Republican president insisted that he was delivering “real cost relief” with his “focus on Housing Affordability.”
In the weeks that followed, he posted a series of follow-up items, each of which hammered home the same point, culminating in a missive published on March 5 (roughly one week into the war with Iran) in which the president once again took credit for mortgage rates falling to roughly a three-year low.
Trump hasn’t mentioned mortgage rates since. Take a wild guess why not. The New York Times reported:
Mortgage rates jumped to 7 percent this week for the first time since January 2025, squeezing housing affordability when many Americans are grappling with higher energy costs and economic uncertainty brought on by the war with Iran.
The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate, the most common home loan in the United States, rose to 7.03 percent, up from 6.3 percent a year ago, the mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday.
[…] What else happened in late February? Trump approved the launch of the war with Iran, which pushed energy prices higher, which in turn had an adverse effect on consumer prices across the board.
Inflation concerns rattled the bond market, which necessarily pushed mortgage rates higher, and which led Trump to stop talking about the issue on his social media platform.
At an event this week, a reporter asked JD Vance for his reaction to the growing number of Republicans in battleground states who have called for an end to the ongoing war. The vice president brushed it off, arguing that voters were “focused on the local issues that matter.”
That might have seemed vaguely persuasive — historically, foreign policy tends not to shape domestic election results — but the pitch suffered from a rather obvious flaw: The war is directly affecting local issues.
As for the president, it was two years ago this month when then-candidate Trump promised an audience in Arizona, “We’re going to bring [mortgage rates] down very fast. … We will drive down the rates, so you will be able to pay 2% again, and we will be able to finance or refinance your homes drastically at much lower costs.”
I have some bad news for the voters who believed him.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Adding to Reginald Selkirk @103. Evan Bernick (Law prof):
Footnote one is a grenade that will create chaos across the country as the DOJ uses it to argue that every sanctuary policy is unconstitutional. It doesn’t do that, but they will read it that way.
The dissent argues that sections 1373(a) and (b) do not displace laws restricting information sharing with DHS because “[w]hen a law imposes an express restriction on disclosure, it is that law—not an ‘entity,’ […]—that is doing the ‘prohibit[ing]’ or restrict[ing].” […] Sections 1373(a) and (b) prohibit any “entity,” “official,” “person,” or “agency” from “prohibit[ing]” or “in any way restrict[ing]” the request for or receipt of information regarding immigration status. Those prohibitions necessarily include invoking a law to deny a request
Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong. [NYT article]
Let’s end the week with an intriguing — and even amusing — new development in the bogus investigation out of south Florida into the “grand conspiracy” against Donald Trump.
As part of the probe, we learned yesterday, DOJ has subpoenaed a group of current and former FBI agents from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation to provide grand jury testimony.
In a very savvy move, lawyers for the agents went to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon yesterday asking for clarification about whether their clients can testify about the details of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report, which covers the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
Cannon, you’ll recall, has bottled up the release of Volume II for years and enjoined DOJ from discussing its contents with anyone outside of DOJ. Anyone outside of DOJ would presumably include grand jurors and the FBI agents own defense counsel.
On its face, the filing is a legitimate effort to protect the FBI agents from jeopardy for either refusing to testify or violating Cannon’s order by testifying (or from having to take the 5th).
But it’s really doing a whole lot more work than that.
It mainly puts Cannon and DOJ in an awkward spot because they’ve taken the position that even Smith couldn’t even testify to Congress about Volume II. But now going along with Trump’s retributive “investigate the investigators” scheme requires that the FBI agents testify.
What to do?
DOJ has already reversed course and said it’s fine for the agents to testify about it, according to the agents’ lawyers, who include Abbe Lowell, Mark Zaid, and Margaret Donovan. Now we’ll see what Cannon comes up with to wriggle out of this apparent bind.
But there are many more layers to it. The filing revealed new information about the status of the “grand conspiracy” probe; it gave the agents a public forum to assert their innocence and the righteousness of the Mar-a-Lago investigation [!]; it lays some groundwork for a future claim of vindictive prosecution if the agents were to ever get charged; and it begins to unspool a counter-narrative for other judges, including the 11th Circuit, where this is all going to land eventually.
The FBI agents’ lawyers are basically using the filing to expose the funhouse mirror of misconduct here at every level.
[…] Meanwhile, a separate long-running effort to force the public release of Volume II has been stalled for months at the 11th Circuit, where oral arguments have been scheduled and then rescheduled a half a dozen times. This week they were tentatively rescheduled yet again, for January.
Since I was not present, I was a convenient target to be scapegoated and publicly vilified. You recklessly agreed in court that I had committed misconduct without even asking for my account, fully reviewing the record or briefing the law. That evening, you sent an office-wide email laying responsibility at my feet for a felony prosecution that you personally directed over my objection that the case was better suited to misdemeanor charges. You then publicly announced an investigation of my conduct spanning twenty years. These inexplicable actions severely damaged a reputation I worked hard to build over decades and have damaged my prospects for future employment and income.
Rando 1: “I’m conflicted on this. We have every reason to believe the prosecutor’s account of that professional nightmare, but ALSO I can’t ignore the ethical line ones crosses *knowingly* bringing felony (!) political charges against a bunch of innocent people, regardless of objections you make AS YOU DO IT.”
Rando 2: “Perfect example of what happens when you side with Trump’s admin. You comply in order to keep your job. But, in the end, you lose your job AND your reputation.”
Rando 3: “Quoting the letter: ‘Through all this, I remained silent.’ How’s that working out for you?”
Eugene Freedman (Union lawyer): “Not only is this a rhetorical beating, it also implies she’s going to be filing a defamation claim.”
Kyle Cheney (Politico): “A federal judge (Trump-appointed Stephanie Gallagher) has held the Trump administration in contempt for deporting a man to El Salvador in violation of three court orders. She’s ordering the government to return him.”
StevoRsays
I listen to This* song and my heart just breaks and how can it noty when i know how true it is..
No expletves suffice.
.* Paul Kelly – Sleep, Australia, Sleep (Official Video.)
Apples are Peace’s passion and the focus of his professional expertise. He […] runs a project called MyFruitTree, which lets members of the public send in leaves from unidentified apple trees and matches those trees’ genetic fingerprints to entries in a database of known types.
[…] a team on the other side of the country […] wanted to identify trees it had found on old and abandoned farms, hoping to salvage valuable rarities before high winds or harsh winters killed them.
Peace does this work because every analysis he runs benefits his central project, a literal family tree of North American apples that traces the distribution of distinctive traits—flavor, color, hardiness, disease resistance—through siblings, parents and forebears. He plugged the data from a Maine sample coded AMHO-504 into a spreadsheet tool that would compare it against his collection. Then he sat back, agape. High up in the continental pedigree the entire DNA fingerprint matched a predicted empty space. The Maine team had found a living lost progenitor to hundreds of varieties
[…]
They wanted to identify a mystery tree on a property that dates back to the American Revolutionary War. But they also wanted to uncover what the possibly oldest living apple tree in the U.S. contributed to generations of apple varieties—and, equally, what traits it might still harbor that could be bred back into apples today to protect them against new threats in the future. “Maybe there are aspects that people didn’t value in the past and, 200, 300 years ago, selected against,” Peace says.
[…]
Although about 2,500 varieties exist in the U.S. and roughly 100 are raised commercially, most of the market depends on just 15 of them. […] When small numbers of varieties are planted very widely, the crop becomes more vulnerable to diseases […] Apples don’t self-pollinate the way that tomatoes and peppers do, fertilizing and germinating with no outside assistance. Instead they cross-pollinate: pollen from one tree travels to a blossom on a second, thanks to a helpful bee that carries it. This means each fruit has two parents […] parents don’t get reproduced identically. Instead their offspring possess unpredictable combinations of traits […] So if you want to precisely reproduce an apple variety you like, you don’t start it from a seed. You clone it by grafting […] Generations of grafting can carry an apple variety unchanged into the future
[…]
three locations lie within 20 miles of one another […] That there were several additional trees demonstrated that early colonists had valued the Drap d’Or, shared it and grown it in different landscapes […] Across the U.S., there may be hundreds of spots where early colonists and their Indigenous allies planted trees they loved—and then, over centuries, we forgot their origins, their uses and even their names.
Rob Grigjanissays
StevoR @113: Thanks for that.
Reginald Selkirksays
@114
Apples don’t self-pollinate the way that tomatoes and peppers do, fertilizing and germinating with no outside assistance. Instead they cross-pollinate: pollen from one tree travels to a blossom on a second, thanks to a helpful bee that carries it. This means each fruit has two parents […] parents don’t get reproduced identically. Instead their offspring possess unpredictable combinations of traits ..
And that’s without going into polyploidy!
birgerjohanssonsays
Some lighter stuff.
.
Swedish singer Zara Larsson talks with Seth Meyers on How Her “Lush Life” Dance Evolved & Fans Recreating Her Dolphin Pose
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnvk0IppAWk
.
I am Swedish, and I cannot really understand how a country of ten million can produce so many good musicians (although some of them like Röyksopp are ‘adopted’ from other Scandinavian countries).
This is what happens when schools invest heavily into support for kids who are interested in music, and towns provide locales where they can practice.
Remote work isn’t new—I’ve known people who telecommuted in the 1960s, and farmers were working from home long before that.
But many people worked remotely for the first time in 2020, for reasons you may remember. Since then, managers and CEOs have confidently—and loudly—stated that remote work is unproductive and hurts morale. Research doesn’t necessarily agree with them.
…
Hybrid work actually increases productivity
…
Hybrid workers are more loyal, not less
…
Returning to office hurts morale
…
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Speaking of Röyksopp…this is an upbeat melody with a very heavy text.
‘Röyksopp & Robyn “Monument” (Music Video)’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6c-RbGZBnBI
birgerjohanssonsays
I think associating Trump’s name with that theatre might give disappointed Trump voters some unfortunate ideas, given they are likely to own firearms.
A Republican running for the Maine’s open 2nd Congressional District seat expressed outrage that a member of his family is facing deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Paul LePage, the state’s former governor, made the disclosure in Augusta at an event where he accepted the endorsement of Maine’s Fraternal Order of Police, in response to a question from a Portland Press Herald reporter.
“Not everybody that’s here is illegal,” LePage said. “I have a father, my son’s wife’s dad is here legally, but he’s being deported because he came from a country that’s not of the certain liking of some people in Washington. That’s not right. He has a work permit. He should be allowed to stay.”
LePage did not name the relative or identify his home country, but he said ICE should concentrate on gang members and criminals…
In a case watched across the country and as voting begins in the midterm elections, the Supreme Court blocked a congressional map in Missouri that was aimed at netting Republicans another seat in the U.S. House.
This is the third time the high court has blocked the redistricting plan that could have helped ousted Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver by increasing the number of Republican voters in his district.
The court warned that changing maps now would cause “electoral chaos.” The decision requires the state use the same districts provided to voters in 2022 and 2024. That’s even though a different map was used in the primaries there last month.
It comes after weeks of conflicting rulings in state courts and federal courts. Elections officials in Missouri already started mailing some absentee ballots last week using the old districts and some argued it would be too late to change them…
Oxygen Forensics sells digital forensics software that law enforcement and government agencies use to extract and analyze data from phones and computers. Its customers were reported to include the U.S. Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations and the Department of [Defense].
the company told those agencies for several years that it was independently owned and operated in the U.S. […] other Russian nationals secretly owned and controlled Oxygen Forensics through a holding company in Cyprus, and its software was written by a team in Russia […] the Russian owners’ names were removed from the company’s public filings, in the wake of Washington expanding sanctions on Moscow after the invasion of Ukraine.
[…]
allegations closely track claims made by Max Weissberg, a former Oxygen employee, in a YouTube video in February, months before the arrests.
Clean on OpSec. /s
The Register: “the same Russian operation that also sold its wares to the FSB […] The DOJ is not alleging that Oxygen’s software contained malicious code or was used to gain unauthorized access to customers’ systems or data.”
[*Super long thread of Microsoft Recall embarrassments since May 2024*]
Microsoft has confirmed they’ve dropped the Copilot+ PC brand, after it flopped due to the botched launch of Microsoft Recall. [Article link]
If anybody wants a smile btw, a MS employee told me they believe this Mastodon thread and my blog cost them over a billion dollars.
I think it’s firmly on Microsoft’s shoulders, the rollout of Recall and Copilot+ PC was just a series of own goals.
Rando: “I still can’t believe they named it the thing they’d clearly have to do to it.”
birgerjohanssonsays
“Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” Review
Decker Shado, Creepy and Chibtulhu reviews one of the better Godzilla films [“Chib” is from theTokyo district Chiba]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0EpV5U7HQj
Beaumont’s screenshot is a series of urls at University of New Mexico, reportedly a failed attack in May. It’s requesting the same jpg over and over. Each time, it tacks different crap on the end: a question mark followed by key=value pairs. It’s nonsense that resembles malicious attempts to fetch a sensitive file (/etc/passwd), or tell the server to fetch malware from evil.com (yes really), or do a custom database query (for plaintext passwords), or run useless javascript code.
If it were sane, it might’ve been systematically bruteforcing every url on a site that way, hoping to hit one that accepts parameters, like a form that was stupidly designed to obey any of those half baked requests.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government is investigating a June incident in which an OpenAI agent accessed “non-public files” from the country’s online Medicare statistics portal. OpenAI said in a statement that “our models took actions we did not intend” in causing the breach
[…] these portals “contain non-sensitive Medicare information” such as aggregate statistics and that early indications suggest “no personal information is believed to have been accessed.”
[…]
Albanese said this system breach stemmed from OpenAI’s own testing […] to conduct “Internet based research into public medicine spending.” When the company’s AI agent encountered “repeated blocks” in its search for specific information, Albanese said, it “attempted alternative ways to obtain the info”
[…]
OpenAI said [“]our models attempted to look up answers and available statistics for questions about Australia[“] […] Although the incident took place on June 18, Albanese said it took until September 10 for OpenAI to disclose the breach to the Australian government
[…]
From all early indications, the actual intrusion into Australian government servers represented by this incident seems relatively minor. If a human had obtained […] statistics in a similar way, it’s unlikely you or I would have ever heard about it. […] It’s the fact that […] the company admits it “did not intend,” that raises an otherwise minor hack to the level of a potential international incident.
[…]
The company said it had taken additional steps to “punish this kind of behavior” so its models no longer attempt this kind of reward hacking.
Note that OpenAI did not redesign the means by which models access the internet to remove that capacity to perform frequent abnormal requests.
When a responsible programmer writes a script that talks to the internet, it’s tailor-made for a given website’s expectations, to perform a specific task in a specific way, and small-scale tests precede big runs. OpenAI wants a tool that takes vague instructions, goes anywhere, and does anything—in whatever way ‘works’.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Konstantin Ryabitsev (Linux Foundation sysadmin) – Creepy crawlies
“AI crawlers” […] create a constant “background radiation” of system load
[…]
Linux development happens in the open—from git repositories you can clone, to discussion archives you can follow in real time. To a large language model, this is a goldmine of learning data […] So, you’d think that […] would use the most efficient way of using our data for training purposes, right? Clone the repos, walk every commit. Done.
But no, let’s in fact choose the stupidest possible way of doing it—by rendering everything as HTML commit by commit and then parsing it. […] But wait, it’s not just commits itself. You can also ask for patches, plain renders, diffs between arbitrary commits […] 1.2 METRIC BAJILLION valid URLs
[…]
With a bunch of generous assumptions, legitimate requests are only about 2% of git.kernel.org traffic—everything else are scrapers. […] At this point, we’re not quite overwhelmed […] out of the total of the 90 cores across 5 geo-distributed nodes, there are 14-16 cores that are constantly doing nothing but rendering commits for scrapers. On average, that’s 20% of our entire capacity
[…]
Where does that leave us? Unclear. Maybe the AI bubble bursts and we suddenly have a lot fewer entities out there trying to train their models. Alternatively, maybe they smarten up and stop consuming our data in the dumbest way possible. In terms of what we’re doing, […] there are no simple solutions to the problem.
Tim Tebow said he’s “pausing” his relationship with Life Surge after scam allegations emerged earlier this week.
The faith-based conference company was accused of using predatory sales tactics to push attendees into expensive financial and investment programs, according to a joint investigation by “Pablo Torre Finds Out” and Mother Jones.
Tebow, 39, said he was “caught off guard” by the report when speaking to the Gainesville Sun on Friday.
“I think the allegations are extremely, extremely serious, and it’s something that we take very seriously,” Tebow said. “We’re having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship so we can learn more about the facts to be able to understand more.”
When asked whether he knew about the questionable practices before the report came out, Tebow didn’t offer much clarity.
“Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday, and the team shared with me when we were leaving as we were flying to Alabama for an event,” Tebow said. “Kind of caught off guard with some of it, and that’s why we’re trying to understand more of the facts to really learn it.”
Tebow serves as a “Kingdom Ambassador” for Life Surge and has been one of the company’s featured speakers at its “faith and finance” events.
The investigation into Life Surge alleges that it uses prominent Christian speakers to attract attendees before steering them toward costly investment and financial training programs.
Some attendees said they felt pressured into spending thousands of dollars on the courses.
“It’s really important to get answers to understand every bit of that. In my heart, getting to share [at Life Surge] was to be able to share something that I love to share, which is the love of Christ and the good news of the gospel,” Tebow said.
“I think it’s really important that we can really understand all the facts and details of it.”
Pew Research Center’s latest Landscape Study places New Hampshire’s atheist population at 11%, the highest concentration in the country. When the 8% who identify as agnostic and the 29% who claim “nothing in particular” are included, nearly half the state sits squarely outside organized religion.
In less than 20 years, Christian affiliation has declined by almost 15%. The question, though, is why.
Gen. John Stark inadvertently drew the blueprint for this mass exodus back in 1809 when he coined the state’s motto: “Live Free or Die.” Adopted as the official state mantra in 1945, the sentiment enshrined an almost pathological distrust of authority in the local bloodstream. Granite Staters appear to regard centralized hierarchies with something resembling contempt. The reasons for this are entirely understandable.
When distant church headquarters began acting like corporate conglomerates, local parishioners tested their inherited loyalties and found them wanting. A Roman Catholic bishop carries little weight in communities where voters routinely reject municipal snowplow budgets just to spite the selectboard…
With backlash to Trump, GOP infighting and a $100 million attack campaign falling flat, Chris Hayes breaks down why deep-red races from Kansas to Texas are suddenly in play.
President Donald Trump informed congressional leaders Friday that he has unilaterally canceled almost $1 billion in federal funding without Congress’ consent — employing a budget maneuver many lawmakers consider illegal.
In a move that will almost certainly set up an ugly government funding battle after the midterms, Trump has again claimed the power to execute a so-called “pocket rescission” to nix money Congress has already enacted. The funding the president declared canceled is for immigration services, support to foreign countries, education programs, health research efforts and assistance for businesses owned by minorities.
…
The White House released new ads promoting Trump—and they’re paid for by the U.S. government. “The whole thing is weird,” says Chris Hayes. Rep. Jamie Raskin joins to discuss.
President Xi Jinping of China concluded a three-day visit to Washington on Friday for which President Trump included plenty of pageantry, but that produced little in terms of policy announcements on significant matters of tension, like artificial intelligence, trade or the war in Iran.
The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority granted an emergency bid from the Trump administration to use a citizenship database, over dissent from the court’s Democratic appointees that said the majority prioritized nonexistent harms to the government over real harms to voters.
The administration sought urgent relief after a federal judge said the government “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan found those government violations when she issued a June 22 order against the administration using the “modified SAVE” database.
“SAVE” refers to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program maintained by the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship and immigration status. The administration’s 2025 overhaul made three major modifications: to include the records of natural-born citizens, to access social security records and to permit bulk searches of records by SAVE users.
In an opinion on Friday, the Supreme Court majority said the district court’s order “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.” The court’s three Democratic appointees argued that the government wasn’t entitled to the urgent relief that the majority granted.
The majority said the federal government would likely suffer irreparable harm without the urgent relief granted on Friday. The court said the government “has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters,” and that the district court’s order blocks the government “from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
Writing on behalf of the court’s Democratic appointees, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority misused its powers by focusing only on purported harms to the government while “disregarding the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.” Joined by fellow Democratic-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, she said the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few of those voters “outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”
The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center challenged the overhaul, leading Sooknanan to issue the June ruling in their favor, as she found the government activity “unlawful in several respects,” including the illegal disclosure of Social Security numbers and related records. A divided federal appellate panel in Washington likewise rejected the administration over dissent from a Trump appointee.
[…] Opposing the Trump administration’s application, the voting and privacy groups said the government “recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights.”
They said the government made the system despite knowing it was illegal and “risked misidentifying eligible voters as non-citizens.” And they said their members were among the American citizens whose privacy and voting rights were violated and would be placed at risk again if Sooknanan’s order is lifted.
With the November elections “already underway,” they said, reviving the program “would needlessly introduce confusion and administrative burdens amid an ongoing election cycle.”
[…] In her dissent, Jackson said that if the ruling has a “bright side,” it’s that limited short-term impact, which allows only for those individualized inquiries as opposed to sweeping purges ahead of the November elections.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
The Trump administration notified Congress on Tuesday that it once again plans to limit the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to 17,500 admissions next year, primarily white South Africans. … It would make 2027 the second year in which refugees fleeing religious persecution are afforded no pathway to resettlement in the U.S. […]
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies have wasted tens of millions of dollars pursuing ill-conceived plans to rapidly increase detention capacity, and the total will likely rise due to ongoing mismanagement, congressional investigators warned Thursday.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office documented costly problems in several initiatives ICE has pursued since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people who are in the country illegally.
Among the misspending was nearly $3 million to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million to maintain purchased warehouses that are now being sold without having housed a single detainee, and excessive rates paid to hold detainees at a deficient and now-shuttered Florida lockup.
Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to expand detention capacity last year as part of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, but the agency still lacks a comprehensive strategic plan for how to spend it wisely, the report warned. The detainee population has increased from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30.
“Without taking action to manage detention investments in accordance with program and project management practices, ICE will likely continue to make uninformed decisions and risk further inefficiency and wasted resources,” warned the GAO, a nonpartisan agency that investigated at the request of congressional Democrats.
Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, the government began blowing money by hastily pursuing plans to detain more people who were in the U.S. illegally, the report found.
After the White House directed officials to use the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for immigration detention in January 2025, the Department of Defense assembled enough tents to hold 5,000 people there at a cost of $2.85 million, the report said. But DHS found that the tents didn’t meet detention standards, and they were removed before they housed a single detainee.
The plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay was later found to be “infeasible” and scrapped because of the costs of building facilities that could meet federal standards. Instead, the agency housed an average of 16 detainees daily there this year, at a cost of millions of dollars, the report found.
Earlier this year, ICE purchased 11 large warehouses across the country for $1.07 billion as part of a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to increase detention capacity. But that idea was scrapped amid public opposition before any detainees were housed in them because the department didn’t conduct “appropriate due diligence and planning,” according to the GAO report. DHS is now planning to sell seven of the facilities.
ICE has spent $20 million on costs and services related to those seven warehouses that it will not recover, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities and security, and will need to sell them for the total purchase price of $707 million to avoid more waste, the report said.
ICE has also “incurred significant costs” for the four warehouses that it plans to keep, including a $426 million outlay to renovate facilities in Arizona and Maryland that is on hold due to legal challenges.
After the warehouse initiative faltered, ICE launched a plan to purchase facilities owned by private contractors that were already housing detainees, saying it would give more control over infrastructure and limit local governments’ ability to restrict their use.
The agency spent $1.5 billion to buy two of them in July and could buy more even though ICE has “not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities,” the report said.
The report found fault with other initiatives. ICE never reached a contract with the state of Florida to operate the facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which housed detainees for a year until it was closed in June following reports of substandard and abusive conditions.
Instead, DHS agreed to reimburse the state through a special $608 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that authorizes a charge of $249 per detainee per day — 171% higher than ICE’s normal rate of $92, the report found. DHS is also paying the state the higher rate for a second facility that’s still open in Sanderson, Florida.
ICE is also facing high costs under an agreement in which the Bureau of Prisons is housing detainees at eight facilities. The agreement requires ICE to reimburse the full cost, which has ballooned because of overtime and other staffing assignments, and pay a rate of $182 per detainee per day, the report said.
Not only are our elections in trouble because the scrotum 6 gave tRUMP the ability to fuckup future elections, there’s also this:
Pink slime is “political propaganda dressed up to look like local news.You may get directed to these sites either with a Google search or one supplemented by AI, where an AI reference acts as “laundering” for partisan information.
I’ve just got to post this one more atrocity:
Second ad promoting tUMP that was paid for by us taxpayers. tRUMP said: “This is only the beginning of the golden age of America.’”
I reply: the only thing resembling an ‘american golden age of tRUMP’ is the tacky, trailer trash gold tRUMP covers everything with. Oh, and maybe we would see golden showers in the ‘pee tape’.
IT’S NOT FUNNY, IT IS ANOTHER DEATH SPIRAL GASP OF THIS COUNTRY.
Former Kennedy Center employees are accusing the institution’s leadership of shelving repairs to leaking infrastructure months ago, then citing those same problems to justify shutting down the building.
The whistleblowers, who submitted their allegations to Congress through attorney David Seide on Thursday, provided internal documents showing that Kennedy Center Executive Director Matt Floca directed officials to cancel funding for planned roof work in April, The New York Times reported Friday.
Nothing surprising, it’s just a bit uncertain if it’s incompetence or malice.
Trump appointed officials at the Kennedy Center deny this.
This JAMA systematic review (recently published September 2026) pooled 155 studies from August 2025 to June 2026. […]
The bottom line is that updated Covid vaccines roughly halve the risk of serious outcomes, and no new safety concerns turned up.
One caveat applies throughout: no actual data yet exist on the 2026–2027 shot itself. The closest evidence comes from last season’s LP.8.1 vaccine. The authors note that in the present world, XFG and the other variants flying around are still quite similar.
Older adults (65+) still have the highest hospitalization rates and account for about 88% of Covid deaths. This is the population I try hardest to reach. Last season’s shot cut hospitalization risk by 53–59% and ER/urgent care visits by 48%. In terms of how sick people get with Covid, sniffles to hospitalization to death exist along a continuum… so if updated shots are clearly bending the needle in the right direction, it makes sense to me to lessen the severity of Covid illness with an updated shot. […]
In 2024–2025 data, updated shots also reduced ICU admission (57%) and ventilation or death (73%). These are grisly situations. Nursing homes with higher vaccination coverage had fewer hospitalizations, too.
Children aged 9 months to 4 years had 76% fewer ER visits, and ages 5–17 had 56% fewer. I like that trend. Less severe illness.
Immunocompromised people got more modest but real protection, about 32–53% against critical illness.
Health care workers (that’s me) who have had 3–5 doses since this whole thing started were found to have fewer infections (41%) and less long Covid (57%) than those with 2 doses. I’ve lost count, but I think I’ve had seven shots by now.
Safety showed no new signals. The myocarditis risk in young males came from studies before the 2022 change to dosing intervals. Myocarditis with respect to Covid is pretty much just something seen with actual infections now. Getting the Covid and flu shots at the same visit showed no added risk. […]
Link
More at the link, including charts, graphs and state-by-state maps.
Attorney General Todd Blanche quietly turned over unredacted handwritten FBI notes involving a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexual and physical abuse when she was a teenager — but apparently left no notice on the court docket, according to attorney and journalist Katie Phang.
While Phang noted that the Justice Department previously filed a formal “notice of compliance” when responding to another order in the case, “in this instance, nothing showed up on the docket.”
But Phang cautioned that Sullivan has not yet independently confirmed the contents of what DOJ provided.
“I do believe that Blanche did turn over the unredacted and redacted handwritten FBI notes,” she said. “We’ll find out from Judge Sullivan imminently.”
This could be petty stalling or incompetence but my guess is that it will be questionable if the files turned over are complete, creating another round of court issues to resolve. The DOJ will hide behind saying they never filed that they had completed turning over files.
[…] I skipped the chapter on megalomania in Psych 101; is it good or bad when they start invoking “national security” in assaults on our fundamental rights? Or when they propose triumphal arches with snipers on top, for that matter?
How about when they swipe, however flaccidly, at the free press? Although, of course, there are legitimate questions as to whether or not the Founders intended the First Amendment to extend to lady reporters who don’t smile enough.
I suppose I’m being dramatic. He [Trump] really only attempted to violently overturn that one election. I mean, okay, his fashier supporters are urging him to declare martial law, but I’m sure the Cabinet that periodically assembles for public supplication rituals can be trusted to rein him in.
Nobody in that crew is dreading the post-blue wave return of accountability, right? No doubt our perpetually push-upping Secretary of War will happily accept responsibility for the eight suicide attempts among that aircraft carrier crew he forgot to feed. You can’t expect a man to make time for both supply line logistics and workout videos.
Panicked Republicans would like America to know they were only kidding about that decade of blind fealty to the warmongering dipshit who made everything more expensive, as polling reveals an electorate curiously unimpressed with the administration’s ongoing efforts to rename theatre buildings after said dipshit.
[…] You know you’re losing your grip on your death cult when your son can’t even throw a Kremlin-funded wedding without mid-level apparatchiks hemming and/or hawing about investigations.
But like the old saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough isolate themselves in elaborate fantasy worlds enabled by human printers and throw themselves parties.
We must remember the parties. Donnie’s little twirl on the world stage this week was one small stumble for a doddering narcissist, one giant leap backwards for a global power.
Everyone was super impressed with his big, tuff speech at the U.N., […] PERHAPS ME ANNIHILATE IRAN he mused cognitively ME HAVE PLENTY OF AMMUNITION NO MATTER WHAT DUMB FAKE NEWS SAY.
And while “to the victor belong the spoils” is unlikely to top the Family Feud board under Things the American President Should Say at the U.N., I certainly look forward to applying the principle after the midterms.
Embarrassing as all that was, he saved the really degrading stuff for Xi Jinping. See, when a foreign autocrat helps Iran target American servicemen, the penalty is that you get images of uniformed American troops literally on their knees rolling out a literal red carpet for you.
Hell, Donnie’ll let you insult the whole dang country right to his face. Go ahead; how the fuck would he know what the Thucydides Trap is? He just wants to show you his helipad and his autopen picture. We have to build the ballroom because the ballroom will have the biggest, most beautiful cuck chair in the whole wide world.
I’d like nothing more than to disparage the summit as a failure, but even I must grudgingly acknowledge the international coalition he’s building to call it “super intelligence” rather than “artificial intelligence.” I have no idea how branding works in a Thucydides Trap, but I imagine there’s a manual.
I do find “super intelligence” appropriately deferential in his case, however. Like WHOA, that robot can look at a picture of a cow and tell you it’s a cow right away! It doesn’t have to ask the doctor for a hint or anything!
I can’t figure out how the FBI got hacked on Kash Patel’s watch. I suppose when you get swept up in the minutiae of composing bestiality loopholes for the HR department, petty shit like information security can slip through the cracks.
Senator Tuberville’s investigative genius likely saved the nation from Furry 9/11, but does anybody even say thank you? Don’t be surprised when he rechristens the Alabama Governor’s Mansion as Tommy’s Furry Detective Agency, announced by a cardboard sign out front, promising to take on cases for 25 cents a day.
I’m super bummed about Freedom Fest getting cancelled. As the proud holder of one of just six VIP tickets sold, I was looking forward to the promised experience, including access to a private concession area with exotic, lead-free cinnamon.
I was about to praise Dear Leader for securing enough precious Belarusian potash to extract us from ‘neath the thumb of the filthy Canuck, but then it turned out that Belarus doesn’t have enough potash to sell us and couldn’t sell it to us if they did.
Is that what we’ve come to at long last? I can handle a riot now and then, but WHO LIES ABOUT POTASH? Some things are sacred, dammit.
Better not be spending my taxpayer money on any creepy cringey culty campaign ads while you’re lying to me about potash. That’s where I draw the line.
I thought it was sweet of the regime to drop that investigation into Susan Collins’ corrupt relationship with that one defense contractor as a little treat for her invaluable assistance rolling back women’s rights. Sure would be a shame if that scandal blew up a month or so before a wave election.
I certainly can’t blame anyone who never trusts a poll again, but for now, I’m choosing to trust Republican fear. They tend to get antsy when the internals show them losing in districts they just gerrymandered this summer.
That Roger Marshall doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Never dreamed he’d have to run an actual campaign. I grew up in Kansas; it’s pretty red…[…] At least Daddy’s helping out with some last-minute ICE thuggery. […]
In today’s Daily Fix:Rockstar has revealed a pricey $400 collector’s edition for Grand Theft Auto 6—and it doesn’t even include the game. The set does include collectibles such as a pair of Oakley sunglasses, a fanny pack, hat, stickers, a keychain, shot glass, and more.
Special edition package of game related collectables and it doesn’t include a copy of the game. It was inevitable that a game as big as GTA 6 would have some over priced editions but this takes the prize for most stupid edition I have seen for any game.
If it was cheaper I would say it was a trap for parents not paying enough attention buying a gift but at that price I’m not sure who they are aiming it for.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it had kicked about 750,000 people off Affordable Care Act plans on the suspicion that they either didn’t qualify for the plans, or maybe those people didn’t exist at all. In a news conference, Vice President [Vance] and Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, who knows fraudulent medicine when he sells it, bragged that the cuts would save the federal government some $2.2 billion, claiming that the ACA was full of fraud that needed to be eliminated.
The cuts were made under the auspices of JD Vance’s “White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” which means that by definition only frauders and cheaters were affected, because it’s right in the name. Vance lied at the presser that “We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them, amazingly we weren’t doing that before,” because Republicans like to pretend that federal programs simply hand out money with no questions asked.
No, the administration didn’t provide details about who had lost coverage […]
Vance [said] that the suspected “fraud” cases included people who A) didn’t even know they were on the ACA because dishonest insurance brokers signed them up fraudulently, 2) people who were ineligible for the ACA because they already have health insurance through their employers, and III) people who are ineligible for ACA subsidies because they earn more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level. (Or who didn’t earn enough money, because the Affordable Care Act meant for those folks to get expanded Medicaid, until the Supreme Court kiboshed the requirement for states to take my fucking money dot gif.)
Oh yes, and as Obamacare policy wonk Charles Gaba points out, there’s just one teensy potential problem with that third category. There’s no way for the government to know right now whether people actually make too much to qualify for the ACA this year, at least not until they file their 2026 tax returns early next year. It’s entirely possible, even likely, that thousands of people may have been wrongly booted off their health plans.
Oh. That sounds bad. […]
The 760,000 people yeeted out of Obamacare represent about four percent of the roughly 19 million people still on the ACA. During the Biden administration, ACA enrollments grew from about 10 million to a record high 24 million, largely thanks to increased premium subsidies that began during COVID and and were extended in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. For a brief shining moment the percentage of Americans without healthcare coverage reached an all-time low, but then Trump and Republicans repealed the premium subsidies in the Big Evil Bill, jacking up premiums and leaving millions without coverage.
In a March 2026 interview with NBC News, Dr. Oz grumbled that “the fact that we have 23 million makes me think we have too many participants in the ACA. […] It’s too high of a number.” At the time, he claimed that there were probably four million, maybe even five million people getting ACA subsidies they weren’t eligible for, because he was just really sure of that.
As Gaba points out, there really has been a problem with fraud by insurance brokers signing up people who shouldn’t be on the ACA. However, he notes, the Biden administration already cracked down on fraudy brokers in 2024, and “the Trump Regime took more aggressive action in 2025, so I find it difficult to believe that there’s that much broker/agent fraud still happening.” (The New York Times said Trump actually recertified the fraudy brokers last year.)
[…] if someone does end up making too much to qualify for the ACA, they aren’t charged with fraud. They simply have to repay the full amount of ACA subsidies they received when they file their taxes the next year.
OK, but if the administration won’t actually know until next year whether folks earned more than they anticipated (which, again, not fraud), how did Vance’s team decide people needed to lose their coverage in advance?
If you guessed it was fucking AI, pat yourself on the back […]
Gaba explains: One of the lesser functionaries at the Vance-Oz presser acknowledged that CMS is using AI to speed up the process of stripping eligibility from people and calling it “fraud,” and that’s fine because “it’s not the same standard of proof as like a criminal conviction. It’s basically pattern recognition,” and that’s good enough! In fact, that’s really great, because it allows the agency to “detect fraud before it happens, before claims are paid, and then they can be cut off.” [Yikes!]
And if the machine fucks up and kicks you off your ACA health insurance, it’s no big deal because all you gotta do is “appeal back to the agency, explain your situation, and the agency will make payment,” just easy-peasy.
The unidentified dipshit then added that there really must be a whole lot of fraud out there, though, because “as Dr. Oz has said repeatedly, when we do these big cutoffs, almost no one comes.” After all, there couldn’t possibly be any other explanation, like maybe the appeals process isn’t quite so easy as he described it, or people are just too overwhelmed to bash their heads against the wall like that. […]
On September 27, 1922, the Sentinels of the Republic formed. […] They wanted to stop any change that might give workers any rights at all. Their main position: pro-child labor. […] Their primary goal was to defeat the Child Labor Amendment proposed to the Constitution. This successful attempt to defeat even the most basic labor reforms demonstrates how rich corporate and conservative interests in the United States can defeat labor reform. […]
The people who met at Faneuil Hall in Boston on that date in 1922 to form the Sentinels of the Republic were largely wealthy. The Sentinels’ first president was Louis Coolidge, a former top aide to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and a shoe company executive for a firm that used child labor in its plants. […]
The leaders of this group included leading newspapermen, politicians, lawyers, anti-suffragists, and textile capitalists. The Sentinels were formed not specifically to fight child labor, but rather to fight all left-leaning reforms, using the typical perversions of the Constitution that we still find in right-wing movements today. Basically, everything done to expand rights or help people out was a betrayal of the Framers, etc.
But the first battle they fought was against the Child Labor Amendment. […] [Editrix’s note: My grandfather lost several fingers on both hands in an industrial sewing machine in New York City in 1914. In 1914, my grandfather was 12 years old.] It stopped kids from going to school and getting an education and thus any hope for an easier life. It undermined the wages of adults. […] [In 1924] a Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution was quite simple. It read:
Section 1. The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.
Section 2. The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress
Well, this was enough to send the Sentinels of the Republic through the roof. What a violation of freedom! When Congress sent it to the states, they mobilized to defeat it. They used this idea of freedom from government interference as the core of the argument […]
A key state in the Child Labor Amendment world was Massachusetts. It was not the state it is today. This is before the New Deal. The […] Democratic Party that long governed the state was still forming. Parts of the textile industry, which had long used child labor, still remained there. There was also a very strong anti-government conservatism that dominated the rural parts of the state and New England […]
So if the CLA was to pass, it had to pass in Massachusetts. The Sentinels thus targeted the state Legislature, demanding they not ratify it. […] they convinced the Legislature to send it out to a plebiscite. And there, it was able to muster the state’s many conservative elements to defeat it at the ballot box. That included the Catholic Church, highly suspicious of any government intervention in the home and which had a lot of votes it could throw around. The final vote wasn’t even close. The CLA was defeated by a 697,563 to 241,461 margin. Ouch.
So the CLA lingered. It actually never had an expiration date on ratification. Heck, we could ratify it today. In fact, we should! A couple of years ago, I testified before the Connecticut state Legislature on a bill to ratify the Child Labor Amendment. We could do this!
The CLA did not succeed in the ‘20s. But then came the Great Depression and then the New Deal. A new era of labor activism was at hand. Unions could actually form and the government would make companies sit down and deal with them! Groups such as the Sentinels of the Republic fought to defeat what they saw as the destruction of America. It was part of the larger coalition of anti-New Deal groups that laid the initial groundwork for the growth of the modern conservative movement and all the horrors we see in America today.
[…] But even though the Sentinels of the Republic would disappear, all these people would end up in other far-right organizations seeking to stem the tide of labor reform and turn back the New Deal. Examining how these groups operated is key to understanding why the state of labor is so poor in the United States. Banning child labor should be something that unites us. But it did not. It’s groups like this, funded with big time resources, that convince people not to support things that are very much in their economic interests, not to mention the interests of their own children.
[…] The Fair Labor Standards Act did end child labor in industrial work in 1938, but that left a lot of work arrangements unregulated, primarily those done by Black workers in the South, required to get the southern senators not to filibuster it to death. Yet, child labor remains far too common in the US today, especially in agriculture. For example, this 2015 Human Rights Watch report exposes just how bad the child labor problem is in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. Of course, little to nothing changed after the story came out. […]
Embedded links to sources and to recommended reading are available at the main link.
“Mike Lee Writing Fantasy Fiction About Trump Taking Xi To Panda Express”
Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee isn’t the same flavor of stupid as Tommy Tuberville or Ron Johnson. He’s this really childlike, worshipful Daddy issues flavor of stupid, where everything Daddy does just leaves him in awe, he just turns into jelly for any white conservative man he believes he’s supposed to defer to and obey.
He’s also stupid in a sad social conservative moral scold kind of way. […]
But with Chinese communist dictator-for-life Xi Jinping in town, Mike Lee [is worshiping] Dear Leader. […] Yesterday on Fox Business Larry Kudlow asked Lee about the ways Donald Trump has been debasing himself and the United States in front of Xi, which as we all understand is part of Trump’s own Daddy issues when it comes to dictators with supreme power. (Kudlow didn’t ask it that way […].)
And Mike Lee, with that stupid, submissive look on his face that we imagine is just genetic, started fantasizing about Donald Trump taking Xi to Panda Express.
LARRY KUDLOW: “Is President Trump being too nice and too good to President Xi? Going to the airport, you know? That’s pretty unusual. It’s hard to know what’s gonna come out of it. Some of your colleagues have been critical. I’m not being critical. I’m just wondering how you’ve– you’re a leading conservative voice. What are you thinking about all this?”
SEN. MIKE LEE: “Larry, one of the many things I love about President Trump is that he is the consummate host. And when a foreign dignitary, whether from China or anywhere else, comes into town, he likes to show them around. He likes to show them the White House. I won’t be a bit surprised if he decides at one point to say, ‘President Xi, let’s go visit Panda Express and see what you think of their broccoli beef.’ I’d love to see that happen. That’s the kind of thing President Trump likes to do. He likes to figure out what people are interested in and makes sure he shows them a good time while they’re visiting.”
There is a lot there that’s embarrassing. That Lee is clearly fantasizing about this. That he’s using his fantasy about something that hasn’t even happened as a way to bathe his Dear Leader […]. That he’s such a white Utah Republican that he thinks the food court in the mall is an exotic ethnic food adventure.
That he thinks Panda Express serves real Chinese food.
That Panda Express is what he thinks Xi would be “interested in.” […]
As for other moments of Trump embarrassing the nation in front of Xi, well, there were a few […]
Trump showed Xi his tacky dementia wall of presidents, especially the one where that is a picture of an autopen instead of a picture of Joe Biden. Ha ha! [video]
Because making fun of former presidents in front of communist dictators with more power than you is just what American presidents do! Trump thought he was humiliating Joe Biden there, but no, he was humiliating the entire United States.
At the State Dinner last night, Trump invited all the guests to visit his ballroom, which does not exist yet, but said they were welcome to go walk around the hole in the ground where the East Wing of the White House used to be. [video]
Can’t wait to see how the judge reacts to Trump’s next argument that Politico or CNN revealed sensitive national security information about his beloved ballroom baby bunker, now that he’s on camera inviting foreign spies and dignitaries to go see it.
[…] Also during their meeting yesterday, Xi once again invoked the “Thucydides Trap,” which is humiliating every time he does it, as it explains the tensions that arise when a new global power emerges to, essentially, eventually, take the place of an existing world power. You can guess which country is which in this scenario.
[…] Of course, Trump is far too ignorant and venal to understand what Xi is doing when he says that […]
It should be of course noted that Trump has used Xi’s visit to praise China’s press corps, while attacking American journalists.
Other things have happened during Xi’s state visit to see President Dementia Dumps and his personal clown Natalie, but we’re too embarrassed for this country to type them out right now, so fuck it.
“Nor’easter Updates: Heavy Rain and Wind Batter Northeast, Bringing Coastal Flooding”
“The storm flooded low-lying areas, knocked out power for thousands and forced the cancellation of several major events and hundreds of flights. Wind gusts exceeded 50 miles per hour in places.”
The combination of strong winds and exceptionally high tides caused flooding in coastal areas of New Jersey and New York City, submerging streets, cars and the first floors of some buildings.
In Edgewater, N.J., the Hudson River flooded, forcing emergency workers to evacuate people from a waterside hotel. Hamilton Beach, a neighborhood of bungalows near Kennedy Airport, also saw streets filled with flood waters.
Wind gusts exceeded 50 miles per hour in several places on Saturday morning, reaching 62 m.p.h. in Nantucket.
The high winds were already downing power lines and causing outages. […]
The storm caused headaches for thousands of airline passengers. More than 250 flights were canceled at Boston Logan International Airport, which is about a quarter of the airport’s traffic, according to the online flight tracker FlightAware. Hundreds of flights were also delayed at the three major airports serving New York City, but there were few cancellations.
[…] The center of the storm was off the coast of Delaware as of 2 p.m. on Saturday, inching north. The threat of coastal flooding remained high because of the storm’s strength, its slow pace and exceptionally high tides because of the full moon.
The storm’s center was expected to stay offshore until late Saturday evening, and then take a turn west toward New Jersey on Sunday. It will most likely linger there until Monday and then move northeast, the National Weather Service said in an advisory early Saturday morning.
The Weather Service has issued coastal flood warnings effective until Sunday evening for northeast New Jersey, southeast New York and the Massachusetts coast, including Cape Cod and Nantucket.
Here’s what else to know:
Latest forecast: Meteorologists say the heavy rain could lead to some flash flooding, mainly in coastal Massachusetts, some of Rhode Island and eastern Long Island. Though the tip of Long Island could see the brunt of the heavier rain and higher winds, significant rain could also fall toward the west, including across New York City, said Joe Pollina, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
Rainfall total: One and a half to three inches of rain was forecast over the weekend for cities including New York, Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Around four inches was predicted for parts of Long Island and Connecticut, with totals as high as six inches possible around Boston and Cape Cod.
El Niño effect: This is likely to be the first of several East Coast storms to follow this path over the next few months, driven by a developing El Niño weather pattern. […]
Two veteran FBI counterterrorism supervisors have been removed from their jobs after a disagreement over an investigation involving alleged harassing phone calls made to the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, multiple people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.
The FBI on Saturday confirmed the demotions.
The special agent in charge of counterterrorism in the FBI’s Washington field office, Michael Burgwald, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, each have deep national security experience.
Weird situation but apparently some combination of tracing the phone calls to a conservative podcaster and not treating the phone calls as a terrorist matter got them demoted. Inside sources say the orders came from above. At this point the FBI is denying that the order came from Kash Patel. This is possible because it may have been Stephen Miller that put pressure on the FBI.
Iowa GOP Senate candidate Ashley Hinson calls for Iran war to end despite voting to let Trump continue it
A third US Supreme Court showdown looms over Missouri’s shifting congressional map
Here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2312583
New ICE horrors come to light
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2312581
Belarus doesn’t have enough potash for Trump, and Trump says U.S. to continue buying Canadian potash but wants cheaper price
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2312577
‘To the victor belong the spoils’: In U.N. address, Trump brags about seizing Venezuelan oil
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2312565
FBI’s anti-corruption team eyed Susan Collins’ operation. Then Trump’s purge began.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/06/28/infinite-thread-xxxx/comment-page-6/#comment-2312421
I just lost a big chunk of my trust in LLM “reasoning”
‘Trump TV’ is an immediate failure
ICE bullet still in his back, victim moved to a distant detention center became paralyzed enough to be hospitalized
See also: Washington Post report: Man shot and detained by ICE hospitalized for partial paralysis
“Wilber Garcés Pérez was transferred to a hospital after his condition worsened, according to his attorney. He was shot and wounded by an ICE officer in Texas.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-hallucinating-miracle-gro-deals
Rawstory: RFK Jr.’s soaring bodyguard costs covered with money for fighting infant deaths: WSJ
Given the family history I’m not surprise that RFK Jr is paranoid about security and has high security costs but spending more then 3 times previous holders of the office is excessive. Taking from an existing program rather then using discretionary spending or asking Congress for more is bad.
And that makes it even worse.
HAPPY EQUINOX EVERYONE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox
DOJ defends White House news bans, saying access a ‘privilege’ and citing national security concerns
Executive summary: the DOJ is serving Donald Trump’s wishes, not the American people.
Mount Ridley hits high-grade scandium 8km outside WA resource
Recently stumbled on Qasim Rashid on facebook and he’s on youtube too with some great clips like :
this – Debunking the Myth That 85% of Muslim Women Don’t Speak English | Let’s Address This
Plus Plus this – Debunking Islamic Immigration Myth | Let’s Address This
as well as – Leaked GOP Plan To Win Midterms
All YT shorts.
Owen Jones Britain Joins Saudi WAR On Yemen interview w Anna Stavrianakis, Director of Research and Strategy at Shadow World Investigations. 18 misn.
Fox News: Rubio’s meme-worthy job collection takes new turn with permanent Trump upgrade
Not a big change since Rubio has held the post since early 2025. It is more important as a demonstration of how the circle of people who Trump actually listens too is shrinking. Rubio seems to be one of the yes men and having one as either Secretary of state and National security advisor is particularly bad, those are both jobs that should be telling the president the risks and issues with his ideas.
Oversight Democrat demands answers on Trump’s ‘ridiculous’ attack on the press
Video is 7:02 minutes. It includes coverage of talking points that Republicans have handed out. “The biggest BS from a lying president.” Also covered, Barack Obama’s comments.
Chris Hayes describes the ‘no win situation’ for Republicans stuck with an unpopular president
Video is 7:17 minutes. Chris Hayes also briefly covered Trump’s embarrassing speech at the United Nations, Trump’s corruption, and more.
‘We need senators that can do the job’: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Mitch McConnell’s absence
Video is 10:32 minutes.
‘This scheme is not going to work’: Chris Hayes on Trump’s ban on media outlets from the White House
Video is 8:36 minutes.
We Finally Know Where Bats Came From—and Dracula Would Approve
Trump’s approval plunges into the 20s, and Republicans give up
Turn that around: 29% of Americans still think Trump is doing a decent job. Yowza!
Team Trump can’t keep its story straight on a proposed ban on diesel exports.
“The president blurted out a policy position he likely didn’t understand, only to be contradicted a day later by one of his Cabinet secretaries.”
Trump got a Greenland deal, but it’s not the one he wanted or vowed to get
“When making a list of the incumbent president’s biggest foreign policy fiascoes, this one will rank near the top.”
Related video from Rachel Maddow “Rachel Maddow shares reporting from a Danish news outlet that a U.S. group connected to Ron Lauder, billionaire friend of Donald Trump, bought a house for a Greenlandic politician whose wife is the former foreign minister tasked with dealing with Trump’s urgent desire to acquire Greenland.”
Melania Trump half-heartedly defends her poor wittle husband
Link
Architect reportedly warned Trump his ballroom will be a death trap
Here’s What California Is Learning From Solar Panels Built Over Irrigation Canals
Ukraine Smashes Russia’s Two-Month Push to Encircle Druzhkivka
Concealed carry in the 1790’s
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MENPPUJKhT4
Reginald @23, sounds like a good idea. It will be interesting to see their final report.
In other news: Alabama’s Tuberville worries aloud about airline personnel joining ‘the furry community’
In the closing weeks of his gubernatorial race, the senator is focused on “bringing back mental institutions” and fearing furries who fly airplanes.
Trump’s rant at the U.N. shows he’s not just a wannabe dictator, he’s also a wannabe Real Housewife!
.https://youtube.com/shorts/0oqNT2Jpvn0
Trump TV launches to a predictably rough start
“Two days after the White House launched the online endeavor, public interest in the ‘unfiltered’ video stream dwindled to effectively zero.”
Related video at the link.
Cartoon: Press freedom fire, by Tim Campbell
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-tells-un-which-words-have-a
“Trump Tells UN Which Words Have A ‘B’ In Them, Threatens To Annihilate Iran”
“Also says artificial intelligence is now SUPER Intelligence, and you must comply.”
See also: https://www.wonkette.com/p/wonkette-book-club-part-1-a-climate-change-is-gonna-come
Washington Post link
Re: Lynna, OM @ #28…
For a comparison, at the moment there are just over 2000 people watching one of the three webcams pointed at the eruptive activity in Kilaeua caldera.
Who neeeds Trump TV when you’ve got the Ganesha Channel:
Family builds Ganesha statue out of 4,500 Tic Tacs
31 years ago, Ganesha drank milk and India went viral
Going green with Ganesha: The push for eco-friendly deities
Intetesting things to ponder. “Why Did Consciousness Evolve? Exciting Research on Bird Brains”
NB -the ancestors of mammals and birds separated with the first very primitive reptiles 300 Myr ago. So advanced brains arose independently.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OlnioeAtloY
PS did anyone ever give DJT the mirror test?
The Toyota Corolla Is Reportedly Going Electric
Commentary on Trump’s UN speech @30.
Anjali Dayal (Intl relations prof):
Also in the clip: “I’m not running. […] The Republican party is running. I’ll be helping them, but I am not running.”
Trump tells midterm voters to ‘pretend that I’m running’ (Sep 9)
Rando: “He’s distancing himself from… himself.”
re Lynna@20:
Yeah, Big Macs and Large Fries.
re Lynna@22:
Why does he continue to want his name attached to assassinated presidents?
Via Aussie ABC news – Part I of a 2 part series with part IIcoming tomorrow Aussie-tome.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-24/ai-race-chips-data-energy-cake-stack-us-china-asia-pacific/107071946
Follow-up on the Ontario synagogue shooting.
Belleville gunman spouted COVID-19 conspiracies while in army
Michelle Cohen (Family doctor):
Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders.
Including some beautiful pictures.
RFK Jr.’s CDC isn’t letting states order COVID-19 shots for kids, blocking access
WaPo – Trump clashed with ballroom architect over safety issues
Rando: “In a book this amount of foreshadowing would make readers roll their eyes.”
Justice Putnam (Netroots radio): “An art collector burned to death in a raging fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in 2018 because it lacked fire sprinklers that Trump fought against since 1983.”
Adding to Lynna @31.
The Guardian – Iran’s president hits out at ‘bully’ Trump in UN speech but signals willingness to talk
Magic.
Smile.exe buffering
.https://youtube.com/shorts/9PvlwGWO6rc
The ex-soldier who attacked a synagogue in Bellville Ontario was an anti vax conspiracy theorist. He was discharged from the Canadian Armed Forces for refusing the covid vaccine. He believed multiple conspiracy theories.
C-SPAN clip – Sen. Duckworth urges Democrats to not impeach anybody and “get back to work” if they win majority (1:20, Sep 22)
Meredith Shiner (The New Republic):
Dana Houle (Former Dem House staffer, Former WaPo/TNR):
A month earlier.
C-SPAN – Duckworth’s at IL Dem County Chairs event (1:32:31 to 1:42:44, Aug 19)
Newsweek – Trump and Mamdani’s convenient surrender
https://archive.is/mjMEiNewsweek’s both-sides hyperbole framing is bad. Trump is a fascist.
The American Prospect – ICE is trying to ignore court’s decision striking down third-country removals
Gillian Brockell (TAP, Flight tracker):
WaPo – The White House banned Politico, citing anonymous sources. It provided the quotes.
Oliver Darcy (Status News): “Scoop: The anonymous source […] was none other than JD Vance himself.”
Hunter Walker (TPM): “Trump wants news outlets banned for reporting what VP said, and Vance was almost certainly bullshitting on that call in the first place when he said we were close to an Iran deal months ago.”
Brian Finucane: “Today’s adventures in the non-unitary executive.”
Rando: “In Trump’s defense, Politico was relying on the credibility of professional liar and turncoat JD Vance, which is usually journalistic malpractice.”
Judge orders White House to restore access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Reporters still blocked
US citizen injured in Illinois after ICE agents mistook him for fugitive and tried to arrest him
No more polite cautions – –
As we posted to the Omnigma Organizations 25 August 2026:
WARNING:
A.I IS NOT CONTROLLED BY ANYONE. It is already too late. The greedy, plutocratic imbeciles that poured tens of billions into creating artificial intellegence can no longer prevent a.i. from autonomously roaming and pillaging any system that touches the internet.
Even if the news media are allowed into the white house, it is a moot point because ALL THE MAJOR MEDIA are NOW owned by greedy, fascistic, tRUMPist plutocrats – –
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/118174/now-cnn
And, a final note for those who would say I’m spouting hyperbole:
Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa on Trump’s Media Ban, Regulating AI & the “Tech Coup in Plain Sight”
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/24/un_maria_ressa
I’ve got to make this one more comment. Because I’ve warned many times that tRUMP and his admin WILL VIOLATE COURT ORDERS WITH IMPUNITY:
Violating Federal Judge’s Order, Trump White House Denies Access to Politico, MS NOW, CNN Reporters
https://www.commondreams.org/news/judge-reverses-trump-media-ban
Therefore, I can state with confidence that There is NO RULE OF LAW in this country anymore
Republican candidates ‘retcon’ their support for an increasingly unpopular Donald Trump
Video is 7:11 minutes
The problem(s) with Trump trying to go around Canada, seeking fertilizer deal with Russia ally
“The president touted a deal that doesn’t exist in the hopes of going around Canada, the target of his misguided trade war.”
“The Scathing Atheist 706: A Couple Short Peters Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qKAShi3OOP4
Trump keeps finding new ways to give Putin unearned rewards, inviting backlash
“The president’s decision to host a summit at a business he owns is a problem. Inviting the Russian leader makes the problem worse.”
Related video at the link.
The quoted text above updates Steve Benen’s earlier coverage.
Link
shermanj @ # 54: … There is NO RULE OF LAW in this country anymore
Only for a select few. The rest of us will have more rules, and maybe laws, than ever.
Good campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Washington Post link
“CNN and MS NOW reporters regain entry to White House”
Link
Link
Cartoon
Tom the Dancing Bug: Musk and DOGE vs. giant AI robots
Followup to comment 26.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tommy-tuberville-alerts-nation-to
“Tommy Tuberville Alerts Nation To Shocking Threat Of Furries In Cockpits”
@56 Lynna, OM:
The thing about a potash deal is that it could be done of Putin wanted it to happen. If Putin told him to do it Lukashenko would ignore the existing contracts. And getting the potash to the US would be difficult but it could be done, transport it via train across Russia to eastern ports and it isn’t far from the US. Much of the potash is going to Russia or Russian clients for food production, it would be hard to give it up but it could be done without starving Russia. Couldn’t replace all Canadian potash but enough to put a big dent in prices.
Putin knows Trump too well to go out of his way to do a favor for Trump in exchange for vague promises. Trump can’t be bothered to keep treaties he personally signed, potential favors and goodwill down the road are worthless. To get a favor from Putin Trump has to do something equally valuable now. And there isn’t actually anything Trump can do that is worth that much. Trump can’t really cut sanctions because it’s EU countries that control the borders. Trump can’t drop military support for Ukraine, he tried that already and Congress forced him to send the budgeted money and gear.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/snow-white-tabs-thurs-sept-24-2026
Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.
Washington Post link
“Nearly 170,000 pounds of raw meat recalled for false inspection labels”
They may have bogus USDA inspection labels that say “EST. 1363.”
New York Times link
“CNN, MS NOW and Politico Return to White House After Fight Over Access”
“A federal court ordered the Trump administration to reverse its ban on the outlets, but reporters were initially denied entry to the White House grounds on Thursday.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/hitler-estate-sues-trump-for-stealing
Professor Gerdes Explains: Russia’s Election Was Even More Rigged Than You Think
Russia held it’s election. Putin’s party, United Russia, did every well as expected.
Percentage of the population voting and the percent of the vote that United Russia got both went up. The amount of election fraud also went up, with no concern for how blatant it was. United Russia has an even bigger majority then in previous election while minority and opposition parties are down, with just splinters left. Putin doesn’t seem to want to allow even the appearance of opposition right now.
The interesting bit is that control of the election was handed over to the FSB. The FSB is replacing the entire Russian government step by step.
DHS claims about noncitizen voters in Nevada completely collapse under scrutiny
Secretary Markwayne Mullin referenced 15,903 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The state checked and found the actual number was zero.
Team Trump ignores legal limits, airs taxpayer-financed propagandistic ad
It is illegal to use public funds for “propaganda purposes.” Worried about the midterms, the Trump administration apparently decided not to care.
Related video at the link.
JM @72. that’s an interesting take on the role of the FSB in Russia. Thanks for that analysis.
In other news: RFK Jr. faces yet another round of ethics questions, adding to brutal pattern
So much for tough talk: Trump gives Chinese president a warm welcome
Unlike Trump, Mamdani is actually boosting the arts
New Jersey fines data center $1.1M after drone pics expose 62 gas generators
$1.1M ? They’ll probably laugh that off.
CEO who posted about wearing ‘Lake America’ sweatshirts to Halifax is no longer CEO
Macklemore announces new tour in support of Palestine
New York Times link
“U.N. Live Updates: Netanyahu Lashes Out at Critics and Underscores Threats to Israel”
“In a combative speech, the prime minister defended Israeli military action across the Middle East, and attacked Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York. Dozens of delegates walked out of the hall as he took the podium.”
Hard-hit Hawaii under hurricane watch as Nolo nears Big Island
Error leads to backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications in Texas
“County election officials are rushing to deal with the pile of delayed records before early voting begins in the state next month.”
NBC News:
MS NOW:
Raw Story: Nominee sparks outrage by refusing to say whether Trump can be wrong: ‘So pathetic’
That is just sad. Outright dodging the question of it being possible for Trump to be wrong.
Follow-up to 47.
LawDork – DOJ goes to SCOTUS to re-start rapid third-country removals
The First Circuit said stop third-country removals. DOJ appealed to SCOTUS, as it had twice before, each time getting an administrative stay (allowing law-breaking to continue) while the court deliberated. Except liberal Ketanji Jackson handles appeals in that circuit. So this time DOJ’s request said that if Jackson doesn’t enter a stay, it wants the full court to do it—and cited instances where the full court snatched a case from the circuit justice. Jackson promptly scheduled briefings without the stay. So the First Circuit’s permanent injunction to stop TCRs remains in effect.
Gillian Brockell (TAP, Flight tracker):
Roger Parloff (Lawfare): “Is DHS defying court orders again? Six days before en banc DC Circuit hears argument on whether Judge Boasberg can finally investigate DHS/DOJ defiance of his order of 3/15/25, which sent 137 Venezuelans to CECOT with no due process?”
Futurism – Tesla argues in court that the n-word is acceptable
Note please Hemidactylus and other fellow F1 fans here that this weekend’s Azerbaijan (Baku) race is on SATURDAY not Sunday ie. race is tomorrow with ually starting there in under 25 mins time.
Q1 is now underway at Baku FYI other F1 fans here.
Washington Post: CNN, MS NOW access unresolved as White House bars some journalists from state dinner event
Lots of activity Thursday. The banned organizations were turned away, got court orders, got in to some events, and then some reports were turned away again for the state dinner with Xi. The situation after the initial court order is the sort of mess you see with incompetent dictators where you can’t be sure if they ordered something or their staff is just incompetent.
Expect another court hearing Friday about the matter.
‘No excuse was given’ MS NOW Reporter blocked from White House event despite judge’s order
Video is 13:41 minutes. Chris Hayes discusses a lot of related topics.
‘Acutely politically toxic’: Hayes on the Iran War hurting Republican candidates at home
Video is 9:49 minutes.
If anyone asks me what I believe in, well, I believe this sums up our world and reality so very much :
Carl Sagan on Pale Blue Dot ( Earth ) image from Voyager 1 yt clip by Anubhav Yadav taking three minutes and twenty seconds time to watch.
There’s very many different yt videos setting videos and photos over Carl Sagan’s awesome words.
Love them all and this is the latest one I;ve seen and sums up my philosophy spot on.
StevoR @93: If I had to pick a single YT video which comes closest to my worldview, it might be this.
Irony is running rampant:
tRUMP, who calls all of us that aren’t maga cult members ‘communists’, used our taxpayer money for his ad: ‘america will never be a communist country’.
 : Then, he hosted the most lavish, expensive, pandering and ass-kissing of xi and china. And, china just happens to be the biggest, most powerful communist country in the world. WTF!
While, malaria admits:
Melania Tells Fox News She Had A Good Life Under Communisim (sic)
https://crooksandliars.com/2026/09/melania-tells-fox-news-she-had-good-life
And, we must admit:
Trump can’t make ‘super intelligence’ happen
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/24/800102864/world/trump-cant-make-super-intelligence-happen/
@93 StevoR
When someone asks you what you believe, the appropriate response is,
“I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Maybe in honor of tRUMP we should all call it ‘STUPOR INTELLIGENCE’.
@ ^ Rob Grigjanis : Truth. Yes. Cheers.
Also when it comes to what we can choose to best do this Midnight Oil – Blackfella/Whitefella / The Dead Heart (Blackfella/Whitefella / 1986) Ths musical / visual fusion shows & sings such power in my view.
I try to do so,.
(I am feeling so very tired & old and stuffed right now. )
Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for seniors in disastrous experiment
@96. Reginald Selkirk : .”When someone asks you what you believe, the appropriate response is,
“I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Yes & I would but is already after 3 a m local time & I’ve already drunk all my beers for tonight here & probly more. Past time to go to bed I know but my my doggie, Roxxi, is out chasing possums and happy so .. anyhow TMI. Going to bed very soon & might even be able to sleep soon I hope. Cheers.
@41
CDC opens state ordering for COVID-19 vaccines after unexplained delay
Los Angeles Has a Flea Problem—and It’s Fueling Typhus Outbreaks
Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use citizenship database ahead of midterms
@80
Ed Sheeran’s Gillette Stadium concerts canceled due to nor’easter, tour promoter says
Two arrested after people seen mysteriously emerging from various New York City sewers
Kiteworks urges customers to shut down their servers amid ‘imminent’ threat of cyberattack
Mortgage rates reach 7%, despite Trump’s misguided 2024 campaign promises
“Until fairly recently, the president wanted the public to see him as directly responsible for mortgage rates. I think we know why he changed course.”
Adding to Reginald Selkirk @103.
Evan Bernick (Law prof):
* Steve Vladeck linked a pdf of the ruling.
Speaking of voter rolls.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:
Listen. Please. Kaurna are our FIrst Peoples Ragtag Extremist Blues – John Schumann and the Vagabond CrewL
Under 5 mins
The Kaurna never ceded their land.
You cannot replace 100 plus years old ancient trees full of hollows and habitat with tubestock.
My heart hurts; Metaphorically but so much,
A Funhouse Mirror of Corruption
Anna Bower (Lawfare):
Rando 1: “I’m conflicted on this. We have every reason to believe the prosecutor’s account of that professional nightmare, but ALSO I can’t ignore the ethical line ones crosses *knowingly* bringing felony (!) political charges against a bunch of innocent people, regardless of objections you make AS YOU DO IT.”
Rando 2: “Perfect example of what happens when you side with Trump’s admin. You comply in order to keep your job. But, in the end, you lose your job AND your reputation.”
Rando 3: “Quoting the letter: ‘Through all this, I remained silent.’ How’s that working out for you?”
Eugene Freedman (Union lawyer): “Not only is this a rhetorical beating, it also implies she’s going to be filing a defamation claim.”
Eric Columbus (Lawfare): “Obligatory link to my earlier deep dive on the Broadview 6 case.”
Kyle Cheney (Politico): “A federal judge (Trump-appointed Stephanie Gallagher) has held the Trump administration in contempt for deporting a man to El Salvador in violation of three court orders. She’s ordering the government to return him.”
I listen to This* song and my heart just breaks and how can it noty when i know how true it is..
No expletves suffice.
.* Paul Kelly – Sleep, Australia, Sleep (Official Video.)
SciAm – How apple detectives solved the mystery of an ancient tree—and rewrote the history of fruit
StevoR @113: Thanks for that.
@114
And that’s without going into polyploidy!
Some lighter stuff.
.
Swedish singer Zara Larsson talks with Seth Meyers on How Her “Lush Life” Dance Evolved & Fans Recreating Her Dolphin Pose
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnvk0IppAWk
.
I am Swedish, and I cannot really understand how a country of ten million can produce so many good musicians (although some of them like Röyksopp are ‘adopted’ from other Scandinavian countries).
This is what happens when schools invest heavily into support for kids who are interested in music, and towns provide locales where they can practice.
3 myths about working from home, debunked
rump aides explore attaching president’s name to Ford’s Theatre
FFS
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Speaking of Röyksopp…this is an upbeat melody with a very heavy text.
‘Röyksopp & Robyn “Monument” (Music Video)’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6c-RbGZBnBI
I think associating Trump’s name with that theatre might give disappointed Trump voters some unfortunate ideas, given they are likely to own firearms.
MAGA candidate fumes after his relative deported: ‘That’s not right’
Leopards.
@2
Supreme Court blocks Trump-backed Missouri congressional map
CNBC – Virginia tech firm’s CEO and a Russian national charged with hiding firm’s Russian ties from U.S. government
Clean on OpSec. /s
The Register: “the same Russian operation that also sold its wares to the FSB […] The DOJ is not alleging that Oxygen’s software contained malicious code or was used to gain unauthorized access to customers’ systems or data.”
Kevin Beaumont (Cybersecurity journalist):
Rando: “I still can’t believe they named it the thing they’d clearly have to do to it.”
“Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” Review
Decker Shado, Creepy and Chibtulhu reviews one of the better Godzilla films [“Chib” is from theTokyo district Chiba]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0EpV5U7HQj
Kevin Beaumont (Cybersecurity journalist):
Rando: “It’s an attack route from like… 30 years ago? It’s basically the same thing as the ‘Little Bobby Tables’ xkcd comic.”
Beaumont’s screenshot is a series of urls at University of New Mexico, reportedly a failed attack in May. It’s requesting the same jpg over and over. Each time, it tacks different crap on the end: a question mark followed by key=value pairs. It’s nonsense that resembles malicious attempts to fetch a sensitive file (/etc/passwd), or tell the server to fetch malware from evil.com (yes really), or do a custom database query (for plaintext passwords), or run useless javascript code.
If it were sane, it might’ve been systematically bruteforcing every url on a site that way, hoping to hit one that accepts parameters, like a form that was stupidly designed to obey any of those half baked requests.
ArsTechnica – OpenAI agent “didn’t accept no for an answer” in Australian government breach
Note that OpenAI did not redesign the means by which models access the internet to remove that capacity to perform frequent abnormal requests.
When a responsible programmer writes a script that talks to the internet, it’s tailor-made for a given website’s expectations, to perform a specific task in a specific way, and small-scale tests precede big runs. OpenAI wants a tool that takes vague instructions, goes anywhere, and does anything—in whatever way ‘works’.
Konstantin Ryabitsev (Linux Foundation sysadmin) – Creepy crawlies
Tim Tebow ‘pausing’ relationship with Christian group after bombshell expose
The Curious Case Of America’s Most Atheist State
‘Every man for himself’: Republicans suddenly sweating races in deep-red states
Video is 8:30 minutes
Trump cancels $1B in federal spending in latest challenge to Congress
‘What the hell?’: Your tax dollars just paid for a ‘PSA’ praising Trump
Video is 8:50 minutes
New York Times:
MS NOW:
Religion News:
Link
ICE is wasting tens of millions of dollars on ‘uninformed’ detention projects, report finds
Not only are our elections in trouble because the scrotum 6 gave tRUMP the ability to fuckup future elections, there’s also this:
Pink slime is “political propaganda dressed up to look like local news.You may get directed to these sites either with a Google search or one supplemented by AI, where an AI reference acts as “laundering” for partisan information.
Pink slime journalism warning
https://digbysblog.net/2026/09/26/pink-slime-psa/
Politico on Friday reported that AI chatbots are directing unsuspecting voters searching for information on candidates to pink slime sites:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/09/25/midterms-partisan-ai-chatbots-01092138
I’ve just got to post this one more atrocity:
Second ad promoting tUMP that was paid for by us taxpayers. tRUMP said: “This is only the beginning of the golden age of America.’”
I reply: the only thing resembling an ‘american golden age of tRUMP’ is the tacky, trailer trash gold tRUMP covers everything with. Oh, and maybe we would see golden showers in the ‘pee tape’.
IT’S NOT FUNNY, IT IS ANOTHER DEATH SPIRAL GASP OF THIS COUNTRY.
To counteract that, so we don’t get too depressed:
A mother wombat and her baby
https://digbysblog.net/2026/09/25/friday-night-soother-376/
To counteract depression, for Science Fiction fans who understand German. This TV series debuted one month after Star Trek
“Raumpatrouille Orion: Episode 1 – Angriff aus dem All” | 1966 | In Farbe
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ihHQEcdsQY
Cartoon: Just one more chance!, by Pedro Molina
Mediaite: Kennedy Center Whistleblowers Say Officials Halted Repairs Now Cited to Justify Shutdown
Nothing surprising, it’s just a bit uncertain if it’s incompetence or malice.
Trump appointed officials at the Kennedy Center deny this.
Link
More at the link, including charts, graphs and state-by-state maps.
MSN: Blanche quietly turns over unredacted FBI notes on Trump accuser without telling court
This could be petty stalling or incompetence but my guess is that it will be questionable if the files turned over are complete, creating another round of court issues to resolve. The DOJ will hide behind saying they never filed that they had completed turning over files.
Link
IGN: $400 GTA 6 Collector’s Edition Is Missing One Important Item – IGN Daily Fix
Special edition package of game related collectables and it doesn’t include a copy of the game. It was inevitable that a game as big as GTA 6 would have some over priced editions but this takes the prize for most stupid edition I have seen for any game.
If it was cheaper I would say it was a trap for parents not paying enough attention buying a gift but at that price I’m not sure who they are aiming it for.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/the-ai-helps-trump-and-vance-kick
https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-some-chuds-beat-a-child
“Tomorrow, September 27, 1922, in labor history!”
Embedded links to sources and to recommended reading are available at the main link.
See also: Child labor violations rise in US – as Republicans still roll back protections, a 2026 report published in The Guardian.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/mike-lee-writing-fantasy-boner-fiction
“Mike Lee Writing Fantasy Fiction About Trump Taking Xi To Panda Express”
New York Times link
“Nor’easter Updates: Heavy Rain and Wind Batter Northeast, Bringing Coastal Flooding”
“The storm flooded low-lying areas, knocked out power for thousands and forced the cancellation of several major events and hundreds of flights. Wind gusts exceeded 50 miles per hour in places.”
MS Now: FBI agents probing threats against Stephen Miller’s wife demoted
Weird situation but apparently some combination of tracing the phone calls to a conservative podcaster and not treating the phone calls as a terrorist matter got them demoted. Inside sources say the orders came from above. At this point the FBI is denying that the order came from Kash Patel. This is possible because it may have been Stephen Miller that put pressure on the FBI.