WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Stating, “I can see where this is going,” on Wednesday Donald J. Trump fled to Argentina, vowing never to return.
Speaking bitterly to reporters as he departed the White House, Trump said, “You take away people’s food, throw yourself a Great Gatsby party, and tear down the White House, and this is the thanks you get.”
Trump had hoped to leave the US on the luxury 747 given him by the Emir of Qatar, but once Tuesday’s election results became clear the Arab ruler swiftly withdrew the gift.
In a tersely worded statement, the Emir declared, “Fly coach, loser.”
In Buenos Aires, Trump was greeted by an angry anti-immigrant mob.
– CEO Musk might quit if investors vote down $878 billion pay package this week, board says
– Many shareholders believe only Musk can deliver on promises of robotaxis, robots
– Some investors, experts warn of risks in staking Tesla’s future on one leader
LOS ANGELES, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Tesla’s (TSLA.O), opens new tab board of directors has pushed in all its chips on Elon Musk. Now investors must decide whether to back the biggest bet in company history.
Shareholders will vote Thursday on the stark choice presented by the board: pay Musk up to $878 billion in company stock or take the risk he will leave – potentially driving down the company’s stock. The decision, experts say, amounts to a referendum on whether traditional corporate-governance rules apply to the world’s richest man. […]
[…]“The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” Blair [White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs James Blair] said during an interview Wednesday. […]
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday she pressed charges against a man who groped her on the street Tuesday.
A video of the incident circulating on social media shows a man approach Sheinbaum from behind, put his arm around her and kiss her on the neck. [The man also ran his hands over her chest.] Another man, later identified by Sheinbaum as her aide, Juan José Ramírez Mendoza, intervened.
[…] Mexico’s first female president, said the man appeared intoxicated and she did not realize what had occurred until Ramírez Mendoza stepped in.
The Mexican leader added that she decided to press charges because “this is something that I experienced as a woman, but also we as women experience in our country.” She noted that she experienced similar harassment while using public transportation when she was 12 years old.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada said on the social platform X on Tuesday evening that the man was arrested by the country’s Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection.
[…] Sheinbaum also called on states to improve safeguards for women to report assaults saying that “women’s personal spaces must not be violated.”
In 2021, 49.7 percent of women ages 15 and older in Mexico reported they had experienced sexual violence at some point in their life […]
For six years, the European Union’s efforts to fight climate change have been on an upward swing. That came to an end on Wednesday morning in messy, exhausted scenes.
After a marathon meeting that ran through Tuesday night and eventually ended a little after 9 a.m. the next morning, a majority of the bloc’s 27 governments agreed on new targets to cut pollution — but only by weakening existing laws and slowing domestic efforts designed to cut down on that very same pollution.
The compromise was met with relief by many countries and European Commission officials, who had feared an embarrassing collapse that would have hamstrung the EU on the eve of the COP30 U.N. climate talks in Brazil starting Thursday.
But it also underscored a swing in political momentum. After half a decade of green victories on climate policy, a much more skeptical group of countries and parties now has the upper hand.
[…] Ministers also agreed on a target for 2035 — a requirement under the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement that was due to be delivered earlier this year in advance of the COP30 talks. The ministers were unable to agree to a single number, instead promising a nonbinding cut between 66.25 and 72.5 percent.
The final deal on the binding 2040 goal came up short of the 90 percent cut in domestic pollution below 1990 levels, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had made the key green pledge in her reelection campaign.
Instead, ministers on Wednesday agreed an 85 percent cut in domestic emissions by 2040. Governments intend to achieve the remaining 5 percentage points by paying other countries to reduce pollution on the bloc’s behalf, a system of purchases known as carbon credits.
[…] Poland was one of the key holdouts and ultimately refused to vote in favor of the target even though it was granted a delay […]
Poland was accused of holding hostage the 2035 climate target, which needed unanimous support, over the delay on ETS2, said three diplomats involved in the negotiations.
[…] even with that concession, the target was still the lowest level of ambition. “We were forced to accept the lower end of the range to prevent certain countries from blocking this agreement,” said Monique Barbut, the French environment minister. […]
Re @ 12
Trump could not get a decent nickname for Newsom. He could have gone for Nasty Newsom, Neggy Newsom or Nihilist Newsom, N is the easiest letter of all to find slurs that go with it.
Also, it is time to put pressure on the more amorphous Democrats in DC to live up to the new higher expectations, or get primaried.
It is no longer enough to be slightly less bad as the others.
“To understand this week’s results as nothing more than “a couple of elections in blue states” is to miss the importance of what actually happened.”
After a dominating Democratic performance in the 2025 elections, some Republicans have grudgingly acknowledged reality. “Last night was a disaster,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Fox News. “It was an electoral blowout.” The GOP senator added that his party would be wise to see the results as “a warning sign.”
It was a warning sign, however, that some other Republicans preferred to overlook. In fact, many leading GOP partisans settled on the same talking point: There’s little to be learned, some Republicans said, from Democrats winning elections in blue states.
“I watched very closely,” Donald Trump told Fox News the day after the elections. “These are three pretty Democrat [sic] states.” House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed a similar line during a Capitol Hill press conference a few hours earlier, telling reporters, “What happened last night is blue states and blue cities voted blue.”
Predictably, JD Vance joined the chorus. The New Republic noted:
Vice President JD Vance has finally reacted to the significant Democratic victories in Tuesday’s election, downplaying the wins while also mimicking the rhetoric of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in his diagnosis of the GOP’s election night failures. ‘I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states,’ Vance wrote in a post on X rather condescendingly.
These reactions aren’t altogether surprising. Every time Democrats have a great election cycle, Republicans scramble to downplay the results and reject the idea of changing the GOP’s direction. (See 2006, 2008, 2018, 2020, et al.)
But that doesn’t make the analyses accurate.
Vance’s reference to “a couple of elections,” for example, likely referred to Democratic victories in Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections. What the Ohio Republican neglected to mention was the scope of the Democratic wins — Govs.-elect Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit wins, outpacing the polls and the party’s recent performances in the same states — coupled with downballot successes, including flipping state legislative seats.
Just as significant, though, were the party’s successes in contests outside blue states.
In Mississippi, a state Trump won easily three times, Democrats were able to break the GOP’s supermajority in the state Senate. In Pennsylvania, a state Trump won twice, Republicans invested heavily to make gains on the state Supreme Court, but voters kept the Democratic majority intact.
Even in Georgia, where Democrats haven’t won a nonfederal statewide race in almost two decades, Democratic candidates successfully — and easily — defeated two Republican members of the state’s utility board.
[…] to see this week’s results as little more than “a couple of elections in blue states” is to miss the importance of what actually happened.
Around this time three years ago, Rep. Nancy Pelosi did something unexpected: The California Democrat announced that she would remain in Congress but step down as her party’s leader in the U.S. House, passing the torch to Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Three years later, the House speaker emerita is taking the next step: After almost four decades on Capitol Hill, Pelosi is retiring at the end of her current term.
The nation’s first woman to serve as House speaker released a video on Thursday morning to announce that she is not seeking a 21st term in 2026.
“With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” she said in a message to her constituents in San Francisco, whom she celebrated in the nearly six-minute clip.
There will be plenty of speculation about who might succeed the congresswoman in her Bay Area district, but for now, it’s worth acknowledging the career of the most accomplished House speaker in generations.
“Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi is an iconic, heroic, trailblazing, legendary and transformational leader,” Jeffries said in a statement. “She is the greatest Speaker of all time.” The New York Democrat added, “The United States is a much better nation today because Nancy Pelosi dedicated her life to serving the children, the climate, the country and the American people.”
As regular readers know, it was Pelosi, first elected in 1987, who helped pass the Recovery Act, which ended the Great Recession. It was Pelosi who ensured the Affordable Care Act became law. It was Pelosi whose record includes historic legislative victories on everything from civil rights to Wall Street reform, student loans to Covid-19 relief, climate change to infrastructure.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but lawmakers and leaders with records like Pelosi’s tend to have buildings named after them.
When the San Franciscan stepped down from her party’s leadership a few years ago, then-President Joe Biden said in a written statement, “History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history.”
As Pelosi’s career nears its end, there’s no reason to consider that assessment hyperbolic in the slightest.
Pelosi was wise to give up the speakership before she actually retired.
“Layoffs rise to recession-like levels through October, new report says”
“Employers have announced 1.1 million job cuts so far this year, the highest reading since the pandemic, a private firm reports.”
Layoffs accelerated in October, pushing 2025 job cuts to levels typically seen in recessions, according to newly released data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a private firm that tracks workplace reductions.
U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far this year — the largest reading since the pandemic recession and on par with 2008 and 2009 job cuts during the Great Recession, the firm’s figures show. The data includes a recent spate of layoffs at major companies such as UPS, Amazon and Target, and adds to growing concern about a labor market slowdown.
Employers cited cost-cutting and artificial intelligence as the top two reasons for job reductions in October.
“We’re entering new territory with these layoffs in October,” said John Challenger, CEO of the consulting firm that tracks job losses. “We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now — 48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon — since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009. When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.” […] [Graph]
Recent layoffs, the data shows, have been concentrated in technology, retail, service and warehousing jobs. Employers announced more than 153,000 job cuts last month, a 183 percent increase from the month before, marking the worst October for layoffs since 2003, the Challenger report said.
The government shutdown, now in its second month, has left policymakers, investors and economists without official data at a critical moment. The job market in recent years has been a pillar of stability, keeping the economy humming despite high inflation and uncertainty. But there are growing signs that employers are pulling back, not just by curtailing hiring, but by slashing jobs altogether.
[…] “You see a significant number of companies either announcing that they are not going to be doing much hiring, or actually doing layoffs,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said in a news conference after the decision. “We’re watching that very carefully.”
The spike in October layoffs, up 175 percent from a year ago, runs counter to recent trends, Challenger said. Although companies have typically avoided announcing job cuts at the end of the year, that seems to be changing this year as firms face new financial pressures and uncertainty from tariffs, federal funding cuts and emerging technologies. […]
Eventually, President Donald Trump will run out White House surfaces to cover in gold, and we won’t have to write about his egregious interior decorating skills anymore.
But until then, we unfortunately have to report that another area has fallen victim to the president’s Hobby Lobby version of the Midas touch.
Eagle-eyed journalists spotted yet another tacky glimmer of gold Wednesday on the white exterior wall of the Oval Office.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted a snap to X showcasing the tacky new lettering on what remains of the White House walls.
A closer look revealed golden cursive—possibly printed on paper?—to the right of the doorway that unsurprisingly reads, “The Oval Office.”
he latest gleaming addition elicited some comedic gold online. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his stellar social media team tweeted an edited version of the Oval Office snap making fun of the tacky lettering.
In place of the cursive “Oval Office” writing, the edited photo read, “Live Laugh LOSE.” The “lose” likely refers to Democrats sweeping elections across the country Tuesday night in a broad rebuke of Trump. [social media post, with image]
Another user pointed out some additional golden decor above the door that’s reminiscent of the insane amount of gold trim now covering the Oval Office’s interior.
[…] given Trump’s climbing age and deteriorating health, the sign might be a means to making sure he knows which office is his own.
[…] And before that, the president lined the halls with a presidential “Walk of Fame,” giving a middle finger to former President Joe Biden by hanging, in place of his portrait, a photo of an autopen signature.
[…] Unfortunately, Trump will certainly be remembered—but it won’t just be for all the tacky gold trim he leaves behind.
I snipped text describing Trump’s other depredations, including paving over the Rose Garden, “renovating” the bathroom near the Lincoln Bedroom with gaudy marble and gold fixtures, and tearing down the East Wing to begin construction on a ballroom.
“Our staffing in the ER is beyond dire now,” said Heather Fallon, a nurse in the emergency department at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago who had long been dreading the arrival of Sept. 30, the day the fiscal year came to an end.
That was the day she says she lost two nurses — and the facility lost nine staffers in total — whose contracts ended, putting further strain on her team, which has seen an increase in patients this year. Veteran Affairs Secretary Doug Collins had vowed to have reduced the size of the agency by 30,000 positions by that date without impacting health services for veterans.
“We are understaffed,” Fallon said. “We don’t have all of the services that we would have had on a regular basis.”
[…] “I am assigned the duties of two people. Many of my co-workers told me they are putting an average of four hours unpaid daily just to keep up with the workload.”
Both Fallon and Uzuegbunam are speaking out as members of National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country, whose contract with the VA was terminated in early August.
[…] Collins’ decision in June to scrap a plan for massive layoffs and his promise to provide quicker services to veterans brought a sigh of relief to many and generated positive headlines.
But the upheaval caused by the Trump administration’s earlier firings of probationary employees who were then rehired months later, the closing of some VA facilities and the cancellation of medical research trials have had a major impact, say nurses who work at VA facilities, staffers at the department and veterans advocates. Morale is low, say nurses and staffers at VA facilities, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, noting that this year the VA decided not to conduct its annual staff satisfaction survey — which has been conducted every year since 2006 — citing costs. The VA confirmed that the survey was not conducted this year.
Collins has repeatedly vowed that cutting 30,000 positions won’t directly impact health care or benefits for veterans provided by the Veterans Health Administration, the healthcare branch of the VA. The VHA, which is the country’s largest integrated healthcare system, serves 9.1 million enrolled vets each year, providing care at 1,380 health care facilities. [That’s a lie.]
Yet, between December 2024 and August 2025, the VA reported a net loss of thousands of health care positions — including 875 physicians, 2,403 registered nurses, 511 licensed practical nurses, 335 nurse assistants, 649 social workers, 287 psychologists and 906 medical support assistants, according to the department’s workforce dashboards, first highlighted by The American Prospect. The total number of those in mission-critical occupations — which “reflect the primary mission of the organization without which mission-critical work cannot be completed” — dropped by 4,214. For comparison, during the Biden administration, the number of those in mission-critical occupations increased […]
[…] some VA hospitals had increased their enforcement of a policy that limits the number of long-term therapy sessions available to veterans and to “broadly reduce the number of patients who get this long-term care — without consideration for whether this is clinically appropriate” […]
The decline in the VA’s workforce leaves it incapable of handling the increase in aging vets. “[…] even if the population demand declines a small bit, the need doesn’t decline because you have these people now who are older — in addition to their military-related service conditions, they now have health conditions connected to aging.”
[…] In some cases, that has forced some veterans seeking substance use treatment to be admitted to psychiatric facilities to get care, said a staffer at the Brooklyn center who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation. “Now when you’re trying to rehab from drugs, you don’t really need the person next to you eating his toenails,” said the staffer. “It’s not conducive to the rehab process. It’s an awful situation.”
[…] “The VA system was built with the veteran as its heart. Private sector medical care has been built on a system of profit maximization. These two systems may be at odds when it comes to veteran outcomes; their philosophies and models of care are that different,” Hunter [Dr. Kyleanne Hunter, a former Marine Corps combat helicopter pilot who now runs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)] said. “This is born out in the evidence. Recent studies found that Community Care providers frequently administered high-cost and medically unnecessary procedures to veterans in order to maximize the money received from the government.” [Well that is certainly counter-productive.]
[…] “That’s the reason why the private sector loves the VA and the Community Care program, because there’s no effective utilization review,” said Gordon, the co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. “That’s unheard of in the private insurance market or even Medicare.”
[The Trump administration created a new grifting opportunity.]
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug’s letters home from The Second Civil War
birgerjohanssonsays
NB! Music history.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ very first gig. After a hate campaign in the Tory ‘gutter press’ they eventually became the most demonised pop band in British history.
The Trump administration is very into bragging about how much it protects and respects religion. That applies to conservative Christians most especially, of course—at least when […] Trump and his minions aren’t busy pretending to care about antisemitism.
However, the administration’s war on immigrants has really highlighted that when it comes to actual, practicing, devout Christians, Trump and company just aren’t feeling it. Can’t all of these bishops and pastors and priests yammering on about inhumane treatment of immigrants just shut up already?
The administration’s actions are so reprehensible that even the Catholic bishops who sit on Trump’s so-called religious liberty commission are criticizing officials’ refusal to give detained immigrants access to religious services.
When you’ve lost even the conservative Catholic bishops, you have really lost.
The pesky new pope is saying the administration’s treatment of immigrants is inhumane and a grave crime. How dare he say, “Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Of course White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt decided to push back on the pope, which is kind of a weird move for someone who purports to be such a faithful Catholic that she prays with her staff before press briefings.
According to Leavitt, there’s no inhumane treatment of immigrants under this administration, nosiree. You know who the real villain is here? Former President Joe Biden, because he let in heaps of violent undocumented immigrants, but now the administration is just “trying to enforce our nation’s laws in the most humane way possible, and we are upholding the law.”
Come. On.
Is it humane to shoot a Presbyterian pastor—in liturgical garb, no less— in the head with pepper balls? Or how about shooting multiple pepper balls at a Methodist pastor who was pretty obviously a pastor because she was wearing her clerical collar?
Or shooting yet another pastor in the face point-blank with pepper balls? So humane!
Pope Leo is not going to let up. On Tuesday, he called for the spiritual rights of migrant detainees to be respected and to allow “pastoral workers” into ICE detention centers. Why would he do that? Because of course the administration is refusing to let priests and pastors into Illinois’ Broadview ICE facility to minister to the detainees, despite Department of Homeland Security policies requiring detainees to have access to religious services.
When a group of faith leaders made a Eucharistic procession to the Broadview facility to try to offer communion to detainees, federal officials refused them entry. Well, sort of. The ICE and CBP thugs somehow weren’t tough enough to turn away the clergy themselves, instead forcing the Illinois State Police to act as a go-between.
The Rev. Larry Dowling of the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled no punches about this.
“No one had the courage to speak directly to us. […]” Dowling said. “No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.” [I definitely don’t like it when “Evil” and its supposed opposite, “Christ,” are used as reasons to act.]
[…] Dowling is basically saying that they are both evil and chickenshit for not coming out to talk to the faith leaders directly.
The Trump administration also refused to allow pastors and priests to deliver communion to detainees on All Saints Day, even though they followed DHS’ new rule of asking pretty please a week in advance.
The administration’s protection of religion has always been a fig leaf, just a way to impose a particularly bleak version of Christian nationalism on the country. [True] But Trump’s immigration crackdown has highlighted that he and his stooges loathe the values of the people they pretend to protect and uphold.
Maybe Leavitt and her staff could pray on that one day.
“American consumers know that gas prices haven’t ‘plummeted.’ So why is the president trying to fool them into believing otherwise?”
As Donald Trump gradually comes to terms with Americans’ concerns about affordability, the president routinely claims that he’s lowered energy costs. That’s demonstrably untrue: Over the course of the year, energy costs have gone up, not down.
But Trump hasn’t talked about energy prices merely in a general sense, he’s also focused specifically on the costs American consumers face at gas stations. [video]
“Gasoline prices have plummeted to the lowest in two decades,” Trump said at a speech on the economy Wednesday in Miami, adding that the public will “soon” see gas that costs $2 per gallon.
The latter claim (which the president makes all the time) is actually an improvement over an earlier iteration of a similar pitch: For months, Trump claimed that gas costs had already fallen below $2 per gallon in states that he never identified.
When that lie proved unsustainable, even for him, it evolved into assurances about future progress.
But the related claim about gas prices plummeting to their lowest level in 20 years is still wrong. Indeed, national averages are higher now than they were at this point a year ago.
To be sure, “Trump says untrue thing” isn’t exactly an unusual revelation, but what strikes me as notable about this specific fiction is how neatly it dovetails with Trump’s lies about grocery prices.
American consumers go to gas stations all the time, and they know that prices haven’t “plummeted.” Trump can’t simply wave his hand and Jedi mind-trick the public into believing otherwise. People know better, not because the White House’s critics have made a persuasive pitch, or because news organizations have successfully set the record straight, but rather, because of their own life experiences at the pump.
His claims, in other words, aren’t just lies; they’re self-defeating lies.
[…] to tell consumers not to believe their own lying eyes about their own wallets is a recipe for failure.
This might be a dementia-related problem. Trump has falsehoods stuck in his head and he plays them on a loop. He is saying what he wishes were true, not what is actually true.
“After Democrats scored election victories, the president started talking about ‘affordability.’ […] his assessment is rooted in nonsense.”
Related video at the link.
Donald Trump spent years publishing assorted messages to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but he literally never wrote a tweet that included the word “affordability.”
On his own platform, however, the president has taken a sudden interest in the term.
On Tuesday morning, as Election Day 2025 got underway, he wrote online, “If affordability is you [sic] issue, VOTE REPUBLICAN! Energy costs, as and [sic] example, are plummeting.” (In reality, energy costs are climbing, not sinking.)
The day after Democratic election victories, Trump assured the public, “Affordability is our goal.” That was followed by a related online rant: “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under Biden, according to Walmart. My cost [sic] are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats [sic] ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!” [Trump should take his own advice and stop lying.]
Whether the president understands this or not, Walmart lowered the cost of its Thanksgiving dinner by reducing the number of items included in the package and replacing brand-name products with value products. It was not, in other words, the result of the White House’s awesomeness.
As for the idea that the underlying issue is “dead,” the president seems to know better. Consider his exchange with Bret Baier during the Republican’s Fox News interview Wednesday night. [social media post, with video]
Assessing the broader political and economic landscape, Trump said he’s succeeded in bringing energy costs “way down.” (That’s the opposite of the truth.) He added that the cost of groceries is also “way down.” (That, too, was a lie.) As part of the harangue, the president insisted that inflation rates during Joe Biden’s term were “the highest … in the history of our country.” (That’s ridiculous.)
But perhaps the most striking part of the interview was Trump saying, “You know, they have this new word called ‘affordability’ and [Republicans] don’t talk about it enough. The Democrats did.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that “affordability” is not a “new word.” Instead, let’s consider the merit of the president’s analysis.
By Trump’s reasoning, GOP officials and candidates have struggled because they haven’t talked about the cost-of-living challenges facing American consumers. That might make him feel better, but the underlying issue isn’t rhetorical, it’s practical.
Republicans can use “this new word” [affordability] all the time and it won’t change the fact the party, with total control over federal policymaking, has failed spectacularly to address one of the key issues that elevated them to power in the first place.
Democrats scored election victories, not by mentioning “affordability,” but by shining a light on the GOP’s substantive failures on the issue and offering an alternative.
Lots of infighting and circular firing squads at the Heritage Foundation:
The Groyper Takeover of the GOP
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ initial defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview with the raging antisemite Nick Fuentes has now ignited an open revolt at the venerable right-wing think tank, the WaPo reports.
While Roberts has backed away some from his initial full-throated defense of Carlson, his apology didn’t keep a staff meeting at Heritage on Wednesday from turning into a shitshow. Some of the highlights from the WaPo:
– “Legal fellow Amy Swearer during the meeting called Roberts’s handling of the controversy ‘a master class in cowardice that ran cover for the most unhinged dregs of the far right’ and described a loss of confidence in his leadership.” [!]
– “Asked later in the meeting about his use of the term ‘globalists’ — a common dog whistle for a conspiratorial view of world ‘Jewry’ — Roberts said he didn’t mean to imply criticism of anyone of any particular faith.”
– When Roberts’ speechwriter complained that countering the accusations of antisemitism might mean he would be required to attend a Shabbat dinner and violate his own faith, another Heritage executive shot back, “I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer but rather a personal attack on you.”
At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have resigned in protest [!], including lawyer Ian Speir, who emailed the WaPo:
When Kevin Roberts repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson after his kid-glove treatment of Nick Fuentes, I lost faith that Heritage is the right institution to lead this important fight. We cannot let this malevolent evil make further inroads into our politics and civil discourse. It will literally destroy us.”
At one level, it’s entertaining to watch conservatives squirm over the Groyperism of their party — although they’ve been very slow in responding to what has been obvious for years.
“The distance between Fuentes and the mainstream Republican Party isn’t really that large,” [True] Richard Hanania told the NYT, whose description of him is itself instructive: “a conservative writer who once posted under a pseudonym in white supremacist forums. (He has since denounced his past writings.)”
Back at Heritage, Roberts threw his own chief of staff under the bus for writing the speech that got Roberts in so much hot water [Oh sure, blame somebody else.]:
On Monday, Roberts reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, to a lower-ranking role. By Tuesday, Neuhaus was no longer employed by Heritage. On Wednesday, Roberts called him a “good man” who “made a mistake,” and said he was largely responsible for drafting Roberts’s controversial remarks.
The kicker was this line: “Two people close to Neuhaus said he views his departure as an attempt to appease Jewish Republicans.”
“Obviously some of these conditions are, in my word, disgusting. To have to sleep on the floor next to an overflowed toilet, that’s obviously unconstitutional.”–U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman of Chicago, who ordered the federal government to provide bedding, hygiene supplies, daily showers, clean toilets and three meals a day at the ICE facility Broadview
Many of the largest airports across the country will see a noticeable reduction in flight offerings starting Friday, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implements new steps to maintain air safety amid the ongoing government shutdown.
The preliminary list of 40 airports operating at reduced capacity, obtained by The Hill’s sister network NewsNation, is subject to change. The FAA is expected to announce the full list sometime later Thursday. […]
Here’s the full preliminary list of affected airports.
Anchorage International (ANC)
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL)
Boston Logan International (BOS)
Baltimore/Washington International (BWI)
Charlotte Douglas International (CLT)
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG)
Dallas Love (DAL)
Reagan Washington National (DCA)
Denver International (DEN)
Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW)
Newark Liberty International (EWR)
Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International (FLL)
Honolulu International (HNL)
Houston Hobby (HOU)
Washington Dulles International (IAD)
George Bush Houston Intercontinental (IAH)
Indianapolis International (IND)
New York John F. Kennedy International (JFK)
Las Vegas Harry Reid International (LAS)
Los Angeles International (LAX)
New York LaGuardia (LGA)
Orlando International (MCO)
Chicago Midway (MDW)
Memphis International (MEM)
Miami International (MIA)
Minneapolis/St. Paul International (MSP)
Oakland International (OAK)
Ontario International (ONT)
Chicago O’Hare International (ORD)
Portland International (PDX)
Philadelphia International (PHL)
Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX)
San Diego International (SAN)
Louisville International (SDF)
Seattle/Tacoma International (SEA)
San Francisco International (SFO)
Salt Lake City International (SLC)
Teterboro (TEB)
Tampa International (TPA)
[…] On Sunday, Commander-in-Chief Donald John Trump went on 60 Minutes to grump and groan that he doesn’t think DHS agents have gone far enough when they tackle young mothers, gas people in residential neighborhoods, and smash car windows. He plans to deport ALL the immigrants, and then maybe he will let the nannies and landscapers back in. Because that’s apparently the only jobs he [can] imagine that immigrants have, other than trophy wife and paid Soros voter, obviously. [video]
Meanwhile, Bovino [Border Patrol Commander / diminutive Nazi cosplayer Gregory Kent Bovino] keeps getting busted lying about stuff! […] There was the protestor who had his charges dismissed after Bovino was caught on film lying about the guy causing a debilitating injury to his testicles.
And then the plaintiffs in this case also found evidence that Bovino was lying about the incident in Little Village in which he personally chucked a teargas canister at a crowd of high-school-age protestors. Bovino had claimed under oath that he responded in fear after he got hit on the head with a rock. But what do you know, footage showed that was a lie, there was no rock, because of course there wasn’t.
Which takes us to Wednesday, and Judge Ellis considering extending the temporary restraining order to the November 19 […]
Judge Ellis heard from witnesses, and plaintiffs’ lawyers played parts of Bovino’s deposition from last week. First up was Father Brendan Curran, who described “federal agents launching projectiles from the corner of the roof at the people who were not armed and not violent in any way.”
Also heard from was Presbyterian pastor David Black, who was shot in the face with pepperballs twice by laughing ICE […]
And Judge Ellis heard from Emily Steelhammer, executive director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild, who said “at least 15” guild members reported they had been “hit with rubber bullets, pepper balls, different projectiles, they have experienced the effects of chemical weapons.”
There was 12th Ward Alderperson Julia Ramirez, who described watching non-violent, unarmed protestors in her ward get menaced by DHS goons with their armored tank-like vehicle, then fired on with pepper balls with no warning or order to disperse, in what she said seemed like an attempt to rile the crowd with chaos. [inciting violence]
And Jo-Elle Munchak, a citizen on a coffee run who filmed ICE agents kidnapping landscapers and shouted, “It’s almost like they’re stormtroopers or something! […] Smile nice, boys, for the Hague!” and then got a gun to her head.
Youth organizer Leslie Cortez also described an immigration agent pointing a gun at her head on October 1 after she began recording them detaining day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot.
“I could see inside the barrel. It was a traumatizing experience because I never had a weapon drew at me […] it made me really reconsider if this was something safe to do, even though I wasn’t doing anything to obstruct.”
And there was Juan Munoz, an Oak Park Township trustee, who said Bovino personally attacked him, slapping his phone out of his hand and detaining him with no explanation or charges, after ICE descended chaotically and without warning on peaceful protestors at the Broadview ICE facility. Munoz had also previously told the local paper that Bovino had paraded him before Kristi Noem like some kind of a prize pig.
And then they played parts of Bovino’s deposition, including lawyers playing a video for him of himself telling agents “everybody fucking gets it if they touch you” and “this is OUR fucking city.”
Bovino was asked, “the instruction that you gave your officers was that they had full rein to arrest anyone who so much as touched them?”
He replied, “no.” […]
And has Bovino seen any circumstances where he thought DHS used too much force?
“I’ve not seen our men, or women, deploy force against protesters.”
[…] And then Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Kristopher Hewson opined that tear gas was not dangerous, and does not harm people. Which is simply false, it can cause long-term lung and eye damage and miscarriages and even kill people, and cause harm even by seeping into nearby homes where residents have their windows closed. And here they are, the dumbest bunch of people alive, untrained to deploy it and throwing canisters around toddlers.
[…] Hewson blamed the chaos in Little Village on the protesters, who were making Latin Kings gang signs, holding shields they probably planned to use as weapons, and had the audacity to kick tear gas canisters away from themselves. Also one of their trucks got blocked by a box truck. Therefore he had to spray the passenger of that box truck in the face, you see. And then somebody set off fireworks, he claimed, and chaos broke out.
[…] Meanwhile, ICE brutalities in Chicago have continued […]
Make no mistake, among Trump, Miller, Noem, and Corey Lewandowski and down to Bovino, there is no bottom to the depths of depravity DHS will go to. There have been five incidents of ICE shooting unarmed people with bullets so far, and you know they’d love for there to be more, and have been training sniper rifles on protestors in rapt anticipation.
But it seems this judge is trying her very best to hold them accountable, so there is that.
“A pivot away from Kyiv would be a ‘Christmas gift’ to Putin, outgoing government said in response to the comments.”
Czechia — one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies — is considering cutting the flow of much-needed arms and ammunition to Kyiv’s forces when its new government takes control in the coming weeks, according to a key leader of the incoming coalition.
Filip Turek, the president of the right-wing populist Motorists party that this week signed an agreement to help form a national government, said that his country will “maintain NATO commitments and adherence to international law.”
However, he went on, “it will prioritize diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine and mitigate risks of conflict in Europe, shifting from military aid funded by the national budget to humanitarian support and focusing on Czech security needs.”
The Motorists party was founded in 2022, and clinched six seats in parliament during last month’s nationwide election, making it a pivotal kingmaker in efforts by prime minister-designate Andrej Babiš and his populist ANO faction to form a government. Turek is under consideration to take on the role of foreign minister in the new administration.
Babiš has previously publicly cast doubt on the future of a major program led by the current Czech government to provide tens of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine, but has avoided publicly committing to a position since the election.
Responding to the comments, first reported in POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook, outgoing Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský said, “the limitation of Czech military aid to Ukraine is news that will surely bring great joy to Russian soldiers on the front line. Let’s consider it a Christmas gift from Babiš to Vladimir Putin.” […]
The former racing car driver, who until last month served as a member of the European Parliament and campaigned on an anti-Green Deal platform, branded eco-conscious policies “unsustainable,” calling for a reversal of the 2035 ban on the sale of cars with combustion engines and for emissions trading systems to be dropped altogether.
[…] Babiš will have to present his proposed list of ministers to Czech President Petr Pavel in the coming days before a vote of confidence in the new government can be held.
Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, told leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD — a party labeled extremist by German authorities — that he sees them as “bold visionaries” shaping the country’s future.
Speaking to a room packed with AfD parliamentarians and supporters in Berlin on Wednesday night, Bruesewitz declared that MAGA conservatives and members of Germany’s rising far right are united in a common fight along with other nationalist forces around the world against “Marxists” and “globalists” that he framed as “a spiritual war for the soul of our nations.”
[…] It’s something of a turnabout for AfD politicians, who have historically exhibited a strong anti-American streak, viewing the U.S. as having infringed on Germany’s sovereignty in the postwar era and seeking instead to build closer relations with Russia. But since Trump’s return to the White House, AfD leaders have made a concerted effort to get close to MAGA Republicans.
Beatrix von Storch, an AfD politician who has been at the forefont of the party’s efforts to build connections with MAGA Republicans, said Bruesewitz’s visit was about “reaching out to be closer to our American friends.”
Bruesewitz echoed that message during his talk on “the global battle for truth,” as the event was dubbed.
“We are in this together,” he said. “The globalists fear united patriots more than anything.”
The AfD is now the strongest opposition party in the German parliament, and in many recent polls has surpassed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling conservatives. The party’s growing popularity comes despite the fact that earlier this year, Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, which is tasked with monitoring groups deemed to be antidemocratic, declared the AfD to be an extremist organization.
This designation fueled debate among mainstream German politicians about whether the party ought to be banned under provisions of the German Constitution designed to prevent a repeat of the Nazi rise to power. Centrist parties in Germany have so far refused to form national coalitions with the AfD, maintaining a so-called firewall around the far right that has been in place since shortly after World War II. […]
When Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declared the AfD to be extremist, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “tyranny in disguise.” During the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged mainstream politicians in Europe to protect free speech rights of anti-immigration parties and to knock down the “firewalls” that shut out far-right parties from government.
[…] Not all aspects of Bruesewitz’s message were met with equal enthusiasm. His defense of Trump’s tariffs, which have hit Germany’s export-oriented industries particularly hard, did not win applause.
Bruesewitz also repeatedly invoked passages from the Bible and called on Germans to embrace a distinctly American brand of Christian nationalism that, while embraced by some AfD politicians, is largely alien to Germans, who are broadly less pious.
[…] “The forces arrayed against us aren’t just ideological opponents, they’re manifestations of evil, seeking to extinguish the light of faith, family and freedom,” Bruesewitz said. “This spiritual battle isn’t confined to the United States. Oh, no. Germany and America may be separated by thousands of miles of ocean, but we face the same exact enemies, the same threats, the same insidious forces trying to tear us down.”
If the president convinces Republicans to scrap the filibuster, what would he want to pass? Legislation specifically targeting elections
After having ignored the issue for much of the year, Donald Trump has became fixated on ending legislative filibusters in the Senate. It’s not immediately obvious, however, why this has become such an obsession for the president.
After all, the Republican can already advance his top congressional priorities — specifically, tax cuts for the wealthy and far-right judges — through the Senate with majority rule, and there’s little the Democratic minority can do to stop them.
What’s more, the president has repeatedly and publicly said that he doesn’t really have much a legislative agenda anymore, since so many of the White House’s goals were already included in the domestic policy megabill that GOP lawmakers approved over the summer (the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill). Trump made this point explicitly last week, declaring: “We don’t need anything more from Congress.”
So why bother with scrapping the filibuster? Why is this suddenly at the top of his priority list?
As it turns out, Trump has hinted at his motivation.
The morning after a dominant Democratic performance in the 2025 elections, the president told Senate Republicans that if they agreed to put an end to legislative filibusters, the change would make it “impossible to beat” Republicans in upcoming elections. “If we do what I’m saying,” he added, Democrats will “most likely never obtain power.”
[Yep. There’s Trump’s motivation. He wants to rig elections.]
He made a related pitch hours later on Fox News, telling Bret Baier that getting rid of the filibuster would allow Republicans to approve unnamed “good things” that would make it difficult to beat the GOP in the near future. [video]
[…] on election night [Trump] published an item to his social media platform that read, “REPUBLICANS, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER! GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION AND VOTER REFORM!”
Minutes later, he wrote a follow-up post, adding that GOP policymakers could “pass voter reform,” impose voter ID requirements and ban mail-in balloting if only Senate Republicans agreed to “terminate” the filibuster. [!]
In other words, confronted with Democratic victories, Trump’s thoughts turned to something specific: imposing new restrictions on Americans, and limiting their access to their own democracy. [!]
[…] consider the related data points from recent weeks:
– At the White House’s behest, Republicans in some states are engaging in brazen gerrymandering, using mid-decade redistricting to win congressional races before they happen.
– The Justice Department is fighting to acquire voter registration lists and election data in several states for reasons that still haven’t been explained.
– The Republican administration has chosen election deniers to serve in key federal election roles, leading The New York Times to note that conspiracy theorists “who worked to destabilize and discredit election results after 2020” will now have “the power to potentially interfere with future contests.”
– Trump’s DOJ also deployed federal election observers to monitor elections in California and New Jersey.
– The president is lobbying for the total elimination of early voting.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump also wants Senate Republicans to kill the chamber’s filibuster rule, clearing the way for something he called “voter reform” — and a political dynamic in which Democrats will “most likely never obtain power.”
In isolation, each of these stories matters, but taken together, we’re talking about what appears to be a multifaceted campaign against elections, launched by a president whose contempt for the democratic process is unsubtle.
During Thursday’s GOP-lead shutdown press conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson offered up a cornucopia of copium following the GOP’s Election Day drubbing.
“There’s only three, conversely, there’s only three House Republicans sitting in districts that Kamala Harris won,” Johnson said, before touting GOP efforts to rig next year’s midterm elections. “After redistricting, we think we’ll need a few more seats, a handful, maybe 6 to 8. We’re in very good position to make history and grow this majority.” [video]
Johnson then claimed the GOP has a “real record to run on,” primarily built on President Donald Trump’s assertions that things are better, despite all evidence suggesting otherwise.
“And Democrats want to talk about affordability? We love that subject,” he added. “We love it. Look at the facts. I brought some this morning. It’s the Republicans who are working every day to make life more affordable for working families. And it’s not a talking point for us—we are delivering.” [head/desk, what a load of bull pucky.]
The FBI fired at least six agents who worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith, only to quickly restore employment Monday for some of them who are pursuing a high-priority public corruption investigation for DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
But between two to four of the fired agents who were told to come back to work Tuesday were then terminated and walked out of the building a second time later that day, said three people familiar with the situation. [Chaos and confusion]
[…] The latest moves prompted strong criticism Tuesday against Director Kash Patel from an advocacy organization representing 90% of active agents.
“The actions yesterday—in which FBI Special Agents were terminated and then reinstated shortly after, and then only to be fired again today—highlight the chaos that occurs when long-standing policies and processes are ignored,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement. “Director Patel has disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution.” [True]
[…] The initial two agents fired Oct 31, who like the others had been involved in Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, were never reinstated. The firings, which continued into this week, respond to outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill over Sen. Chuck Grassley‘s (R-Iowa) disclosure of 197 subpoenas Smith’s team issued in its operation dubbed “Arctic Frost.”
“Arctic Frost was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus,” Grassley said at a press conference Oct. 29.
But the FBI Agents Association, which has become increasingly vocal of late in criticizing Patel’s leadership, defended agents for performing tasks that were assigned to them. [!]
[…] The firings of line agents comes directly after Patel’s outrage over public attention about his personal travel to visit his girlfriend led him to force out a highly-ranked official who ran the bureau’s critical incident response group.
“Popular AR-15 ammunition made at an Army-owned facility was far more likely than any other to turn up in a government database tracking evidence from gun crimes, new data shows.”
In the weeks before a gunman wielding an AR-15 style rifle killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, he purchased 2,115 rounds of ammunition. Every one of them was made at a U.S. Army-owned facility just outside Kansas City, Mo.
Later that year, another shooter walked into a St. Louis high school equipped with over 400 rounds from the same plant. He killed a student and a teacher in an attack with bullets designed for use on the battlefield.
The use of ammunition manufactured at the facility, the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, was not unusual: Its products have become a common denominator in crimes involving 5.56-millimeter and .223-caliber rounds, the most widely used cartridges for AR-15-style weapons, according to new data that provides a rare window into Lake City’s role in the ecosystem for the popular firearms.
The data, reported here for the first time, is from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and was obtained by The New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists through public records requests.
From 2017 to 2024, law enforcement agencies conducting criminal investigations reported spent Lake City casings to the A.T.F. at more than twice the rate of any other manufacturer of 5.56 and .223 cartridges, the records show. The finding is based on information submitted to the A.T.F. by more than 7,400 law enforcement agencies on crimes ranging from burglary to homicide. It provides the most comprehensive accounting to date of Lake City ammunition’s use in crimes.
Commonly available for sale online and at stores across the nation, the AR-15 — known by its admirers as “America’s rifle” — offers civilians firepower similar to that of an American infantry soldier and has featured prominently in some of the country’s most infamous mass shootings.
[…] in a letter to members of Congress on Jan. 15, senior Army officials acknowledged that they did not “vet or approve commercial sales of ammunition” made at Lake City and had not conducted any investigation or analysis of its use in violent crime.
[…] Senator Elizabeth Warren described the findings as “horrifying,” saying in a statement that “our government shouldn’t be subsidizing gun violence.” In 2024, Ms. Warren and a group of other Democratic members of Congress introduced a bill that would, among other things, prohibit Department of Defense contractors from selling “military-grade assault weapons and ammunition to civilians,” but it never made it to the floor for a vote. [!]
The bill followed a 2023 investigation into Lake City by The Times that revealed the scale of its ammunition production for civilians and tied the ammunition to a dozen mass shootings, as well as other crimes across the nation.
The new data goes much further, showing how the sheer volume of Lake City’s production has flooded the market and made its ammunition a presence in far more criminal investigations than previously known.
Lake City, built during World War II to supply the U.S. military, is operated by a private contractor with Army oversight. It is the largest manufacturer of rifle ammunition for the U.S. armed forces and has produced rounds for sale to American allies and domestic law enforcement agencies. But the facility has also pumped billions of its rounds into U.S. retail markets, where they have been sold by the nation’s largest ammunition companies under a variety of brand names.
For more than a decade, the Army has encouraged the contractors who run Lake City to use excess capacity at the plant — which is required to maintain manufacturing capacity of over 1.6 billion rounds a year — to make cartridges for the commercial market. The arrangement is meant to provide an affordable solution to a longstanding problem: how to keep ammunition production lines active and ready for war in periods of low military demand.
A vast majority of the cartridges have undoubtedly gone to ordinary gun owners, such as target shooters and hunters. But the rounds are also readily available to criminals, who can buy them cheaply and in bulk from gun shops, big-box retailers and websites, offered in packages ranging from 20-round boxes to 1,000-round cases. […]
Lake City makes various types of ammunition, including cartridges that can be fired from AK-47s and from .50 caliber rifles — guns large enough to destroy a car’s engine block or to down a small plane. But the plant’s bread and butter are the 5.56 and .223 rounds — the kinds most often used in AR-15-style firearms. […]
The new data from the A.T.F. suggests that Lake City’s massive production has far exceeded that of any other manufacturer of 5.56 and .223 rounds, helping to make ammunition for AR-15-style guns cheaper and more accessible for both ordinary gun owners and criminals.
[…] While the data provides insight into the pervasiveness of ammunition made at Lake City, the real scale of its criminal use is probably far greater than the numbers suggest, both in the quantity of cartridges found during each investigation and in the number of crimes committed with them.
The information entered into the NIBIN system is used to link spent casings to the guns that fired them, helping law enforcement officers determine whether a particular firearm was used in multiple crimes. For that reason, examiners typically only submit one spent casing to the system for each gun connected to a crime. In 2024, for example, law enforcement agencies submitted nearly 5,500 Lake City casings to the A.T.F. But for every casing submitted, investigators may have collected tens or even hundreds more. […]
Today is the 90th anniversary of the first flight of the Hawker Hurricane prototype. The aircraft outnumbered the Spitfire two to one as the Battle of Britain began.
.
50 years since the very first gig by a band called “Sex Pistols”.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #38…
Plus… About 80% of the German aircraft losses during the Battle of Britain were to Hurricanes. Generally, speaking, the faster Spitfires arrived first and got in dog fights with the Bf-109 fighter escort cover. Then the slower Hurricanes arrived and went after the–now unprotected–bombers.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Lynna #26:
members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have resigned in protest [!]
Gosh, someone at Heritage had principles? No, of course not.
Posted on 2024-12-09:
Heritage Foundation Plan To Fight Antisemitism Has Hilariously Ironic Problem
If your plan to fight antisemitism is itself antisemitic, you might have lost the plot.
[…]
you’ll never guess who this plan to combat antisemitism blames for all the antisemitism in the first place! […]
The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, a conservative plan to counter antisemitism, sees the problem as one in which a handful of “masterminds” including Jews like George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are seeking to “dismantle Western democracies, values and culture,”
Let us get this straight: the plan to fight antisemitism relies on a claim that wealthy, shadowy Jews are manipulating the public in order to game public opinion and destroy America from within?
This [announcement] sounds really innocuous, but Teen Vogue just axed their whole politics desk—everybody working on it has been laid off. This is devastating: it was a publication with a lot of reach and it was consistent in how it spoke out against this administration.
Teen Vogue will focus its content on career development, cultural leadership and other issues that matter most to young people
[…] From the former editor of the Politics desk and the […] other former editor of the Politics desk. I worked with both of them. [Screenshots]
[…] after today, there will be no politics staffers […]
Sky Captain @41, thanks for that additional information.
Sky Captain @42, Teen Vogue was a good source. Now that Vogue has stripped Teen Vogue of their entire politics team, I expect that we will see a very restricted view of “issues that matter most to young people.” WTF? That is so condescending.
In other news, The Washington Post reports:
The Philippines declared a national state of emergency Thursday, after a deadly typhoon swept through vulnerable low-lying communities in the country’s center, flooding streets and prompting an urgent search and rescue effort. By Thursday afternoon, officials said Typhoon Kalmaegi had killed at least 114 people in the Philippines, where it was also known as Typhoon Tino.
StevoRsays
Depending on your skies cloudiness & darkness status might be worth looking up about now..
The northern lights and southern lights could receive a considerable boost again tonight as Earth braces for impact from a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled from the sun during yesterday’s M7.4 solar flare.
The speedy CME is forecast to arrive late tonight or early Friday (Nov. 7) morning (UTC) and could trigger strong (G3) geomagnetic storm conditions, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. This follows a surprise round of auroras overnight when a glancing CME arrival combined with lingering effects from a high-speed solar wind stream, and pushed geomagnetic activity to G3 levels, sparking auroras across the northern U.S., Canada and Europe.
NOAA and the U.K. Met Office both have G3 storm watches in effect for Nov. 6 and Nov. 7.
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to find the money by Friday to fully fund SNAP benefits for November. The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. on Thursday was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit.
“Transgender and nonbinary Americans said they want passports ‘that allow them to travel without fear of misidentification, harassment, or violence.’ ”
The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority has agreed to let the Trump administration implement its new passport policy, which has been opposed by a group of transgender and nonbinary Americans.
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the majority wrote Thursday.
The latest ruling in favor of the Trump administration came over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees. “The documented real-world harms to these plaintiffs obviously outweigh the Government’s unexplained (and inexplicable) interest in immediate implementation of the Passport Policy,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent, joined Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. She said the majority “has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification.”
Under previous government policy, transgender passport applicants could choose male or female to correspond to their gender identity or sex assigned at birth, and intersex, nonbinary and gender nonconforming applicants could choose “X” instead of male or female. The new policy restricts passport applicants to their sex assigned at birth and to male or female, following […] Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick issued an injunction against the new policy in June. The Biden appointee in Massachusetts wrote that the plaintiffs showed “uncontroverted evidence of the harms that transgender and non-binary people face if they are required to use passports bearing sex designations aligning with their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity.” The judge wrote that “transgender people with gender-discordant identity documents have an elevated risk of encountering problems with airport security and experiencing harassment or violence when traveling, particularly to countries that criminalize transgender expression.”
An appellate panel rejected the administration’s request to lift Kobick’s order. The panel of Biden appointees reasoned that the plaintiffs “will suffer a variety of immediate and irreparable harms” if the policy is enforced.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer took an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court, seeking to lift the injunction while the litigation proceeds. He wrote that there’s “no basis in law or logic” for the lower court order that “injures the United States by compelling it to speak to foreign governments in contravention of both the President’s foreign policy and scientific reality.”
Opposing the administration, the plaintiffs told the high court that they were only seeking “the same thing millions of Americans take for granted: passports that allow them to travel without fear of misidentification, harassment, or violence.” They said the administration’s preferred policy deprives them “of a usable identification document and the ability to travel safely.”
Sean Dunn [known as “sandwich guy”] was found not guilty by a Washington, D.C., jury of a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a federal officer with a sandwich, The Associated Press reported. The verdict in the case of the man who became a folk hero in the nation’s capital follows a D.C. grand jury’s refusal to approve a felony indictment against him […]
President Trump has become an unexpected ally in the progressive quest to eliminate the filibuster, deciding that anger over the government shutdown catalyzed Tuesday’s blue wave.
“TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, NOT JUST FOR THE SHUTDOWN, BUT FOR EVERYTHING ELSE,” he posted.
It’s become a nexus of consternation between him and Senate Republicans. Senate Republicans are displaying a unique refusal to accede to his whims because they plan to be around longer than he will be, and know that the filibuster a.) doesn’t stop them from doing what they want (they can still do tax cuts, judicial confirmations and reconciliation-passed benefits cuts) b.) does stop Democrats from doing what they want and c.) stops them from doing what they don’t want to do (abortion ban, ending vote-by-mail, any host of culture war red meat the base would demand that would backfire).
President Trump’s incentives are completely different.
For a while, the filibuster didn’t bother him — he amassed increasing degrees of congressional power to himself, and Republicans didn’t protest. He’s hardly bothered to use his trifecta, preferring to use executive action and the right-leaning judiciary.
But now, the filibuster is hurting his short-term interest. He thinks the shutdown caused him electoral pain, and could help Democrats win (at least) the House and impeach him, so he wants it to be over (far more than he wants to stay on message, and remember to blame Democrats). He doesn’t care that the arrangement disproportionately benefits his party, that it would be transformative for Democrats if they could actually pass a minimum wage hike, abortion protections, redistricting reform, campaign finance fixes, voting rights bills, environmental protections, on and on and on.
This is a tension we should expect to see reemerging after Tuesday served as a glaring reminder of Trump’s limited shelf life. If he can’t turn out voters when he’s not on the ballot, and he won’t ever be again, he’s a lame duck whether he wants to be or not. Senate Republicans, some of them decades younger than he is, see a life in the post-Trump world. And they don’t want to spend it caught between the wishes of a rabid, punishing base, and a desire to stay palatable enough to win reelection.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made an absurd claim about how much weight Americans would lose thanks to lower prices of popular weight-loss drugs produced by manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk during a MAHA event in the Oval Office on Thursday.
“We thought it was 125 million pounds. Mr. President, our estimate based on the company numbers … is Americans will lose 135 billion pounds by the midterms.” [video]
It’s likely that Oz misspoke, meaning millions, not billions. Or maybe he’s factoring in Trump’s refusal to fully fund SNAP benefits for 40 million Americans during the GOP-created shutdown.
But with over 340 million Americans in this country, for that to be true, every American would need to lose nearly 400 pounds on average.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Thursday that the U.S. military took out another alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing three “narco-terrorists.”
Hegseth said the vessel was operated by a designated terrorist organization and was blown up in international waters. It is unclear which terrorist group the Defense secretary was referring to. No U.S. troops were harmed in the operation.
“As we’ve said before, vessel strikes on narco-terrorists will continue until their the poisoning of the American people stops,” Hegseth said in a post on social platform X. “To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you.”
The U.S. military has now conducted 17 strikes since the campaign began in early September, killing at least 70 people. The attacks have taken place in the Caribbean Sea and in the Eastern Pacific.
The strikes have prompted pushback from Democrats and some Republicans as lawmakers have asked the administration to provide more information about the targets, the legality of the operation and how boats are selected.
[…] Earlier on Thursday, GOP senators in a 51-49 vote blocked a war powers resolution, introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) that would have blocked the president from potentially conducting military strikes inside Venezuela without the authorization of Congress.
MAGA Still Out Of Its F*cking Gourd Over Zohran And Other Election Night Losses
The excuses for Republicans’ resounding and humiliating losses on Tuesday are getting more copey and strangey.
[…] for just a weird unhinged rant, we’ll finish back at Fox News with host Emily Compagno, who said, um, all this, and broke a land speed record for being wrong and out of her fucking gourd: [video]
“I don’t care who he [Mamdani] is. He’s a blatant anti-semite,
Cite primary source? Because a lot of people say that, but they’re not showing their work. [embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link]
who has never had a job in his life,
Three-term member of the New York state Assembly, since 2020. Before that, he was a foreclosure prevention and housing counselor. She could check Wikipedia, it’s easy and free!
who enjoys a royal wedding in Uganda,
At his mom and dad’s house.
who lives in a Chelsea multi-million dollar apartment
$2,300-a-month rent-stabilized one-bedroom in Astoria, Queens, but aside from that, she almost nailed it.
thanks to the hard work of people he knows nothing about. The million people who voted for him were because he was viral, clearly.
He was viral?
All of them all sedated and seduced by the clickbait that he is.
He sedated them, then he seduced them? Sounds more like a MAGA bro dating manual than Zohran’s campaign strategy.
We have anecdotal people who went to college with him
They have anecdotal people.
that said, ‘Yeah, he was a drinking bro.’
Drinking? IN COLLEGE?
He did whatever it was to be popular. And now his insides are coming out.
Oh no, Zohran, your insides!
I consider him an absolute joke, and I look forward to him totally failing. But I am horrified by his policies and his communism and his anti-semitism spreading even further across this rot.”
Well, if this weirdo considers him a joke, how ever will he recover and move into Gracie Mansion and serve as the mayor of New York?
Guess he’ll have to manage somehow. […]
More examples, with video are available at the link.
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted its coronavirus vaccine guidance from a near-universal recommendation to a more limited approach, many readers asked what has changed in the science to warrant the change. Some wondered how effective boosters really are and whether they should continue receiving them once a year.
A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine helps answer these questions. It found that last season’s updated vaccine provides significant protection against covid-19, particularly against severe illness and death. The results reaffirm the benefit of staying current with covid vaccination.
Researchers analyzed data from approximately 1.8 million Americans between August 2024 and April 2025, of whom only about 13 percent received the 2024–2025 coronavirus shot. They evaluated three clinical outcomes related to the disease: infections, emergency department visits and hospitalization or death. [Graph]
The vaccine reduced the chances of infection by about 45 percent at four weeks after vaccination. That declined to roughly 36 percent at 10 weeks and about 17 percent at 20.
Protection against emergency visits followed a similar pattern, though it waned less: It was about 45 percent at four weeks, 43 percent at 10 and 39 percent at 20.
The strongest protection was against hospitalization and death. Effectiveness was about 57 percent at four weeks, 50 percent at 10, and 34 percent at 20.
Importantly, the benefits of vaccination persisted even after adjusting for differences in age, socioeconomic status, time since prior vaccination, and medical conditions including immunocompromising disorders. The vaccines were also effective across multiple subvariants that circulated during the study period.
These results are consistent with data collected in prior seasons. We’ve known that the most important benefit of coronavirus vaccines is reducing severe disease. This matters most for older adults, who accounted for nearly 80 percent of hospitalizations in this study and stand to benefit most from booster doses.
We’ve also known that effectiveness against infection wanes quickly. Even at its peak, it only cuts the chances that someone will catch the virus by half. These data should inform expectations: The goal is not to prevent every infection but to prevent serious illness and death. Breakthrough cases do not mean the vaccine isn’t working; rather, they show the virus can still cause mild infections even as vaccines blunt its worst effects.
For those seeking optimal protection before a high exposure event, getting vaccinated two to four weeks in advance remains a sound strategy. It is not, however, a guarantee against infection. People who want to minimize their risk further should also consider wearing a high-quality N95 mask and limit the time they spend in crowded indoor settings.
What about safety? A separate study published in JAMA Network Open analyzed data from more than 1.5 million people in Denmark. It found no increase in adverse outcomes among those who received the 2024-2025 booster compared with those who did not. Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine supported the safety of not only coronavirus vaccines but also shots against influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses.
Together, these studies make a strong case for vaccination. There really is little reason for eligible people to skip the updated booster. As Robert Califf, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote in a JAMA editorial, “It is difficult to understand why the use of messenger RNA technology, which has been shown capable of teaching our immune systems to prepare to combat a virulent threat and reduce the risk of death and serious illness with relatively few detectable serious adverse outcomes, has produced such a broad-based hesitation.”
If anything, this latest research raises a different question: Should those most vulnerable to severe disease continue to receive two doses a year rather than one? Judging by these results, the answer seems to be yes.
The CDC has yet to weigh in on the question of a spring booster. It should recognize the mounting evidence in favor of it and make sure anyone who wants additional protection can get it.
the marks it left behind remain nearly as visible as the day they were made. […] What the researchers found was sobering: minimal biological recovery, persistent physical damage, and signs that the ocean’s slow pace of renewal may be no match for even small-scale industrial disturbance.
[…]
the tracks made by the mining vehicle remain largely unchanged—1 to 3 meters wide and up to 0.8 meters deep. The reason lies in the ocean’s pace: sedimentation at these depths occurs at a rate of just 1.5 to 11 millimeters per thousand years
[…]
“The footprint left by one machine in four days still hasn’t healed. What happens when dozens of machines run for decades?”
I remain absolutely confused that people *ever* thought screwing with the abyssal sea floor would “get better” after mining. Mining at the *surface* doesn’t generally “get better” either.
That’s the tradeoff: you get to have a post-neolithic society in exchange for rendering parts of the Earth’s surface effectively unusable for hundred thousand year to million year timescales.
Here’s an example of a successful mine waste remediation effort. Notice the effort involves:
1) covering the waste (tailings) with soil and revegetating it (sort of)
2) complicated efforts to prevent water from touching the ores or their waste.
The site is not actually usable as such. […] the mines (like many mines) are at an area of high elevation, meaning no matter what’s done the waste, it’ll eventually erode and contaminate the streams draining the area. The point of remediation is to make that a future society’s problem…
or (optimistically) slow down the process by which the waste is exposed to water such that the streams aren’t contaminated to a biologically significant level (more or less what’s happening naturally from erosion of mountains anyway).
Again, I want emphasize that this is the kind of tradeoff we *have to make* to have anything other than a neolithic society using flint tools.
I seems researchers found the biggest spider web of all time in a cave, a 100m^2 web inhabited by a colony of spiders from two different species. They are part of a rather unique underground ecosystem:
Inspired by of c – Looks tired featuring a much younger female leader. Under a minute by three secs
StevoRsays
Former Neighbours star Damien Richardson performed an illegal Nazi salute in public but was not intending to display loyalty to Adolf Hitler, (WTF!? LOL!? – ed) a magistrate says.
Richardson made the gesture in 2024 during a speech to the National Workers Alliance, a group that stands for “the preservation of Western culture and identity”.
Neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Network were at the event, which was hosted at a Melbourne restaurant.
Wonder which of the dregs of the leftovers there will replace her? She sure didn’t last long – no suprise from such a misognyist party. She ain’t even a Julie Bishop despite their relative ranks reached.
“There’s an Excellent Chance That Thanksgiving Travel Will Be a Total Disaster”
The government shutdown has entered its 36th day, making it the longest in history. More than 700,000 federal workers have been working without pay for the past month, including air traffic controllers and airport security screeners. Pressure is mounting as more airport workers and controllers call in sick. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, travel companies are warning that it will get a lot worse.
The U.S. Travel Association, along with 500 organizations, sent a letter to Congress on Monday urging lawmakers to end the shutdown. It warned that the consequences will be immediate, “deeply felt by millions of American travelers, and economically devastating to communities in every state.”
The letter added that the U.S. economy has lost more than $4 billion during the shutdown and stands to lose more each day it continues. Last year, more than 20 million people flew over Thanksgiving weekend—one of the busiest times of the year—but this year, flight delays and cancellations could derail family travel plans.
[…] the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tweeted that nearly 13,000 controllers are working without pay, and half of its 30 facilities are facing staffing issues. In New York, 80% of controllers were absent on Friday. “As we continue to reiterate, we will never compromise on safety. When staffing shortages occur, the FAA will reduce the flow of air traffic to maintain safety. This may result in delays or cancellations.”
Last weekend, there were 98 staffing triggers nationwide, forcing air traffic controllers to reroute or delay flights to handle the workload. Los Angeles and San Diego airports saw flight delays of more than an hour on Sunday. In Houston, wait times have increased significantly, with travelers waiting up to three hours to clear security at Bush Airport.
With no end in sight, airports are advising travelers to arrive early for their flights and check flight statuses. If possible, avoid connections and book early morning flights to reduce the chance of disruptions later in the day.
Fox News is experiencing backlash after publishing a story featuring what appeared to be real SNAP beneficiaries, but the videos were generated by artificial intelligence. The article, posted Friday, was originally titled “SNAP beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown.”
It included videos of women discussing food assistance benefits, but viewers quickly noticed signs that the clips weren’t real. The story, written by production assistant Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi, used quotes like:
“’It is the taxpayer’s responsibility to take care of my kids,’ one emotional mother said in a video posted online.”
However, those “mothers” were AI, and not actual people.
People like “The Bulwark Podcast” host Tim Miller began exposing the story after users who called Fox News out prompted the company to issue changes.
Fox News changed the headline and added an editor’s note admitting the videos were AI-generated. Still, the story remained live as of Monday. [!]
One user on X wrote, “This is a viral string of AI videos and Fox News reported on it like it’s a real person?!” [!!]
The updated version does not include an apology […]
There were several telltale signs the videos weren’t authentic. In one clip, a woman appears to yell at a cashier, “I ain’t paying for none of this sh–, I got babies at home that gotta eat.” [video]
[…] Taking a look at the shirt worn by the mother yelling at the cashier, it appears to say “Born to be…” followed by gibberish. AI-generated visuals often include blurred text or warped letters, which don’t form recognizable words.
Even with some of these artifacts and others that TikTok labeled “contains AI-generated media” and tagged with “#AI,” the story’s framing treated them as authentic social media reactions.
[…] used Sora 2, an AI video tool, to create videos of Black women yelling about EBT card issues.
[…] the goal was to produce “rage bait,” a term describing social media content designed to make people angry. Many users didn’t realize the warped faces and background artifacts because the videos were meant for rage bait.
[…] The backlash also focused on how the AI clips targeted Black women.
[…] Fox’s decision to highlight these clips without verifying their authenticity perpetuates racist and classist stereotypes.
Is Fox News going to retract the story about a Black woman with seven children by seven different men needing her SNAP funding? The story about the woman is AI generated, designed to enrage viewers. […]
“Labor Department social media campaign depicts a White male workforce” [OMG, those images!]
A year ago, the Labor Department’s social media messaging focused heavily on portraying a diverse assortment of employees and laborers, both in gender and race.
But the agency has made a dramatic shift during the Trump administration, launching a social media campaign with illustrations that appear to be AI-generated and that almost exclusively feature White men — part of an effort to promote the hiring of American citizens over foreign workers.
Art experts and historians say the images mimic the styles of artist Norman Rockwell or historical government propaganda, including posters from New Deal-era America and fascist Europe. The campaign has drawn scrutiny, with critics saying it is not realistically portraying the diversity of the country’s workforce and is sending messages that feel exclusionary, given that White men make up a minority of the workforce.
A vast majority of the about two dozen poster-style images posted in recent months feature a White man; most are blond, and a significant number are blue-eyed. They have sharp jawlines, broad shoulders and blue-collar uniforms, and they are placed against backgrounds that show construction equipment and factory stacks. Only one of the posts features a non-White man, who is flanked by a White woman and a White man.
Renee Hobbs, a University of Rhode Island professor who teaches media literacy, said the Labor Department’s social media campaign checks off all the boxes of what she teaches as the four features of propaganda: It activates strong emotions, simplifies information and ideas, attacks opponents, and appeals to people’s deepest hopes, fears and dreams.
[…] Many of the illustrations appear to be generated by artificial intelligence, and several are from American artists and advertisements, according to experts and a Washington Post analysis of posts on the Labor Department’s official accounts on X, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky.
Several postings show Christian imagery, including a painting of a White family of four attending a church service. Another illustration depicts a White family of four and a montage featuring scenes of a house, church, school and factory.
[…] Some of the art is pure Americana. The agency used Michigan-based artist William Brody’s painting of a rural farmhouse with an American flag basking in sunlight that he had named “An American Dream.”
But Brody said he was not asked for permission by the Labor Department. He especially didn’t approve of seeing his painting included as part of a messaging campaign that he views as a far cry from the diverse country the American Dream has come to represent.
“I feel like they hijacked it,” he said.
[…] White non-Hispanic men make up about one-third of the American workforce, and White non-Hispanic women are about one-quarter, according to federal labor data. About 20 percent of American workers are Hispanic or Latino, according to 2024 federal labor data, and about 13 percent are Black or African American. About 47 percent of workers are women. Conti noted that the ads also don’t reflect Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who is Latina.
“This isn’t a dog whistle,” Conti said. “This is a loud trumpet blaring that White men who are supporting their wives and children are worthy of good jobs.”
Many of the posts in the Labor Department’s campaign idealize the country’s past industrial booms. The drawing of a White family of four was part of a Fortune magazine ad in the 1940s for Philadelphia-based Lee Tire and Rubber Co. that advertised “fundamentals,” including “homes and families; practical, efficient schools; church leadership that makes devotion to religion a spiritual inspiration; elimination of class hatred and resumption of confidence and mutual interest in each other; employment for all who want it and independence for everyone who will work for it.” The company announced the closure of its last tire plant in 1964.
[…] The Labor Department is not the only example of a shifting social media tone under the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security has posted Rockwell paintings and other scenes depicting idealized images of American life, prompting a rebuke from Rockwell descendants this week for misrepresenting the painter’s beliefs through unauthorized social media posts.
[…] The administration has also increasingly used AI images in its messaging war, though the technology has a tendency to promote stereotypes. While experts caution that there is no definitive way to determine whether the images were generated by AI, they said the illustrations in the Labor Department’s campaign have features indicative of AI, such as a slightly warped outline of the continental United States, a mangled lattice of a crane and squashed stars on an American flag.
[…] Duke University art history professor Paul Jaskot said he would compare the images to a range of historic propaganda, including Nazi and Soviet art in the 1930s, as well as the campaign led by the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal era in the U.S.
“These images participate in a longer history of images of heroic white masculinity that extends well beyond the Nazi period,” Jaskot wrote in an email.
Images and reporting on the issues are also available at The Chicago Sun Times: “The government is too dumb — or too confident — to even bother hiding its racism.”
The Department of Homeland Security has stopped using software that automatically captured text messages and saved trails of communication between officials, according to sworn court statements filed this week.
Instead, the agency began in April to require officials to manually take screenshots of their messages to comply with federal records laws, citing cybersecurity concerns with the autosave software.
So stupid I don’t know what to say. It’s too stupid and obviously intentional to allow that it is a honest mistake, this was done so that officials could forget to capture messages that they don’t want to be public or officials could miss them while reviewing megabytes of screenshots.
They got caught using Signal and it’s delete history feature and had to come up with something. This is entirely unworkable but just barely can be said to be an attempt to comply with the law.
“Cornell is the latest Ivy League school to announce a settlement with the federal government to restore research grants.”
Cornell University said on Friday that it reached a deal with the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funds the government cut earlier this year.
The university will directly pay the federal government $30 million over three years “as a condition for ending pending claims that have been brought against the university,” the university’s president Michael I. Kotlikoff, said in a letter to students and faculty. Cornell will also invest $30 million over three years in “research to strengthen U.S. agriculture,” and benefit U.S. farmers, he said.
In April, the Trump administration withheld $250 million in federal research funding from the university, accusing Cornell of committing civil rights violations.
“The decades-long research partnership between Cornell and the federal government is critical to advancing the university’s core mission and to our continuing contributions to the nation’s health, welfare, and economic and military strength,” Kotlikoff said. “This agreement revives that partnership, while affirming the university’s commitment to the principles of academic freedom, independence, and institutional autonomy that, from our founding, have been integral to our excellence.”
Kotlikoff added that the “agreement to these terms is not an admission of wrongdoing” and that the university did not violate civil rights law.
[I snipped White House official lies about how Trump “delivered a major win for American students.” Lies]
In July, Columbia University said it would pay $200 million to the federal government to restore $400 million of federal research grants the Trump administration cut from the university earlier this year.
Brown University reached a similar deal with the administration days later, promising to pay $50 million in grants over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island.
In all three cases, the Ivy League schools — whose staffs include some of the best legal minds in the world — chose to settle the dispute rather than challenge the Trump administration in court.
The Trump administration had stripped funding from elite U.S. universities, arguing that they did not do enough to quell antisemitism at campus protests against the war in Gaza last year. [Bogus excuse.]
Simultaneously, the administration had tried to get universities to rid themselves of diversity programs and what it has described as liberal bias.
In addition to issuing a payment, Columbia University agreed to a long list of demands by the Trump administration, which included changes to its admissions process, staffing and efforts to promote diversity. And in July, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to ban transgender women from competing on its women’s sports teams after facing pressure from the administration to do so.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
“The Nasdaq is on track to record its worst week since the April global market plunge tied to Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs.”
Stocks were set to post their first weekly losses in three weeks on Friday as concerns about the sky-high valuations of artificial intelligence companies prompt investors to pull back.
The Nasdaq Composite, which closely tracks the biggest technology companies, could record a drop of more than 4.5% this week […]
The S&P 500 is also poised to post a loss of more than 2.7% this week, its worst since May. […]
Markets have been led lower primarily by companies connected to the artificial intelligence boom. Collectively, the drop this week in shares of Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Palantir, Oracle and Instagram owner Meta Platforms has erased more than $1 trillion of market value.
Nvidia and AMD each have dropped more than 11% this week, while Oracle, which provides cloud computing services for AI software developers, has dropped about 10%. Meta is down 7% and Microsoft has tumbled 4% this week, as of Friday morning.
Super Micro Computer, which sells servers and equipment that cloud computing providers use for AI, has plunged 25% this week and is the worst performing stock in the S&P 500 this week.
[…] Not all tech stocks have fared so poorly though. Apple, the second largest company in the world behind Nvidia, is set to end the week flat, while Alphabet and Amazon have only declined around 1.5% this week.
The sell-off started Tuesday, after government contractor and AI developer Palantir reported earnings. Fears that it was too highly valued led to the stock plunging in the following days and dragging its peers lower.
[…] Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang further fueled fears about the U.S. tech sector, telling the Financial Times on Thursday that China would likely “win the AI race.” He later clarified, writing that “China is nanoseconds behind America in AI.”
Other factors could be at play, too.
On Friday, consumer sentiment tumbled to near record low levels in the widely read University of Michigan’s survey of consumers. “With the federal government shutdown dragging on for over a month, consumers are now expressing worries about potential negative consequences for the economy,” survey director Joanne Hsu said.
[…] A report from research firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas also showed that announced job cuts from U.S.-based employers reached the highest level for any October in 22 years.
For more than a decade, Silicon Valley venture capitalists have poured enormous sums of money into technology companies seeking to disrupt, and even supplant, the traditional financial system and sidestep its burdensome regulations.
At the same time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has policed that effort, going after such businesses for deceiving, overcharging or otherwise taking advantage of their customers by enacting rules, filing lawsuits and shutting down the worst offenders. [True]
[…] it has especially irritated Marc Andreessen, one of America’s most well-known investors and an outsize figure in the so-called fintech industry.
His firm has seeded eight companies since 2016 that landed in the crosshairs of the small watchdog agency that Congress created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect vulnerable consumers from exploitation […] Some of those inquiries have resulted in consent orders, fines and, for one company, a lifetime industry ban.
The CFPB exists to “terrorize finance, terrorize financial institutions, prevent fintech, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with the big banks,” Andreessen told podcaster Joe Rogan last year, invoking the agency as an example of government bloat ripe for the carving. [video]
Of particular concern to Andreessen was federal regulators’ targeting of the freewheeling crypto industry […] the investor’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, told the CFPB last year it planned to put more than $7 billion in crypto funds. So in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the longtime Democrat shifted his allegiance to Donald Trump, donating more than $5 million to groups supporting the Republican candidate, and even volunteered to help Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. [!!]
[…] In short order, the Trump administration has hollowed out the CFPB — the primary regulator with jurisdiction over increasingly ubiquitous financial technology companies and the only one looking out for consumers in the rapidly expanding crypto marketplace. Lawsuits have been dropped, settlements have been renegotiated in favor of companies and a proposed consumer-friendly crypto regulation was killed outright. [Trump took the side of grifters.]
Virtually all investigations have also ground to a halt, including three probes into Andreessen-backed companies [
1]
[…] Among those frozen: inquiries into the popular cash advance app EarnIn and Point Digital Finance, one of the country’s largest providers of so-called alternative mortgages.
[…] “There are lots of ways that this breaks bad for families, and it all flows downstream from this moment we are now in,” said Mike Pierce, a former bureau official who now runs the advocacy group Protect Borrowers. “If there’s no watchdog, people are going to get hurt.” [True]
[…] administration officials have defended their decision to shrink the bureau to a fraction of its size, arguing that the agency had engaged in the “weaponization” of consumer protection to the detriment of industry. They say the bureau should instead “focus on tangible harms to consumers,” relinquish oversight to states and reimburse defrauded consumers, rather than impose heavy fines on companies.
CFPB officials have been busy implementing the new approach, reworking deals with 20 businesses that had been accused of wrongdoing. In May, for example, they renegotiated a settlement with the international remittance firm Wise, an Andreessen-backed company that had previously agreed to pay $2 million to resolve claims that it had deceived its customers about the true cost of ATM fees. The new penalty: $45,000. [Wow]
[…] as new financial technology like payment apps took off, the CFPB examined it. In 2016, as the Obama administration came to a close, the bureau took the digital payment network Dwolla to court for “deceiving consumers about its data security practices and the safety of its online payment system.” […]
According to a ProPublica analysis of CFPB data, 22 of the top 100 companies consumers complained about last year were fintech businesses, up from just seven a decade earlier.
It’s not clear exactly how much Andreessen’s business has invested in such companies […]
Among those companies is LendUp Loans, an online startup app that was meant to disrupt the payday lending industry. The CFPB had taken the company to court three times in five years, alleging it had bilked its customers by hiding fees, misadvertising its credit scorekeeping or exceeding capped interest rates for military service members. […]
LendUp didn’t admit or deny the CFPB’s allegations but shut down following its agreement with the agency.
More recently, in the final year of the Biden administration, bureau investigators seemed poised to examine not just a company’s actions but what its investors knew about them, records reviewed by ProPublica show.
[…] the bureau had designated the app’s “venture capital investors” as “relevant parties” to its probe because those investors “likely have knowledge” of the company’s business model and “associated documents,” according to the records. […] The investigation was looking into whether EarnIn’s app effectively tricked as many as 200,000 customers into thinking that millions of dollars they paid in such fees went to help other customers when instead they went straight to the business’s bottom line […]
The probe stalled in February though, after Trump’s appointees to the CFPB issued bureauwide stop-work orders. […]
The enforcement freeze also effectively ended investigations into two other A16Z-backed ventures [Andreessen-backed companies]: Point Digital Finance and Greenlight Financial Technology Inc., a popular debit card for kids.
Beginning last fall, investigators started probing the former’s business model of buying a portion of a homeowner’s equity in exchange for a lump sum payment, records show. […]
A spokesperson for Point Digital Finance declined to comment. A16Z participated in four funding rounds that raised more than $248 million for the company.
As for Greenlight, bureau investigators were examining whether the company had deceived parents about how quickly they could transfer money onto their kids’ prepaid debit cards, according to people familiar with the case and records reviewed by ProPublica. Though the company’s marketing materials said parents could “instantly” load money onto them, in reality the transfers took days — a delay that left children unable to pay for cabs, meals and other purchases, records and interviews with the people show.
[…] Nikita Aggarwal, who teaches consumer finance at the University of Miami School of Law, said that a defanged and downsized CFPB would help companies like these save on compliance costs and grow faster — factors that would appeal to investors like Andreessen[…]
[…] while the bureau is a shell of its former self, it hasn’t been entirely eliminated.
In August, the CFPB sued the Andreessen-backed banking software company Synapse Financial Technologies Inc., which had declared bankruptcy as the agency probed whether it lost track of millions of dollars in customer funds. But the action has so far resulted in little redress — the now-defunct company agreed to pay a $1 fine and it’s unclear whether the agency will tap its own funds to compensate consumers. […]
When it comes to crypto, the industry’s influence under Trump represents a particularly relevant win for firms like those that are backed by Andreessen. The billionaire donated $33.5 million last year to a pro-cryptocurrency political group, more than six times as much as he did to support Trump, federal elections records show. And some A16Z investments have become major players in so-called decentralized finance, known as defi, which supporters hope will replace the traditional banking system.
So when the CFPB proposed a rule in 2023 that would have subjected these types of companies to bureau supervision, the firm pushed back […] In a win for the industry, the bureau’s final agency rule excluded crypto.
But 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, the CFPB asked for the public’s input on another proposed rule that would have effectively subjected the industry to a 1978 law, putting the onus on virtual currency firms to make their customers whole in the event they are defrauded.
Such a rule could impose a major financial obligation on the companies given the frequency of hacks in the crypto industry. By one count, more than $2 billion in digital assets were stolen in 2022 alone.
As the Biden administration was ending, the top lawyer at Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange — and a recipient of A16Z investment dollars — posted on X that it was “obvious” that such a proposal “will never be adopted; it is DOA with the next admin and DOA in the courts,” he wrote, using the acronym for “dead on arrival.” He was right. In May, under Trump, the CFPB withdrew that rule, saying that it “does not align with current agency needs, priorities, or objectives.”
Posted by readers of the ProPublica report:
CFPB was the most pro people agency ever created by the government, was the brain child of Elizabeth Warren, conceived while she was a law professor at Harvard, Obama gave her a special position with significant leeway to create the statutes and regulations (and Larry Summers a bad pick by Obama tried to undercut it all the way). republicans and corporate flunkies have been trying to kill it from day one. It helped consumers collect billions […]
————————
Corruption is everywhere in Washington, and it’s now virtually the Republican party brand.
—————————-
Without bullet-headed billionaire backers, Republicans would have to compete with actual ideas and plans. [Reference to a photo of Andreesen]
——————————-
One of the most important purposes of government is to protect people from harm. Flawed though they might be, Democrats take this purpose seriously. Republicans are clearly on the other side.
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Just another sociopath
[…] on Thursday, Judge Ellis extended the restrictions that she issued last month, with no stay for appeal, ordering agents to wear body cameras, give at least two audible warnings before using riot control weapons, and to use those weapons only to “preserve life or prevent catastrophic outcomes.” And she determined that Bovino [self-described “Border Commander” Gregory Bovino] was a bald-faced liar, and that the government’s evidence was “simply not credible.”
So. Many. Lies.
Bovino admitted that he lied about getting hit in the head with a rock before personally throwing not one, but two tear gas canisters at high schoolers who were running away, and only admitted he lied after he got caught caught on camera, the judge noted.
And agents lied about somebody in a crowd setting off fireworks as a justification for using tear gas. That somebody was … themselves! Setting off flash-bang grenades! And not only did agents violate her order by issuing no warning, they laughed and mocked a retreating crowd with “HAVE FUN” while they threw tear gas at them. [video]
Judge Ellis noted Bovino lied about getting kicked in the nuts, and even if he hadn’t, punching the person in the head repeatedly and bashing his head on the pavement was not an appropriate amount of force. The entire squad, just indulging their sick fantasies, wilding out and lying shamelessly […]
And Judge Ellis was extra-disgusted with how Bovino had personally slammed Oak Park Township Trustee Juan Muñoz to the ground with no warning, kneed him in the back, zip-tied him and held him with no charges, and paraded him in front of Kristi Noem like a prized show dog. “They grabbed us for a photo op. We were on display for her,” Muñoz said. Then he was detained for eight hours with no charges before being dumped at a remote gas station.
Noted Judge Ellis, “The use of force shocks the conscience.”
Much more at the link, including videos, proof that an ICE agent destroyed evidence in the case of the woman he shot; evidence that detainees are being held with inadequate places to sleep, no mattresses, in cells with no clocks. They haven’t been getting enough food, water, or hygiene products, are being denied access to medical care, lawyers, telephones, and translators and translated documents, and have been getting disappeared into the system without being entered into the Detainee Locator System; evidence that US citizens are being arrested, etc.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or sidelined at least two dozen generals and admirals over the past nine months in a series of ousters that could reshape the U.S. military for years to come.
His actions, which are without precedent in recent decades, have come with little explanation. In many cases, they have run counter to the advice of top military leaders who fought alongside the officers in combat, senior military officials said.
The utter unpredictability of Mr. Hegseth’s moves, as described in interviews with 20 current and former military officials, has created an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust that has forced senior officers to take sides and, at times, pitted them against one another.
Mr. Hegseth has delayed or canceled the promotions of at least four senior military officers because they previously worked for Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom President Trump loathes and has repeatedly accused of disloyalty. One is Maj. Gen. James Patrick Work, who was expected to be the deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, which oversees troops in the Middle East, officials said.
General Work, one of the Army’s most combat-experienced officers, played a crucial role leading U.S. and Iraqi troops to victory over the Islamic State in Mosul during the first Trump administration. He also served as General Milley’s executive officer in 2018, which might have led Mr. Hegseth to view him with skepticism, senior Army officials said.
Despite the strong backing of top Army leaders, General Work remains in limbo, his future uncertain, senior military officials said.
Other officers fell out of favor after being targeted on social media by right-wing influencers or because they had voiced support years earlier for diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Rear Adm. Milton Sands, the commander of the Navy SEALs, who pushed to have female instructors in SEAL training, was fired by Mr. Hegseth in August. […]
“Glen Casada, a Republican, was sentenced to 36 months in prison after being convicted on 17 charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
[…] Trump pardoned former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, who were convicted on federal corruption charges.
Casada, a Republican, was sentenced in September to 36 months in prison after being convicted on 17 charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Cothren, the aide, received a shorter sentence.
Casada confirmed the pardon on Thursday in a statement to NBC affiliate WSMV in Nashville, saying: “Yes the president called me today and granted me a full pardon. I am grateful of his trust and his full confidence in my innocence through this whole ordeal.”
In a statement, a White House official confirmed Trump’s decision to pardon Casada and Cothren and blamed the Biden administration for over-prosecuting the two men.
[I snipped White House statement]
[…] The charges against Casada and Cothren centered on a consulting firm they founded with another lawmaker, called Phoenix Solutions. Prosecutors alleged that the former House speaker and his aide used the company to illegally funnel money to themselves for campaign and taxpayer-funded work, including by organizing a $52,000 mailer program for Tennessee lawmakers.
Prosecutors said they used a false name — Matthew Phoenix — to run the company.
Several years before Casada was charged, he served as House speaker in Tennessee, but resigned in 2019 after a no-confidence vote by his fellow lawmakers. The vote came in the wake of another scandal involving Casada and Cothren, where the two were accused of exchanging sexually explicit text messages about women. Casada apologized for the texts and said that they were “not the person I am.” […]
lumipunasays
Update to my 130 and 232 on previous page: Teboil is now preparing to shut down its operations in Finland, as a result of US sanctions on its parent company Lukoil. The planned sale of Teboil to Gunvor was revoked after the US Treasury rejected it flat out as a way to circumvent sanctions. It now seems highly likely there won’t be another buyer that passes the muster.
lumipuna @77, thanks for the update. You were right to note that the previous Lukoil arrangement was a shady deal, an attempt to continue operating in Finland without sanctions.
As you previously pointed out, now there will be disruption in Finland’s distribution of petrol. I hope that part of the difficulties is resolved soon.
“Military planners travelled to Bodø, nestled between the sea and snow-capped peaks of the Arctic Circle, to war-game out the response to Kremlin threats.”
BODØ, Norway — Half a mile inside a mountain in the north of Norway, the U.K. is preparing for war.
The country’s military planners have travelled to Bodø, nestled between the sea and snow-capped peaks of the Arctic Circle, to rehearse what it would look like if Russia decided to unleash hostile activity on its doorstep.
The exercise is set a year after an imagined ceasefire in Ukraine. It asks leaders of Nordic and Baltic countries to calculate what they would do as they begin to track pro-Russia civil unrest inside a bordering country.
Defense ministers and generals in attendance are supplied with newspaper reports about the incidents, patchy intelligence updates and social media posts and asked to decide the best course of action.
The task is not purely hypothetical. An unexplained attack on a Baltic undersea cable last year, Russian drones and airplanes violating NATO airspace and an increase in Russian ships threatening British waters have called attention to the vulnerability of the so-called “high north.”
In the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, Britain put itself forward to lead a group of like-minded European countries in preparing for threats on their northern flank, founding the 10-nation Joint Expeditionary Force.
The question now is whether this alliance can live up to its potential as the Russian threat morphs — and the U.S. continues to turn away from European security under Donald Trump.
[…] While the high north has long been an area of Russian strength, Moscow’s methods are diversifying in a way that demands answers from its neighbors.
At the same time, melting Arctic ice is opening previously-impassable seas and triggering a new contest for access and minerals in the region — pulling in both China and the U.S.
[…] “These are the countries where Russian aggression is their everyday experience. They live next door to the presence of the Russian military,” Healey [British Defence Secretary John Healey]
[…] One ingredient for powering up allies’ presence in the high north is investment in more icebreaking capability: specialist ships which can plow through the polar sea.said. “We’re the nations that can best assess the risks, best respond to the threats, and best get NATO connected to take this more seriously.”
Part of the idea behind JEF is that it can act swiftly while the NATO machine, which requires the agreement of 32 member states to act, takes much longer to whir into action.
Russia is estimated to have 50 icebreakers — at least 13 of which can operate in the Arctic and seven of which are nuclear — while China has five that are suitable for the Arctic.
NATO members Sweden and Finland have their own versions of these vessels — as do the U.S. and Canada, but Norway’s Dyndal said more are needed. […]
President Trump lambasted an NBC News reporter who pointed out discrepancies in this year’s Walmart Thanksgiving meal package Friday as Trump continues to cite it as an example of lower prices under his administration.
According to the retail giant’s website, this year’s meal serves 10 people for under $4 per person. Last year, Walmart’s holiday meal served eight people for less than $7 per person.
But this year’s package also includes fewer items and some of those items will be Walmart’s store brand instead of name brands. Those details were cited by the reporter before Trump jumped in to declare NBC “fake news.”
“Mr. President, since you brought up the Walmart Thanksgiving meal, and it is cheaper but it also contains less,” the reporter asked.
“I haven’t heard that,” Trump interrupted. “Who are you with?” [Of course Trump hasn’t heard that. He is fucking ignorant and he remains willfully ignorant by never vetting any information with which he gaslights the public.]
“You’re fake news,” the president said when the reporter identified themselves as with the network.
“NBC’s gone down the tubes with most of the rest of them.” […]
Vivek Ramaswami thinks he is part of the White club…
Phil Moorhouse:
“Why Do People Join Groups That Hate Them?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HeQfB7JXn0s
-In Sweden we have a Black murderer in prison who is a Nazi. The other Nazis tolerate jim because they all hate Jews.
“U.S. steps up presence in Gaza to support fragile ceasefire”
“The move relegates Israel to a secondary role in determining how and what humanitarian relief can enter Gaza, according to people familiar with the transition.”
The U.S. military-led “coordination center” charged with implementing President Donald Trump’s peace plan in the Gaza Strip is replacing Israel as the overseer of humanitarian aid to the enclave, even as multiple people familiar with the center’s first weeks of operations have described it as chaotic and indecisive.
In a transition that was completed Friday, the Israelis are now “part of the conversation,” but decisions will be taken by the wider body, a U.S. official said, referencing the shift from COGAT, the unit within the Israel Defense Forces responsible for regulating and facilitating aid in Gaza, to the Civil-Military Coordination Center set up in southern Israel near the Gaza border.
[…] Since the Gaza ceasefire began last month, humanitarian aid, while improved, has remained significantly restricted by Israel.
More than 40 countries and organizations are represented in the U.S.-led center […]
Until now, the IDF has opened only two entryways for aid into Gaza, with the vast majority of aid coming through Kerem Shalom in the south. There have been no direct deliveries to northern Gaza since early September. Many of the trucks allowed to enter, according to the United Nations, are commercial shipments of goods offered for sale in Gaza markets that few have money to buy.
The transit point between Jordan, where large quantities of aid are waiting, and Israel over the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River has been closed for much of the year. The majority of international aid organizations have largely been barred from bringing food into Gaza for months since Israel imposed intrusive new registration rules they have refused to sign.
Aid organizations long have complained of Israel’s restrictions on “dual-use items” that it deems capable of being turned into weapons, which have included tent poles, medical scalpels and ointment to treat skin infections
[…] As part of the implementation, the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for planning and coordinating the U.S. military in the region, has also stepped up its own surveillance of Gaza, including with drones to monitor both aid distribution and the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Last week, Centcom posted a video taken from an MQ-9 Reaper drone of what it said were Hamas “operatives” looting a heavily laden aid truck in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. […]
Even as it continues monitoring Hamas activities, continued U.S. pressure on Israel is considered critical to moving the peace plan forward and ensuring ongoing support from governments in Europe and the Middle East, and nongovernmental organizations, all of whose buy-in is deemed vital.
Israel has pushed back forcefully against any suggestion that it is under the U.S. thumb and that Centcom is collecting its own intelligence to verify its compliance with the agreement.
“The whole activity of the Americans operating in Gaza is something new,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former IDF general who served as director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. “But the rules, in my mind, of sharing information are the same. Whatever is valuable for Israel is shared.”
[…] many regional leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will visit the White House in mid-November, are waiting for assurances that the war is truly over and that Israel will relinquish control over the enclave. On Monday, Trump will host President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, with whom he hopes to expand U.S. security relations.
[…] neither the Palestinian police force nor the ISF yet exist. Many of the countries seen as possible participants, particularly those in the Arab and Muslim world, have indicated they don’t want to be involved in the process of disarming Hamas or contending with what they see as trigger-happy Israeli forces still behind the “yellow line” now separating them from the rest of Gaza.
[United Nations] security council members are seeking stronger and more specific humanitarian commitments, as well as a path to Palestinian statehood. […]
European countries in the CMCC “can in no way take part in something which is seen as a strategic tool for one party to the conflict, which is Israel,” Egeland said. Such a plan, he said “is doomed. It’s bound to be a failure.”
“James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97”
James D. Watson, who entered the pantheon of science at age 25 when he joined in the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of the most momentous breakthroughs in the history of science, died on Thursday in East Northport, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 97.
His death, in a hospice, was confirmed on Friday by his son Duncan, who said Dr. Watson was transferred to the hospice from a hospital this week after being treated there for an infection.
Dr. Watson’s role in decoding DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, would have been enough to establish him as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. But he cemented that fame by leading the ambitious Human Genome Project and writing perhaps the most celebrated memoir in science.
For decades a famous and famously cantankerous American man of science, Dr. Watson lived on the grounds of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which, in another considerable accomplishment, he took over as director in 1968 and transformed from a relatively small establishment on Long Island with a troubled past into one of the world’s major centers of microbiology. He stepped down in 1993 and took a largely honorary position of chancellor.
But his official career there ended ignominiously in 2007 after he ignited an uproar by suggesting, in an interview with The Sunday Times in London, that Black people, over all, were not as intelligent as white people. He repeated the assertion in on-camera interviews for a PBS documentary about him, part of the “American Masters” series. When the program aired in 2018, the lab, in response, revoked honorary titles that Dr. Watson had retained.
They were far from the first incendiary, off-the-cuff comments by a man who was once described as “the Caligula of biology,” and he repudiated them immediately. Nevertheless, though he continued his biological theorizing on subjects like the roles of oxidants and antioxidants in cancer and diabetes, Dr. Watson ceased to command the scientific spotlight.
He said later that he felt that his fellow scientists had abandoned him.
Dr. Watson’s tell-all memoir, “The Double Helix,” had also provoked his colleagues when it was published in 1968, infuriating them for, in their view, elevating himself while shortchanging others who were involved in the project. Still, it was instantly hailed as a classic of the literature of science. The Library of Congress listed it, along with “The Federalist Papers” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” as one of the 88 most important American literary works. (The list was later expanded to 100.)
But it was in discerning the double-helix physical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, the chromosome-building molecule and medium of genetic inheritance, that won Dr. Watson and his co-discoverer, Francis H.C. Crick, enduring fame and the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1962. [Historic photo]
[…] Breach of Protocol
Working with X-ray images obtained by Rosalind E. Franklin and Maurice H.F. Wilkins, researchers at King’s College London, and after at least one humiliating false start, Dr. Watson and Mr. Crick eventually constructed a physical model of the molecule. The key came when Dr. Wilkins gave them access to certain images of Dr. Franklin’s, one of which, Photo 51, turned out to be the clue to the molecule’s structure. In what is widely — but not universally — regarded as a breach of research protocol, Dr. Wilkins provided the X-ray image to Dr. Watson and Mr. Crick without Dr. Franklin’s knowledge.
Aided by that material, the two proposed that DNA was shaped like a kind of twisted ladder whose outside “rails” were formed of molecules of sugar and phosphate. Each of the ladder’s steps was formed of two of DNA’s four chemical bases — adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Adenine always paired up with thymine, and guanine always paired up with cytosine.
[…] If the Watson-Crick paper were published today, Dr. Franklin would almost certainly be listed as a co-author because of the importance of her work in the development of the double-helix structure, said Nancy Hopkins, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who began working with Dr. Watson in the 1960s when she was an undergraduate at Harvard.
But Dr. Franklin could not have shared the Nobel when it was awarded in 1962. She died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at 37, and the prize is not given posthumously. (Nor is the prize ever shared by more than three people.)
Today, Dr. Franklin is a heroine for feminists in science, who note that, like most women at the time, she was underpaid, disrespected and often denigrated by male colleagues. Over the years, Dr. Watson played down her contribution, saying among other things that while her X-ray images were good, she did not realize what she had.
Expressing attitudes retrograde even by the standards of the 1960s, Dr. Watson famously described Dr. Franklin as a sexually repressed spinster and an unimaginative researcher. He and Dr. Wilkins called her “Rosy,” a nickname she did not use, but never to her face.
[…] Dr. Watson’s relations with the rest of the Harvard biology faculty were fraught. He offended his departmental colleagues by dismissing evolution, taxonomy, ecology and other biological research as “stamp collecting,” saying those fields must give way to the study of molecules and cells.
[…] Over the years Dr. Watson acquired a reputation for challenging scientific orthodoxy and for brash, unpleasant and even bigoted outspokenness. At one time or another he was quoted as disparaging gay men and women, girls who were not “pretty” and the intelligence and initiative generally of women, as well as of people with dark skin. At a lecture at Berkeley in 2000, he suggested a connection between exposure to sunlight and sex drive, saying it would explain why there are Latin lovers but not English lovers. And he once said that he felt bad whenever he interviewed an overweight job applicant because he knew he wasn’t going to hire someone who was fat.
Dr. Watson escaped serious consequences for his remarks until 2007, when he was traveling to promote his memoir “Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science,” published that year. He was quoted in The Sunday Times as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects of Africa.”
Social policies assume comparable intelligence levels, he went on, “whereas the testing says not really.”
[…] Though Dr. Watson immediately apologized “unreservedly,” saying “there is no scientific basis for such a belief,” his remarks produced a swirl of denunciations and canceled speaking engagements. Within a week, he had resigned as chancellor of the laboratory.
[…] When the sequencing of the genome was announced in 2000, President Clinton referred to the work as revealing God’s “book of life.” But Dr. Watson attributed his success as a researcher in part to his lack of religious belief. He once described himself as an “escapee” from the Roman Catholic faith.
“The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn’t believe in God,” he told Discover magazine in an interview on the 50th anniversary of the publication of the double helix paper.
That was not to say he did not have faith. In his resignation statement in 2007, he referred to the “faith” in reason and social justice that he shared with his Scottish and Irish forebears, especially, he said, “the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate.”
“’It is the taxpayer’s responsibility to take care of my kids,’ one emotional mother said in a video posted online.”
Yes. Yes, raising the next generation is absolutely the collective responsibility of the present generation.
There is enough money for everyone. Therefore, if someone does not have enough money, that means someone else has too much money. And taxation is the way we collectivise taking money away from people who have too much, to use for the benefit of people who don’t have enough, by investing in universally available public services, benefitting from economies of scale, so the base level of public services artificially reduces the lower threshold of “enough”.
Civilised societies do not spontaneously spring into existence. The world into which we are born is only the way it is because of other people’s hard work, and we are born owing a debt to all those who have gone before us, the fruits of whose labours and whose discoveries and inventions we take for granted. We can best repay this debt by working to ensure the next generation will be born into a better world than ours. Once we have done our fair share towards this, we may even receive a dividend in the form of the improvements our children made for our grandchildren.
We all have the same basic needs. Once these are satisfied, and the most efficient way to do this is collectively, then we are in a position to indulge our individual desires.
birgerjohanssonsays
I learned something new today.
Nick Cave is not only a musician, he is also an author. His book The Death of Bunny Munro will be filmed.
The Kremlin on Friday dismissed speculation that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had fallen out of favour with Vladimir Putin after efforts to organise a summit between the Russian president and Donald Trump were put on ice last month.
Lavrov, 75, a veteran Soviet-era diplomat known for his robust negotiating style, was absent from a big Kremlin meeting this week that he would typically attend, and Putin chose someone else to attend a G20 summit in South Africa later this month, a role that Lavrov has filled in the past.
Apparently he didn’t attend one of the Russian security council meetings, which would be like not showing up for a cabinet meeting the US. Plus his travel has not be disclosed and he is not attending some international meetings that would be normal for him to go to. He could just be sick but it isn’t a good sign. If he is sick enough to require this for several weeks there is a good chance he has to retire for medical reasons anyways.
johnson catmansays
re JM @87: If Lavrov has fallen out of favor with Putin, he may soon have an accidental defenestration.
@ whheydt, #86: I know it’s AI generated, but, still, my point stands: it’s by no means an unreasonable demand. Or just pay us more, and once we can afford to pay more tax, you won’t have to pay so much tax in order to raise the same total amount.
But, by economy of scale, something you as a taxpayer get at the taxpayer’s expense can end up working out costing you less in extra tax than you would have spent if you had paid for it yourself. Common needs are best met collectively.
whheydtsays
Re: blurislagirl @ #89…
I’m not arguing against the underlying point, that we–collectively as a society–should provide a safety net for those in need, and that it is, on the whole, more cost effective to do it collectively. I merely point out that the example cited is fake and intended to inflame passions against those points.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro held a press conference Friday to announce that SNAP funds in the state have been restored—and to call out President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance for denying Americans food assistance.
“JD Vance rose to some prominence by writing a book about growing up in Appalachia, where there’s a whole lot of people who get SNAP,” he said. “He made millions of dollars on the backs of telling their stories, and then he turned his damn back on those very people who he likes to write about and claim as his own.” [video]
Shapiro continued, “And you’ll excuse me for getting emotional about it, but when I see hungry people in my state who are hungry because of JD Vance’s bullshit politics—that makes me angry. And that’s why I went to court.”
Some details from earlier reporting:
[…] The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Donald Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8 — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.
he order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would leave some recipients getting nothing for this month.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown.
Last week’s rulings ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.
On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program.
The next day, Trump appeared to threaten not to pay the benefit s at all unless Democrats in Congress agreed to reopen the government. His press secretary later said that the partial benefits were being paid for November — and that it is future payments that are at risk if the shutdown continues. […]
What JD Vance said:
Vice President Vance on Thursday pushed back on a federal court ruling that directed the Trump administration to make full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments for November, arguing the court should not be telling the president how to spend money during a government shutdown.
“It’s an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the middle of a Democrat government shutdown,” Vance said during a roundtable with Central Asian leaders at the White House.
“What we’d like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government of course, then we can fund SNAP and we can also do a lot of other good things for the American people,” Vance said. “But in the midst of a shutdown we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation.”
U.S. District Judge John McConnell earlier Thursday rejected the administration’s plan to provide partial payments without tapping additional funds, saying it failed to comply with his previous order.
The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling, throwing the fate of SNAP benefits for millions of Americans who rely on the program into limbo.
[…] Vance said the White House would look to fund certain government operations amid the strain of the shutdown, but would do so “according to what we think we have to do to comply with the law, of course, but also to actually make the government work for people.”
The administration has asked a federal appeals court for an emergency pause on a judge’s order to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The Trump administration told states on Friday that it will immediately begin funding SNAP benefits in full while its appeal of a federal judge’s order to do so makes its way through the courts.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered the administration on Thursday afternoon to deliver full payments to states by Friday, chastising it for delays that he said have likely caused SNAP recipients to go hungry.
On Friday morning, the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court for an emergency pause on the judge’s order. The administration said in a court filing that because of the government shutdown, there is only enough money to pay partial benefits in November.
However, in a memo obtained by NBC News, Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, informed states that the USDA “will complete the processes necessary” to fully issue SNAP benefits for the time being. The funds could be available later Friday, the memo said.
Nearly 42 million people rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.
The administration agreed earlier this week to use $4.65 billion in contingency funds to cover about 65% of the benefits that eligible households would ordinarily receive. But it argued that it cannot draw from additional funds set aside for child nutrition programs, known as Section 32 funding, to fully fund SNAP because doing so would take away resources from other programs, like school lunches.
“This is a crisis, to be sure, but it is a crisis occasioned by congressional failure, and that can only be solved by congressional action,” the administration wrote in a court filing.
“This Court should allow USDA to continue with the partial payment and not compel the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program with no certainty of their replenishment,” it added.
The back-and-forth over SNAP funding has persisted for weeks. First, the USDA said that SNAP funding would not be distributed in November as long as the federal government remained closed. However, the progressive legal advocacy group Democracy Forward challenged that plan in a lawsuit, prompting McConnell last week to order the Trump administration to distribute benefits as soon as possible.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the partial payments were disbursed to states on Monday. Since states oversee the process of loading payments onto electronic benefits cards, the Trump administration has argued that it has done its part by authorizing SNAP funding and giving states information to calculate partial benefits for households.
However, McConnell said Thursday that the administration’s actions did not comply with his order to deliver the payments expeditiously and efficiently.
“People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable,” McConnell said, adding: “This should never happen in America.”
This is the first time SNAP benefits have lapsed because of a government shutdown in the program’s 61-year history. Some families whose EBT cards were due to be reloaded already this week have reported skipping meals or subsisting on the meager foods remaining in their pantries, such as cereal or ramen.
“Before Friday’s handover, Hamas had returned the bodies of 22 hostages since the start of the current ceasefire.”
The Red Cross transferred the remains of a hostage to Israeli troops in Gaza on Friday, the military said, hours after hundreds of mourners flocked to the funeral of a soldier whose body was turned over earlier in the week by Palestinian militants.
Before Friday’s handover, Hamas had returned the bodies of 22 hostages since the start of the current ceasefire. The latest remains were moved into Israel late Friday, the military said, and taken to the National Institute for Forensic Medicine for identification.
If they are confirmed to be those of an additional hostage, that would leave five others in Gaza still to be returned under terms of the ceasefire that began Oct. 10. The agreement is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.
As part of the ceasefire, Israel has released the bodies of 285 Palestinians, the Red Cross and Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Only 84 of them have been identified. DNA labs are not allowed in Gaza, according to the ministry, which makes the identification more difficult.
Friday’s handover is a sign of progress under the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement. But relief efforts under the pact still fall well short of what Palestinians in Gaza require, said Farhan Haqq, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations. More than 200,000 metric tons in aid is positioned to move into Gaza, but only 37,000 tons, mostly food, have been admitted, he said. […]
“Belgrade approves controversial development to please the U.S. president, critics say.”
Serbian lawmakers on Friday approved a luxury Trump-branded high-rise in Belgrade on the site of an architectural landmark.
The contentious project, proposed by Jared Kushner — son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump — had been on hold after several Serbian officials linked to it were charged with fraud. [!]
Critics also objected to the plan to build the half-billion-dollar complex, which includes a hotel and apartments, on the grounds of the former Yugoslav army headquarters. The site was left in ruins after NATO’s 1999 bombing to end the Kosovo war, and has long been regarded as an unofficial memorial, as well as a landmark of 20th-century Yugoslav architecture.
Despite the controversy, Serbia’s parliament pushed the project through, with President Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party passing a special law to strip the site of its cultural protections. Lawmakers took the unusual step of invoking a constitutional provision to declare the development a project of national importance, thereby allowing it to proceed.
Opposition lawmakers lashed out at the government over its decision, with center-left MP Marinika Tepić claiming Belgrade was sacrificing the country’s history simply “to please Donald Trump.”
[…] But Vučić has argued the project is necessary to improve ties with Washington, accusing its critics of wanting to get in the way of “better relations with the Trump administration.”
Kushner, who has no official role in the White House but has frequently advised his father-in-law, has pursued a flurry of major real-estate development deals around the world in recent years, including a luxury resort in Albania. Affinity Partners, a private investment firm founded by Kushner, was gifted a 99-year lease by Serbia’s government in 2022 to build the Trump-branded development in Belgrade.
Anti-corruption activists have taken to the streets across Serbia over the past year, protesting what they describe as the government’s impunity and lack of accountability. This week, the European Commission highlighted Belgrade’s slow pace of reforms on corruption and rule-of-law standards in its annual enlargement progress report.
I’m coming across articles predicting that the “AI bubble” is close to bursting – possibly resulting in the deranged uncle of global economic meltdowns. They cite poor returns for companies adopting AI; the tech giants’ bloated valuations, vast planned expenditure on data centres (I’ve seen it claimed that they will depreciate faster than they can produce revenue!), and multiple incestuous dealings among themselves; and the more general combination of a booming stockmarket with spreading belt-tightening in the middle class and outright destitution among the poor. If it happens, it will cause great suffering, but is also likely to make Trump so unpopular* no amount of gerrymandering and intimidation will keep Congress in Republican hands; Trump and those around him will face the alternatives of continuing as a lame duck administration, or an outright coup – most likely, I would guess, in the form of simply refusing to seat the new Congress.
*And of course will have similar effects on other incumbents everywhere.
KGsays
James D. Watson was a great scientist. James D. Watson was a complete shit. There is of course no contradiction between these statements.
Palantir CEO Not Sure if His Company Is Involved in Caribbean Bombing, but if It Is He Is Proud
“By the way, let me say something slightly political.”
That’s how Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp began a bizarre, two-minute rant at the end of a company earnings call Monday, during which he suggested that the Trump administration’s recently acquired habit of blowing up boats in the Caribbean is simply a matter of the government exercising its rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“To believe our Constitution does not give us the right to stop 60,000 deaths a year of working-class men and women is insane,” he said. “This country is right to stop that. I am very proud.”
Karp’s diatribe implied that people who opposed the Trump administration’s lawless attacks in Venezuela and around the South American-Caribbean region were actually classist, and did not care about the “working class” people being impacted by the illegal flow of fentanyl into the U.S. Unlike those oppositionists, the billionaire Karp said, Palantir is “on the side of the average American.”
“I want people to remember,” he said, “if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working-class people, we’d be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America.”
Karp runs the difficult-to-categorize government contractor [Palantir], whose data systems have been described by ICE as “mission critical” and decried by former employees. Palantir recently scored a $10 billion contract with the Army and raked in more than $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts between fiscal years 2021 and 2026, according to an analysis by left-leaning public interest advocacy and research nonprofit Public Citizen. The company is also a donor to Trump’s ballroom project. According to its own third-quarter earnings call, Palantir’s largest revenue segment is U.S. government contracts, which saw a 52% increase year over year and netted the company $486 million year-to-date.
Karp claimed to be unsure of the extent to which Palantir is involved in the U.S.’s bombing of South American people and boats. “I don’t know all the efforts we’re involved in, but to the extent we’re involved in these efforts, I and most Palantirians are very proud of this,” he concluded.
Cartoon: Actually affordable health insurance plans
robrosays
KG @ #99 — The fact that there is deemed to be an “AI bubble” is indicative of what’s looming. Bubbles always burst. Recall the “Dot-com Bubble” in the early 2000. But though that bubble burst, we still have the Internet and it’s bigger than ever. Some of the major players will barely hiccup, of course. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia will adjust. But a lot of small time “consultants” will go bust. AI and in particular genAI are probably here to stay and continue to evolve as there is value in the technology, just not the “god send” that sometimes portrayed.
The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds.
A judge had given the Republican administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.
After a Boston appeals court declined to immediately intervene, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an order late Friday pausing the requirement to distribute full SNAP payments until the appeals court rules on whether to issue a more lasting pause. Jackson handles emergency matters from Massachusetts.
Her order will remain in place until 48 hours after the appeals court rules, giving the administration time to return to the Supreme Court if the appeals court refuses to step in.
[…] Officials in more than a half-dozen states confirmed that some SNAP recipients already were issued full November payments on Friday. But Jackson’s order could prevent other states from initiating the payments.
WHICH STATES ISSUED SNAP PAYMENTS
In Wisconsin, more than $104 million of monthly food benefits became available at midnight on electronic cards for about 337,000 households, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said. The state was able to access the federal money so quickly by submitting a request to its electronic benefit card vendor to process the SNAP payments within hours of a Thursday court order to provide full benefits.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said state employees “worked through the night” to issue full November benefits “to make sure every Oregon family relying on SNAP could buy groceries” by Friday.
Hawaii had the information for November’s monthly payments ready to go, so it could submit it quickly for processing after Thursday’s court order — and before a higher court could potentially pause it, Joseph Campos II, deputy director of Hawaii’s Department of Human Services, told The Associated Press. […]
Trump’s administration told the Supreme Court that the fast-acting states were “trying to seize what they could of the agency’s finite set of remaining funds, before any appeal could even be filed, and to the detriment of other States’ allotments.”
“Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing.
Officials in California, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington state also said they moved quickly to issue full SNAP benefits Friday, while other states said they expected full benefits to arrive over the weekend or early next week. Still others said they were waiting for further federal guidance.
MANY SNAP RECIPIENTS FACE UNCERTAINTY
The court wrangling prolonged weeks of uncertainty for Americans with lower incomes.
An individual can receive a monthly maximum food benefit of nearly $300 and a family of four up to nearly $1,000, although many receive less than that under a formula that takes into consideration their income.
For some SNAP participants, it remained unclear when they would receive their benefits.
Jasmen Youngbey of Newark, New Jersey, waited in line Friday at a food pantry in the state’s largest city. As a single mom attending college, Youngbey said she relies on SNAP to help feed her 7-month-old and 4-year-old sons. But she said her account balance was at $0.
“Not everybody has cash to pull out and say, ‘OK, I’m going to go and get this,’ especially with the cost of food right now,” she said.
Later Friday, Youngbey said, she received her monthly SNAP benefits.
THE LEGAL BATTLE OVER SNAP TAKES ANOTHER TWIST
Because of the federal government shutdown, the Trump administration originally had said SNAP benefits would not be available in November. However, two judges ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the shutdown. One of those judges was U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who ordered the full payments Thursday.
In both cases, the judges ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.
On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program and that the other money was needed to shore up other child hunger programs.
Thursday’s federal court order rejected the Trump administration’s decision to cover only 65% of the maximum monthly benefit, a decision that could have left some recipients getting nothing for this month.
In its court filings Friday, Trump’s administration contended that the judge usurped both legislative and executive authority in ordering SNAP benefits to be fully funded.
“This unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers,” Sauer told the Supreme Court.
STATES ARE TAKING DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO FOOD AID
Some states said they stood ready to distribute SNAP money as quickly as possible.
Colorado and Massachusetts said SNAP participants could receive their full November payments as soon as Saturday. New York said access to full SNAP benefits should begin by Sunday. New Hampshire said full benefits should be available by this weekend. Arizona and Connecticut said full benefits should be accessible in the coming days.
Officials in North Carolina said they distributed partial SNAP payments Friday and full benefits could be available by this weekend. Officials in Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana and North Dakota also said they distributed partial November payments.
Amid the federal uncertainty, Delaware’s Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer said the state used its own funds Friday to provide the first of what could be a weekly relief payment to SNAP recipients.
She interceded to prevent the full SCOTUS from doing worse damage. […]
The first thing to say about this order is that I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Circuit Justices don’t usually explain administrative stays, and certainly not with this much detail about the timing. Here, Justice Jackson is clearly telling the First Circuit to hustle—a message I am sure the court of appeals will receive and act upon.
As for why Justice Jackson did it, to me, the clue is the last sentence. Had Jackson refused to issue an administrative stay, it’s entirely possible (indeed, she may already have known) that a majority of her colleagues were ready to do it themselves. […] from Jackson’s perspective, an administrative stay from the full Court would’ve been worse—almost certainly because it would have been open-ended (that is, it would not have had a deadline). The upshot would’ve been that Judge McConnell’s order could’ve remained frozen indefinitely while the full Court took its time. [I snipped an example]
Instead, by keeping the case for herself and granting the same relief, in contrast, Justice Jackson was able to directly influence the timing in both the First Circuit and the Supreme Court, at least for now. She nudged the First Circuit (which I expect to rule by the end of the weekend, Monday at the latest); and, assuming that court rules against the Trump administration, she also tied her colleagues’ hands—by having her administrative stay expire 48 hours after the First Circuit rules.
Of course, the full Court can extend the administrative stay (and Jackson can do it herself). But this way, at least, she’s putting pressure on everyone—the First Circuit and the full Court—to move very quickly in deciding whether or not Judge McConnell’s orders should be allowed to go into effect. From where I’m sitting, that’s why Justice Jackson, the most vocal critic among the justices of the Court’s behavior in Trump-related emergency applications, ruled herself here—rather than allowing the full Court to overrule her. It drastically increases the odds of the full Supreme Court resolving this issue by the end of next week—one way or the other.
[…] I think it’s both a savvy move from Justice Jackson and a pretty powerful rejoinder to the increasingly noisy (and ugly) criticisms of her behavior from the right. Given the gravity of this issue, it makes all the sense in the world for a justice in Jackson’s position to do whatever she could to ensure that the underlying question (must the USDA fully fund SNAP for November?) is resolved as quickly as possible—even if that first means pausing Judge McConnell’s rulings for a couple of days. If the alternative was a longer pause of McConnell’s rulings, then this was the least-worst alternative, at least for now. And regardless, imposing this compromise herself, rather than forcing her colleagues to overrule her, is, to me, a sign of a justice who takes her institutional responsibilities quite seriously, indeed—even when they lead away from the result she might otherwise have preferred if it were entirely up to her.
Donald Trump just can’t stop “improving” the White House to make it look more and more like one of his failed Atlantic City Casinos. He even demolished the East Wing of the White House to make it look like the bankrupt Trump Plaza casino after it was imploded. [video]
Early this week the executive mansion added a handsome new “The Oval Office” sign in fancy gold letters, printed out on three sheets of letter-sized paper like a homemade “Garage Sale” sign. (Fierce debate raged over whether the paper was letter or legal sized, but it was definitely not that funny foreign A4 stuff.) [social media post, with photo]
In an impressive feat of investigative journalism, Fast Company determined that the font used for the golden sign was “Shelley Script,” created by “famed type designer Matthew Carter” for Linotype in 1972. “It’s been used for everything from winery websites to book covers, according to Fonts in Use, and it’s a go-to choice for wedding invitations.”
Fast Company also consulted type historian Paul Shaw, who said that the typeface itself “is perfectly fine,” but added, “The problem is not the fit, but the idea of even slathering the phrase ‘The Oval Office’ on the exterior. It looks like part of a theme park.”
That goes double for another “improvement” we had so far missed, the addition of a grand new golden sign on the West Colonnade, which leads from the residence to the West Wing. That’s where Trump classed up the White House even further in September by adding a collection of framed portraits and photos of all the presidents, but instead of a photo of Joe Biden’s face, there’s a photo of an autopen, haw haw haw.
But to prove that this is one classy joint, the Colonnade now sports its own golden sign — this time in actual three-dimensional gold letters attached to the wall — proclaiming it the “Presidential Walk of Fame.” [Social media post, with photo]
The Colonnade also is covered in a fuckton of those ugly gold wall appliqués that have been slathered all over the Oval Office. The things are apparently reproducing like gilded tribbles, and may soon cover every surface of the White House […]
Inside the part of the Dementia Care Unit labeled 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓦𝓮𝓼𝓽 𝓦𝓲𝓷𝓰 Thursday, The Great Man held a press event to announce price reductions — for some Medicare patients at least — on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Trump is fond of calling the meds “the fat drug” or the “fat shot,” and reminded everyone that’s what he calls them, because even a good thing must be accompanied with some shame. While Eli Lily CEO Dave Ricks was giving his spiel about the deal, one of the guests at the meeting fainted. [video]
Trump appeared to be nodding off himself at several points during the speeches. […] But the commotion among the people behind him did at least rouse him enough that he stood up, and after briefly watching the drug execs and White House staffers help the guy, Trump turned away and went into standby mode, as press aides shooed reporters from the room. The image of Trump standing impassively while others helped the human being in distress became instantly iconic. [social media post]
Don’t worry, folks, plenty of people in the replies on Bluesky pointed out that their cats have far more empathy than Donald Trump has ever demonstrated in his entire life.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell put it aptly:
He looked and then turned away. […] And then Donald Trump, a person without a single sympathetic instinct, stood staring straight ahead, as if pretending that whatever suffering the man behind him was experiencing wasn’t happening.
[In my opinion, Trump hadn’t fully awakened from his mid-meeting nap.]
Lots of people were reminded of that time when Barack Obama helped a woman who fainted while he explained that the bugs in the Affordable Care Act website were being fixed. Notice how he doesn’t at all look like a zoned-out weirdo here. [video]
Predictably, the White House has made at least some flailing gestures toward insisting that Trump cared very deeply, despite his blank stare. As Newsweek reports, Dr. Mehmet Oz insisted in a video released by the White House that Great Leader was a secret hero, at least once the cameras were gone.
Oz said that he somehow managed to get the wife of the poor man on the phone within moments of the guy collapsing. […]
“I wanted to speak to the wife to let her know what was happening, but also comfort her. The president saw me in the corner and said, ‘Who are you talking to?’ I said, sort of sheepishly, I was talking to the wife. And he said give me that phone,” Oz said.
“And he talked to her and got her much calmer than I could have ever done. And I just think he’s just a wonderful human being that he would take time. He could have gone off and done ten other things. But he actually cared that the wife of a man who he has never met before felt in a safer place.”
“He remembers the forgotten folks,” Oz added.
Oz prefaced the story by insisting it “speaks loudly to the kind of person the president is,” and we agree: He can never be seen as anything but heroic, so he has his lickspittles make up bullshit stories about how he’s the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being they’ve ever known in their lives.
Health insurance cost update, as reported by the Washington Post:
[…] [Graph and map of premium increases under the Affordable Health Care Act]
Enrollment in the marketplaces soared once they offered enhanced subsidies, and the subsidies’ expiration is hitting older Americans with higher incomes the hardest.
The ACA initially capped the percentage of annual income a person can spend on insurance purchased through the law for anyone earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $62,000 for a single person and $129,000 for a family of four). Nearly five years ago, Congress extended the cap to all enrollees, a provision that also expires at the end of the year.
Fewer than 10 percent of marketplace enrollees will lose access to spending caps, according to KFF, a health policy research organization. But the sticker shock is hefty, especially for those in their 50s or 60s, since insurers are allowed to hike premiums up to three times as much based on a person’s age. [Chart]
Cost increases are smaller for people earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level (around $23,000 for an individual and $48,000 for a family of four).
People earning between 150 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level will also see their monthly payments rise, depending on their income and plan. Add in the underlying spike in insurance costs, and some Americans will pay thousands of dollars more a year. The increase in prices varies by state. [maps]
Gary Epperley, 59
San Jose
Monthly payments rising from $492.16 to $1,260 […]
Robert Funderburk, 51; Gretchen Kalwinski, 50
Chicago
Monthly payments rising from $1,309 to $2,359
I don’t think I can count on the marketplace anymore. We were working with $1,309 before. … It’s not cheap, but we pinched and we made it work. But this is absolutely not doable. This is inspiring conversations like, “I guess we need to move to Canada.”
[…] Matt Hornberger, 61
Altoona, Pennsylvania
Monthly payments for couple rising from $670 to $2,054
Between the high deductible and $25,000 in premiums, this is 40 percent of our income. I’m just trying to live a life here and be able to go to the doctor when you need to go to the doctor. It’s just obscene what politicians have allowed to happen.
[…] Diane Swintal, 63
Irvine, California
Monthly payments rising from $702 to $1,211
I’m definitely going down to a bronze plan. I have to — 1,200 bucks is not something I can pay each month.
[…] Douglas McCombs, 63; Kiki Yablon, 56
Chicago
Monthly payments rising from $1,269 to $2,746
[…]
“How the Trump Administration Is Giving Even More Tax Breaks to the Wealthy”
“The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service are issuing rules that provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax relief to big companies and the ultrarich.”
With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country’s most profitable companies and wealthiest investors.
The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, through a series of new notices and proposed regulations, are giving breaks to giant private equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real estate investors, insurance providers and a variety of multinational corporations.
The primary target: The administration is rapidly gutting a 2022 law intended to ensure that a sliver of the country’s most profitable corporations pay at least some federal income tax. The provision, the corporate alternative minimum tax, was passed by Democrats and signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It sought to stop corporations like Microsoft, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson from being able to report big profits to shareholders yet low tax liabilities to the federal government. It was projected to raise $222 billion over a decade.
But the succession of notices the Treasury and I.R.S. have issued beginning this summer means the tax could bring in a fraction of that.
These breaks come in addition to the roughly $4 trillion package of tax cuts that President Trump signed into law in July. The legislation, passed entirely by Republicans, heavily benefits businesses and the ultrawealthy. It is projected to add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit and came with steep cuts to health care for the elderly and food stamps for the poorest Americans.
[…] the aggressive actions of the Trump administration raise questions about whether it is exceeding its legal authority.
[…] “Treasury has clearly been enacting unlegislated tax cuts,” said Kyle Pomerleau, a tax economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Congress determines tax law. Treasury undermines this constitutional principle when it asserts more authority over the structure of the tax code than Congress provides it.”
The alternative minimum tax isn’t the administration’s only effort to roll back taxes on large businesses and wealthy individuals. Last month, the Treasury and I.R.S. granted new tax relief to foreign investors in U.S. real estate. In August, they withdrew regulations to prevent multinationals from avoiding taxes by claiming duplicate losses in multiple countries at once. And, as The New York Times previously reported, the Treasury and I.R.S. have rolled back a crackdown on an aggressive tax shelter used by big companies, including Occidental Petroleum and AT&T. That amounts to another $100 billion in cuts — and likely far more, according to tax advisers. [!]
[…] The Treasury’s actions are probably contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit, tax experts said. That is on top of the trillions that the legislation signed by Mr. Trump in July is already adding to the deficit. Yet unlike laws passed by Congress, Treasury is under no obligation to publicly account for revenue lost by its actions — such as cutting spending to offset the money no longer being collected.
Doing it through the Treasury means “you can just give away the goodies to one group, without having to take back anything from another,” said Daniel Hemel, a law professor at New York University. […]
Big companies effectively keep two sets of books — one for investors and another for the I.R.S. The profits they report to the I.R.S. permit various deductions that can bring a firm’s tax rate far below the 21 percent corporate tax rate.
A holy grail of tax planning is figuring out a deduction that businesses can claim on their tax return — but one that they don’t report to investors, which would dent their profits, potentially hurt their stock price and thus depress compensation paid to executives. […]
The original proposal was relatively simple. Limited to a tiny group of corporations averaging profits of more than $1 billion a year, it would require I.R.S. auditors to look at the income reported to shareholders. If the companies paid taxes at a rate of less than 15 percent on those earnings, the new tax would kick in. It would hit as few as 80 corporations, according to one study.
Industry lobbyists swung into action, and Democrats in Congress began carving out enormous exceptions, permitting deductions for, say, businesses investing in heavy machinery and wireless spectrum used by the likes of T-Mobile and Verizon.
[…] The crypto companies “owe tax and they’re not happy about it, so they’re going to the Trump administration for a special carve-out,” complained Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.
Some energy firms are already benefiting, too. Cheniere Energy, the giant natural gas exporter, disclosed in a securities filing last month that, thanks to the most recent Treasury notice, it was entitled to a refund of $380 million of previously paid alternative minimum tax.
Private equity firms are yet another beneficiary. Beginning in early 2023, the industry giant Blackstone pressed for a number of provisions to be included in the regulations to administer the minimum tax.
This summer, Blackstone succeeded. Much of the recent guidance grants Blackstone’s requests, giving private equity firms enormous flexibility to calculate their bills. […]
“They’re effectively repealing the statute,” said Monte Jackel, a tax lawyer and former I.R.S. official, referring to the minimum tax law.
“In March, the U.S. government sent more than 200 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.”
[…] We interviewed 40 of the men who were imprisoned: They described being beaten, sexually assaulted by guards and driven to the brink of suicide.
A team of independent forensic analysts examined their testimony. The experts called it consistent and credible, saying most of the acts described met the United Nations’ definition of torture. [!]
They said they were shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed until they passed out.
They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours.
One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods.
They said they were told by officials that they would die in the Salvadoran prison, that the world had forgotten them. […]
“‘You are all terrorists,’” Edwin Meléndez, 30, recalled being told by officers who added: “‘Terrorists must be treated like this.’”
[…] the men received little to no due process before being expelled to the terrorism prison in El Salvador, and they were abruptly released in July, part of a larger diplomatic deal that included the release of 10 Americans and U.S. residents held in Venezuela.
Mr. Trump, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, praised Salvadoran officials for “the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.”
[…] In interviews, however, the men sent to the prison described frequent, intense physical and psychological abuse. Beyond the beatings, tear gas and trips to the isolation room, the men said they were mocked or ignored by medical personnel, forced to spend 24 hours a day under harsh lights and made to drink from wells of fetid water.
[…] Several doctors from that team, known as the Independent Forensic Expert Group, said the men’s testimonies, along with photographs of what they described as their injuries, were consistent and credible, providing “compelling evidence” to support accusations of torture. The group’s assessments in other cases have been used in courts around the world.
[…] The forensic experts said that they were struck by how similar the men’s allegations were. The former prisoners, each interviewed separately, described the same timeline and methods of abuse, with many of the same details.
When such “identical methods of abuse” are described by multiple people, the experts wrote in their assessment, it “often indicates the existence of an institutional policy and practice of torture.”
[…] Of the 40 men interviewed for this article, The Times found criminal accusations, beyond immigration and traffic offenses, against three of them.
Victor Ortega, 25, who said he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet while in the Salvadoran prison, has “pending charges for discharge of a firearm and theft,” according to the Trump administration.
A second man we interviewed, Neiyerver Leon, 27, had a misdemeanor charge for possession of drug paraphernalia and was fined.
[…] Many of the men say they still don’t know why they were put in a prison for terrorists.
[…] The prisoners said they were never allowed visits from lawyers or relatives.
[…] In September, a U.S. federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants. But the ruling does not prevent the government from using other lawful means to remove people from the United States, meaning Mr. Trump could send more people to prison in El Salvador.
In the interviews, the freed prisoners reported ongoing physical and mental health problems, which they attributed to the beatings and other abuse: blurred vision; recurring migraines; trouble breathing; shoulder, back and knee pain some linked to the “crane” position; nightmares; insomnia. Some have seen doctors, but many said they could not afford to. […]
Over 3,300 flights traveling to, from and within the U.S. have been delayed and 914 were canceled as of this afternoon, according to FlightAware.com.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport remains in the lead with over 300 delays and almost 130 cancellations. Chicago O’Hare International Airport follows closely behind with 280 delays and 83 cancelations.
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has had 189 delays and 56 cancellations, while John F. Kennedy International Airport has almost 300 delays and 50 cancellations, per FlighAware.com
Researchers believe this ceramic can be used in radiation-hazardous facilities, X-ray rooms, and laboratories […] “We mixed clay imported from Iraq with glass production waste and a small amount of boric acid. This allowed us to create durable and inexpensive ceramics that effectively protect against gamma radiation. The addition of glass increases the strength of the tile. This method allows for the disposal of glass waste in building materials, including it[“]
[…]
“Currently, gamma radiation is attenuated or absorbed by lead, concrete, lead oxide, tungsten, or tin-based materials. These materials are not always suitable as protection against gamma radiation since they can be expensive, heavy, and toxic to humans and the environment.[“]
[…]
In new ceramics, raw materials are widely available, and the manufacturing technology is simple. […] the team is focused on optimizing the ceramic composition for specific applications and testing the materials under different conditions to prepare them for practical use.
Angel Goodwin used to work remotely, processing applications for Medicaid and for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or snap. People would sometimes yell at her over the phone—“I’ve been called every name but a child of God,” she said—but it was worse when they cried. “Especially the elderly. They would be approved for, like, thirty dollars a month, and they’re getting Social Security for, like, nine hundred and forty-three dollars. They’d be, like, ‘Honey, I can’t—I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t have anybody.’ ” Goodwin, a single mother with an eleven-year-old son, also received snap benefits. “Little do they know I’m in the same boat,” she said.
Earlier this year, Goodwin began to feel pain shooting down from her shoulder, most likely a consequence of repetitive computer work. At the beginning of October, she took a short-term disability leave. Then, toward the end of the month, she logged in to her snap account and saw an alarming notification: November benefits weren’t coming. She and her son had already scaled back to subsist on the short-term disability benefits, which were “not very much at all,” she said. Now they’d have to make do with less […]
Amid the prolonged government shutdown, which is now the longest in American history, snap benefits have become a political football. In previous shutdowns, emergency funds have been used to cover the program[…] But the Trump Administration has declined to do so. A number of states have stepped in to cover the gap, or to provide additional money to food banks; Texas, which has a multibillion-dollar rainy-day fund, has done neither. (H-E-B, the grocery-store chain which arguably serves as a second layer of social services in the state, has donated six million dollars to food banks.) […]
Goodwin, who grew up in South Carolina, had what she describes as “a pretty rough childhood.” […] She got a job working the night shift at a gas station, and earned enough money to move into a hotel where she paid by the week. It took two years to save up enough to cover a deposit to rent a small apartment. “I didn’t have any furniture—no couch or anything like that, just a couple of pans that I’d had in the hotel,” she said. “We pretty much slept on the floor. We literally started from zero.” […]she’d saved up enough money to cover the deposit on an apartment in Houston. Two years ago, she moved into a renovated two-bedroom with pale-gray walls and a bright, narrow kitchen. Her days were taken up with work and with homeschooling her son.
On the morning of November 3rd, day three of no snap, Goodwin put her son in the car and drove twenty-five minutes to the West Houston Assistance Ministries, a nonprofit social-services organization, which was hosting a special food-distribution event for snap recipients. When she arrived, at around 9 a.m., a line of cars snaked down the block, and volunteers in neon vests directed traffic. Nationwide, fourteen per cent of households are considered food-insecure. In Harris County, which comprises Houston, the figure is close to forty per cent. […] “We’ve been focussed on food, but we’ve also seen an increase in evictions—it’s a crisis on top of a crisis,” Neysa Gavion, a social worker and a senior case manager at WHAM, told me. […]
Goodwin’s car inched forward until she reached the front of the line. She popped her trunk and a volunteer placed a box inside. Another volunteer offered Goodwin a bouquet of flowers that still had a day or two of life in them. Goodwin, surprised, thanked her effusively. When she got back to her apartment, she sent her son into the other room to resume his lesson—he was learning about phytoplankton—as she surveyed the box’s contents: a bag of grapes, some chicken, a can of SpaghettiOs, a gallon of milk. “He loves SpaghettiOs, so that will be his school lunch,” Goodwin said. She had a small stockpile of dried beans, rice, and canned vegetables, some of it from other food banks. […]
Online, people were saying that a judge had told President Trump that he’d have to release snap funds, but Goodwin wasn’t putting too much stock into that. “It’s just so hard to tell. I think it may start up again in December, or maybe something supplemental will happen. Honestly, to be completely transparent with you, I try not to put my faith in the system,” she said. […]
“Both countries are mulling sanctions extension requests for their Lukoil-owned facilities. But deeper problems lie ahead.”
Romania and Bulgaria are racing against time to stop their critical oil refineries from shutdowns before U.S. sanctions on their Russian owners kick in later this month.
Washington’s decision to blacklist Lukoil and Rosneft has sent EU countries where Russia’s two largest oil companies are present into a tailspin, as they scramble to prevent fuel cutoffs before the sanctions take effect on Nov. 21.
On Friday, Bulgarian lawmakers approved a new bill that would allow the government to appoint a manager of the country’s mammoth Lukoil-owned Burgas refinery, granting them sweeping powers to take operational control of the facility, approve its sale and nationalize it if necessary. In the meantime, the country is sounding out asking for a sanctions exemption.
Romania — home to Lukoil’s Petrotel refinery — is yet to take a formal decision. But Bucharest is also considering asking for a “sanctions extension” as it drafts its own response, said a senior government official, granted anonymity to speak freely. Nationalization is seen as a “last option,” they added.
Still, Romanian Energy Minister Bogdan-Gruia Ivan told POLITICO that Bucharest was “prepared” operationally for any scenario. The government’s plan will aim to preserve “the economic activity of Romania, but at the same time to stop financing the Russian Federation,” he added.
[…] Efforts to secure new ownership for the refineries were thrown further into doubt after Swiss-based trading house Gunvor on Thursday retracted its bid to buy Lukoil’s international assets, following a blistering rebuke to the sales offer by the U.S. Treasury.
The new measures also impact other EU countries. Germany has won a six-month exemption for its Rosneft-owned Schwedt refinery, which has been under government control since 2022. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday travelled to Washington in hopes of securing a waiver on Russian pipeline oil imports for his country and neighboring Slovakia.
[…] The EU has in recent months stepped up its campaign to end the bloc’s remaining reliance on Moscow for energy.
[…] Technically, securing exemptions or appointing a state-backed manager to the refineries shouldn’t be an issue.
That said, the worst-case scenario — where the refineries cease operations — would play out very differently for the two countries.
For Bulgaria, where the Russian-owned refinery provides up to 80 percent of the country’s fuel needs, it would leave Sofia without supplies “by the end of the year,” said Martin Vladimirov, a senior analyst at the Center for the Study of Democracy think tank.
Romania’s facility, meanwhile, supplies around “20 percent” of the country’s fuel, said Ana Otilia Nuțu, an energy analyst at the Expert Forum think tank. A shutdown would therefore prompt “a few months” of mild price increases, she said, as the country races to find replacement imports.
Still, a shutdown could hit exports to neighboring Moldova, she added. And “if Moldova gets hit really bad, then it’s going to be another … huge PR opportunity for Russia,” Nuțu said.
The Moldovan government on Friday put forward its own proposal to buy Lukoil’s assets in the country, including an aircraft fuel depot, and said it had also asked Washington for a sanctions delay.
[…] While Vladimirov [Martin Vladimirov, a senior analyst at the Center for the Study of Democracy think tank] estimated the value of Bulgaria’s historically profit-making refinery at $1.5 billion, Romania’s Petrotel is less attractive, according to Nuțu. The facility, which had an annual turnover below €40 million in 2023, is debt-laden and “needs very large investments,” she said.
[…] Meanwhile, future arbitration is also a challenge — especially amid a government takeover.
[…] he decision to sell the refineries must be coordinated “at the EU level,” to prevent risks of Lukoil circumventing the U.S. sanctions.
[…] Whatever happens, he said, Brussels should probe potential buyers before the transaction takes place, given the lurking Russian presence. […]
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and top adviser Corey Lewandowski ordered officials at [ICE] to purchase 10 jets from Spirit Airlines, before learning that the airline not only didn’t own the planes, but they also didn’t come with engines.
[…]
a few weeks ago. […] The pair planned to use the planes to increase deportation flights, and for their own travel […] Noem and Lewandowski were warned by ICE officials that the purchase would cost significantly more than simply increasing the number of flight contractors
McMinnville Grocery Outlet, tried to offer a 10% discount to all SNAP recipients whose food-assistance money had been frozen. But when the feds told them no, they came up with a go-around: Extending the offer to all customers.
[…]
McGinty announced […] “If you do not need a discount, please do not ask for it.” But if you do, “Take it. Ask for it.” […] Six days into the offer, […] the honor system appears to be working.
[…]
Department of Agriculture notified [tens of thousands of grocers] last week of the program’s “Equal Treatment Rule” prohibiting discrimination. The rule states that charging SNAP recipients anything other than the price charged to their overall customer base could result in their removal from the program. […] three Oregon owners, however, navigated around the restriction […] About one in six Oregonians benefits from the federal food assistance program.
A neo-Nazi rally outside New South Wales parliament on Saturday morning was deemed “authorised” as police had chosen not to oppose the proposed public assembly.
Two rows of men clad in black stood at the front gates on Macquarie Street in Sydney and displayed a banner calling for the Jewish lobby to be abolished. About 60 protesters attended the demonstration, which started just before 10am and lasted about 20 minutes, according to police.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said the force received a “Form 1” from a group called White Australia on October 28, notifying police of its plans to hold a protest.Under the Summary Offences Act, a public assembly is taken to be “authorised” if police were given at least seven days notice and a court has not prohibited the gathering.
If a protest is “authorised”, participants are immune from being convicted of certain offences like blocking a person or vehicle. “The police area command needs to make an assessment on what’s on the Form 1,” Commissioner Lanyon said. “They were comfortable … it was not one that they needed to actually take objection to.” ( WTF? Comfortable with nazis and blatant racist haters protesting? Butsame police force tried to ban pro-Palestinain marches.. -ed)
An Adelaide teacher allegedly dressed up as slain US conservative activist Charlie Kirk for a school Halloween event, in an incident described by the school’s principal as “completely unacceptable”.
In a statement issued by South Australia’s Education Department, the principal of Urrbrae Agricultural High said the incident occurred at an event last Friday and that the teacher had subsequently been “directed away from the school”.
The principal, Todd George, also said he had apologised to parents about the teacher’s costume.
Huh, Kirk was a horrible scary human being so, I can kinda see that but then so was Hitler with similar views as Kirk and yeah, dressing upas him wouldn’t be okay either so anyhow..
StevoRsays
Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket will launch a NASA mission to Mars this weekend, and you can watch the action live.
The twin ESCAPADE Mars probes are scheduled to lift off atop the partially reusable New Glenn from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday (Nov. 9), during a 2.5-hour window that opens at 2:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT).
You can watch the launch — the second-ever for New Glenn — live via Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Space.com will carry the feed as well, if the company makes it available.
I guess some NASA people are still working despite the shutdown..
StevoRsays
The Young Turks has this clip – YouTube Is Censoring Videos Of Israel’s War Crimes(under ten minutes long) the first part of which is disturbing if well discussed & worthwhile until it segues into .. what the .. Ana Kasparian? Seriously? Anti-vaxxy or very adjacent to, really?
“Amid an ideological civil war over antisemites in the MAGA movement, the right-wing podcast superstar unleashed a xenophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani.”
MAGA thought leader Ben Shapiro made headlines earlier this week when he unloaded on his former friend and political ally Tucker Carlson over the latter’s chummy interview with the unabashed antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Shapiro correctly accused Carlson of “normalizing” the vile identity-based hatred emanating from Fuentes and his followers […]
As the conservative firewall that once isolated Fuentes as a “fringe” kook crumbles, MAGA is at war with itself. On one side, overt bigots such as Fuentes and Carlson have become increasingly critical of Israel and more open about their antisemitism. On the other side, pro-Israel right-wingers such as Shapiro who seemed comfortable with intolerance when it was directed at Blacks, immigrants, trans people and other marginalized groups, are shocked (shocked!) that their former friends also hate Jews.
[…] The hate is coming from inside the house.
Case in point: Hours before New York City voters elected Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor, MAGA podcast superstar Megyn Kelly delivered a rant against the New York state assemblyman that was both chillingly prejudiced and comically un-self-aware.
[…] Kelly said Mamdani, a U.S. citizen born in Uganda, is “not American,” and that Muslims “should not be ascending to our mayors and our governors” because “the tenets of Islam are not consistent with Western civilization.” [video]
The xenophobic diatribe came a week after Kelly declared, “I do have a problem with Islam. I do. I think it’s totally incompatible with Western values and I don’t think people who practice Islam should be the leaders of America. I just don’t. That’s how I feel and I’m entitled to that belief because Islam is more than a religion. It is a political ideology…All of Islam is political Islam. That’s the truth. And we can’t be afraid to say it.”
[…] Kelly [said], “Yeah. Like immigrants like my grandfather from Italy, and then my grandfather on the other side from Ireland, who desperately wanted to assimilate. But if they didn’t … you’d have some guy with an Irish brogue eating a lot of meat and potatoes and drinking a lot. That was the most significant downside to the Irish not potentially assimilating. It’s a very different story when you’re talking about immigrants from Uganda who are Muslim at a minimum and potentially radicalized Muslims.” […]
indicting millions of Muslims as inherently dangerous and untrustworthy isn’t fearless iconoclasm — it’s gutter bigotry. It’s un-American. And it’s very difficult to believe Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, would be OK with another MAGA influencer declaring all Jews to be unfit for public office or disloyal to America.
[…] Irish immigrants in the 19th century were regularly met with “No Irish Need Apply” declarations in job listings. A Harper’s Weekly political cartoon from 1871 depicts an Irish immigrant as an ape waving a rum bottle, sitting on a gunpowder keg. In the early […] and Italians were often depicted in the mainstream press as racially inferior criminals.
A New York Times editorial in 1891 deplored the public lynchings of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans, while also saying the victims were “sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins … to us a pest without mitigations.”
As for Kelly’s assertion that Islam is a “political ideology,” both Italians and Irish — two groups with large Catholic populations — were accused of being politically loyal to the Pope in Rome. […] [video]
MAGA bankroller Elon Musk has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and backed the Nazi-sympathizing German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD). And, of course, President Donald Trump’s got a long track record as MAGA’s bigot-in-chief.
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Summit this week, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “I just want to make it really clear: I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.” He smiled, selling it as a joke — but many a truth is said in jest. If there’s a “Hitler sucks” wing of the GOP, then the opposite wing, by definition, does not think “Hitler sucks.”
Meanwhile, after the election, Kelly endorsed MAGA intellectual architect Steve Bannon’s commentary on Mamdani’s victory: “Forty to fifty years of visa scams and ten to fifteen million illegal alien invaders, that’s what you end up with. If you don’t think that’s a reality check, you’re not paying attention.”
Shapiro and his allies may want to exorcise Carlson, Fuentes and other antisemites in MAGA’s midst. But if rooting out identity-based hatred and conspiracy theories about the sinister “other” is the goal (and it should be), MAGA’s big tent will have to get a whole lot smaller.
Pulte’s X post came after Trump posted an image on his social media platform Truth Social in which he placed an image of himself next to one of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the 30-year mortgage standard. He wrote “30-year mortgage” above Roosevelt’s image and “50-year mortgage” above his.
In a separate post, Pulte wrote: “Trump proposes 50-year mortgage to help affordability.”
This is Trump’s proposal to deal with excessive housing costs, make mortgages even longer. It probably won’t actually help but until there are actual terms spelled out and we see how many banks are interested it’s hard to say. This will probably reduce monthly payments slightly in exchange for adding another 20 years of payments.
It’s the sort of thing that would make sense to Trump because he buys property without intending to pay off the loan anyways. He just pays for a while, threatens or goes bankrupt, and then demands to renegotiate with the bank.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and his Republican leadership team are scrambling for new ideas to end the 38-day government shutdown after it became clear Friday that tactics to pressure Democrats to vote for a House-passed funding bill have failed so far.
Senate Republicans are batting around various ideas to break the stalemate, such as voting on a new Senate-drafted bill that would fund a large swath of the federal government through fiscal year 2026.
At this point there is no widely popular plan, just a bunch of proposals. Several of the proposals would be out of the question for the Democrats. The significance here is that the Republicans are throwing out ideas to deal with the situation as the elected Republicans want to find a way out. The Republicans are less organized and more desperate then the Democrats on the shutdown at this point.
Of course having the Senate agree to a plan doesn’t solve the problem on it’s own but there would be a lot of pressure on the House Republicans if the Senate does advance some plan. At that point the House Republicans cant even say it’s the Democrats refusing.
“Ross Douthat Somehow Not Worst Person On ‘Did Women Ruin Everything Ever?’ Panel”
“Meet Helen Andrews.”
You know, I wasn’t going to write anything about that “The Great Feminization” article that has been making the “Oh God, can you believe this shit?” rounds for the last month or so. I read it. I read the whole damn thing and then decided that it was just too stupid to even address.
If you haven’t read it, the gist of it is that its author, Helen Andrews, believes that the presence of women in various professions is going to lead to the absolute ruin of society.
But this week, I saw, in The New York Times, an article titled “Did liberal feminism ruin the workplace?” with Ross Douthat’s byline attached. It was part of his “Interesting Times” series. An hour long discussion with our gal Helen and Leah Libresco Sargeant, identified as a “conservative feminist.”
Fine. You got me, Helen. Let’s do this.
I watched the whole thing. And then, craving more punishment, I guess, I watched a video of Andrews being interviewed by Meghan Daum, the memoirist who later became a weird “anti-woke” scold. And one thing I can tell you is that Helen Andrews is so far off the reservation that she made these folks sound like the voices of reason, compassion, and progress.
Another thing I can tell you is that Helen Andrews does not have many good female friends. Her perception of “what women are like” makes her sound exactly like an angry male incel who spends far more time in his head stewing about how awful women are than actually interacting with any.
According to Andrews, male virtues and vices are what propel things like innovation, success, and progress, thus making the world a better place for all involved. These virtues and vices include things like risk-taking, truth-seeking, being able to have a fight and then immediately make up afterwards without holding any grudges, not avoiding conflict, being competitive, taking criticism, bonding by acting like frat boys, being physically strong, being rational …
Actually, now that I am writing this, I am not wholly sure she’s engaged with that many men, either. […] In fact, I suspect her entire understanding of gendered characteristics may have been derived from a little number from My Fair Lady. [video]
I did watch one other video of Andrews — one in which her libertarian ex-boyfriend shared that the reason she opposed Obamacare was because it would “ameliorate suffering,” which she viewed as a good, character-building thing and that she said if she were in charge, the first thing she’d do was legalize assault so men would get into more fist fights or “at least live under the threat.” He also called her out for saying she wanted to set people up on dates and then try to seduce the man away in order to “play with his mind” and hurt the woman.
It … explains a lot. [video]
However, if I’ve learned anything from all of this self-inflicted torture, it is that all we really need to do if we want to turn practically everyone in the nation into a feminist and bleeding heart liberal (or perhaps just an opposer of sweeping generalizations) is simply to have Helen Andrews talk to them.
Trump administration orders states to pause paying full SNAP benefits
“A memo issued by the Agriculture Department warns states that if they do not comply with the new orders, they will face consequences.”
The Trump administration over the weekend ordered states to stop distributing full food assistance benefits for November to the 42 million low-income Americans at risk of food insecurity.
A memo from the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service directs states to “immediately undo any steps taken to issue” full payments to recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.[!]
Instead, the White House is asking states to issue only partial payments — which are about 65 percent of a usual SNAP payment.
The memo warns states that if they do not comply with the orders, they will face consequences, including the cancellation of federal funding that states need to cover some of SNAP’s administrative costs. [!]
The federal government pays for all SNAP benefits, but states administer the program to its residents. States and the federal government share administrative costs.
The move came after Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday evening temporarily blocked a Rhode Island judge’s order, which directed the Trump administration to release November SNAP benefits in full by that same day. [Justice Jackson had good reasons for that ruling. See comment 105.]
On Thursday, the Rhode Island judge ruled that the Trump administration has resisted paying full benefits amid a legal battle over whether federal officials would deliver the funds for the program, which is a vital lifeline for millions of people who rely on it to afford groceries.
While earlier Friday the Trump administration had said it was working to release the benefits to comply with the Rhode Island judge’s order — suggesting that the money would indeed be disbursed — the administration appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. […]
“Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land”
“The Justice Department moved an inquiry that appeared initially focused on the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan to South Florida and is beginning to recruit line prosecutors.”
Far-right influencers have been hinting in recent weeks that they have finally found a venue — Miami — and a federal prosecutor — Jason A. Reding Quiñones — to pursue long-promised charges of a “grand conspiracy” against President Trump’s adversaries. [FFS]
Their theory of the case, still unsupported by the evidence: A cabal of Democrats and “deep-state” operatives, possibly led by former President Barack Obama, has worked to destroy Mr. Trump in a yearslong plot spanning the inquiry into his 2016 campaign to the charges he faced after leaving office.
But that narrative, which has been promoted in general terms by Mr. Trump and taken root online, has emerged in a nascent but widening federal investigation.
Last week, Mr. Reding Quiñones, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, issued more than two dozen subpoenas, including to officials who took part in the inquiry into ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Among them, they said, were James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence; Peter Strzok, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent who helped run the Russia investigation; and Lisa Page, a former lawyer at the bureau.
The investigation in Florida appears to focus, for now, on a January 2017 intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, particularly the role played by John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, in drafting the document.
[…] over the past two months, the investigation into Mr. Brennan’s actions has widened to encompass other actions in a broader time frame, according to officials with knowledge of the situation.
[…] The investigation started earlier this year after criminal referrals to the Justice Department by top Trump intelligence officials. It was assigned to David Metcalf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who was given special authority to scrutinize and possibly prosecute Mr. Brennan, according to four people with knowledge of his actions who requested anonymity to discuss an open matter.
Mr. Metcalf, a veteran prosecutor who held senior Justice Department positions during the first Trump administration, was given a relatively narrow mandate in his authorization, limited to examining Mr. Brennan’s work on the intelligence assessment in 2017. He struggled to advance a case that was regarded as weak by current and former department officials.
It is not clear if Mr. Metcalf believed a prosecution of Mr. Brennan was viable. But he never got the chance to complete his work.
This fall, senior Justice Department officials transferred the investigation from Mr. Metcalf to Mr. Reding Quiñones, as part of a decision to greatly expand the scope of the Brennan investigation into other, unspecified activities [!], according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
That kind of internal maneuvering, once highly unusual, has become commonplace under Mr. Trump, who has personally and publicly directed top department officials to go after people he reviles, often over the objections of experienced investigators who have found insufficient evidence to proceed. [!]
[I snipped details regarding Lindsey Halligan, as an example of the tactic described above.]
The Florida subpoenas seek documents or communications related to the intelligence community assessment from July 1, 2016, through Feb. 28, 2017, according to people familiar with them. It commands the recipients to provide them to prosecutors in Miami by Nov. 20.
Some of the people who have reviewed the subpoenas said they did not mention specific crimes being investigated. Most federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations, and offenses must be charged in a venue where the conduct occurred. It is not clear how the preparations of the intelligence assessment, which took place in and around Washington, would be connected to Florida, apart from Mr. Trump’s residence there.
Whether the subpoenas will lead to charges, much less to convictions, is impossible to know. But merely creating an aura of criminality around Trump foes by celebrating incremental prosecutorial moves is a trophy in itself to die-hard Trump supporters […]
[…] Mr. Reding Quiñones, a military veteran, has pursued his mandate to hunt down Mr. Trump’s foes with a gung-ho attitude that has endeared him to the president and the small but influential cadre of loyalists pushing hardest for prosecutions.
[…] People familiar with the nascent inquiry say there have been signs in recent days that it is ramping up.
The Justice Department, for example, has begun to recruit line prosecutors in Florida to work on the case […]
The 2017 intelligence assessment said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a multifaceted information operation targeting the U.S. presidential election. That included hacking Democratic emails and releasing them, as well as seeding social media with messages promoting Mr. Trump and denigrating his rival, Hillary Clinton.
[…] a judgment in the assessment stated that Mr. Putin aspired to improve Mr. Trump’s chances of winning — not just sow chaos and undermine Mrs. Clinton.
[…] Two previous investigations — one by the Justice Department’s inspector general and the other by the special counsel John H. Durham — have already scrutinized the actions of law enforcement and intelligence officials and found no evidence to support charges against high-level officials like Mr. Brennan.
[…] The statute of limitations would also likely be an issue. The intelligence assessment occurred nearly nine years ago. The Russia inquiry ended in 2019, when the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III issued a report.
Still, influencers like Mr. Davis have floated theories about how federal prosecutors could extend the statute of limitations. They have claimed, without providing evidence, that the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, during which the F.B.I. found reams of highly sensitive classified documents, was somehow connected to the Russia investigation. […]
More than 4,200 flights traveling into, from and within the U.S. have been delayed, and 1,500 flights have been canceled as of Sunday afternoon, according to FlightAware.com.
Chicago O’Hare International Airport accounts for many of the delays, with over 600 flights delayed, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport accounts for most of the cancellations, with more than 320.
Southwest has delayed 1,030 flights so far today, and Delta has canceled almost 390.
[…] U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,500 weekend flights by Saturday evening as the Federal Aviation Administration’s mandate to reduce air traffic because of the government shutdown showed no signs of easing.
[…] Analysts warn that the upheaval will intensify and spread far beyond air travel if cancellations keep growing and reach into Thanksgiving week.
Already there are concerns about the squeeze on tourism destinations and holiday shipping.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that travel will be “reduced to a trickle” ahead of Thanksgiving, warning that many will not be able to spend the holiday with their families. […]
Some air traffic controllers have reported to their supervisors that they cannot afford to buy gas. They can’t drive to work because they aren’t being paid.
More details:
Staffing accounted for about 71% of total National Airspace System delay minutes yesterday, according to Airlines for America, which analyzed Federal Aviation Administration data.
“Staffing-related delay minutes exceeded 184,000 — the highest of the shutdown,” the association said about yesterday’s delays.
According to Airlines for America, the staffing issues have triggered “secondary impacts,” including “late aircraft arrivals, crew legality issues, and equipment mispositioning.” This is expected to get worse as the FAA-mandated flight reductions reach 10%. […]
A ground delay has been issued at Newark Liberty International Airport due to staffing, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. […]
When […] Trump posted a satirical music video on social media in early October depicting his budget director, Russell Vought, as the Grim Reaper lording over Democrats in Congress, public health workers recognized a kernel of truth.
Vought has exerted extraordinary control over government spending this year, usurping congressional decisions on how the nation’s money is used. His push for more layoffs during the government shutdown is only the latest blow, following months of firings, canceled grants, and withheld funds.
By cutting and freezing public health funds, in particular, the Trump administration has already begun to undercut efforts to provide medical care, outbreak response, housing assistance, and research across the U.S., according to health officials, nonprofit directors, and federal agency staffers interviewed by KFF Health News.
Since most federal funds for public health flow to states, Vought is rivaling the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his ability to upend government-led efforts to keep Americans healthy. In Texas, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds to stem a measles outbreak weren’t available until after the crisis had subsided and two children had died. A project to protect Alabamans from raw sewage and hookworm was abandoned. People with HIV have had to delay medical care as clinics scale back hours. Time-dependent surveys on HIV and maternal mortality were halted. […] Tobacco prevention programs lapsed. […]
No matter what budget Congress ultimately passes for next year, the Trump administration may continue to thwart financial support for such programs in ways that will harm people’s health. […]
Vought outlined budgetary strategies the executive branch could deploy to wrest power from Congress and federal agencies in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative blueprint.
[…] Government employees have described these tactics to members of Congress, said Abigail Tighe, executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, a group that includes current and former staffers at the CDC and HHS. “We want Congress to act, because this is preventing states and communities from doing critical public health work to keep our country safe,” she said. “If they don’t have capacity, we all collectively suffer.”
[…] the extent to which money Congress appropriated for public health in 2024 and 2025 has gone unspent because of the administration’s disruptions is not yet known. “This is a sophisticated strategy to cause money to lapse and then say, ‘If they can’t spend it, they don’t need it,’” said Robert Gordon, a public policy specialist at Georgetown University and a former assistant finance secretary at HHS.
[…] The Trump administration has defunded and threatened federal offices that hold the government accountable and fired whistleblowers. […]
“Thankfully, President Trump won,” Vought said. “And we have now been embarked on deconstructing this administrative state.” [in a Sept. 3 speech]
[…] the OMB, which administers the federal budget, activates money for agencies, like a bank activates a credit card, so that grantees can spend and get reimbursed rapidly. Auditors keep an eye on spending, but the government has in the past limited interruptions so that programs run smoothly.
Early on, the Trump administration canceled billions of dollars in awards granted in 2024 and early 2025 for research and global health. In March, it clawed back $11.4 billion in covid-era funds that Congress had earmarked for health departments that were using the money for disease surveillance, vaccinations, and more.
Although some funds have been restored because of lawsuits, the Supreme Court has allowed other cuts by the administration to stand while the cases move through the courts.
[…] By August, the CDC’s center for HIV and tuberculosis prevention had doled out $167 million less than the historical average […] The CDC’s funding for chronic disease prevention lagged by $259 million, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program had underspent by $105 million, and funds for mental health at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration were more than $860 million behind what was expected.
An unknown amount of Congress’ 2025 funding for research and public health has yet to be awarded and will probably lapse this year […]
Incremental Chaos
A key tactic Vought described in Project 2025 occurs when the OMB activates funds for agencies in installments, called apportionments. […] the OMB shrank the size of apportionments […] It’s illegal for agencies to let grantees withdraw money before the total amount is in the metaphorical bank, so that delayed agencies’ ability to greenlight spending.
[…] The CDC and other agencies circulated lists of priorities that reflect White House stances, including those targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; immigration; and transgender rights. Public health efforts have been especially caught up in red tape, since many focus on populations bearing an unequal burden of death, disease, and injury.
Groups that rely on federal funds have largely been unaware of the reasons grants were held up, but they’ve fielded what they viewed as unsettling queries. For example, Kathy Garner, the head of a Mississippi nonprofit, said officials asked her to defend the exclusion of men from a program to shelter women who experienced domestic violence.
[…] Grantees said they’ve been unable to reach program officers because tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off. Agency officials said firings slow funding further.
[…] Time was critical as a measles outbreak surged in West Texas early this year. The state asked for federal funding for the response in March, but it didn’t arrive until May, after the outbreak had largely faded in Texas, according to an investigation by KFF Health News. Apportionment control was a key reason, CDC staffers said.
In July, 81 HIV organizations sent a letter to Kennedy. “With every day of delayed FY2025 funding release, the delivery of essential HIV services is compromised,” said the letter, which was reviewed by KFF Health News. Because of delays and uncertainty, it said, HIV clinics had laid off case managers and reduced clinician hours, closed sites, and pared down hotlines that patients call with urgent questions. The funds arrived about a month later, but HIV providers remain shaken.
Lauren Richey, medical director at University Medical Center’s HIV clinic in New Orleans, backed out of hiring a sorely needed dentist she had recruited. “I was afraid to tell someone to move across the country for a job when I wasn’t sure if or when we’d get the funding for their salary,” she said. “The wait is now three to four months for dental services, when it was usually a couple of weeks at most.”
[…] she stopped buying the condoms they distribute throughout the city to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
Louisiana already has one of the highest rates of HIV, chlamydia, and gonorrhea in the country. Condoms cost far less than treating these diseases. […]
Groups focused on cancer, diabetes, and heart disease also report lasting repercussions from delays, as well as ongoing fears that they will happen again. [Add dementia to that list.]
DOGE also stalled calls for applications for 2025 funding — and some calls never appeared as the fiscal year came to a close on Sept. 30. Among them are programs for groups that provide housing assistance. People will be evicted when these organizations run out of money left over from 2024 […]
Other solicitations came out months behind schedule, leaving groups with a few weeks to put together complicated applications for multimillion-dollar awards, including for Alzheimer’s care, addiction recovery, senior support, and chronic disease management.
“They’ve set projects up to fail,” one HHS official said.
And when those projects fail, Republicans will blame Democrats.
[…] Trump on Wednesday tapped a conservation critic and former oil industry executive to head up the federal agency that oversees the majority of public lands in the United States.
If approved, former U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico will lead the Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for balancing conservation of public lands with human use, such as resource extraction and cattle grazing. Since January, the Trump administration has overwhelmingly prioritized the latter with the Department of the Interior—BLM’s parent agency—rapidly approving oil, gas and mining permits, including more than 600 new permits to drill on public lands since the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities.
Environmental groups have spoken out vehemently against Pearce, who they say will threaten public lands and ramp up activities that fuel global warming.
A veteran and former owner of an oilfield services company, Pearce began his foray into politics as the U.S. representative for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District from 2003 to 2009, then again from 2011 to 2019. Over his seven terms in the role, Pearce strongly advocated for ranchers and the oil and gas drilling sector, the latter of which donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns. Now, industry groups are rallying around Pearce’s nomination.
[…] Democratic politicians have also expressed concern over the Pearce nomination, including Deb Haaland, the former interior secretary under President Joe Biden, who called him a “dangerous choice.”
During her four-year tenure at the Interior Department, Haaland oversaw BLM’s operations and helped enact the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which placed conservation on equal footing with uses such as natural gas drilling, mining, ranching, grazing, timber production and recreation. In September the Trump administration declared its intent to rescind the rule.
“In New Mexico we value our lands and waters, and we need a manager who would be a good steward. Steve Pearce however, has a record of threatening New Mexico’s public lands, putting profits over people, and neglecting the needs of our state,” Haaland, who is now running for New Mexico governor, said in a statement. “He is the wrong choice to serve in this role.”
Since Trump re-entered office in January, the administration has coordinated an aggressive rollback of environmental laws and policies in the United States in a push to ramp up extractive activities on public lands.
In July, the White House began the process of changing how the landmark National Environmental Policy Act is implemented across the federal government in a manner that allows the fast-tracking of fossil fuel, mining and other industrial projects. One of the first to benefit from these streamlined reviews is a gold mine project in Nevada, with far less opportunity for public comment on its permitting. Opponents fear the lack of review will threaten key aquifers and land for vulnerable animals such as the sage grouse.
Along with fast-tracking permits, the Trump administration is opening more lands for oil drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Dan Ritzman, the director of conservation at the nonprofit Sierra Club, expects Pearce would run BLM in line with this pro-extractive agenda. […]
“Airports in Brussels and Liège suspended flights last week due to unidentified drones, and other UAVs overflew the port of Antwerp.”
The U.K. is following France and Germany in providing staff and equipment to help Belgium counter drone incursions around sensitive facilities, British Chief of the Defense Staff Richard Knighton told the BBC on Sunday.
Belgium’s Defense Minister Theo Francken thanked “our British friends” for their decision to deploy an anti-drone team in Belgium, after similar moves by France and Germany were announced in recent days.
Airports in Brussels and Liège were forced to suspend flights last week after unidentified drones were spotted in their airspace, and other drones overflew the port of Antwerp recently. Even Belgium’s military bases have been targeted.
Incursions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the EU’s critical infrastructure sites have escalated in recent months, with the European Commission dubbing them part of the hybrid war that Russia is conducting against the bloc. Russia denies the allegations.
Belgium’s National Air Security Center will be fully operational by Jan. 1, 2026, Francken said after holding an emergency meeting of the National Security Council on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Belgian government asked for help from Berlin, Paris and London, which are all sending air force experts.
Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that the drone incursions are linked to the ongoing talks on using Russian frozen assets to help fund Ukraine’s effort to defend itself against Moscow’s all-out invasion. The assets are mostly held in Belgium’s Euroclear facility.
“This is a measure aimed at spreading insecurity, at fearmongering in Belgium: Don’t you dare to touch the frozen assets. This cannot be interpreted any other way,” Pistorius said at a Friday press conference, Reuters reported.
Belgium’s government did not explicitly point fingers at Moscow, but the country’s secret service has little doubt about the origin of the drones, according to VRT. Francken said on Saturday that “Russia is clearly a plausible suspect.”
“Emergency power cuts have been introduced in a number of regions of Ukraine,” Energy Minister Svitlana Vasylivna Hrynchuk said.
Several Ukrainian regions suffered power outages on Sunday after Russia launched what the state grid operator called the “most massive strike” against Ukraine’s power plants since the beginning of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country.
Kyiv responded with a counterattack of drones overnight into Sunday, targeting energy infrastructure and leaving the Russian city of Voronezh and around 20,000 people without electricity, Reuters and AFP reported.
Ukraine’s grid operator said the Russian strikes hit its energy plants continually from Friday into Saturday, and the country’s generation capacity was “zero” on Saturday. The Russian assault included hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles.
[…] The company scheduled power cuts that can last up to 16 hours in some regions, as it works to repair the power supply.
[…] The main targets of the attack were the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions, according to the Ukrainian air force.
The Russian strikes have targeted energy, heat and water supplies in many Ukrainian cities, as well as the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear plants, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said.
“Russia is deliberately endangering nuclear safety in Europe. We call for an urgent meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors to respond to these unacceptable risks,” Sybiha wrote […]
“Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, steps down after days of torrid headlines for the state broadcaster — and a direct attack by the Trump administration.”
The head of Britain’s publicly-funded broadcaster and its top news executive resigned Sunday after days of pressure over its coverage of Donald Trump.
In a move swiftly celebrated by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness both announced their exits from the media institution.
The resignations — which represent a moment of crisis at the U.K.’s main public service broadcaster — come after days of torrid headlines for the BBC over an episode of its flagship Panorama documentary show.
The broadcaster had faced allegations it misled viewers by splicing footage from different portions of U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day that rioters breached the U.S. Congress.
Leavitt seized on the row in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper on Friday, directly accusing the broadcaster of being “purposefully dishonest” and peddling “total, 100 percent fake news.”
The White House press chief appeared jubilant Sunday, posting screenshotted news coverage of both her remarks and Davie’s subsequent resignation on X alongside the caption “Shot: … Chaser.” [social media post]
The BBC is bound by its governing charter to avoid “favoring one side over another,” and is no stranger to claims from all political sides in the U.K. that it sometimes fails to do so.
But the latest row marks a significant escalation in attacks on the BBC from the right.
Last week the right-leaning Telegraph newspaper published a memo written by Michael Prescott, the broadcaster’s former standards advisor, covering a range of alleged failings in its content. That included its coverage of transgender issues, the war in Gaza, and Trump’s presidency.
Perhaps the most eye-catching accusation was that footage in the Panorama show had been selectively edited to suggest the U.S. president had told supporters in January 2021: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
The words were in fact spliced from sections of the speech almost an hour apart, and omitted a section in which Trump had said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” […]
More at the link.
whheydtsays
The lava fountain at Kilaeua ended after about 5 hours. During that time, 8-9 million cubic meters of lava was erupted and eruption rate was 650 cubic meters per second. (Basalt has a specific gravity very close to 3, so some 24-27 million tonnes in 5 hours.)
birgerjohanssonsays
NB
During the Swedish night, I got messages some asshole Democrat senators voted with the Republicans to betray their voters.
If this is true, EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT WHO VOTED WITH THE REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE PRIMARIED!
birgerjohanssonsays
The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it has given in.
Here is something to save you from dangerously high levels of blood pressure after reading the news.
.
20 Minutes of Adorable Kittens 😍
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=y0sF5xhGreA
KGsays
Two shameful capitulations to fascism – by 8 so-called Democratic senators in the USA, and by the top executives at the BBC. Tim Davie, who has resigned as BBC director-general, is himself a Tory – he stood unsuccessfully as a Tory local councillor – but I’d bet Starmer will make sure some trans-hating pro-genocide Trump-arselicking shitbag is appointed to succeed him.
Blue Origin called off the launch of its giant New Glenn rocket carrying twin NASA Mars probes on Sunday (Nov. 9) due to bad weather at its Florida pad, one day before new federal restrictions take effect for commercial spaceflights.
The planned New Glenn launch was expected to send NASA’s twin Mars ESCAPADE orbiters on a winding path to the Red Planet..
..(snip)..
..The delay led Blue Origin to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to secure an exception in order to fly again. That’s because the backup launch days for New Glenn’s ESCAPADE launch are on Nov. 10 and 11 during the afternoon. But on Friday, the FAA announced an indefinite halt to all commercial launches during daytime hours to ease workloads on air traffic controllers working without pay during the government shutdown.
“Our next launch attempt is no earlier than Wednesday, November 12, due to forecasted weather and sea state conditions,” Blue Origin said..
Antarctic scientists have documented the fastest retreat of a glacier in modern history, after it lost eight kilometres of ice in just two months, according to a new report.
The Hektoria Glacier on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula is roughly 300 square kilometres — about 10 times larger than the City of Sydney local government area.
International researchers, led by the University of Colorado Boulder, analysed satellite images and seismic data to investigate how and why the glacier rapidly lost ice.
A glacier “retreats” when it melts or erodes faster than it gains new ice, causing the front of the glacier to move backwards.
A report on their study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows the glacier shrank 25km between January 2022 and March 2023.
I get that you meant Sunday night, but I had a slightly amusing mental image of a cultural event called Swedish Night. As you may know, 6 November (last Thursday) is officially marked in Finland as the Swedish Day, when Finland-Swedes celebrate their heritage and the Swedish history of Finland. I understand this date was chosen in early 20th century, based on Gustav Adolf’s Day.
StevoRsays
When I imagine the future of space commerce, the first image that comes to mind is a farmer’s market on the International Space Station. This doesn’t exist yet, but space commerce is a growing industry. The Space Foundation, a nonprofit organization for education and advocacy of space, estimates that the global space economy rose to US$613 billion in 2024, up nearly 8% from 2023, and 250 times larger than all business at farmer’s markets in the United States. This number includes launch vehicles, satellite hardware, and services provided by these space-based assets, such as satellite phone or internet connection.
…(snip)..
The Office of Space Commerce, an office of about 50 people, exists within the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). To paraphrase its mission statement, its chief purpose is to enable a robust U.S. commercial interest in outer space.
OSC has three main focus areas. First, it is the office responsible for licensing and monitoring how private U.S. companies collect and distribute orbit-based images of Earth. …(snip)..
.. A second primary job of OSC is space advocacy. OSC works with the other U.S. government agencies that also have jurisdiction over commercial use of outer space to make the regulatory environment easier. This includes working with the Federal Aviation Administration on launch licensing, the Federal Communications Commission on radio wavelength usage and the Environmental Protection Agency on rules about the hazardous chemicals in rocket fuel.
This job also includes coordinating with other countries that allow companies to launch satellites, collect data in orbit and offer space-based services.
..(Snip).. OSC has been under stress in 2025. In February, the Department of Government Efficiency targeted NOAA for cuts, including firing eight people from OSC. Because about half of the people working in OSC are contractors, this represented a 30% reduction of force.
In March, Trump’s presidential budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed a cut of 85% of the $65 million annual budget of OSC. In July, space industry leaders urged Congress to restore funding to OSC.
This is a list of geological features on the asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson. The asteroid was visited on 20 April 2025 by NASA’s Lucy mission en route to the Jupiter Trojans.[1] Its surface features are named after major paleoanthropological sites and discoveries, and names are adopted by the International Astronomical Union
StevoRsays
Predictable but stillinfuriating and disgusting :
US President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as several others involved in efforts to overturn 2020 election, a Justice Department official says.
Mr Giuliani was formerly the mayor of New York and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer until he was disbarred last year.
Justice Department Pardon Attorney Ed Martin posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, which also names conservative attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman.
A more wholesome topic than US politics (the critters below do not live in North America, their ecological niche is approximately that of your possums)
“What Do Hedgehogs Do At Night? “(Caught on Camera)
“The end of IRS Direct File offers timely evidence that the Republican administration isn’t actually interested in trying to address affordability.”
The day after Democrats dominated the 2025 elections, largely by focusing on affordability and Republican failures to address the cost of living, Donald Trump declared that he sees the issue as “dead.” On Thursday, the president went further, adding, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”
For good measure, at a White House event on Friday, Trump went so far as to condemn the very idea of “affordability” as a potent political issue, dismissing it as “a con job by the Democrats.”
In each instance, Trump’s underlying point was the same: There’s no point in thinking about the issue anymore, he argued, because he’s already succeeded in “substantially” reducing consumer costs, pushing Americans’ cost of living “way down.” [Lying, clueless Orange Doofus repeats himself endlessly.]
The obvious problem with these claims is that they’re demonstrably wrong. Despite Trump’s assurances (and campaign promises), everything from energy costs to grocery prices has gone up over the last year.
The less obvious problem is that the White House is taking deliberate steps to make matters worse. The Associated Press reported:
IRS Direct File, the electronic system for filing tax returns for free, will not be offered next year, the Trump administration has confirmed. An email sent Monday from IRS official Cynthia Noe to state comptrollers that participate in the Direct File program said that ‘IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026. No launch date has been set for the future.’ [!]
As the AP’s report noted, the average American typically spends roughly $140 preparing returns each year. That total is unrelated to what taxpayers might owe: The $140 refers only to the annual cost of preparing and filing the paperwork.
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats who approved the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 came up with an alternative solution that was implemented last year: IRS Direct File was an online system that made it easier for Americans to file their tax returns at no cost.
Those who participated in the system liked it quite a bit, and there’s no great mystery as to why: People like free things, especially when it comes to dealing with government bureaucracies they’d rather avoid anyway. The result was a program that demonstrated that the federal government can function more efficiently and make Americans’ lives a little easier.
Lobbyists for the commercial tax preparation industry, predictably, asked the Trump administration to reverse course. It did, quickly ending Direct File after a successful one-year experiment. [!]
“This is another corrupt decision by the Trump Administration to help corporate donors while raising costs and making life more difficult for the American people,” Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said in a written statement.
“Whether it’s raising price-hiking tariffs, cancelling infrastructure projects, driving up electricity prices, blocking attempts to lower the cost of health care, going to court to prevent hungry people from getting SNAP, or eliminating a no-cost method to file taxes, President Trump is going all out to make life less affordable for American families.” [True]
And therein lies the point. It’s not easy for any president, even a competent one, to snap his or her fingers and magically reduce the cost of living, but White House teams can at least try to make a positive difference. The demise of IRS Direct File offers timely evidence that this Republican administration doesn’t want to bother.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined an opportunity to overturn its landmark precedent recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, tossing aside an appeal that had roiled LGBTQ advocates who feared the conservative court might be ready to revisit the decade-old decision.
Instead, the court denied an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges allowed same-sex couples to marry.
There are certainly some on the court that would like to overthrow this but apparently not enough.
“What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly,” Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote.
Over the course of the year, some of the most pointed and memorable commentary on Donald Trump’s presidency has come not from politicians or pundits, but from judges responding to cases involving the Republican White House.
Judge Mark L. Wolf’s new opinion piece in The Atlantic advances the broader issue in extraordinary ways. The headline reads, “Why I Am Resigning,” and it begins with the Reagan-appointed jurist explaining why he walked away from the judiciary last week, “relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.” Wolf explained:
My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.
Wolf […] went on to note that others who’ve held positions of authority “have been opposing this government’s efforts to undermine the principled, impartial administration of justice and distort the free and fair functioning of American democracy. They have urged me to work with them. As much as I have treasured being a judge, I can now think of nothing more important than joining them, and doing everything in my power to combat today’s existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.”
[…] A New York Times report on the piece noted that Wolf wrote “one of the most explicit expressions of concern for the rule of law to come from a member of the federal judiciary amid Mr. Trump’s efforts to vastly expand the scope of presidential power.”
I think that’s correct, though it arguably understates the case: Condemnations like these are historically rare in the American tradition. Plenty of jurists have resigned, but it’s spectacularly uncommon for longtime federal judges to resign because they feel the need to condemn a sitting president and warn the American people about the seriousness of the threat he poses to our system of government.
Wolf told the Times that he resigned not only to speak more freely about his own views, but also on behalf of colleagues who are still on the bench. “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people,” he said. [Interesting]
I won’t pretend to know how many will take note of the retired judge’s concerns, but his willingness to resign and speak out in unsubtle terms reflects the concerns of a respected jurist who confronts a “break glass in case of emergency” moment.
Not yet. The Sunday-night vote in the Senate was a procedural vote to advance a bill intended to end the shutdown. It received 60 votes, but the underlying legislation still needs to pass.
Who caved?
In addition to Cortez Masto, Fetterman and King, who’ve consistently voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, five other Senate Democrats sided with the GOP on the procedural vote: Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jackie Rosen of Nevada and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. (Durbin and Shaheen, it’s worth noting for context, are retiring at the end of their current terms.) Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, meanwhile, voted with most Democrats against the package.
Did they get anything in exchange for their votes?
Not much. The deal, to the extent that it can fairly be described as such, includes three full-year appropriations bills to fund some federal departments through the end of the fiscal year and money to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It also reverses Donald Trump’s shutdown layoffs (also known as “reduction in force” notifications, or RIFs).
What about the Affordable Care Act, which was largely the point of the shutdown?
Republicans promised Democrats there will soon be a vote on extending the expiring ACA subsidies.
For health care advocates, does this offer some reason for hope?
Not really. Even if there is a vote, there’s no reason to assume it will pass the GOP-led chamber. And even if it were to pass, there’s no guarantee that the Republican-led House would care.
So why in the world did these eight senators cave?
According to King, it was time to surrender because the status quo “wasn’t working.”
Was he right?
No. The public has blamed the president and his party; Democrats received a dramatic boost from the electorate five days before the Sunday-night vote, which should’ve stiffened spines; Trump’s approval rating is sinking; and GOP officials were increasingly divided against one another. The pieces, in other words, were in place for Democrats to stand firm in support of a popular cause. Eight of them folded anyway.
So what happens now?
In the coming days, the Senate will vote on the underlying agreement, which is likely to pass. It would then move to the House, which hasn’t done any work whatsoever in almost two months.
If all goes according to plan, we won’t have to worry about any more government shutdowns for a while, right?
Wrong. As MSNBC’s report added, “Even if, as expected, both chambers pass the bill and President Donald Trump signs it, most of the government will only be funded through that stopgap bill going until Jan. 30.”
In other words, this new agreement funds the government through a temporary spending package known as a continuing resolution (also known as a CR). If signed into law, it will expire in 11 weeks, at which point most of the federal government will face the prospect of another shutdown.
[…] Trump issued mass preemptive pardons to those involved in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election five years to the day since the Four Seasons Landscaping debacle in Philadelphia.
Trump granted “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons for 77 people involved in the fake electors scheme and others aspects of the 2020 subversion effort on Nov. 7, but they were not publicized by the White House. Instead, U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin revealed the pardons in a post on X late last night.
The pardons, coming the same week Republicans were routed in off-year elections, complete Trump’s promise to vindicate his co-conspirators in the first non-peaceful transfer of executive power in American history. Trump had already issued pardons or commutations for some 1,500 participants in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Those commutations, on the first day of his second term, included 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, including some convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack.
Among the big names in the latest round of pardons:
Rudy Giuliani
Kenneth Chesebro
Jeffrey Clark
John Eastman
Jenna Ellis
Boris Epshteyn
Mark Meadows
Sidney Powell
Trump explicitly excluded himself from this round of pardons: “This pardon does not apply to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”
The pardons were preemptive. While some of those involved in the fake electors scheme were charged in various state prosecutions, only Trump was charged federally in connection with subverting the 2020 election. The federal case against Trump, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, was dropped after he was re-elected a year ago.
Trump’s pardon proclamation stands as a landmark in the revisionist history of the 2020 election and its aftermath. It purports to “end a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and “continue the process of national reconciliation.” The pardons granted are sweeping in their scope and include the fake electors scheme as well as “efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities.”
The unusual way in which the pardons became public — via Ed Martin on X — reinforces the lawlessness of the Trump II presidency. A GOP political hack with no experience as a prosecutor, Martin is not only U.S. pardon attorney but is also designated a “special attorney” and the chief of the DOJ “Weaponization Working Group,” in which role he is spearheading the retributive investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s perceived foes, including former DOJ personnel.
Martin’s X post on the pardons was embedded in a thread he began in May with a post that simply said: “No MAGA left behind.”
BESSENT [Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent]: I haven’t spoken to the president about this yet, but, you know, it could — the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways […] You know, it could be just the tax decreases […] You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions that, you know, are being financed in the tax bill.
Translation: There is no proposal, no one is getting a $2,000 payment, and this is another wild, empty promise Trump threw out there for his [cult followers] […]
More details regarding the maybe-end-the-shutdown deal:
On NBC’s Meet The Press, Senator James Lankford was telegraphing before this terrible deal to Kristen Welker that Republicans are not going to negotiate for ACA subsidies. [video]
WELKER: Should the 300,000 Oklahomans who rely on ACA subsidies be prepared for their costs to skyrocket?
LANKFORD: We’re trying to find a way to be able to help.
Translation: Yeah, your health costs are gonna skyrocket.
And the House hasn’t indicated its position has changed from three days ago: [video: “MIKE JOHNSON: Ah — no. I’m not promising anyone anything.”]
So while Chuck Schumer stated last night that “this fight will and must continue. Democrats must fight,” it certainly does appear that this was the fight.
THIS was the moment.
And eight Democratic senators (and unofficially Schumer?) cowered to assholes giving billions to scumbags spending $300 million on ballrooms, $200 million on private jets with no engines [Kristi Noem], giving $40 billion to that dancing Argentinian weirdo, and auctioning $64,000 Thailand vacation packages while Americans struggle with grocery and healthcare costs. […]
There are more embedded links to additional sources available at the main link.
A group of Senate Democrats, fresh off of caving to Republican demands for ending the government shutdown, appeared on morning news shows on Monday to try to spin their cowardice.
On Sunday night, a group of eight Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to begin the process of funding the government. Notably, the Democrats have failed to secure funding for enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year and raise health insurance costs for millions. Democrats had originally claimed extending these subsidies was the core of their objection to a Republican funding plan.
The Democratic capitulation comes less than a week after last Tuesday’s elections, where Democratic voters in multiple states served up a stern rebuke to President Donald Trump’s agenda, electing Democrats up and down the ballot.
Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was one of the senators who sided with Republicans. And in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” King argued that surrendering to the unpopular GOP agenda was the only viable path forward. […]
Florida’s anti-woke plan for education at the university level is a failure … an all encompassing failure on many levels:
Perhaps you recall that Florida has its own mini Department of Government Efficiency, because Gov. Ron DeSantis […] does nothing but ape […] Trump’s dumbest ideas.
That fun-sized DOGE has been digging into the efficiency of the state university system. Finally, we can find out how all of those pointy-headed Marxist professors are wasting taxpayer money.
And hey, the baby DOGE and DeSantis turned out to be right! There is a hugely inefficient state school that’s lighting taxpayer money on fire. Glad we caught it.
Oh, wait. Is it too late to delete that report?
It turns out that the school hoovering up the most taxpayer money—and, honestly, with nothing to show for it—is none other than New College.
That’s the school that was once a shining star of Florida’s university system, hobbled by a fatal flaw of not being conservative enough. So DeSantis basically took it over, shoving out people with actual experience and installing anti-woke crusader Christopher Rufo and his fellow travelers in their stead.
Despite having shed all sorts of woke baggage like qualified faculty, library books, and gender studies, New College somehow costs the state much more. Much, much more. In the 2020-2021 school year, New College’s total spending was $53 million. Now? $93 million.
Hmm. Did they keep any math people on at New College? Because some back-of-the-envelope math shows that’s a 75% jump. Similarly, the college’s costs per student sit at $83,000—or four times the university system average.
But surely this money is getting great results, right?
Wrong. The graduation rate at New College stands at a triumphant 19%, which is the second worst in the state. [!!]
Apparently, this cut-rate DOGE was supposed to be a huge success because it found $33 million in DEI wokeness to cut from the Florida state university system. They did that, but it still wasn’t enough to cover just one year of expenses at New College alone.
[…] Much like the federal government, none of these efforts is about saving money—because they don’t save money. It’s about taking money away from people DeSantis doesn’t like and giving it to people he does.
Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline’s energy was palpable as he gazed out from the video on the computer screen, grinning ear to ear, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up.
The Republican legislator from Fort Worth had a message to share with people watching the prerecorded video: As a Christian, you have an essential role in politics and local government.
“There is no greater calling than being civically engaged and bringing the values that Scripture teaches us into every realm of the earth,” Schatzline said.
The legislator was teaching a section of Campaign University, a series of online lessons he and others associated with Fort Worth-based megachurch Mercy Culture created to raise up so-called “spirit-led candidates.” [That sounds like such a bad idea.]
The course, created in 2021, is an extension of Mercy Culture’s increasingly overtpolitical activities that have included candidate endorsements. The church’s political nonprofit, For Liberty & Justice, houses Campaign University. [“nonprofit” !}
Campaign University builds on Mercy Culture’s growing political reach as Schatzline, a pastor at the church, joins President Donald Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board and as the course now is offered at other congregations across the country.
[…] At the core of Campaign University is the idea that there is no separation between what happens within the church and what happens in the government.
[…] Previously, churches risked losing their tax-exempt status by discussing or engaging in politics. Then this summer, the Internal Revenue Service decided to allow religious leaders to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, a decision Schatzline took as a green light for him and other pastors to ramp up political activity.
[…] Past movements encouraged churchgoers to become activists […] but Campaign University stands out for training Christian conservatives to seek public office.
[…] In an attempt to better understand Mercy Culture’s approach to recruiting candidates, two journalists from the Fort Worth Report purchased and completed the more than five-hour Campaign University course and listened to hours of the For Liberty & Justice podcast. What became clear in the course is For Liberty & Justice’s mission to push Christian conservative values beyond church doors and into the public sphere.
The nonprofit states on its website that it vets and supports “candidates who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect our God-given liberties and take a stand for Biblical Justice!” Its leaders have said they stand against LGBTQ rights and abortion access, and they have pushed for the ban of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in government and public education. [!]
[…] The national faith board that Schatzline has been tapped to join declares its mission is to be “a strong, unified, uncompromising voice” on issues such as religious freedom, marriage, reproductive and parental rights, and gender-affirming care. […]
A Divine Calling
[…] Over its six years, the church has become a center of conservative religious politics in the region and increasingly across the state. […]
Mercy Culture’s expansion has included additional church campuses in Fort Worth, Dallas, Waco and Austin, and it plans to open a San Antonio campus next year. […] For Liberty & Justice aims to partner with churches across the country as it seeks to elevate Campaign University to a national level. […] the goal is to create lessons for local churches to politically mobilize congregants, similarly to how Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA mobilizes students on college campuses.
He said the church is already spreading awareness about Campaign University by opening For Liberty & Justice chapters in other states.
[…] two For Liberty & Justice chapters outside of Texas offer Campaign Universi […] Florida’s nondenominational Revive Church and Hawaii’s Pentecostal megachurch King’s Maui […]
The nonprofit plans to open its next chapter in Arizona at the start of 2026, Penate said. After that, he expects For Liberty & Justice to grow exponentially thanks to Schatzline’s visibility on Trump’s faith advisory board. […]
[…] “This idea that God has called you to do this is a very empowering message. It gives you a clear source of identity and direction,” McDaniel said.
[…] Campaign University’s goal is to bring Jesus into “every sphere of influence and every mountain,” Joshua Moore, another course instructor, says in the course’s second lesson. “That’s what we’re called to do as political activists.” Moore […]
During this year’s legislative sessions, Schatzline authored 75 state bills on a range of issues, such as limiting DEI initiatives in local government, banning drag show performances in front of children and further penalizing the possession or promotion of child pornography. He failed to get many of his bills passed this year, except for one aimed at criminalizing the promotion or possession of child-like sex dolls.
[…] “We give you this room. … The 89th legislative session is yours, Lord. The members of this body are yours, Lord. This building belongs to you, Jesus.”
[…] Campaign University lessons highlight what its instructors argue were the Founding Fathers’ “deep religious beliefs” as evidence that “God was not separate from the public square; nor was that the intent of the founders.”
[…] “If our goal in engaging in partisan politics is to impose our own interpretation of the Bible, our own religious views on other people, that will lead to harm for people in our communities that are not of the same religious views,” Tyler [Christians Against Christian Nationalism organizer] said.
County at a Crossroads
[…] The Republican-majority Tarrant County Commissioners Court, the county’s governing body, led by County Judge Tim O’Hare, steamrolled through a redistricting process this summer to gain a stronger majority as detractors alleged racially motivated gerrymandering. In late October, a federal appeals court upheld a judge’s decision not to block the new map.
[…] After state lawmakers adopted a new congressional map to create additional GOP seats at Trump’s request this summer, the political makeup of Tarrant County’s congressional delegation is poised to shift from five Republicans and two Democrats to four Republicans and one Democrat. [!]
[…] For Liberty & Justice is prepared to ensure strong Republican results as Tarrant voters gear up for next year’s elections, plus a runoff election to fill a Texas Senate seat vacated by now-Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock.
[…] To end the night, one Campaign University graduate led the crowd in prayer. “We need you, Lord, desperately to be able to accomplish what you are calling us to do for this nation, for our city, for our county, for our state.”
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This article was co-published with Fort Worth Report and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.
OSLO (The Borowitz Report)—The committee tasked with awarding next year’s Nobel Peace Prize will deduct points from any candidate who has denied people food, a Nobel spokesperson announced on Sunday.
The spokesperson, Halvard Dorrinström, explained how the scoring system works, using the hypothetical example of someone who withheld food from 42 million people.
“That person would lose 42 million points,” he said.
Offering further insight into their deliberative process, Dorrinström said the committee would “instantly disqualify” any candidate who blew up random fishing boats for no apparent reason.
“There were already concerns about the president being too gullible to do his job. Over the weekend, he made those concerns far worse.”
[…] in March 2016, when there was still some question as to whether Donald Trump would be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Ezra Klein wrote a piece for Vox that stood out for me. The headline read, “Donald Trump is too gullible to be president.”
Klein made the case that the then-candidate had proven himself incapable of knowing the difference between good information and bad. “His tendency to solicit, repeat, and retweet self-serving falsehoods served up by sycophants and hangers-on should be taken seriously,” the Vox piece read. “Among the most important tasks the president has is knowing what to believe, whom to listen to, which facts to trust, and which theories to explore. Trump’s terrible judgment in this regard is one of the many reasons he’s not qualified for the office.”
It’s an assessment that came to mind anew over the weekend. HuffPost noted:
During his Sunday morning torrent of Truth Social posts, Trump amplified a headline about his perceived nemesis, former President Barack Obama. The problem is that the headline is from a satirical news website that published it nine months ago.
As difficult as it might be to believe, there’s a satirical outlet called the Dunning-Kruger Times — named after a cognitive bias that leads ignorant people to overestimate their abilities — that published a report that was obviously intended to be funny. The article in question said that Obama was receiving $2.6 million a year for “royalties associated with Obamacare,” before the Department of Government Efficiency intervened and halted the payments.
And while it might seem impossible that anyone would actually believe such a joke, Trump published an item to his social media platform promoting the satirical item, alongside text that read, “Wow!”
The president must’ve overlooked the “About Us” page on the Dunning-Kruger Times, which includes this straightforward disclaimer: “Everything on this website is fiction. … If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”
That 2016 headline about Trump being “too gullible to be president” resonates for a reason.
The U.S. military killed six people on Sunday in two more strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday. The latest strikes raised the death toll in the campaign to 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea since early September.
New York Times:
At least three U.S. military aircraft, including a heavily armed attack plane, have begun flying missions out of El Salvador’s main international airport in an expansion of the extraordinary U.S. troop buildup in the Caribbean, according to an analysis of satellite images, air traffic control communications and flight tracking data.
The Supreme Court declined to review Kim Davis’ petition asking the justices to overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which recognized same-sex marriage rights. The expected denial came on Monday via the court’s routine order list announcing the latest action on pending appeals. It would have taken four justices to grant to review. No justices noted any dissent from the denial.
President Trump has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from sanctions the United States has imposed on countries buying Russian oil after meeting with the Hungarian prime minister [Viktor Orban] at the White House on Friday.”
Trump’s wannabe dictator buddies get special treatment.
President Donald Trump hosted one of the more attention-grabbing press events of his term in the Oval Office this week, announcing price cuts for weight-loss drugs, only to be interrupted when one of the attendees collapsed in a faint. Before that dramatic turn of events, however, Trump appeared to struggle to stay awake. … A Washington Post analysis of multiple video feeds found that Trump spent nearly 20 minutes apparently battling to keep his eyes open at the Thursday event.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, took questions outside the White House on Monday, where CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked him about the rising costs Americans continue to face.
“Inflation is way down,” Hassett replied, repeating a familiar bit of Trump misinformation.
“Grocery prices are up,” Collins noted. [video]
“Well, not everything. I mean, egg prices are down,” Hassett said defensively. “Why haven’t you covered the lower egg prices?
“We certainly have covered that,” Collins responded. “But grocery prices are up about 1.4% since Trump took office.”
Egg prices have dropped, thankfully, but the vast majority of other costs have continued to rise, due in no small part to Trump’s mismanagement of our economy.
[…] Donald Trump went to a football game and got booed worse than we’ve seen any politician ever get booed at a sporting event, or possibly anywhere. Worse than he got booed at Game 5 of the World Series in 2019. Worse than when he attended the Super Bowl last February. Worse than Vice President Tattoo — sorry, Vice President JD Vance — got booed when he showed up at a symphony concert at the Kennedy Center a few months ago. Worse than Mr. Burns at the Springfield Film Festival.
Trump attended the Washington Commanders game on Sunday, the first president to attend a regular season NFL game since Jimmy Carter in 1978. Trump was supposedly invited to the game by the Commanders’ owner, who is trying to get a new stadium built in Washington DC and needs Trump’s approval. (He might also need to promise to put Trump’s name on the stadium, about which more in a moment.)
First, let us enjoy Trump being booed twice. The first time was when he was shown on the stadium scoreboard late in the first half. The second, much louder booing came during halftime, when he took the microphone to administer a swearing-in oath for new members of the military: [video]
[…] Trump at least managed to get through the oath without reacting to the crowd’s booing. Of course, he’s so out of it half the time that it’s an open question whether he was aware the crowd existed or not.
Almost as funny is the expression on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s face while all this was going on. Look at that stern visage! The tight lips! The furrowed brow! […]
There was a time when a scene like this would have been embarrassing for a president’s handlers. We even wondered aloud what genius thought it was a good idea to put him in front of 75,000 residents of the heavily Democratic city and its surrounding environs in the middle of a government shutdown for which he was getting the majority of the blame […]
Because the game was on Fox, Trump also got to go to the broadcast booth to yammer with the broadcast announcers, Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma. He even got to call a play. It was the third quarter, the Commanders were down by 22 points and had the ball inside the Lions’ 10-yard line. And here is our president calling it at around the 4:19 mark in this video with his customary insight: [video]
“I think this is a very important couple of plays. Second and seven, let’s see what happens. Whoa. Not bad.”
John Madden wept.
Trump’s visit occurred the day after ESPN reported that he is pushing the Commanders to name a new stadium after him. And because he has some authority over the federal agencies that have to approve various parts of the project, in theory he has some leverage:
Sources say Trump is not seeking to buy naming rights or have a private donor do so. He wants the stadium to carry his name as a tribute, similar to Chicago’s Soldier Field or Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. [FFS]
[…] The Commanders have the option of selling the naming rights to a corporation, which is usually worth between $10 and $20 million a year to a team. Trump already tried to blackmail the owners into changing the team name back to the Redskins before he would approve the deal. But that idea fell by the wayside right quick. […]
“The hack is estimated to have cost the company nearly $2.5 billion and delayed manufacturing for weeks.”
A cyberattack against British car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, the country’s largest automaker, has been so catastrophic that it put a dent in the U.K.’s gross domestic product, the Bank of England said.
In its quarterly monetary policy report, released Thursday, the Bank of England said headline GDP had grown by 0.2%, less than it had projected. That slowdown was due to reduced exports to the U.S. and “disruption linked to the Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack,” it said.
The hack against Jaguar Land Rover, which began in August, has proven to be the most economically devastating in British history, said Ciaran Martin, the chair of the technical committee at Cyber Monitoring Centre […]
“What makes this incident so bad is the total shutdown of industrial production. That’s much rarer in cyberattacks than is commonly understood,” Martin told NBC News.
[…] while the hackers didn’t appear to steal customer data, “our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.” It then took almost four weeks before the company announced it was even close to resuming manufacturing.
[…] the attack’s fallout has been extremely far-reaching, affecting the company’s global manufacturing operations at at least three U.K. plants, as well as car dealerships and a host of smaller companies that supply automotive parts.
[…] Ransomware is one of the most destructive and profitable forms of cybercrime. An analysis published in February by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence found there had been at least 5,289 attacks in 2024, with some netting tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
The British government has not publicly accused anyone of masterminding the hack. A group of hackers who had claimed to be behind a string of other hacks against large British and American companies earlier this year told the BBC in September that they were responsible for hacking Jaguar Land Rover. NBC News was unable to confirm with the group, as their channel on Telegram, the app where they had previously made such claims, has been deleted.
“Worldwide, every other week seems to bring a new climate-related crisis. Increasingly, the response has seemed to be a dulled acceptance.” By Elizabeth Kolbert
Excerpts from a longer article are presented below. There’s more at the link.
In the spring of 1992, President George H. W. Bush flew to Brazil […] Delegates from more than a hundred and seventy countries had gathered in Rio de Janeiro to hammer out a global treaty on climate change. The United States was, at that point, far and away the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and, in negotiations leading up to the summit, it had widely been seen as dragging its feet. […]
This week, representatives of just about every country in the world—there are now more than a hundred and ninety—are gathering for what amounts to a Brazilian homecoming. This year’s climate-negotiating session, or COP (short for Conference of the Parties), is the thirtieth since the treaty negotiated in Rio went into effect, and it’s taking place at the mouth of the Amazon River, in the city of Belém. […] the U.S. won’t be sending its President or any other high-ranking officials to offer encouragement. […]
In a recent speech to the United Nations, […] Trump called climate science “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and he has set himself against all efforts to limit warming, at home and abroad. […] And he’s bullying other nations into following suit. Last month, at a meeting in London, Trump Administration officials went so far as to threaten international diplomats negotiating a pact to cut emissions from shipping. According to the Financial Times, some of diplomats were warned that, if they voted for the pact, they might find themselves unable to enter the U.S. in the future. […]
The year 2023 was, by a wide margin, the warmest on record, until it was exceeded by 2024. A report issued last month by more than a hundred and fifty scientists warned that the world’s coral reefs are fated to die off; even under the “most optimistic” scenarios, ocean temperatures will be too high for them to survive. The Amazon rain forest and the Greenland ice sheet, the report stated, may similarly be destined for “irreversible collapse.”
In the first six months of this year, the cost of climate-related disasters in the U.S. set a new record: a hundred and one billion dollars. (Though the Trump Administration has stopped keeping track of such costs, the nonprofit group Climate Central has continued to gather the data.) Worldwide, every other week seems to bring a new climate-related crisis. [I snipped examples.]
Increasingly, the response to all this has seemed to be a dulled acceptance. In the lead-up to this year’s COP, every country was supposed to announce an emissions target for itself, extending through 2035. The U.S.submitted such a target in the last month of the Biden Administration; it is now considered largely meaningless. Last week, China submitted its target, which was widely described as inadequate. Brazil’s target, too, has been criticized as insufficient. And, just a few weeks ago, the Brazilian government decided, for the first time, to allow oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon. […]
Bill Gates weighed in with a memo to COP delegates. In it, Gates noted that the world’s poorest people are also the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. But, he said, these people have more acute problems than warming—namely, being poor. Therefore, he argued, money now spent on reducing emissions would be better spent on encouraging economic growth: “Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”
Gates’s comments generated a swirl of attention, in part because, just a few years ago, he wrote a book warning of a “climate disaster.” Trump, on Truth Social, characterized the memo as an admission by Gates that he had been “completely WRONG,” and cited it as evidence that “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax.” [!!]
[…] It is understandable, in the age of Trump, that people—billionaires included—would want to focus on more tractable problems than climate change, even if those problems are as immense as global poverty. After thirty years—or thirty-three, if you’re counting from Rio—it’s hard not to be discouraged by all that has, and hasn’t, happened. But there is no getting away from climate change. All other problems, poverty included, are linked to it and will be exacerbated by it. The notion that you can alleviate suffering in a world of uncontrolled warming isn’t just shortsighted, it edges toward magical thinking. ♦
Senators whose phone records were sought by Special Counsel Jack Smith would gain authority to sue for millions in damages under a provision buried in the Senate-advanced deal to reopen the government.
The spending measure, which cleared a Senate procedural hurdle Sunday night, would create a private right of action allowing senators who’ve been searched—without their knowledge—for their communications data to bring civil lawsuits against the US government and potentially individual federal employees.
Essentially the Republicans have figured that they don’t have a case against Smith so they are going to rewrite the law and let the Senators make a spectacle of the investigation. If this passes it will be a huge shield for Senators against the law because it becomes nearly impossible to investigate them without telling them. What modern investigation doesn’t involve communication records?
On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”
Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.
Almost immediately, aides were fielding angry phone calls from those who thought the idea – which would endorse a 50 year payback period for a mortgage – was both bad politics and bad policy, a move that could raise housing costs in the long run, the person said.
Apparently Pulte is one of Trump’s few personal friends in the administration and can arraign a casual meeting anytime he wants. This lets him go around the bubble the rest of the administration tries to keep around Trump to keep him from hearing random ideas. “rest of administration” here probably means Stephen Miller. It doesn’t always work because Fox News feeds Trump some ideas and Laura Loomer has gotten private meetings that have resulted in firings.
“After months of missteps and failures, the last thing Patel needed was another embarrassing report that casts him in an unflattering light.”
After months of controversies, missteps and failures, FBI Director Kash Patel didn’t need another embarrassing report that casts him in an unflattering light. Anyway, let’s check the headlines. The New York Times has reported:
At a secret gathering in May, south of London, the head of Britain’s domestic security service asked Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, for help. British security officials rely on the bureau for high-tech surveillance tools — the kind they might need to monitor a new embassy that China wants to build near the Tower of London. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, asked Mr. Patel to protect the job of an F.B.I. agent based in London who dealt with that technology, according to several current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode.
According to the Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC, Patel committed to MI5 that the posting would remain intact. The bureau’s director did not, however, keep his word, and the agent in question left London as part of a White House-directed cost-saving measure.
It was, the article added, “a jarring introduction to Mr. Patel’s leadership style for British officials.” [Patel’s “leadership style” apparently included lying to MI5.]
[…] it’s become challenging to keep up with the FBI director’s many embarrassments. Just in recent weeks, he’s been accused of misusing a bureau jet, prematurely sharing sensitive details about an ongoing case (twice) and overseeing a brazenly political personnel purge.
These developments came on the heels of a brutal federal lawsuit, filed by three former senior FBI officials in September, which characterized Patel’s bureau as fixated on “politically motivated retribution” and consumed by the whims of the Trump White House.
A few months earlier, NBC News reported, “Patel’s approach to his new job has raised concerns that he is not taking the position seriously enough, a dozen current and former DOJ and FBI officials told NBC News. … At the same time, Patel has drawn attention for regularly appearing with celebrities at professional sporting events around the country, according to flight logs and social media posts.”
The Times’ latest report added, “Mr. Patel’s inexperience, his dismissals of top F.B.I. officials and his shift of bureau resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift.”
It’s almost as if putting an amateurish conspiracy theorist and podcast personality in charge of FBI wasn’t a good idea.
Nine months ago, Patel was confirmed with the support of 51 of the chamber’s 53 Republican members. To date, none of them has acknowledged the mistake.
A Utah judge on Monday rejected a Republican-passed redistricting plan that created two more-competitive districts in the state — a win for Democrats who thought the map did not go far enough. In denying the new map, the judge put in place one of two options offered by plaintiffs that creates a solidly-Democratic district that covers Salt Lake City, giving the party its second win in the redistricting wars that have swept the nation ahead of the midterms.
Summary by Steve Benen of new reported by New Republic and NBC:
[…] as the dust settles on the 2025 elections, there’s one takeaway that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee in her state, based much of her candidacy on an anti-trans message. She also lost by nearly 15 points, suggesting the issue isn’t quite as potent as some in the GOP want it to be.
Once upon a time, in 1914, in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island — where my Dad’s side of the family is from — there was a multi-day civil uprising related in part to the increasing price of pasta. I realize I am inviting all kinds of bad ethnic jokes by telling you all about this, but it was a thing that happened. They were called the Macaroni Riots.
We may very well see some of our own soon enough, because Italy’s biggest pasta exporters say they plan to stop selling in the United States starting next year. Why? Because last month, the US Commerce Department decided that they were charging too little for their pasta and “undercutting” the market for macaroni made in the states, and hit them with a 92 percent “anti-dumping” duty. That’s on top of the 15 percent tariff on all goods from the European Union — 107 percent in total.
The additional costs could drive up the price of imported Italian pasta to $7.99 a bag, which I think we can all agree is ridiculous for shelf-stable pasta. The US is the largest consumer of Italian-made pasta, but most people are not going to pay that — so there would basically be no point in exporting.
Newsweek reports that the 13 companies that will be affected by these increased taxes are:
– La Molisana
– Pasta Garofalo
– Rummo
– Agritalia
– Aldino
– Antiche Tradizioni Di Gragnano
– Barilla (noting U.S.-produced Barilla will be less affected)
– Gruppo Milo
– Pastificio Artigiano Cav. Giuseppe Cocco
– Pastificio Chiavenna
– Pastificio Liguori
– Pastificio Sgambaro
– Pastificio Tamma
Now, you may be thinking, “Oh, well, I don’t really buy most of those brands, anyway! I am safe!” But the United States does not actually make enough pasta for everyone, so this will very likely lead to a pasta shortage starting in the first few months of 2026 — a horrific tragedy, the likes of which we have never seen before in this country.
The US Commerce Department began its “investigation” into this supposed price dumping back in August after two US companies, Winland Foods and 8th Avenue Food & Provisions (the latter of which doesn’t even sell pasta anymore), complained that they couldn’t compete with Italian pasta brands.
Via The Daily Beast:
“This isn’t about dumping—it’s an excuse to block imports,” said Cosimo Rummo, CEO of Rummo Pasta, another company caught in the crossfire.
Officials in Rome agree. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has assembled a diplomatic task force to push back on the decision, while EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic blasted the 107 percent combined tariffs as “clearly unacceptable.”
U.S. officials deny politics played a role, insisting the rates are the result of a “technical review.” An official noted, as evidence, that the Trump administration has friendly relations with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
This is true. After all, they’re both fascists. However, last month, when Trump visited Italy, multiple outlets reported that she appeared to be visibly skeeved out by him after he repeatedly called her a “beautiful young woman” and then shook her hand for an awkwardly long amount of time. I would not put it past the man to be angry enough about that to push for something like this. He’s petty AF.
“Together with the Italian ambassador to the United States, Marco Peronaci, we are carefully following the alleged anti-dumping action, which would trigger a hyper-protectionist mechanism towards our pasta producers for which we see neither the need nor any justification,” Francesco Lollobrigida, Italy’s Minister of Agriculture and, yes, the grandnephew of actress Gina Lollobrigida […]
Now, there’s already been an ongoing issue with tariffs increasing the price of “the good” olive oil and discouraging many exporters […]
So between that and a pasta shortage, there are going to be a whole lot of angry Italian-Americans out there, not to mention all of the other people who like good food. Let’s be real, there are a lot of people out there who are perfectly content to ignore politics and tariffs and what have you until it directly affects them, and they are either forced to eat substandard pasta or go without it altogether.
“An appeals court last year upheld a lower court’s judgment that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s, and later defamed her after she went public with her allegations.”
[…] Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a $5 million civil judgment that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
A jury in 2023 awarded the judgment after it found Trump liable of sexual abuse, following Carroll’s allegations that Trump assaulted her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996 and later defamed her during his first term by referring to her allegations as a “hoax” and a “con job.”
“There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their filing to the Supreme Court.
“Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself,” the filing added.
It is unclear whether the high court will take up the civil case.
[…] A spokesman for Trump’s outside legal team said in a statement on the filing, “The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes. President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.” [Loads and loads of bull pucky.]
[…] A federal appeals court last year upheld the judgment after Trump argued that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the case, had erred in allowing testimony from two women — Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff — whose allegations of sexual abuse Trump has denied.
A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in December last year that Kaplan had not “abused his discretion” by permitting their testimony. [!]
Trump had also asked the appeals court for a rehearing of the case in June, which was denied.
Trump has repeatedly sought to have the judgments in Carroll’s cases against him overturned. A separate appeal that Trump filed to overturn Carroll’s $83 million defamation judgment last year, in a case tied to his defamatory comments about her while president and after the $5 million verdict, failed in September.
“The video, likened to a scene from ‘Mad Max, ‘was geolocated by NBC News to Pokrovsk, where fierce battles have been taking place as Russia pushes to capture the city.”
Video and still photos are available at the link.
A convoy rolls through the dense fog: soldiers on motorbikes, some perched on the roofs of cars missing doors and windows, others atop a battered truck.
Debris covers the muddy, pockmarked road, geolocated by NBC News to southern Pokrovsk — the city where fierce battles are taking place amid Russia’s push to advance deeper into eastern Ukraine.
After more than a year of fighting, there are growing signs that Russia may be about to capture the city, a logistics hub seen as a gateway to the broader region.
Its forces have pierced stretched defensive lines, with Ukraine’s military saying Tuesday that there were “more than 300 Russians in the city.”
“In recent days, Russians have intensified their efforts to enter Pokrovsk on light vehicles through the southern suburbs,” the Ukrainian unit defending the city, the 7th Rapid Response Corps, said in a statement.
“To do this, the enemy used adverse weather conditions, in particular thick fog,” it added. “This reduces the possibilities for our aerial reconnaissance and destruction in open terrain.”
The video shows the Russian troops moving through the thick haze as they pass a road sign marked “Pokrovsk.”
The footage was shared widely on Telegram by Russia’s popular military bloggers, with some comparing its postapocalyptic landscape to scenes from the “Mad Max” action movies.
Pokrovsk is a key Ukrainian transport and supply hub that Russian forces claimed to have encircled earlier this month. It was home to some 60,000 people before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.
[…] Moscow last week urged Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk to surrender and save themselves, claiming they were “trapped.”
Kyiv has repeatedly rejected these claims, with the 7th Rapid Response Corps saying Tuesday that it continued to identify and destroy Russian soldiers in the city.
[…] Ukrainian forces continued to maintain their defensive line, with supply routes still operational to the nearby city of Myrnohrad on the eastern front.
Ukrainian forces pulled back from their positions around five villages on the front line in the southeast because of Russian advances, military spokesman Vladyslav Voloshyn confirmed to NBC News.
If Pokrovsk was to fall, it could become a springboard for Russian forces to threaten nearby strongholds such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk as President Vladimir Putin eyes full control of his neighbor’s industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
“As the president pushes ‘dividend’ checks from tariffs, there’s an accounting maxim he still doesn’t understand: ‘You can’t spend the same dollar twice.’ ”
As this week got underway, Donald Trump held an event in the Oval Office ostensibly about the swearing-in of an ambassador, although the president took the opportunity to emphasize one of his priorities. [video]
“One of the things we’re going to do, we’re going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people of about $2,000,” the Republican boasted. “And we’re going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt.”
A day earlier, by way of his social media platform, Trump touted his idea of rebate checks worth “at least” $2,000 per person, adding that they’ll be “paid to everyone” except high-income earners. As part of the pitch, the president added that he also intends to use the same tariff revenue to “begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion.” (Not to be picky, but the national debt recently topped $38 trillion.)
As a practical matter, those hoping to see this money shouldn’t hold their breaths. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, appears to be going through the motions, pretending these rebates checks will eventually manifest, even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested to ABC News over the weekend that there is no real policy plan in place. [see comment 174]
[…] As regular readers know, Trump’s tariffs are generating revenue. He’s wildly exaggerated how much revenue, pointing to “trillions” of dollars, despite the reality of far more modest sums, but the money does exist. That’s not exactly surprising: Tariffs are, for all intents and purposes, taxes — and taxes generate revenue.
The trouble is that the president, who’s long struggled with the basics of accounting, seems to be under the impression that the pool of money is so enormous that he can use it for a whole buffet of priorities.
According to Trump, tariff revenue will be used to reduce the national debt. And pay for dividend checks. And pay for tax cuts. And even finance a new system of free childcare for American families. [Not at all realistic.]
There are very credible concerns about tariffs weakening economic growth in the coming months and years, and it’s an open question as to whether the Supreme Court even allows the administration’s tariffs scheme to remain intact. But it’s foundational problem too often goes unaddressed: The White House can’t spend the same dollar several times over.
In late September, during his radical remarks to U.S. generals and admirals, Trump boasted, “We’ve taken in trillions of dollars. We’re rich again.” If he were right and the U.S. had actually taken in trillions of dollars since he began implementing his tariffs scheme, we might have a very different kind of conversation. But in reality, tariff revenue was roughly $195 billion in the fiscal year that ended in late September. (That’s “billion” with a B, not “trillion” with a T.)
And while $195 billion might sound like an enormous amount of money, in the context of federal expenditures, that’s not even close to being enough money to pay for all of the things the president has talked about.
In late July, Trump boasted online, “[O]ur Country is doing very well and can afford just about anything.” It’d be nice if that were true.
There’s been some sporadic talk in conservative circles about the introduction of new, 50-year mortgages for Americans looking to buy a home, but it seemed easy to dismiss and difficult to take seriously.
That is, until the White House threw its public support behind the policy.
On Saturday, Bill Pulte, the Trump loyalist who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, announced via social media that the Republican administration is working on making 50-year mortgages available — a move the FHFA director described as “a complete game changer.”
Two days later, during Donald Trump’s latest Fox News interview, for example, host Laura Ingraham asked whether a 50-year mortgage is “really a good idea.” The president responded as if a half-century-long mortgage was a modest change from the status quo. “I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years,” the Republican said, overlooking the fact that 40-year mortgages are practically unheard of for most consumers. He added, “All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time.”
The following morning, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council and one of the most influential voices in Trump’s inner circle on economic policy, appeared on CNBC and touted 50-year mortgages as a “really good” idea.
It’s really not.
[…] just below the surface, there’s a lengthy list of problems. Homeowners who take on 50-year mortgages would end up paying far more, building equity far more slowly than those with traditional mortgages, and just as importantly, paying higher interest rates.
A CNBC report added that a 50-year mortgage “does not currently meet the definition of a qualified mortgage” under federal law, and a related Washington Post report added, “Implementing such a policy would also require changes from regulators, plus buy-in from lenders and the broader housing finance industry.”
In other words, no one should expect to see such a policy implemented anytime soon.
But as the public conversation and political debate advances, a related question hangs overhead: How exactly did Trump come to endorse such an idea in the first place? Politico reported on Pulte’s role in securing presidential buy-in.
On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below ‘30-year mortgage’ and one of Trump below ‘50-year mortgage.’ The headline was ‘Great American Presidents.’ Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.</blockquote?
The Politico report […] added that White House officials “are furious” with Pulte for putting a misguided idea in Trump’s head and sparking “a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.”
The same article added, “The episode underscores the haphazard ways consequential policies are sometimes brought before the president, and how Trump’s govern-by-whim nature can backfire.”
And therein lies the larger point. It is, to be sure, a problem that the White House stumbled into extending its imprimatur to a misguided idea on housing policy. But stepping back, it’s just as serious a problem that the White House doesn’t have a robust policymaking process in place in the first place. What it has instead are unqualified loyalists who persuade an unqualified president to embrace ill-advised policies without forethought, analysis or due diligence. [True!]
There’s no reason to expect this governing model to change anytime soon.
As […] Trump’s deadline for a massive budget bill drew near early in the summer, Republican Senate leadership needed to corral the support of some members of the conference. The bill would help pay for tax cuts for the wealthy partly through cuts to Medicaid and needed nearly all Republican votes to pass. The impact on rural hospitals, analysts warned, would be severe. But Republican leadership was able to win over key votes by directing a small slice of money to a “rural hospital fund.”
Now, all 50 states are now vying for a piece of that $50 billion fund […] The fund, and its application process which closed last Wednesday, has been called “the rural health ‘Hunger Games.’” […]
Despite that, due to Trump administration restrictions on how the fund can be used, advocates now say that hospitals will not be able to spend it in the areas they most need to address.
Under Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rules for distributing the funds, only 15% of any money awarded to states from this fund can be used to cover unpaid patient care, a major funding shortage for rural hospitals.
“If enough people keep coming in who can’t pay their bills, the hospital can’t just survive on nothing,” Adam Searing, an attorney and research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, told TPM. “That’s why we have more hospitals closing in non-Medicaid expansion states than elsewhere and this is just going to make that program worse.”
The grant funding will be distributed to states whose applications are approved by CMS over a five year period. Half of the $50 billion will be distributed equally to all approved applications. The other half will be distributed based on a complex weighted formula under which a range of policy-based factors account for about 15% of a state’s score. Some of those factors, advocates note, have a partisan valence.
Those policy points include whether a state restricts certain health insurance plans, sometimes called junk plans, which skirt Affordable Care Act rules, but also such MAHA-coded criteria as whether states restrict SNAP users from buying “non-nutritious foods” and whether states plan to institute Trump’s “Presidential Fitness Test” in schools. [WTF?]
[…] In the meantime, more than 300 rural hospitals are immediately at risk of closure, and more than 1,000 are at risk in general as of October 2025 […] More than 75% of the hospitals in either category are in states that went for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Solving the Wrong Problem
Ultimately, the rural health “fund” doesn’t deserve the name, rural emergency physician Rob Davidson told TPM last summer. “I think we — probably all of us — need to stop saying that it’s a rural health fund,” he said.
Trump’s $3.4 trillion tax cuts and spending package, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, earned enough support from Republican lawmakers to pass the Senate largely only after the last-minute $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program was added.
Yet the $50 billion fund is largely designed not for shoring up hospitals budgets left by the Medicaid cuts and other gaps in patients’ ability to pay, but for state spending on workforce recruitment and retention, modernization and technological advancement initiatives, and preventative care. The initiatives are mostly things that, barring historic health care cuts, Searing said would garner bipartisan support.
In addition to the CMS provision that only 15% of the cash can be used by rural hospitals to cover the cost of uncompensated care, only 10% of any award amount can be used to cover direct and indirect administrative costs, and no funds can be used to supplement clinical services already covered by other insurance sources including private plans, Medicaid or Medicare. This despite the fact that insurer payments to hospitals don’t always cover the cost of patient services, according to a report from the CHQPR’s rural hospitals arm.
“We have found that many small rural hospitals are losing money because of low payments from private health plans, not because of how many Medicaid patients they have,” Harold D. Miller, CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, told TPM […]
During negotiations, advocates decried the provision, saying the $50 billion boost was a drop in the bucket compared to the $1 trillion cuts, about $137 billion of which will be taken away from rural hospitals, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They warned the legislative language wasn’t strong enough, and didn’t even ensure that the comparatively small amount of money allotted would go to the most vulnerable rural communities.
Now that CMS has released its rules for the program’s grant application, those warnings are proving prescient.
[…] the partisan aspects of the application rules could be used to block funding Democratic states, several of which have at-risk rural hospitals. […]
[…] Trump gave a wandering Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery Tuesday, revisiting one of his favorite grievances: not getting enough credit.
“You know, I was recently at an event and I saw France was celebrating Victory Day, but we didn’t,” he said. “I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II. And other countries were celebrating—they were all celebrating. And we’re the one that won the wars.” […]
A video about CV 90 in Ukraine. It is obviously seen from the Ukrainan point of view, but the fact that most of the vehicles remain and function after all this time proves it is reliable and can survive a lot of combat damage (by contrast, Soviet-heritage troop transports were not designed around survivability but about low cost so as many as possible could be available for WWIII). I do not know if this version have programmable 40 mm shells.
“Diplomats are looking at ways to move Kyiv’s application forward despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s veto.”
Top European ministers will travel to Ukraine next month in a show of support for the country’s application to join the EU, a move that comes as allies work around delays caused by opposition from Hungary.
The informal summit of ministers for European affairs will be held in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Dec. 10 and 11, according to an invitation sent to capitals Monday. The letter was sent jointly on behalf of Denmark, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU, and Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Taras Kachka.
“The main focus of our discussions will be Ukraine’s progress on its path to EU membership,” the document reads. “The meeting will provide an opportunity to take stock of the results achieved, to share reflections on the next steps and to reaffirm political support for Ukraine’s reform and integration efforts.”
“By convening in Ukraine, we will send a clear and united political message that the future of Ukraine lies within the EU,” the message reads.
Plans for the Lviv meeting come as Brussels struggles to deliver on pledges of direct support for Ukraine, with a proposal to back a €140 billion loan using frozen Russian assets still stalled over Belgian objections.
Kyiv secured candidate status as a prospective member of the bloc in 2022 and has carried out wide-ranging economic, judicial and anti-corruption reforms even as Russia’s war rages across the country. However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has vowed to block Ukraine’s accession, which requires unanimous support from all EU countries, and is holding up the formal opening of negotiating chapters.
Proposals to change the rules and allow that process to go ahead with just a qualified majority of support have so far failed to find sufficient backing. […] the current plan is to ensure that Ukraine — along with neighboring Moldova — can start working through the next round of reforms without waiting for formal approval, an approach being termed “frontloading.”
That would position Kyiv to move quickly if the impasse is resolved. Orbán faces a tough test next year when Hungarians vote in parliamentary elections to be held no later than April 2026. His governing Fidesz party is trailing in the polls to pro-EU opposition politician Péter Magyar’s TISZA alliance.
“The idea is to do as much as possible without having to wait,” said one of the officials, granted anonymity to speak freely. “Then, when Hungary no longer has a veto, we can move without delays.”
Celebrating a positive report on his country’s reform progress from Brussels, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that it will become a full member “in a fair way when Ukraine is standing for itself and when the war is over.”
[…] FIFA [soccer’s governing body] did not ask me who should win the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. This newly created honor will be awarded by FIFA boss Gianni Infantino in December at the World Cup draw, which will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington. We don’t know who will win, but here’s a hint: If you don’t live in a partially demolished dwelling with golden bathroom fixtures at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., you are probably not in the running.
Asking who will win the FIFA Peace Prize seems a bit like asking who will win the Russian presidential election. […] Infantino is widely expected to honor President Donald Trump with another of the shiny trinkets the president loves. Even though the only ball Trump has probably ever kicked is his golf ball — when he’s moving it to cheat.
Soccer fans and members of national federations who thought of Infantino, who is Swiss, as the antidote to his endlessly compromised countryman Sepp Blatter have been hugely disappointed. They now see someone who is continuing FIFA’s odious reputation for pandering to power while trying to accumulate more of it.
[I snipped some history from 1966 and 1978.]
[…] Sepp Blatter, Havelange’s successor, would later face allegations that FIFA was part of a bribery scheme that helped Germany beat South Africa for the 2006 tournament. Blatter then sent the 2018 World Cup to Putin’s Russia before he was forced to leave office in the aftermath of a massive scandal that ultimately landed in U.S. courts, where a number of FIFA officials were charged with crimes.
One of Infantino’s first acts as a supposed reformist was to manage the award of the World Cup to Qatar despite its sordid human rights record. He later doubled down on putting petrodollars before people, shepherding the 2034 Cup to Saudi Arabia, where free speech doesn’t exist and women are second-class citizens and whose ruler was implicated in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
From Infantino’s point of view, handing the Cup to Qatar and Saudi Arabia is part of expanding soccer’s footprint in places where the pro game is less developed. The other term for the moves is sportswashing: allowing money to dilute the unjust behavior of unsavory rulers.
Which brings us to Trump’s America, where immigrants, and even U.S. citizens, are being disappeared off the streets in raids by federal agents. Where Trump has antagonized and targeted cohosts Canada and Mexico with an unnecessary and harmful tariff regime. And where he has threatened to move World Cup matches from San Francisco and Boston on the false pretense that these cities are being ruined by out-of-control leftists.
The president’s peacemaking qualities, too, may come as a surprise to teams from around the world. While Venezuela was trying to qualify for the Cup, Trump was busy using U.S. armed forces to kill alleged drug runners off the its coast while moving an aircraft carrier group in place for a possible attack on the country. In Europe, the nearly four-year war in Ukraine that Trump said he would end rages on. The Ukrainian team, which can still make the tournament, has had to play qualifying matches in Poland to stay safe from Russian bombs. [I snipped some details.]
[…] Infantino is so desperate to remove the friction that Trump has created for this World Cup that he’s going way out of his way to placate him. That’s why the draw is taking place in Washington, of course, where he will get the opportunity to hand Trump a phony trophy before the real one goes to the World Cup winner. (Which isn’t going to be the U.S., something neither Infantino nor Trump can fix.) […]
“BREAKING: Democrats Gain After Utah Judge STRIKES DOWN GOP Map”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=34hvZ3LbfBo
I usually do not publish links to this Youtuber since it tends to get quite technical, but you need some good news.
Senate Republicans say they’re open to extending a pot of Affordable Care Act funds that will expire at the end of the year — but only if Democrats acquiesce to stricter abortion restrictions on insurance plans.
The demand presents a significant hurdle to reaching a bipartisan deal to extend ACA funding designed to avoid major premium hikes next year for more than 20 million Americans, as Democrats are adamant that existing abortion guardrails under Obamacare are sufficient.
If the funds are not extended by the end of the year, some people insured under Obamacare could see their bills rise by thousands of dollars per month, raising concerns that millions will choose to go uninsured.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said there will be a negotiation about an extension after the government reopens. He said one condition will be stricter rules pertaining to the Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding from being used for abortion.
[…] Katie Keith, a Georgetown Law professor and founding director of its Center for Health Policy and the Law, said existing law bans any federal funds from flowing to abortion care through ACA plans, including the premium tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments, consistent with the Hyde amendment.
States have the option to create separate revenue streams where enrollees can pay a surcharge to gain abortion coverage through their plans. Twenty-five states ban abortion coverage through ACA marketplaces entirely. The rest are split between requiring it through additional state funding or deferring to insurers.
Still, even for states that allow ACA plans to cover abortion, “there are strict segregation requirements,” Keith said. “Since the law was enacted, no federal funds flow toward abortion care.”
She said the same rule applies to Medicaid funding.
“What critics of the current policy are arguing is they want Hyde plus-plus. This goes far beyond what Hyde requires,” she added. “It’s not about federal funds flowing toward the care, it’s about federal funds flowing toward coverage, even if it’s financed separately. … They want to knock out abortion coverage fully.” […]
Veterans, along with their families, received a pleasant surprise when former President Barack Obama boarded their Honor Flight to personally greet them upon their arrival in Washington, D.C., ahead of Veterans Day festivities.
“Hello, everybody,” Obama said over the airplane’s PA system. “I want to stop by and just say thank you for your extraordinary service—to you, your family, the sacrifices that all of you made to protect our country is something that will always be honored. And, we are very grateful.” [video]
Obama shook hands with each veteran as they disembarked from the aircraft and presented them with a Presidential Challenge Coin, which recognizes outstanding service or achievements.
Honor Flight is a nonprofit organization that honors World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War veterans by flying them to Washington, free of charge, to visit the memorials built in their honor.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen a president, former or current, greet an Honor Flight, and that is absolutely amazing,” said U.S. Navy Captain Mary Quigley, a veteran herself, who works with the organization. “A commander-in-chief, a leader who’s going to show up and tell you that your service was worth something.”
birgerjohanssonsays
“China removes two popular gay dating apps from Apple and Android stores”
A classic move by dictatorial leaders who feel insecure, alongside ethnic repression.
US President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a civil jury’s finding that he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid 1990s and later defamed her.
“Polska” (Poland) comes from namesake tribe, ultimate meaning “field”.
Slovakia = land of slavs.
Slovenia = land of slavs.
Norge (Norway)= northern way.
Danmark (Denmark)= march of danes.
Sverige (Sweden)= domain of swedes.
New York = not old York
York = Jor-vik, Jor bay.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Trump Screws Over His Scumbag Friends By Giving Them Pardons”
They may now lose their 5th amendment rights for their state charges if the accept the pardons!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4LAnI_H4-k
whheydtsays
Re: birgerjohansson @ #217…
Before York was Jorvik, it was the Roman camp of Eboracum.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 213
Watch as the Dems cave on this too. “Abortion just isn’t a winning issue anymore, besides it alienates pro-life Dems.”
birgerjohanssonsays
God Awful Movies
GAM532 Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible – Adam and Eve
QUEENS, NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In what has become a Veterans Day tradition for him, on Tuesday Donald J. Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist.
Trump made his annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the heroic doctors who issued bogus diagnoses to ensure that their privileged patients never answered the call of duty.
In an emotional tribute, Trump thanked the fallen foot specialists who bravely risked their medical licenses so that others facing military service could be free.
Choking back tears, he said, “They gave everything so people like me could give nothing.”
Some Trump administration officials are deeply concerned that the Gaza peace deal between Israel and Hamas could break down because of the difficulty implementing many of its core provisions, as private documents obtained by Politico and circulating among U.S. officials underscore the lack of a clear path forward.
[16 hrs ago]: Going to be really really good auroras the next couple of nights!!
[6 hrs ago]: HOLY SHIT THE SKY IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE AAAAHHHHHH WOWWWWWWW.
I haven’t yelled that many (overwhelmingly excited) swear words at the sky for a long time. […] [Photos]
She’s in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Aurorasaurus map had crowdsourced sightings down to Florida!
For once from a Southern hemisphere source here – possible aurorae visible tonight :
One of nature’s most magnificent shows, the southern lights, could be on display for large parts of southern Australia tonight as far north as Perth and Sydney, with a severe solar storm having an impact on Earth.
It comes as the Sun’s magnetic cycle nears the end of its most active phase — a period that has been helping trigger a boom of aurora activity over the past two years.
…(Snip)..
he Bureau of Meteorology’s space weather forecasting centre has issued an “aurora watch”, with severe geomagnetic storm conditions forecast to arrive at Earth from today, peaking at G4 levels.
Strong geomagnetic storm conditions are expected to continue on Thursday, before declining over Friday.
Matt Woods, from the Perth Observatory, said a storm of that magnitude meant there was a “good chance” that bright auroras could be visible across large parts of southern Australia once the skies darkened.
@ ^ Never guess I hadn’t refreshed to see the latest comments before posting this would you?
birgerjohanssonsays
“Mathematical model indicates Neanderthal disappearance can be explained by genetic dilution”
We are their descendants!
New project: trick the Nazis into regarding the muscular, blond-or red-haired Neanderthals as the original northern master race, so they donate funds to reconstructing the full genome instead of using the money to buy weapons for the race war.
Same video, “Epstein files return to haunt Republicans as crucial vote approaches,” as is highlighted in comment 229, tops this report from Steve Benen.
Donald Trump has long insisted that he did not know about and had no involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. […] over the course of the year, Trump began condemning the scandal as a “scam” and a “hoax” concocted by his Democratic critics.
But despite Trump’s efforts to make the story go away, the slow-moving avalanche of revelations continues to create new problems for the president and his White House.
On Wednesday morning, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a package of emails, obtained by the Epstein estate, in which the convicted sex offender wrote, among other things, that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of Epstein’s victims. In a separate message, Epstein said the future president “knew about the girls.”
In April 2011, for example, as Trump took on a higher political profile, Epstein sent an email to longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, which read, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. (REDACTED) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” [social medial post, with screen grab of email exchange]
The fact that Trump and the late millionaire pedophile had a relationship is not new. Not only have we all seen the video footage of the two men hanging out, but as my MSNBC colleague James Downie noted, Trump told New York magazine in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
But knowing that the two men were one-time friends is one thing; seeing an email in which Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims is something else altogether.
There’s also this email in which Epstein wrote that Trump “of course … knew about the girls.” [social medial post, with screen grab of email exchange.]
[…] The revelations of the emails […] come just hours before Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva is scheduled to be sworn in as Congress’ newest member. The Arizonan is expected to quickly sign a discharge petition related to disclosing the Epstein files, giving the bipartisan resolution the support it needs to receive a floor vote.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
As this week got underway, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the latest in a series of announcements: Deadly U.S. military strikes killed six people on Sunday as part of the latest operation against civilian boats in international waters. According to the Pentagon’s official tally, this was the 19th such strike since early September, with a collective death toll of 76 people.
The broader controversy surrounding this policy, which the Trump administration claims without evidence is intended to target vessels carrying drugs destined for American soil, is a multifaceted mess, including serious questions about whether the military operations are legal. What’s more, while Donald Trump and his team have insisted that the boat crews are made up of “narco-terrorists,” an Associated Press analysis found that these claims weren’t altogether true. [Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
It’s against this backdrop that the controversy took on a new dimension this week related to international intelligence sharing. CNN reported that the United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with U.S. officials about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean “because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal.” From the report:
For years, the UK, which controls a number of territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, has helped the US locate vessels suspected of carrying drugs so that the US Coast Guard could interdict them, the sources said. That meant the ships would be stopped, boarded, its crew detained, and drugs seized. The intelligence was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, a task force stationed in Florida that includes representatives from a number of partner nations and works to reduce the illicit drug trade.
That cooperation, however, is now apparently on hold: The report added that British officials began its “intelligence pause” over a month ago.
[…] The Washington Post published a related piece, as did some British media outlets. (Officials in the U.S. and the U.K. said they do not comment on intelligence-related matters.)
If the reporting is accurate, it’s a dramatic development in its own right: It suggests one of the United States’ closest and most important allies doesn’t want to bear responsibility for deadly, extrajudicial military operations in international waters.
But it’s also worth acknowledging the unsettling larger pattern related to intelligence sharing.
When Donald Trump first announced that he wanted Tulsi Gabbard, who has a habit of echoing Russian propaganda, to be the director of national intelligence, Time magazine reported that some foreign officials expressed concern about sharing intelligence with the administration with her in office.
Earlier this year, Shane Harris had a related report in The Atlantic that raised the same point: “Several foreign intelligence officials have recently told me that they are taking steps to limit how much sensitive intelligence they share with the Trump administration, for fear that it might be leaked or used for political ends.”
Two months into the president’s second term, as the White House took steps to align U.S. foreign policy with the Kremlin, NBC News reported, “Some U.S. allies are considering scaling back the intelligence they share with Washington in response to the Trump administration’s conciliatory approach to Russia. … The allies are weighing the move because of concerns about safeguarding foreign assets whose identities could inadvertently be revealed, said the sources, who included a foreign official.”
Now, it appears the problem has metastasized: Foreign officials haven’t just expressed concern about the Trump administration’s reliability with sensitive intelligence, they’ve also reportedly concluded that the Trump administration might use intelligence to launch legally dubious military strikes against civilian targets.
President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Tuesday night the United States doesn’t have workers with “certain talents” to fill jobs needed domestically, defending the H1-B skilled worker visa program.
Pressed by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on whether his administration would reduce H1-B visas over concerns it would depress wages for American workers, Trump told Ingraham, “I agree — but you also do have to bring in talent.”
When the Fox host responded, “We have plenty of talented people here,” Trump replied, “No, you don’t, no you don’t … you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’”
Trump has triggered a MAGA complaint storm over this. Trump has spent so much time listening to a handful of billionaire friends and fellow grifters that he is forgetting the issues that brought him to popularity in the first place. At the same time Trump has actually imposed fees that make H1Bs less viable. His administration is flip flopping on these issues so fast that it’s policies end up being incoherent.
[…] About a month ago, Reuters reported that Vought [White House Budget Director Russell Vought] was moving forward with plans to shutter the CFBP [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau], sparking immediate pushback from Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, who were quick to warn the Office of Management and Budget chief that the Republican administration cannot simply close agencies that it doesn’t like.
A month later, Vought — one of the key authors of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint, which called for the CFPB’s demise — is advancing his plan anyway. Politico reported:
The Trump administration has formally determined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s current funding mechanism is unlawful, a move that puts the agency on track to close in the coming months when its existing cash runs out. The decision, disclosed in a court filing late Monday, marks the administration’s most direct effort yet to dismantle the consumer watchdog and sets up a new front in the ongoing legal battle over its future. The administration said it now considers the CFPB legally barred from seeking additional money from the Federal Reserve, which is the agency’s typical source of funding.
On its current trajectory, in early 2026, the bureau will no longer have the funds needed to keep the lights on.
Congress could intervene, but given the fact that Capitol Hill is lead by Republican opponents of the CFPB, that seems extraordinarily unlikely.
[…] the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau remains one of the best examples of progressive governance in the 21st century. From taking on banks to the student loan industry, payday lenders to mortgage companies, the bureau — an idea first championed by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — has looked out for Americans’ interests since its inception.
Late last year, Helaine Olen explained in a piece for MSNBC, “Over its almost 13 years, the agency has stopped numerous financial ripoffs and returned billions of dollars to the public. Its mere existence provides an ongoing demonstration of how the government can effectively stand up to big money interests and protect the American people.”
A New York Times report added soon after that this one agency “has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.”
The Trump White House doesn’t just want to curtail these efforts, it also wants to stop them — permanently.
It’s likely that Vought’s gambit will spark a new round of litigation, but as thing stand, the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in serious doubt.
The Trump DOJ’s bogus prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James just got a lot more difficult to pull off, with what appears to be a major administration coverup of the origins of the case against her.
In a new report, the WSJ has fleshed out a Reuters account from last week about the ousting of the acting inspector general at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. […]
As you well know by now, FHFA director Bill Pulte is the instigator of the bogus mortgage fraud investigations of James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA). The Trump administration has seized on Pulte’s bogus claims to, variously, indict James, attempt to fire Cook, and launch a criminal investigation of Schiff.
It’s the James case that’s of most interest here. She is seeking to dismiss the indictment against her on the grounds that it is a vindictive and selective prosecution. The new revelations bolster her arguments for dismissal.
Watchdogs at Fannie Mae had been looking into whether Pulte had “improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials,” including James, the WSJ reports:
Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents […]
The investigation into who was rifling around in the personal mortgage records of prominent Democrats was serious enough, apparently, to bring it to Joe Allen, the acting inspector general for FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (For those keeping score at home, Pulte is not just just the director of FHFA, he’s also chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)
That’s where things get interesting, according to the WSJ: “The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia […]” The Eastern District of Virginia is where recently-installed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan is prosecuting James. […]
Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors [!] in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.
The description by Reuters is vague, but it suggests that Allen was attempting to give exculpatory evidence to the prosecution team, which, generally speaking, the government is legally required to share with the defendant — in this case, James.
In her motion last Friday to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution, James referenced the Reuters’ report and indicated that she had not received from prosecutors whatever it was that Allen had turned over: [Screen grab of text from court filing.]
“The defense is left guessing at what other prosecutorial vindictiveness discovery exists in the government’s hands,” James’ lawyers wrote.
Allen wasn’t the only one ousted. About a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit were fired on Oct. 29 in the wake of the probe into origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims and who had access to the personal mortgage records of James and others. [!!]
To sum up: Internal government watchdogs who were looking into the origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims emanating from the Trump administration were fired en masse, but not before the acting inspector general for the FHFA managed to turn over what appears to be exculpatory evidence to federal prosecutors in the James case.
[…] In another email exchange from 2015—when Trump was first running for president—reporter Michael Wolff told Epstein that Trump could get a debate question about his relationship with Epstein.
When Epstein asked Wolff how Trump should respond to such a question, Wolff replied: “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
And in a third email from 2019 to Wolff, Epstein wrote about a victim who was at Mar-a-Lago, saying of Trump, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
[…] the House will vote on whether to release the files in the coming weeks, likely in early December. Republicans will have to decide whether to do what polls say voters want and vote to release the files, or instead vote to protect Trump, as Dear Leader demands.
The tariffs argument at the Supreme Court last week did not really go so great for the Trump administration. That must have been a new and unpleasant feeling for President Donald Trump, given that the court’s conservatives have given him nearly everything he wants.
But Trump has a cunning plan to fix it: make shit up.
Late Monday night, Trump got on Truth Social to say that, if the court rules against him on tariffs, the country would lose $3 trillion in refunds or lost investments. Oh, and also that “the U.S. Supreme Court was given the wrong numbers.”
Pretty tough to know what the right numbers might be, as tariff revenue is whatever Trump says it is at any given time. Indeed, that $3 trillion number was a huge leap from the $2 trillion that he touted just 10 hours earlier. To be fair, it’s easy to lose track when you’re just making things up on the fly.
During Nov. 5 oral arguments, Trump said that his tariffs “are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” which is very much not $3 trillion.
And Solicitor General John Sauer, who got his job by being one of Trump’s former criminal defense lawyers, is equally vague. In its brief to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration said that, one day, these tariffs could be worth $15 trillion and will reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion someday. [blowing smoke]
Here’s Sauer’s big problem: Since the Constitution gives taxation power to Congress, the administration has to say that the tariffs do not actually raise money. So Sauer told the Supreme Court that these are regulatory tariffs, and any revenue is incidental.
But, as Neal Katyal, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs, noted during oral arguments, the administration’s brief to the court admits to raising $4 trillion—and he’s right. [!]
“Vitally, the Congressional Budget Office recently projected that the IEEPA tariffs will reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion in upcoming years,” the brief says.
Sauer’s other big problem is that Trump can’t stop bragging about how much money his tariffs have raised. In fact, we’re so flush that he’s going to maybe give everyone $2,000—maybe. That would run about $600 billion, and it appears that the government does not seem to have collected nearly that much money so far.
But since none of this is grounded in reality, who cares?
Trump also didn’t seem to notice those “wrong numbers” that were given to the Supreme Court when he took a victory lap on Fox News the day of the hearing, saying that he heard the case went well. [delusion on the part of Hair Furor]
“If I didn’t have tariffs, the entire world would be in a depression. I did this for the world. If I didn’t put 100 percent tariff immediately on China, because of magnets, a special kind of rare earth, we’d be closed up,” Trump said. […]
In the real world, with real numbers, Americans are being battered by these tariffs. The average tax on imports— as in money that Americans are paying—now sits at 18%, which is up from 2.4% before Trump took office. […]
As always, Trump’s solution is to lie and say that all of those higher prices just don’t exist. But unlike Trump and Sauer, we can count, and those higher prices are extremely real.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took time away from overseeing unjustified air strikes against alleged drug boats to revisit another of his battlefronts: the war on beards.
“Whether you’re an airborne ranger or a chair-borne ranger, a brand-new private or a four-star general in the Pentagon—you need to beat height and weight standards and pass the PT [physical training] test twice a year,” Hegseth said at the Northeast Indiana Defense Summit on Wednesday. “I also said we don’t need to be in [a] military of beardos anymore.” [video]
Hegseth wasn’t finished pushing his latest thinly veiled bit of racism.
“Do you know how many troops claim to be Nordic pagan?” he continued. “Suddenly, it’s become like this real religious—fake religious—affiliation inside the Pentagon where troops claim to be Nordic pagan so they can grow a beard, and no one challenges them on it because no one’s upheld standards for a long time. Now a quarter of the platoon’s sporting beards because they’re now suddenly Nordic pagans. We’re not doing that stuff anymore.”
Pete Hegseth only accepts his version of Christian Nationalism as real.
birgerjohanssonsays
The MAGA people are going to be really upset if emails are uncovered showing he knew what Epstein was doing.
.
Oh, so that happened this morning…and they don’t care.
.
“Trump Gets AWFUL NEWS as Epstein SECRET EMAILS are UNCOVERED”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-lOCIrqy8uw
The Trump administration is really, really into offshore oil and gas drilling, but maybe not so much where Republicans have to actually see it. Hence the plan to force California to accept oil rigs dotting its shores and doing some cool oil spills while sparing states like Florida.
Surely it’s just a coincidence that this move targets a blue state with a governor who President Donald Trump hates while giving the red state where Trump lives a pass, right?
Offshore drilling in state waters has been banned in California since 1969, after a huge oil spill near Santa Barbara. But state waters only extend three miles from shore, so anything after that is apparently fair game for federal drilling. No new leases have been issued since the mid-1980s, but Trump is here to change that.
Part of how you know what a trash deal this is, just a way to target California while rewarding some pals, is that the company the administration is backing for this, Sable Offshore, is already an environmental nightmare in the state. Sable owns a pipeline in California, having purchased it from the previous owner.
Did we mention that before Sable bought it, the thing sprang a 140,000-gallon leak and trashed beaches from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles?
Sable bought it and was apparently so eager to start that it overlooked obtaining permits, for which the California Coastal Commission fined it $18 million. The California state attorney general recently sued Sable on behalf of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, thanks to Sable’s habit of discharging waste into state waterways.
And the Santa Barbara district attorney filed felony criminal charges against the company in September for the harm it has caused to wildlife and the pollution of the state’s waterways.
It will surprise literally no one that Sable’s CEO, James Flores, has ties to Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. So, since Sable is being thwarted by California for state drilling, why not get the nod from the administration for federal drilling off California’s shores instead? Sable dropped them a line to see if they couldn’t pretty please get some expedited permitting so they can drill in federal waters.
[…] South Carolina’s governor just wrote to the administration to ask to be exempt from Trump’s plan to open both the East and West Coasts up to offshore drilling, because their coastline is pristine.
Trump had already helpfully put a moratorium on drilling off of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina during his first term because Republicans in those states were concerned about oil spills hurting tourism and fishing. Florida’s GOP senators want a little more reassurance, though, so they’ve proposed a law banning offshore drilling for just Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
[…] The administration’s enthusiastic embrace of fossil fuels keeps running into a big problem, which is that even fossil fuel companies are not as enamored of the whole thing as Trump is.
The L.A. Times spoke with Dan Pickering, head of a Houston-based investment firm, who said energy companies will likely be eager to pay for new drilling leases off Louisiana and Texas, where they already have infrastructure, but California gets a big meh. “California is going to have either no interest or very low interest, with a much smaller subset of players.”
Clark Williams-Derry, another energy industry analyst, told the L.A. Times that “Nobody really wants offshore oil, except for maybe Texas and Louisiana. In my mind, this is at least in part politically motivated rather than substantively motivated.”
You don’t say.
Trump has the same problem with coal, which is that even coal companies don’t really want it. A recent attempt to get coal companies to bite at the opportunity to mine on public land in Montana drew a bid of a fraction of a penny per ton of coal. Companies that own coal-fired plants want to shut them down and phase them out, but instead, the administration is forcing them to stay open.
And now, perhaps, California gets forced to accept offshore rigs and all the risk of oil spills that they bring. But never the pristine shoreline of South Carolina or Georgia, and certainly never ever in Florida.
[…] And Epstein had 14 different phone numbers for Trump in Epstein’s 2009-or-earlier address book. Even Epstein apparently thought it only made sense for investigators to at least ask his best friend a question or two. And yet that never happened, for whatever reason. Guess because as Alexander Acosta had claimed in his September closed-door testimony, he simply did not think that any of those between 30 and 80 underage victims were credible witnesses, so why even bother?
And in January 2019, Epstein emailed author Wolff to scoff at the notion Trump never knew about any underage girls:
[VICTIM] mara lago. [Redacted sentence]. Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member or ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop
This would seem to refer to child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell poaching Trump’s employees from the ladies’ locker room of the Mar-a-Lago spa, as victim Virginia Giuffre had alleged happened to her. And when confronted about that in July, Trump confirmed that Epstein had done that, and to people plural, while also offering up a new reason as to why the two broke up.
“He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, to tell you the truth.”
[…] Epstein did keep his mouth shut about Trump, as it happened, but it did not save him. It does seem to have saved Ghislaine Maxwell, though, getting to stay alive and play with puppies in exchange for gushing to Todd Blanche about what a gentleman Donald Trump always was.
[…] Hmm, remember last month when Epstein’s former neighbor/Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick blurted out out of nowhere on a podcast that there was no way anybody who knew Epstein was unaware of what a creep he was, and also called him the greatest blackmailer ever?
Funny how when the FBI busts a drug dealer they pile all of the drugs and guns and cash on a table and take pictures of the bounty, but we’ve never seen even a full accounting of what-all was seized from Epstein. There’s evidence lists with lots of computers, hard drives, and photographs on them, but after almost a decade we’ve never learned what was actually in any of them. And in a way it doesn’t matter, people believed that Epstein had incriminating tapes and photographs, and still believe that those things might could still exist somewhere. That alone is enough for the guilty to be covering up as hard as they can!
[…] Trump’s […] supporters do not actually care that he’s all over the Epstein Files. It was well known before 2015 that the two were close, and that Donald Trump was a gross creep.
Jeffrey Epstein could have issued a death blow to Trump’s candidacy, which by November 2015 was seriously on the ropes, what with that Access Hollywood [P-word] tape, and new accusations every day of Trump going around grabbing unsuspecting women by the [P-word] because he was a star, and therefore he could do it. But Epstein did not do that, much to Steve Bannon’s relief.
So what worse to know than what we already do? What’s in there that made the entire House of Representatives get shut down for seven weeks to protect this dead pedophile’s cabal? What did Dan Bongino see in those files the FBI was combing through on Trump that made him go insane and basically quit and disappear?
“Israeli civilians ‘attacked IDF soldiers who were operating in the area and caused damage to a military vehicle,’ Israel’s military said in a statement.”
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and set fire to property in a pair of villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday before clashing with Israeli soldiers sent to break up their rampage, the Israeli military and Palestinian officials said.
“Four Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday. Security forces used “riot dispersal means” to break up the mob in the Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf villages “and apprehended several Israeli citizens,” the statement added.
After the masked individuals fled and regrouped close by near the Baron Industrial Zone, the IDF said civilians “attacked IDF soldiers who were operating in the area and caused damage to a military vehicle.”
[…] attackers had targeted warehouses belonging to a food production company “and smashed windows and other property.” […]
Settler violence has surged since the war in the Gaza Strip erupted just over two years ago. On Friday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said settlers staged at least 264 attacks on Palestinians in October — the highest monthly tally since the U.N. began tracking incidents in 2006.
Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers, which have intensified in recent weeks as Palestinians harvest their olive trees.
Several senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have close ties to West Bank settlers, including his ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line settler leader who oversees the police.
[…] the Switzerland-based nongovernmental child rights organization Defense for Children International said in a statement that it had obtained documentation that showed a 13-year-old boy had died on Tuesday of tear gas inhalation.
[…] Elsewhere, the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza was opened on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid trucks into the enclave, COGAT, the Israeli military’s arm that oversees aid flows, said in a statement.
U.N. aid agencies have been calling for the reopening of the crossing for more aid to flow into the devastated northern part of the enclave, especially after last month’s ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Herzog’s office confirmed Wednesday that he had received a letter from President Donald Trump urging him to consider granting a pardon to Netanyahu in his long-running corruption trial. [Not good.]
“While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System, and its requirements, I believe that this ‘case’ against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution,” Trump said, using Netanyahu’s nickname in the letter shared by Herzog’s office.
Trump has repeatedly asked for a pardon for his close ally. Netanyahu denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty. […]
“The White House has repeatedly pressured the administration, and no U.S. officials will attend the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg.”
Enoch Godongwana, South Africa’s finance minister, slammed claims of a genocide against white Afrikaners in the country Tuesday, after President Donald Trump last week announced no U.S. officials would attend the upcoming Johannesburg G20 summit as long as “human rights abuses continue.”
“We convene at a time when South Africa, like many nations around the world, is grappling with intensifying global competition and mounting economic and political divisions,” Godongwana said in a budget statement. To South African leaders, “it is against this fractured landscape that South Africa has been falsely accused of genocide against its white community and threatened with punitive sanctions based on these falsehoods.”
The White House has long fixated on what it says is South Africa’s mistreatment of white farmers. The administration granted refugee status to Afrikaners in May, even as it clamped down on refugee admissions from other countries. Also in May, Trump surprised South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House visit by showing him videos and images he said were evidence of persecution.
Trump’s social media post last week was yet another escalation in his pressure campaign against South Africa.
“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” he wrote on Truth Social. ”Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” [Trump doubles down and spews more falsehoods.]
The South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation last week called Trump’s post “regrettable” and said his claims were “not substantiated by fact.”
“Let me thank the many communities here at home and around the world that have rejected the false narratives and the fear, hate and disinformation they represent, and instead chosen to defend the principles of solidarity and equality,” Godongwana said Tuesday. […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that tests the limits of presidential power, on Wednesday Donald J. Trump ordered ICE agents to arrest the 67,000 football fans who booed him at Sunday’s Washington Commanders game.
“This should never be allowed to happen in this country,” Trump said, adding that the booing fans “were paid by Soros.”
Justifying his use of immigration agents, Trump accused all those who booed him of being in a Venezuelan drug cartel.
Elaborating on his claim, Trump said, “Despite our successful air strikes off the coast of Venezuela, somehow 67,000 of these criminals got through.”
You’d think that since those “nordic pagans” in the armed forces tend towards white supremacy, you’d think Kegsbreath be more supportive. But America’s bigotries have always been of a Christian flavor, so I can see why he’d be miffed.
“The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands”
It was January, my final week in the outgoing Administration. In a few days, Donald Trump would be inaugurated as President. I had come to the United States Agency for International Development in early 2022, leaving my surgery practice and public-health research in Boston to lead the agency’s global-health efforts. Now I’d be returning to my previous life.
I spent my last days at U.S.A.I.D. in meetings with our civil- and foreign-service leaders, thanking them. Their work with partner countries had helped to contain twenty-one outbreaks of deadly disease, sustain Ukraine’s health system after Russia’s invasion, combat H.I.V., tuberculosis, and polio, and reduce maternal and child deaths worldwide. On a budget of just twenty-four dollars per American—out of the fifteen thousand dollars in taxes paid per person last year—they had saved lives at an almost unimaginable scale. An independent, peer-reviewed analysis in The Lancet estimated that U.S.A.I.D. assistance had saved ninety-two million lives over two decades.
Many of the leaders voiced trepidation about what the incoming Administration might bring, but I struck a sanguine note. U.S.A.I.D., I pointed out, had more than sixty years of solid bipartisan backing. Trump had advanced significant parts of the agency’s work in his first term. He had personally pledged to end H.I.V. as a public-health threat by 2030. The incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had been a vocal supporter of the bureau. There would be isolated partisan skirmishes—over diversity initiatives, abortion-related policies, and the like—but more than ninety-five per cent of our bureau’s work had never been under contention.
Clearly, I lacked imagination. Within hours of being sworn in, President Trump signed an executive order for a “pause” to all foreign assistance. Secretary Rubio sent a cable suspending every program outright. No program staff could be paid. No services could be delivered. Medicines and food already on the shelves could not be used. […] Within weeks and in defiance of legal mandates, he and Rubio purged U.S.A.I.D.’s staff, terminated more than four-fifths of its contracts, impounded its funds, and dismantled the agency. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court did anything to stop it.
We are now witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed “public man-made death,” which, he observed, has been perhaps the most overlooked cause of mortality in the last century. Brooke Nichols, the Boston University epidemiologist and mathematical modeller, has maintained a respected tracker of current impact. The model is conservative, assuming, for example, that the State Department will fully sustain the programs that remain. As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.
[…] When H.I.V. or tuberculosis goes untested, unprevented, or inadequately treated, months or years can pass before a person dies. The same is true for deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses. Another difficulty is that the deaths are scattered. […]
The Administration, for its part, has denied causing widespread harm, even as it has made the scale of the damage harder to measure—halting data monitoring and dismissing the inspectors general who might have documented it. This is common in cases of public man-made death. During Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, from 1958 to 1961, the Chinese government released no accurate mortality data. Observers abroad understood that a hunger crisis was under way when China began importing grain, but the scale of the catastrophe was not known until the mid-nineteen-eighties, when the first reliable census allowed historians to calculate that between twenty-three and thirty million people had died. [!]
[…] With a documentary team that includes both American and local journalists, I have been following what has happened in Kenyan communities where U.S.A.I.D. had been active—in an advanced-H.I.V. ward in Nairobi, in primary health-care centers that had sharply reduced malaria, in a refugee camp, and elsewhere.
We chose Kenya because I’d done a lot of work there during my tenure […] U.S.A.I.D. supplied medicine, food, and staffing for some of the most desperate and vulnerable, while providing technical assistance and investment to accelerate the country’s expertise in needs ranging from H.I.V. control to primary care.
I was especially worried about what would happen to the programs for childhood malnutrition, which, during the past two decades, had made extraordinary progress around the world. In place of a system that waited for emaciated children to reach distant hospital wards, often hours away, we had helped countries bring the front line to where they lived. […]
The results were dramatic. Mortality rates for severe malnutrition, once twenty per cent or higher, fell below five per cent. In Kenya, communities we worked with, including refugee camps, saw death rates drop to under one per cent. The United States had played a central role in developing and manufacturing the formula for therapeutic supplements. […]
In Kakuma, a vast refugee camp near the South Sudan border, starting in spring, our documentary team followed clinicians and families inside the stabilization unit at Clinic 7, where the sickest children come. Because of the termination of U.S. support, the World Food Programme’s supplies had been reduced to forty per cent of minimum needs, and cases of acute malnutrition had surged. Two-thirds of the clinic’s community health workers were laid off, hobbling the early-detection system that once saved most children before they needed acute care. Clinic 7 is where we met Rovina Naboi, who had fled South Sudan with her family. In our short film, she reveals what it was like trying to keep her desperately ill daughter, Jane Sunday, alive in a system that has broken down.
There are valid criticisms of U.S.A.I.D. It sometimes fostered dependency. It could be inefficient. Too much of its funding went to international institutions, rather than to local ones. And its history includes episodes in which aid was bent to American military and political aims—in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Yet no other agency of the U.S. government has saved more lives per dollar. It helped move billions of people out of poverty. And it showed how to deliver results for all of humanity, including Americans, through coöperation, rather than coercion.
The destruction of U.S.A.I.D. does nothing to improve this work. Instead, we have public man-made death. And the cruelty and lethality will only grow as the Administration expands its rollback of public-health advances to the homeland. We cannot let the people affected […] And we cannot let the consequences go unaccounted for.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson #228:
New project: trick the Nazis into regarding the muscular, blond-or red-haired Neanderthals as the original northern master race, so they donate funds to reconstructing the full genome
Book Excerpt: Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries 10e by Kenneth Feder:
Nationalism is a broader sort of fame that has also served as a motive for extreme or unsubstantiated archaeological claims. The desire to prove some sort of nationalistic claim through archaeology has been common. Wanting to show that “we” were here first or that “we” were civilized before “you” has led some to play fast and loose with the archaeological facts. The Nazis provide a particularly odious example of this. In the 1930s and 1940s they went so far as to publish maps showing the claimed geographical extent of their Aryan ancestors during the Neolithic, a time dated to 5,000 years ago, all based on their interpretation of artifacts found at ancient archaeological sites excavated in Europe. The presence of these ostensible “Germanic” artifacts was viewed as evidence of previous German ownership of these other territories, providing at least a partial rationale for evicting or even slaughtering the non-Germans living there. It was all nonsense, but it was scary and deadly nonsense. [A journal article, “The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany”] by Bettina Arnold (1992) chronicles this appropriation of archaeology by the Nazis.
Prior to the formation of the Ahnenerbe [SS archaeo-propaganda org], there was little funding for or interest in Germanic archaeology. This allowed for the Nazi Party to easily rouse interest in the subject among the general public, which in turn made it easier to push their ethnocentric views onto the uninformed public. Another side effect of this sudden support was felt in some scholarly circles, since many German scholars who specialized in archaeology had long been envious of the advancements in archaeology their European neighbors had made during their excavations in the Middle East. With the sudden boom in interest, the scholars were finally able to put their knowledge to work.
Because of Hitler, many changes occurred; funds were made available for scholars to make great advancements beyond their neighboring countries. Under Nazi rule, archaeology went from having one chair in prehistory in Marburg in 1933 to having nine chairs in the Reich in 1935. Once archaeology started gaining popularity, scholars were able to partake in much grander projects, such as the excavation of castles, old ruins, and bring back pieces for display in museums. In their enthusiasm for the Nazi regime’s support of archaeology, many German archaeologists became pawns and puppets of the real goals behind the movement.
birgerjohanssonsays
Newly discovered RNA molecule could limit protein aggregation and prevent neuronal damage
(It has the potential to prevent Alzheimer’s and other diseases)
“A deal in Congress to end the government shutdown includes full SNAP funding through September and could mean the Supreme Court will not have to issue a ruling later.’
With a potential end to the government shutdown in sight, the Supreme Court on Tuesday extended a freeze on a federal judge’s ruling that would require the Trump administration to fully fund the SNAP food program in November.
The decision means the government, for now, does not have to distribute about $4 billion in additional SNAP funding as required by Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge John McConnell. The Supreme Court block remains in place until midnight on Thursday.
The case would likely become moot if the shutdown ends, as the bipartisan bill to reopen the government would fully fund the SNAP program through September of next year. The House is expected to vote Wednesday on the Senate-passed measure to end the record-long shutdown.
[…] The brief court order noted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the government’s request.
he court had temporarily put McConnell’s ruling on hold Friday while it waited for the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to act. That court on Monday morning declined to intervene.
The Trump administration has argued that, because of the shutdown, it could only spend $5 billion out of a contingency fund to partially pay for November SNAP benefits. The program usually costs about $9 billion a month.
The government objected to McConnell’s order that required the other roughly $4 billion to be paid from a separate pot of money that funds child nutrition programs, called Section 32.
The practical impact of the Supreme Court decision Tuesday means that until the government shutdown ends, the SNAP program will be about 65% funded.
The Trump administration’s failure to fund SNAP was challenged by a coalition including cities, churches and nonprofits that provide food assistance.
A few more days of pain, and lack of food, for SNAP recipients.
The American penny died on Wednesday in Philadelphia. It was 232. The cause was irrelevance and expensiveness, the Treasury Department said. Nothing could be bought any more with a penny, not even penny candy. Moreover, the cost to mint the penny had risen to more than 3 cents, a financial absurdity that doomed the coin. The final pennies were minted on Wednesday afternoon in Philadelphia. Top Treasury officials were on hand for its final journey. No last words were recorded.
“As the Arizona Democrat becomes the newest member of Congress, the White House still hopes to kill the discharge petition she immediately signed.”
When Democrat Adelita Grijalva cruised to a landslide victory in September, winning her congressional special election by roughly 40 points, it was widely assumed that she would soon be sworn in as Arizona’s first Latina congresswoman. That didn’t happen.
In fact, for the last seven weeks, the congresswoman-elect pleaded with House Speaker Mike Johnson and the chamber’s Republican leadership to let her get to work. But they refused, pointing to dubious claims regarding the government shutdown.
As the shutdown nears its end, and with GOP leaders out of excuses, the wait is finally over: On Wednesday afternoon, Grijalva took the oath of office, becoming Congress’ newest member. The House now has a 219-member Republican majority, working alongside a 214-member Democratic minority.
For Grijalva — who succeeds her father, the late Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva — it’s a breakthrough moment and a career milestone. But for the rest of the political world, there’s a related element to the congresswoman’s swearing-in that’s of great interest.
There’s a pending discharge petition to force disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files, currently being held back by Donald Trump’s Justice Department. As Wednesday got underway, proponents of the effort were one member short of the 218 signatures needed to trigger a vote.
Now, Grijalva has joined the signatories and achieved the long-sought threshold.
A complex legislative process is now poised to unfold, starting with a waiting period of seven legislative days. Soon after, the House will, at long last, hold a floor vote on the bipartisan resolution on the Epstein files, which will be expected to pass.
Only four House GOP members — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — joined with Democrats in support of the discharge petition. With this in mind, The New York Times reported earlier Wednesday:
President Trump and his administration on Wednesday ramped up a pressure campaign on congressional Republicans who are pushing for a full release of the Justice Department’s files about the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, rushing to head off a House vote on the matter. Top officials met in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday with Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who is backing an effort to force a House vote on whether to demand the release of the files.
[…] White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt effectively confirmed the account, acknowledging the meeting. (Why this was held in the White House Situation Room is unclear.) [video]
Around the same time, the president published an item to his social media platform, calling the scandal a “hoax,” arguing that “only a very bad, or stupid, Republican” would take the controversy seriously, and concluding: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else.”
Or put another way, the White House sure does seem nervous about the discharge petition. Watch this space.
[…] Grijalva pushed back on Johnson’s delay in her first floor speech following her swearing in.
“It has been 50 days since the people of Arizona’s 7th congressional district elected me to represent them. 50 days that over 800,000 Arizonans were left without access to the basic services every constituent deserves,” Grijalva said. “This is an abuse of power. One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons. Our democracy only works when everyone has a voice.”
[…] A floor vote on the bill is reportedly expected in the first week of December. But even if the House successfully passes the bill, Republicans expect it to go nowhere in the Senate. Senate GOP leadership have not committed to bringing it up for a floor vote.
[…] Johnson swore in two Republicans during a pro forma session earlier this year. […]
[…] Trump has long made clear that empathy isn’t his strong suit. From cutting food aid to blocking health care subsidies, he has repeatedly forced Americans to struggle when it suits his agenda.
Now he’s at it again—this time proposing a vanity project that could cost taxpayers up to $2 billion.
According to NBC News, Trump’s directive to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War would require replacing thousands of signs, letterheads, badges, and digital systems across U.S. military installations worldwide.
Just swapping out signage and letterhead could cost roughly $1 billion, sources told NBC. But one of the biggest expenses would come from rewriting code and rebranding the department’s digital infrastructure—updating software across classified and unclassified networks, internal communications, and public-facing websites.
Though Congress would need to approve the change, Trump’s Pentagon appears to be moving forward regardless.
“The Department of War is aggressively implementing the name change directed by President Trump,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told NBC, calling it “a nod to our proud heritage.” He also blamed “the Democrat shutdown” for delaying cost estimates.
The timing is striking. Trump has spent months railing against so-called wasteful spending and blocking bills that would keep millions fed, but he’s ready to pour billions into a vanity rebrand that no one asked for. It’s a familiar pattern: gut social programs, bulk up the Pentagon, and sell it all as patriotism.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has championed the effort, saying it reflects a renewed focus on “lethality” and a “warrior ethos.”
Meanwhile, during Trump’s Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, he cast the move as a symbolic restoration.
“We are restoring the pride and the winning spirit of the United States military,” he said. “The Department of War better conveys the message that we fight to win.”
Trump first floated the idea in September, signing an executive order authorizing Hegseth to use the “Secretary of War” title and “Department of War” branding. But an official renaming still requires congressional approval, which so far hasn’t happened.
[…] not all Republicans are on board. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that the plan is “glorifying war” and vowed to oppose any funding for it.
Democrats have been openly dismissive of the rebrand.
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia called the proposal “cosplay,” according to NBC. And in September, 10 Democratic senators asked the Congressional Budget Office to detail the costs of the rebrand, criticizing it as “wasteful and hypocritical.”
“It appears to prioritize political theater over responsible governance, while diverting resources from core national security functions,” the senators wrote.
This latest stunt proves that Trump’s “legacy” is more about branding than defense. Spending billions on stationery and websites won’t make the country safer […]
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which failed to release an October jobs report, might never do so—and, of course, blamed Democrats in the process.
“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October’s CPI and jobs reports likely never being released,” she said. “All of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period.” [video]
Posted by readers of the article:
Politically nobody is going to buy the Federal Statistical System is permanently broken because of one month with no cash.
But foreign Investors stay in invested a country’s stock market that has no official economic numbers? Just hinting that kind of ludicrous thing like that makes any economic statistics Trump might put out later seem suspect.
————————
Keeping folks in the dark has been the plan all along
——————-
The idea that a data sampling, pure math process can be damaged by not being done over a month or two is ludicrous.
Over the weekend, Donald Trump floated yet another dumb idea that probably won’t go anywhere, as is his habit. But instead of it being one of his own stupid brainfarts, it was instead the brainfart of one of his (alleged) best pals. At the suggestion of Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Great Leader got on his fake Twitter substitute Saturday night and posted this terrific idea that Pulte ran by him just 10 minutes before Trump sent it out into the world: [Image]
Yes, we said “10 minutes,” since Politico reports that’s all the time it took for Pulte’s flattering message to convince Trump that introducing an all-new type of mortgage would win him a place in history and probably yet another Nobel Peace Prize, for solving high home prices. All Pulte had to do was show up at Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a “3-by-5 posterboard” calling Trump a great president just like FDR, and Trump was all in. Pulte even said that the agency he runs is already working on rolling out the new mortgages.
The idea came under attack almost immediately, and not only from economists or lefties, but also from usually reliable [cult followers], including such worthies as “Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Christopher Rufo, Sean Davis of the Federalist, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.),” who took to social media to say it was a terrible idea and probably that Pulte should be flayed.
OK, but let’s be clear: Maybe it’s a terrible idea, but it’s never wrong to tell Donald Trump that he’s a great president, especially if you tell him that with nifty graphics.
The supposedly brilliant idea behind extending the standard home mortgage from 30 years to 50 years is that the longer repayment period would mean lower monthly payments, making homes more affordable, and who could possibly object to that? There’s only one eensy-tiny downside, which is that the short-term benefit of lower payments would result in roughly double the amount of interest over the extra 20 years of the mortgage, while also greatly reducing the rate at which homeowners would build equity in their home.
As the AP explains, monthly payments for a home costing $415,200 — the average home price as of September — would be $2,288 with a 30-year mortgage, assuming a 10 percent down payment and 6.17 percent interest. Extend the loan period to 50 years, and your monthly payment would drop to $2,022, but only if banks didn’t demand a higher interest rate. But there’s a big price for that $266 per month “savings” on payments:
Because even more of the monthly payment on a 50-year mortgage would go toward interest on the loan, it would take 30 years before a borrower would accumulate $100,000 in equity, not including home price appreciation and the down payment. That’s compared to 12-13 years to accumulate $100,000 in equity when paying off a 30-year mortgage, excluding the down payment.
A borrower would pay, roughly, an additional $389,000 in interest over the life of a 50-year mortgage compared to a 30-year mortgage, according to an AP analysis.
Congratulations, that’s almost the initial cost of the house! And you won’t be able to pay off your mortgage while you’re still alive, probably. Everyone else who’s run the math, from Fox News to Fortune magazine to the Wall Street Journal, agrees that a 50-year mortgage is a terrible idea.
But in Trump’s defense, Pulte’s pitch was very flattering, and it put Trump in the company of FDR in history. Didn’t you see how great the two portraits looked next to each other?
Oh, hey, this is where we also point out that Donald Trump is supposedly a real estate and financial GENIUS, and that Bill Pulte is the grandson of bajillionaire homebuilder and suburb developer William J Pulte. No particular reason that background might have dissuaded either failson from latching onto a stupendously bad mortgage scheme […]
[…] One White House insider said that right after Trump posted the great idea — with no explanation or follow-up — angry phone calls started pouring in to the White House.
“[Pulte] just sold POTUS a bill of goods that wasn’t necessarily accurate,” the person said. “He said ‘FDR did it, you can do it, it’s gonna be a big thing.’ But he didn’t tell him about all the unintended consequences.” […]
“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” said the person present for Pulte’s poster presentation. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”
By Monday, Great Leader was having difficulty defending the brainstorm even to Lara Ingraham on Fox, sputtering that “All it means is you pay less per month. Pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit.” […]
One of Politico’s two sources clearly had their knives out for Pulte, griping, “The thing that became clear from this latest episode — if it wasn’t already clear — is that Bill Pulte doesn’t know the first fucking thing about how the mortgage markets operate. After publicly humiliating the president with his moronic 50 year mortgage plan it’s safe to assume that his days are numbered.” [!!] […]
“U.S. allies begin to push back on Trump’s Caribbean military strikes”
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario — The Trump administration’s deadly, go-it-alone military campaign in Latin America is facing growing pushback from some long-standing U.S. allies and partners, with France now among those who’ve registered objections to the Pentagon-led killings.
Speaking to reporters at the start of the Group of Seven ministerial meeting, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said his country was troubled by “military operations in the Caribbean region” because they “violate international law” and could lead to escalation in the region, where France holds territories.
His comments Tuesday followed reports that Britain, another key European ally, has paused some intelligence sharing with the United States due to concerns about the legality of the U.S. strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats, and as Colombia — long an essential partner in combating the Latin American drug trade — halted all such cooperation over what its president said was a “human rights” imperative.
[…] “We firmly believe that continued collective pressure on Russia is necessary,” Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said as she announced, in concert with Britain, new economic measures targeting Putin’s war machine, including sanctions on drone makers and 100 vessels from Russia’s “shadow fleet.”
And while many G-7 nations celebrated a Trump-brokered ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip last month, its long-term prospects look increasingly uncertain. The U.S. government is seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution to give a mandate for an international stabilization force in Gaza for at least two years, but administration officials say they are frustrated that other nations are not doing enough.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who arrived in Canada late Tuesday, wrote on social media that evening that he was here to work with other nations “to continue our work towards President Trump’s mission of enduring peace around the world.”
The statement seemed sharply at odds with Trump’s campaign of violence in the waters around Latin America. [Understatement!] There, his administration has dramatically upended conventional U.S. drug-interdiction efforts and fueled speculation — by amassing close to 15,000 troops and roughly a dozen warships — that he is preparing to order a direct attack on Venezuela.
[…] Experts on the laws of war contend that the Trump administration’s activities are illegal because the small vessels being targeted are carrying civilians allegedly involved in the commercial sale of drugs, not armed hostilities against the U.S. or its citizens. The administration has rejected such assertions, but that has done little, it appears, to assuage the concern of stalwart allies like France, and for Rubio it has made for an awkward reception among his G-7 counterparts. […]
Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will vote next week to repeal a provision slipped into the bill to end the shutdown that would allow senators to sue the government for potentially millions of dollars if their data is obtained without being notified.
Johnson said he was “shocked” and “angry” when he learned about the provision, which would uniquely benefit eight Republican senators, whose phone records — but not the contents of their calls or messages — were found to have been accessed as part of the investigation that led to former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
When asked Wednesday if he knew about the provision, which was tucked into the bill to reopen the government, Johnson replied, “No, I found out about it last night.” [Why is Mike Johnson always claiming ignorance?]
[…] The House planned to pass the package to reopen the government later Wednesday, which will bring an end to the 43-day government shutdown.
But Johnson vowed on X that House Republicans would introduce standalone legislation to undo the provision, adding that he will put it on a fast-track to get a vote in the House next week. That process means it will need the support of two-thirds of House members to pass and move on to the Senate.
Democrats and many House Republicans have been critical of the measure, which appears to apply only to senators and retroactively applies to data requests that were made on or after Jan. 1, 2022.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released an unclassified document in October showing that the FBI requested a review of phone data for eight Republican senators and one House member on Sept. 27, 2023.
[…] Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the top Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the Legislative Branch, said in a statement shared with NBC News: “I am furious that the Senate Minority and Majority Leaders chose to airdrop this provision into this bill at the eleventh hour — with zero consultation or negotiation with the subcommittee that actually oversees this work.”
[…] A GOP aide said the language was a member-driven provision, but did not name which senators made the push, and said that Thune did include the language at their request. […]
[…] a Schumer spokesperson said later Wednesday that Schumer now supports Speaker Johnson’s effort to strip the language from the bill and will push for that in the Senate.
The eight Republican senators whose phone “tolling records” were accessed were: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina; Bill Hagerty, of Tennessee; Josh Hawley, of Missouri; Dan Sullivan, of Alaska; Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama; Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming; and Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee.
Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania also had his tolling records disclosed as part of the probe, but the provision in the government funding bill specifically focuses on senators.
The “tolling data” would include who was called, when and the length of a call, but not what was said.
The provision added to the government funding bill would require that senators be notified if their data is disclosed. If they aren’t — as the eight Republican senators were not — and they successfully sue, the court would be required to award “the greater of statutory damages of $500,000 or the amount of actual damages” for each violation.
[…] Johnson didn’t indicate who was responsible for the provision but said he trusts Thune. “He’s a great leader, but some members got together and hoisted that upon— put it into the bill at the last minute. And I wish they hadn’t,” Johnson said. “I think it was a really bad look, and we’re going to fix it in the House.”
“EXCLUSIVE: U.S. troops not liable in boat strikes, classified Justice Dept. memo says”
“Trump administration lawyers said that U.S. military personnel engaged in lethal action in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution.”
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) stated in a classified opinion drawn up over the summer that personnel taking part in military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution, according to four people familiar with the matter.
[…] reflects the heightened concerns within the government raised by senior civilian and military lawyers that such strikes would be illegal
.
The strikes, now totaling 19 with a death toll of 76, began in September, though interagency discussions about the use of lethal force to combat drug cartels started early in the Trump administration.
Top officers, including Adm. Alvin Holsey, the head of Southern Command, sought caution on such strikes, according to two people, who like several others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Holsey wanted to make sure any option presented to the president was fully vetted first, one person said. In October, he abruptly announced that he was resigning at year’s end, about a year into what is typically a three-year assignment
.
[…] In a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday, Parnell [Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell] said that “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law,” with all actions in “complete compliance with the law of armed conflict.”
[…] Parnell said, “no lawyer involved has questioned the legality of the Caribbean strikes and instead advised subordinate commanders and [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth that the proposed actions were permissible before they commenced.”
A Justice Department spokesman said: “The strikes were ordered consistent with the laws of armed conflict, and as such are lawful orders. Military personnel are legally obligated to follow lawful orders and, as such, are not subject to prosecution for following lawful orders.”
The OLC opinion, which runs nearly 50 pages, also argues that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” waged under the president’s Article II authorities, a core element in the analysis that the strikes are permissible under domestic law.
The “armed conflict” argument was also made in a notice to Congress from the administration last month, and is fleshed out in more detail by the OLC.
The opinion states that cartels are selling drugs to finance a campaign of violence and extortion, according to four people.
That assertion, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that traffickers use violence to protect their drug business, appears to be part of the effort to shoehorn the fight against cartels into a law-of-war framework, analysts said.
“I don’t know anywhere else in domestic law or international law, for that matter, that anyone’s argued that introducing drugs into a country is the sort of organized violence that can trigger an armed conflict and give the nation the right to kill people merely because they’re part of an alleged enemy force,” said Martin Lederman, who served as a deputy OLC assistant attorney general during the Obama administration and now teaches at Georgetown Law.
Adam Isacson, a scholar at the Washington Office on Latin America, said “there is no proof” that the gangs are using drug profits with the intent of promoting violence or mayhem in the United States.
“These groups are businesses,” he said. “If they are carrying out violence in the United States, they are doing it for profit, not for the purpose of sowing terror.”
The Trump administration has also charged that Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, heads a narcotics cartel as the U.S. has amassed close to 15,000 troops in the region, including personnel spread across roughly a dozen warships.
The arrival this week of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in waters near Latin America has prompted Venezuela to put its entire military arsenal at the ready, as the U.S. naval buildup fuels speculation that the Trump administration intends to dramatically escalate its deadly counternarcotics campaign there
.
Democratic lawmakers who have read the memo said the legal analysis was not convincing. [!]
“It reads as if you gave a lawyer an assignment: Give me the best possible rationale for why this is legal — be as inventive as you like,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), a former federal prosecutor, told reporters last week. “If that opinion were to be adopted, it would not constrain any use of force anywhere in the world. I mean, it is broad enough to authorize just about anything.”
He added that he saw legal risk to service members for participating in these operations. “I would certainly not want to rely on the rationale I’ve read,” Schiff said.
[…] The OLC’s apparent attempt to allay concerns that the U.S. military might be exposed to prosecution is reminiscent of the office’s response during the George W. Bush administration to top military lawyers’ concerns about harsh interrogation techniques used on detained terrorism suspects after al-Qaeda’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 […]
In a 2003 memo that has since been declassified, John Yoo, then an OLC deputy assistant attorney general, addressed concerns that the techniques violated statutes prohibiting torture. “Even if these statutes were misconstrued to apply to persons acting at the direction of the President … the Department of Justice could not enforce this law or any of the other criminal statutes … against federal officials acting pursuant to the President’s constitutional authority to direct a war,” he wrote. [John You, infamous for excusing torture.]
Then, as now, said Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department attorney and a law-of-war expert, field personnel are being asked to conduct activities that are “unprecedented and, frankly, unlawful.”
[…] A future OLC could withdraw the memo, as the Obama administration did with memos justifying the use of harsh interrogation techniques written by the Bush-era OLC. But the Obama Justice Department declined to prosecute personnel who had relied on them.
With its boat strikes against alleged narco-traffickers, the Trump administration has sought to graft the language and framework of the two-decade-long battle against international terrorism onto what has generally been considered a law enforcement problem. [True]
Yoo, the former OLC official, wrote in a recent Post opinion article that the current campaign blurs the distinction between crime and war. He also charged that the White House “has yet to provide compelling evidence in court or to Congress that drug cartels have become arms of the Venezuelan government. That showing is needed to justify … the naval attacks in the South American seas.” [And now John You sounds almost reasonable.]
By framing the military campaign as a war, the administration can argue that murder statutes do not apply, said Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group and a former Pentagon lawyer. “If the U.S. is at war, then it would be lawful to use lethal force as a first resort,” she said. The president, she argued, “is fabricating a war so that he can get around the restrictions on lethal force during peacetime, like murder statutes.”
We all know it is murder.
StevoRsays
Think I mentioned this in a previous thread last week but the spider species Aulonia albimana :
A spider with a high risk of extinction, unseen in the United Kingdom for four decades, has made a dramatic return. The tiny arachnid reappeared in a secluded Isle of Wight wildlife sanctuary, a location people can only reach by boat. This rediscovery of Aulonia albimana marks a significant moment for British conservation, offering a powerful symbol of hope for the nation’s lost and declining species.
I do like the idea of the spider being seen as a symbol of hope here!
StevoRsays
Bad political news from Oz altho’ with a metaphorical silver lining in that it probly sentences the LNP to further political destruction and irrelevance :
The Liberal Party has agreed to formally abandon its commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, a day after the majority of members came out in support of scrapping the climate target.
A meeting of Liberal shadow ministers on Thursday also decided to repeal Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction legislation, but determined to remain in the Paris Agreement and set five-yearly interim targets, though only from government.
The party said it would reduce emissions on average, year-on-year “in line with comparable countries and as fast and as far as technologies allow without imposing mandated costs”.
And while the Liberals would not actively strive for net zero, it was agreed that reaching it would be a “welcome” outcome.
Been coming for a while now & likely means current LNP leader Sussan (not a typo for once) Ley will be going soon too.
StevoRsays
Good political news from the USoA :
As the longest government shutdown in US history winds up, a fresh bout of political infighting is brewing over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Politicians have returned to Capitol Hill and picked up where they left off several weeks ago.
For Democrats and some Republicans, that work included a petition for a vote to release documents related to the investigation into the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Before the shutdown, the petition had amassed all but one of the signatures it needed from politicians in the House of Representatives.
Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva was due to become the final name added after she won a special election in Arizona more than seven weeks ago, but the shutdown had put a pin in those plans until she could be sworn in.
House Speaker Mike Johnson — who is in the Republican party — held her swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday.
After delivering a floor speech, Ms Grijalva signed the petition.
Seagrass in huge trouble in gamay (Botany bay) but maybe biochar will help?
The Gamay Rangers and UNSW research teams are on a restoration mission, collecting and replanting washed-up seagrass fragments. They are experimenting with using biochar, the charcoal-like substance left over after burning, on the replanted seagrass in a section of the bay. The team is hopeful biochar will improve the long-term survival and growth of transplanted seagrass. “Biochar has been used for a long time. It has been used in agriculture to improve crop yields,” UNSW PhD student Ann Flemming Nielsen says.
Making churches a branch of Fox News was a mistake.
“The Bible Belt Is Splitting in Half — And Pastors Are Terrified”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=V3zwc29M6CE
birgerjohanssonsays
“The 2026 Senate Elections Based on NEW POLLS in Every State.”
If GOP does just a little worse than in this map in Alaska and Nebraska, Republicans will not have a majority, even if the veep votes.
(The map avoids being overly optimistic, which I appreciate)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=npuvyd2Allk
birgerjohanssonsays
MSNBC
Lawrence: Trump says 65% of Americans are ‘FOOLS!’
Also, the truth about the end of the shutdown is more complex. The criticism should be aimed at the three senators who surrendered without attempting to get anything in return.
@260 StevoR: I do appreciate that what should be a happy moment for Trump signing off on ending the shutdown is actually borderline panic. The shutdown didn’t go as easily or as well for Republicans as they had hoped but in the end they didn’t have to make major concessions.
For Trump whatever gain he may have wrung from the shutdown is obliterated by Epstein problems. Things leaking to the press, the Maxwell prison situation and the looming vote must have him on the edge. The whole thing has made it clear his claims not to be deeply involved are a farce even to the far right. The administration is flailing about looking for anybody they can pressure into not voting for the discharge.
Considering how long they have and that they only need to get one or two votes it won’t surprise me if Trump finds a way to block the discharge. It’s already done massive damage and isn’t going to get better. Even if he manages to dodge this vote it will loom over him for the rest of his time in office. The Democrats can try to force this again and again, Trump will have block it every time.
whheydtsays
Re; JM @ #274…
As I understand it, the discharge petition is now a done deal, so trying to get individuals to withdraw their support will have no effect. The House now has to vote on the underlying bill within 7 “Legislative days”. This is expected to have to take place by early December. On top of that, there are reports of several Republicans who didn’t sign on to the discharge petition that plan to vote in favor of the underlying bill.
“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange. Lavrov was an apparent reference to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister.
In the email exchange, one of hundreds released Wednesday by congressional investigators, Epstein indicated he had previously talked about Trump with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s forceful ambassador to the United Nations, before Churkin died in 2017.
Something else in the Epstein information that Trump might want to keep buried. It appears that Epstein was talking to the Russians about how best for the Russians to handle Trump. It isn’t clear from what is released so far how much Epstein actually talked to them.
Epstein was also giving people in the Trump administration advice on how to handle international politics. At the same time he was giving other governments advice on how to handle Trump.
But Epstein would later opine about Trump’s fateful meeting with Putin, which was panned around the world for his apparent capitulations to the Russian dictator.
“Do the Russians have stuff on Trump? Today was appalling even by his standards,” wrote Larry Summers, the former Clinton administration Treasury secretary and Obama administration economic adviser, in an email to Epstein on July 16, 2018, the day of the Helsinki summit with Putin.
“My email is full with similar comments. wow,” Epstein replied the next day. “Im sure his view is that it went super well. he thinks he has charmed his adversary.. Admittedly he has no idea of the symbolism. He has no idea of most things.” He also called Trump’s handling of the summit with Putin “predictable.”
That is an amusing bit. Epstein at least thought he was manipulating Trump. Given Epstein’s history he would certainly try once Trump was in the White House.
Shutdown ending as House passes bill to reopen government
Video is 4:21 minutes
Never-before-seen Epstein emails: Trump ‘spent hours’ with victim inside house
Video is 8:45 minutes
StevoRsays
Via DW News :
Half of Iran has not seen a drop of rain since the end of summer — after the summer itself brought extreme heat and exacerbated water supply issues.
Official data, which starts measuring precipitation every year starting from September 23, shows zero rain has been recorded since then in 15 out of the country’s 31 provinces.
The crisis now amounts to unprecedented drought and has forced the authorities to ration water. The capital Tehran has imposed rolling restrictions on water supply to “avoid waste,” according to Energy Minister Abbas Ali Abad.
The residents are instructed to use water containers and pumps to bridge the supply issues. For many of them, the story sounds very familiar — Tehran’s population is constantly growing, with some 10 million currently living in the city itself and nearly 18 million in the metropolitan area, but its water infrastructure remains outdated and dilapidated and much of the water is lost in transit.
Sorta related to that – Real Life Lore is a good, factually reliable yt channel in my view and does go into things in reasonable depth – as ironic as that wrod might be here – Why Iran is Rapidly Dying or should that be drying? 39 mins long.
As the gavel came down to seal the Paris Agreement in 2015, tears fell, world leaders joined hands and attendees of the UN COP21 climate summit erupted in a standing ovation.
It marked a pivotal moment in climate action. For the first time, nearly 200 nations adopted a binding treaty to limit global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), while striving to cap the rise at 1.5 C.
Scientists consider the 1.5 C threshold a critical line of defense against climate change’s most severe and irreversible damage. The UN has now said overshooting this, at least temporarily, is “inevitable” with “devastating consequences” for the world.
…(Snip)..
While climate action overall is critically lagging, there are pockets of striking progress.
Global growth in renewables has skyrocketed, even exceeding the expectations of optimists. Plummeting costs are helping to drive the boom, with investments in clean energy growing and now doubling those going into fossil fuels.
The share of global energy provided by renewables has more than tripled since the Paris Agreement.
In 2024, the world experienced its largest-ever increase in renewable energy generation, which now provides 40% of global electricity. In the first half of this year solar and wind exceeded all demand growth for electricity, surpassing coal for the first time.
Global solar capacity is over four times what was predicted in 2015, doubling every three years. Wind has tripled, according to analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a UK-based non-profit.
China is leading the pack, having last year installed more solar capacity — now 1,000 times greater than it was in 2010 — than the rest of the world combined.
In the last decade, electric vehicles have surged from around 1% of car sales to almost a quarter. The world is on track to reach the Paris Agreement target of 100 million vehicles on the road by 2030 ahead of schedule.
After a year of delay, NASA’s next Mars mission is ready to launch on Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket, and you’ll be able to watch it all live online.
The twin ESCAPADE Mars probes are scheduled to lift off atop the partially reusable New Glenn from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today (Nov. 13), during a nearly 90-minute window that opens at 2:57 p.m. EST (1957 GMT). It will be the third attempt for this mission; the first try, on Sunday (Nov. 9), was scrubbed due to weather, and the second was called off due to an intense solar storm.
You can watch the launch — the second-ever for New Glenn — live via Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, starting about 30 minutes before liftoff. Space.com will carry the feed as well
3 hours from now by yt count. Where it has just passed 3 am. dangnabbit.. Guess I won’t be seeing it live myself. Sttill. Hope otheerswatch & enjoy. Go ESCAPADE!
“After 16 years of broken promises, GOP leaders insist they’re serious this time about presenting health care proposals. That’s very difficult to believe.”
There were a variety of factors that led to the government shutdown, but at the heart of the matter was health care costs — or, more specifically, Democratic efforts to save tens of millions of American consumers from vastly more expensive premiums through the Affordable Care Act.
The shutdown is over, but the underlying issue on coverage costs remains entirely unresolved and millions of families will soon have to choose between paying far more or going without.
Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said during a Fox Business interview last week that if the matter remains unresolved in the coming weeks, the GOP is likely to “get killed” in the 2026 midterms. He’s not alone: Punchbowl News reported that other House Republicans from competitive districts are also pushing party leaders to extend existing Obamacare subsidies.
It’s against this backdrop that House Speaker Mike Johnson and other members of the GOP leadership have seemed quite eager in recent days to deliver public assurances about the party and its serious intentions. On Wednesday night, for example, Johnson told reporters that Republicans have “volumes of ideas” about health care policy, though the Louisiana congressman didn’t share any of the ideas.
Earlier in the week, the House speaker similarly told Fox Business, “We’ve got notebooks full of ideas” [LOL]— though, again, he didn’t elaborate or offer any specifics.
On Wednesday afternoon, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer appeared on Fox News and was asked to name “one thing” he wants to do on health care policy. The Minnesota Republican responded, “More choice. More transparency. More competition. There’s all kinds of ideas.”
And while his buzzwords sounded nice — few argue against choice, transparency and competition — Emmer’s rhetoric was vague to the point of comedy.
Earlier in the day, however, the GOP leader was willing to get a little more specific. “You’re going to have to create high-risk pools again,” Emmer said on a talk radio show. [social media post, with video]
For those who might benefit from a refresher, the idea behind high-risk pools might sound appealing at first glance. Emmer was describing an insurance model in which older consumers and those with preexisting conditions, and younger consumers who are healthy, are kept in separate risk pools. As a result, the latter group can spend far less on coverage, since insurers expect they’ll need less (and less expensive) care.
Indeed, Americans have some experience with this model: It’s the one that existed before the Affordable Care Act became law.
States created high-risk pools to cover people with expensive health care needs — those with preexisting conditions, for example — keeping them out of the patient pools with younger and healthier people. The high-risk pools, however, created dramatic problems for those who needed the most help: Americans with preexisting conditions were stuck with plans they couldn’t afford and benefits that didn’t meet their needs.
Obamacare fixed this problem to the benefit of millions, with shared risk and guaranteed protections for those with preexisting conditions. The one idea a congressional Republican leader has been willing to publicly endorse is an idea that would roll back the clock.
Politico reported this week, “House committee chairs will begin having listening sessions next week with groups of Republican members on health care policy and the fate of expiring Obamacare subsidies.” Or put another way, more than 16 years after GOP officials vowed to unveil a health care plan, the party is organizing “listening sessions” to kick around some thoughts, no doubt reviewing Johnson’s “notebooks full of ideas.”
For those facing soaring coverage costs, it’s tough to be optimistic.
After weeks of delay by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) was finally sworn into office on Wednesday afternoon. She quickly became the 218th person needed to sign a bipartisan discharge petition that will trigger a House vote on the full release of the files the Justice Department has on the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Perhaps in anticipation of Grijalva’s plan to sign the petition immediately upon her swearing-in, White House officials were reportedly working overtime on Wednesday to try to persuade one Republican who had already signed the petition to remove their name and prevent the official collection of 218 signatures. While the petition will force a vote in the House on the release of the files, the measure is considered dead-on-arrival in the Senate. Should it get out of the Senate, President Trump is expected to veto it. Nonetheless, the president has “lobbied intensively behind the scenes” to stop a House vote from happening, in The New York Times’ words.
Some of President Trump’s top officials at the Justice Department were reportedly enlisted Wednesday to meet with one of the GOP signees, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Boebert has been vocal for months about her support for the discharge petition.
Boebert was reportedly summoned to a meeting in the Situation Room with top DOJ and FBI leaders, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, according to The Times. Trump also personally connected with Boebert over the phone on Tuesday morning about the matter and was trying to get Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has also signed the petition, on the phone as well. […]
It appears Trump administration officials’ lobbying of Boebert was not fruitful. Just after Grijalva signed the petition, an immediate effort to bring the measure to the floor for a vote was blocked over a procedural issue. [social media post, with video]
birgerjohanssonsays
OOPS! Pam Bondi’s Office Admits To Judge That They Made Major Mistake
Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement is flush with cash and has no guardrails, agency officials are going to hire bounty hunters. And they’ve got $180 million to do it.
What could possibly go wrong?
It’s difficult to imagine that the lawless, all-of-government approach that the Trump administration has deployed to terrorize immigrants and blue cities across the country somehow isn’t enough. Federal agents are already running around masked, even when there are laws against that. They don’t wear identification, because they don’t wanna. They make violent arrests. They lie in court about what they’re doing. […]
404 Media reviewed documents posted by ICE on Monday, and things are not great. Basically, ICE has a list of 1.5 million people, and they will give bounty hunters a batch of 50,000 names at a time with the last-known addresses of alleged undocumented immigrants.
Then, the bounty hunters get to use whatever surveillance data they can get their mitts on “before moving onto physical surveillance.” Oh, and “to achieve a higher level of confidence, the vendor may physically verify the alien’s location and presence, preferably confirming their home or work location.”
That is a fancy, dispassionate way of saying that the bounty hunter can go to the homes and the jobs of anyone on the list spit out by ICE, which definitely surely has no errors and hasn’t scooped up the wrong people. After that, they feed them to ICE.
Bounty hunters are, of course, not government employees, and therefore don’t have even the meager restrictions that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents might face. Additionally, even though some states, like Minnesota, bar bounty hunters from pretending to be law enforcement and dressing up like them, in a world where ICE agents are anonymous and drive unmarked vehicles, who is going to know the difference?
[…] Surely, incentivizing bounty hunters with financial rewards based on how many people they find will not result in bounty hunters scooping up as many people as possible, right? And it won’t incentivize any bad behavior, because bounty hunters are good and law-abiding, right?
Bloomberg reported that in Nevada, which is apparently a bounty hunter haven, the Department of Insurance had 459 pages of complaints about bounty hunters. We’re talking harassment, stalking, excessive force—so, basically, what ICE and CBP are already doing.
[…] ICE is already paying ridiculous incentives to get people to work there, and the administration keeps yanking government workers from their jobs and reassigning them to ICE. And then, of course, there’s the troops.
But it’s just not enough. They’re never gonna hit racist White House adviser Stephen Miller’s numbers this way. So, if they can’t get enough government employees to do the dirty deed, it’s time to call Dog the Bounty Hunter.
“Anti-Abortion-Rights Creeps Get Increasingly Creative With The Plots To Institute A National Ban”
Senate Republicans have a bit of a problem. They really don’t want to continue the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but 74 percent of the country, including 50 percent of Republicans (44 percent of MAGA Republicans, 72 percent of Original Flavor), wants to keep them. Hell, even their own internal polling shows that if the generic “Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15-points.”
So now, some Republicans have latched on to a plan that they hope will let them get away with not extending them without being held responsible for it. They say they would be willing to renew the subsidies for another year … but only if they get to institute abortion restrictions on ACA plans.
To be clear! Because we have the stupid and cruel Hyde Amendment, there are no federal funds being used to subsidize abortion. However, individual states are allowed to create their own individual, state-funded revenue streams that allow people to pay a surcharge for abortion care. That does not violate the Hyde Amendment, because it’s not federal dollars, it’s state dollars.
Guess they don’t love states’ rights as much as they claim.
“That’s what we’re going to negotiate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters. “A one-year extension along the lines of what [Democrats] are suggesting, and without Hyde protections […]”
Except, again, that’s not the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment covers federal funds only. States are free to direct as much of their own tax dollars to abortion as they like.
“Republicans said they might vote to lower Americans’ healthcare costs, but only if we agree to include a backdoor national abortion ban,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said on the Senate floor on Saturday, adding that if they got their way on this, “Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive health care. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations … The possibilities are endless.”
It will surely shock you to know that this plan comes straight from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which is so pro-life that it would rather see poor people die of treatable illnesses because they couldn’t afford health care than allow states to use their own money to insure abortion care through the ACA.
[…] Republicans don’t want to extend the subsidies — but they would prefer people blame Democrats for losing them instead. They want to be able to say “Gee, we would have loved to have kept your premiums down, but the Democrats just wouldn’t allow it unless they got to keep their precious abortions!”
Florida Thinks Planned Parenthood Is The Mob Now
Just when you think the anti-abortion-rights crowd has grasped every possible straw, the state of Florida has decided to pursue racketeering charges against Planned Parenthood.
Florida’s Republican attorney general James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit claiming that the nonprofit organization has “misrepresented the safety” of abortion pills (they haven’t!) by claiming that they are safer than Tylenol.
They are, in fact, extremely safe. Over 100 scientific studies over 30 years have determined that, on average, there is only a 0.31 percent chance of serious complications when taking abortion medication. Not only is this rate far lower than many medications that are on the market today, but it is far lower than the rate of serious complications for actual childbirth, which stands at about 1.4 percent.
Uthmeier’s source for his claim that the pills are unsafe is one singular and extremely flawed “study” published earlier this year by a conservative think tank, which absurdly claimed that there is a 10 percent chance of complications with abortion medication.
The lawsuit states:
The results of Planned Parenthood’s deception-fueled sales have been disastrous. An analysis released earlier this year found that 11% of women experience a serious adverse event like sepsis or hemorrhaging within 45 days of a chemical abortion. Other studies estimate the incidence of serious adverse events to be as high as 20%, with over 15% of women experiencing hemorrhaging and 2% experiencing infection.
A charge of racketeering basically means that a group of people (usually the mob!) are running some kind of scam or fraud for the primary goal of turning a profit. For example, running an illegal gambling ring or money laundering would be examples of racketeering.
Uthmeier claims that Planned Parenthood — a nonprofit — is falsely claiming that abortion medication is more safe than it is so that women will take it and they can rake in the profits. As absurd as this is, were a court to take it seriously and give him what he wants, it could possibly be the end of the 110-year-old organization. He wants $350 million for deceptive trade practices ($10,000 per patient), $1 million for every individual person he believes “deceived” someone into taking abortion medication, and for Planned Parenthood to be barred from saying the medication is safer than Tylenol.
He also has some suggestions for the court, should they feel like issuing any “additional relief”:
• Ordering any Defendant to divest itself of any interest in any enterprise, including real property;
• Imposing reasonable restrictions upon the future activities or investments of any Defendant, including, but not limited to, prohibiting any Defendant from advertising or selling chemical abortions;
• Ordering the dissolution or reorganization of any or all of Defendants’ enterprises;
• Ordering the suspension or revocation of all licenses, permits, or prior approvals granted to Defendants by any agency of the State; and
• Ordering the forfeiture of the charters of Planned Parenthood of Florida Inc. and Planned Parenthood Florida Action Inc. and the revocation of certificates authorizing Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. and Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc. to conduct business within Florida.
So, basically, were all of his dreams to come true, Planned Parenthood would be eliminated from Florida entirely, and possibly from the whole country.
It would be an uphill battle to get this to go anywhere, even with Florida’s very conservative state supreme court. There are commercial speech and free speech laws at issue, not to mention the fact that the medication has been deemed safe by the FDA. However! Even if this doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that the anti-abortion lobby isn’t going to keep trying it, if only to troll Planned Parenthood and waste their time and money. They are determined to claim that a perfectly safe medication is unsafe because they don’t like what it does and are only going to get increasingly creative and hysterical as time goes on. […]
Some Actual Nice News!!
Billionaires shouldn’t exist, but if they must, it’s great when they use their money for good instead of evil. In that spirit, Melinda French Gates, who previously pledged to donate $1 billion to support women’s rights, has donated $250 million to more than 80 women’s health organizations across the globe — many of which are focused on reproductive rights […]
But There Is One Billionaire Who Wants To Track You …
Hey! Do you want a bunch of right-wing conservatives to know when you’re menstruating? Or even to know when you’re ovulating, what you’re eating, and when you’re sleeping? Probably not! But apparently there may be a market for this.
Evie, the extra-creepy conservative women’s website attempting to be some kind of anti-sex Cosmo, is launching a wearable period tracker that will keep track of all this data and definitely not use it in any unscrupulous way. Are you wondering “Hey! How Handmaid’s Tale-y would that be, exactly?” Then let’s take a look at the current articles in their “culture” section.
But wait! It gets wors!
Via Abortion, Every Day:
This true nightmare fuel is a project of Brittany Hugoboom, the conservative influencer who created Evie and a period-tracking app with her husband, Gabriel. It gets worse: the Hugobooms are funded by none other than pronatalist Trump ally, Peter Thiel. [!]
That’s right, the billionaire behind Palantir and the rise of JD Vance is very interested in women’s pregnancies: Thiel bankrolled Hugoboom’s “28” app, which has raised all sorts of questions about data-collection and privacy in post-Roe America.
What could possibly go wrong?
StevoRsays
^ Like that’s somethig special .. exceptional .. & somethow it is..
StevoRsays
@290.
StevoRsays
That people cannot see that other people are also people has to be right up there as Humanity’s biggest flaw and explanation for our inhumanity to the other people who are also Humanity.
“Sean Hannity Learns All About The Epstein Files!”
“With the help of liberal radio superhero Stephanie Miller.”
It’s generally accepted that, as a rule, people of integrity and decency and intelligence should not go on Fox News.[…] if you’re there you’re meant to be a punching bag, the token liberal for them to scream at and punch in the face for the delight of their viewers. […]
There are exceptions, of course. Pete Buttigieg is allowed to go on Fox News, and it is a good idea when he does. He freaks them out so much, it’s hilarious. [Links to sources are available at the link.]
[…] And it turns out Stephanie Miller — longtime progressive radio host, she’s hilarious, you know her, you love her — is also allowed, and encouraged, though we imagine after last night on Hannity they won’t be asking her again.
[…] The MAGA […] media is [upset] over a video of Miller kissing Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s feet. It was silliness, obviously, but that’s the exact kind of bait the right-wing noise machine loves to take, because they’re not normal people who experience healthy human joy, and they’re not capable of laughing if the joke doesn’t make them feel superior in some way.
[…] The Daily Mail has the story, the New York Post has it, and last night, in typical Murdochian fashion — that thing where they amplify a story fully incestuously, by responding to “controversies” they themselves created — Sean Hannity had Miller on for a friendly conversation about it.
Miller did not give Hannity the interview he was hoping for.
Just watch these videos, we’re not going to spoil them. Acyn’s previews are enough. [video]
“You know the funniest thing about this story — is Trump’s all over the Epstein files and I wonder if they’re going to release that after the big bombshell! I didn’t see anything about that on Fox News today,” said Miller. [video]
When did she notice Joe Biden’s mental decline?
“Well, I think it was through all of the times that Donald Trump has fallen asleep in public and talked about magnets getting wet …”
Yep, that’s how you do that.
It’s hilarious that Sean Hannity […] really thought it would work, that it would be a clever gotcha! to ask Stephanie Miller about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. You know, especially when the other main story in the news right now about Donald Trump, besides the files related to his best friend [Epstein], is his rapidly onsetting and painfully obvious dementia.
Sean Hannity really thought that’d get her. […]
Instead, Miller said, “My mom had dementia, so I recognize it.”
And it’s true, people who have had loved ones with dementia, they can recognize it, in the way Trump repeats the same confused information over and over again verbatim, in the way he stares off into the distance totally empty-headed while men are collapsing next to him, in the way they’re putting up signs in the White House to tell him where he is. [Yep]
You can watch another clip of the interview here. [This and many more embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
We get it. Hannity really needed to take the bait, to distract his dumbass viewers with stories like this last night. ZOMG! Stephanie Miller kissed Jasmine Crockett’s feet! Literally anything to distract from the Epstein Files revelations about [Trump] who Jeffrey Epstein said in an email was grosser than he was.
Hey, pop quiz! When a world-famous child rapist says his best friend is grosser than he is, what does that suggest about his best friend? […]
What else were they going to talk about? Trump’s godawful interview with Laura Ingraham where he said we need 600,000 students from China and H-1B visas because America’s workers don’t have the “talent,” and that people really need to shut the fuck up about so-called “affordability”? Last night, Ingraham showed more of that interview, the part in the Oval Office where Trump started babbling about painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building tacky-ass McMansion white, while Ingraham tried to pretend she wasn’t throwing up in her mouth. This after she asked him out loud in a clip aired the night before if the ugly gold diarrhea all over the Oval Office is from Home Depot. (Yes, sure looks that way.)
Yeah, we understand why Hannity needed to distract his viewers from literally everything last night with WOKE WHITE LADY KISSED THE BLACK LADY WHO SCARES US RIGHT ON THE FEET!
Unfortunately, what she gave him in return was Trump being all over the child rapist files, and fucking magnets, the president literally does not know how they work.
And that is why Stephanie Miller is allowed to go on Fox News but unfortunately will not ever be asked again.
“EXCLUSIVE: FIFA will use Kennedy Center free of charge for World Cup event, contract says”
“The Kennedy Center booked the World Cup draw at President Donald Trump’s urging. It will occupy much of the campus and displace planned performances.”
FIFA will not pay a rental fee when it takes over much of the Kennedy Center later this month for the 2026 World Cup draw, according to a copy of the venue use agreement obtained by The Washington Post, and other internal documents. The center’s arrangement with soccer’s international governing body will disrupt its performance schedule, forcing the relocation or postponement of several concerts at an institution that has seen a sharp decline in ticket sales since it was taken over by […] Trump earlier this year.
To prepare for the draw, which is scheduled for Dec. 5, FIFA will occupy performance spaces and other sections of the Kennedy Center for almost three weeks, according to the documents and a center employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agreement.
Scheduled performances from the National Symphony Orchestra during that period — from Nov. 24 to Dec. 12 — have been postponed, said the person and another employee with knowledge of the changes who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. One NSO concert, a Dec. 9 performance to the movie “Home Alone,” was moved to another venue in Washington, while one highlight of the orchestra season, NSO music director Gianandrea Noseda’s concert weekend with opera singer Camilla Nylund, was moved to March 2026. The online calendar on the Kennedy Center’s website shows a thinned-out schedule in the weeks surrounding the World Cup event.
[not] first time that FIFA has booked a venue for the draw free. But it marks a change at the Kennedy Center […]
The draw is essentially an invite-only event, and neither FIFA nor the Kennedy Center is expected to generate any ticket revenue. FIFA has announced it will distribute an unspecified number of complimentary tickets for fans through a lottery system, but there are no tickets available for purchase by the general public.
[…] White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said the president was honored to bring the event to the Kennedy Center, which she described as a venue he had “quickly transformed into the cultural center of our nation’s capital.” [bollshit]
[…] Performance venues — including the Concert Hall and Eisenhower Theater — along with the Reach complex are among the spaces FIFA will occupy for the draw, which takes place two days before the Kennedy Center Honors in the Opera House.
One person said there have been concerns among staffers about the quick turnaround to prepare for the Honors ceremony and the potential loss in revenue from programming changes.
Outside organizations generally pay a rental fee to use the Kennedy Center’s space. An internal report reviewed by The Post showed various rental fees for events in November and December — including $2,681 for choir rehearsals and $26,810 for performances in the Concert Hall. The Kennedy Center currently quotes a standard rate of $39,000 to rent the Concert Hall and $18,000 for the Eisenhower Theater. Those are rates for single nights, suggesting a multiweek rental of much of the campus, such as FIFA’s, could cost significantly more.
The venue use agreement between the Kennedy Center and FIFA, signed Aug. 12 and 13, states that the federation is still responsible for production costs for the draw.
[…] The World Cup draw is the biggest event connected to the tournament before a ball is ever kicked. It’s the moment when national teams are divided into their groups and learn their early opponents […]
In practical terms, it’s a logistics exercise, pulling together soccer personalities and officials from all over the world for a suspense-filled unveiling. But in FIFA’s hands, it is also a global television production — a live show designed to showcase the host nation and stoke anticipation for the coming World Cup, which begins June 11. Next year’s tournament will feature 104 matches, spread across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The draw, which will be broadcast live in the United States on Fox [!], commands eyeballs from all over the world. The most recent edition, held in Qatar in 2022, was broadcast to more than 190 countries, and FIFA officials said the ceremony reached a global television audience of roughly 300 million viewers.
[…] the draw has a long history of spectacle and excess. The draw for the 1994 World Cup, the last time the men’s tournament was held in the United States, was a glitzy production held in Las Vegas […]
This year’s draw was widely expected to return to Las Vegas, but in a surprise late move, Trump swooped in and, thanks in part to a chummy relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, helped shift the event to the Kennedy Center at the 11th hour.
Trump aides had spent weeks quietly lobbying FIFA officials to stage the event at the Kennedy Center, pitching the capital as a more prestigious and politically resonant setting. Talks with Las Vegas officials were in the late stages at the time, and according to one person familiar with the planning, a Las Vegas venue was willing to offer a hosting fee for the right to stage the draw, and no rental costs were expected for FIFA. [video]
But Trump’s influence ultimately won out. He and Infantino have enjoyed a close relationship as the tournament has drawn near. FIFA opened an office this year at New York’s Trump Tower, and in July, Trump attended the Club World Cup final, where he posed for photographs with Chelsea players as the English team celebrated a championship. More recently, Infantino was alongside world leaders in Egypt for a peace summit last month in which Trump heralded a Gaza peace plan.
Infantino joined Trump in the Oval Office on Aug. 22 to announce the Kennedy Center as the draw site, presenting the president with the iconic tournament trophy.
“It’s for winners only,” Infantino said. [head/desk]
[…] for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Cape Town officials said it would cost the city more than $6 million to stage the draw, with $4.7 million earmarked for renting the Cape Town International Convention Center, according to news reports at the time.
For the 2014 tournament in Brazil, local media outlets reported the draw at Costa do Sauípe would cost $5 million, with FIFA covering $3.8 million and the state government $1.2 million, including television production, performances, technology, security and set design.
While the draw can carry significant production costs, it remains unclear whether FIFA typically pays anything directly for the venues themselves, or relies on host governments and facilities to absorb the expense as part of the privilege of association with the World Cup.
“The president keeps using the word “trillions,” but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.”
Estimates vary on the economic impact of government shutdowns, but by most measures, the just-completed standoff cost the economy roughly $15 billion per week. Since the shutdown lasted seven weeks, the U.S. economy just took a $105 billion hit.
For most of us, that sounds like an enormous amount of money, but given the size of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, $15 billion per week in lost economic output is unfortunate but not disastrous.
[…] Donald Trump apparently decided it was time to exaggerate the cost of the shutdown — a lot. In an item published to his social media platform, the president argued: “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country.” [Yikes! Ignorance married to lies.]
That was, by any responsible metric, bonkers [!]. Trump appears to have taken a credible number and, on a whim, started adding zeroes so that he could use the word “trillion.”
As it happens, it’s a word he struggles with all the time. Take this week, for example.
On Monday, the president wrote online that he’s expecting tariff revenue to be “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars.” A day later, he published another missive in which he boasted about tariff revenue “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars.”
Both figures were spectacularly wrong, but more important was the question hanging overhead: How did the total go from $2 trillion to $3 trillion in the span of one day?
Similarly, in October, Trump made a series of boasts about international investments in the United States that he’s secured. He started by claiming the total was $17 trillion. It was soon after revised to “very close to $18 trillion.” In the days that followed, the new total was “$18 trillion,” followed by “over $18 trillion.”
The figure then climbed to “$19 trillion.” That was soon followed by “$20 trillion,” “over $20 trillion,” “$21 trillion” and “maybe even $22 trillion.” [Escalating delusions and lies.]
If you’re thinking that the president just likes to say the word “trillion” without any meaningful connection to reality, you’re not alone.
To be sure, Trump has struggled with the basics of arithmetic for quite some time. We are, after all, talking about a president who thinks it’s possible to lower the cost of prescription drugs “by 1,500%,” as if pharmaceutical companies are prepared to start paying consumers to take free medications.
But Trump is actually offering the public an important lesson: He doesn’t use numbers and statistics like an adult; he uses numbers and statistics that he thinks sound good and make him feel better.
That’s a childish tactic.
birgerjohanssonsays
Saving Christmas Island from invasive ants.
“They Released Millions of Ant Killers on Crab Island – And the Change Was Instant”
‘My Dress-Up Darling’ has two persons with unusual hobbies. The boy makes traditional Japanese dolls, the girl likes cosplay. Eventually, the boy helps with tailoring strange outfits to her specifications. It puts some anime tropes upside down.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pF1yqExVhC8
Missing time: Currie also laid into Whitaker during the hearing on whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had reviewed the grand jury transcript in James Comey’s case, noting there was no record of anything that happened after 4:28pm ET that day. Comey wasn’t indicted for nearly two hours after that, according to available court transcripts.
This is significant. In Halligan’s special appointment Bondi has sworn she reviewed and approved documents that apparently don’t exist. That might get the case chucked on it’s own.
lumipunasays
Re StevoR at 262: I just learned to identify the Pleiades cluster during this northern fall (in October, before the weather here turned very cloudy and rainy). In Finnish it’s called Seulaset or “the sieve holes”. In my suburban environment under optimal conditions, I was barely able to directly see one or two of the stars. But in side eye view, the whole cluster suddenly became visible as a fuzzy blot.
Supposedly, the Māori have separate names and mythological roles for nine stars of the Pleiades. I learned this some years ago, after stumbling on Maisey Rika’s music on YouTube. One of her albums is dedicated to the Pleiades folklore and titled “Nga mata o te ariki Tawhirimatea”, one of the Māori names for the cluster. I very much like her music, and the aesthetic of Māori language. She also has some music videos with amazing visuals.
America’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday rebuked the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in a rare and near-unanimous statement that framed the immigration crisis in starkly moral terms. The statement, passed at the bishops’ annual conference in Baltimore, did not call out President Trump by name, but the context was clear.
Senior military officials on Wednesday presented President Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings at the White House.
Assocciated Press:
The most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier is expected to reach the waters off Venezuela in days, a flex of American military power not seen in Latin America for generations.
With the longest U.S. government shutdown over, state officials said Thursday that they are working quickly to get full SNAP food benefits to millions of people who made do with little-to-no assistance for the past couple of weeks.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was hospitalized Thursday after falling near his Pennsylvania home and sustaining ‘minor injuries’ to his face, the senator’s spokesperson said. Medical personnel determined that the incident, which included ‘feeling light-headed,’ involved a flare-up of a cardiac issue known as ventricular fibrillation, the spokesperson said in a statement on X.
A group of 17 transgender members of the Air Force are suing the U.S. government over what they say is the military’s unlawful revocation of their early retirement pensions and benefits.
This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.
Reporting Highlights
– Chicago Raid: Agents rappelled from a helicopter to raid an apartment complex “filled” with Tren de Aragua gangsters. ProPublica found little to support the government’s claims.
– Immigrants Speak Out: Federal officials declined to release the names of 37 immigrants detained in raid. ProPublica has identified 21 of them and spoken with a dozen.
– A Bust? Immigration officials said they arrested just two members of Tren de Aragua. ProPublica talked with one and found no criminal records in his past.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
On the night of the raid, heavily armed federal agents zip-tied Jhonny Manuel Caicedo Fereira’s hands behind his back, marched him out of his Chicago apartment building and put him against a wall to question him.
As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid. Next to Caicedo, masked Border Patrol agents inspected another man’s tattoos and asked him if he belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group.
Until that moment, Caicedo’s only interaction with law enforcement in his two-and-a-half years in the United States had been a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance, according to the records we reviewed. Chicago police had run a background check on him and found no prior arrests, no warrants and no evidence that he was in a gang. Caicedo said he had a pending asylum application, a steady job at a taco joint and a girlfriend whose daughter attended elementary school across the street.
None of that mattered. The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime. They didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist. And after a brief hearing in immigration court, the government sent him back to the country he had fled nine years earlier.
“I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”
Caicedo’s quiet deportation contrasted with the drama of his capture during one of the most aggressive and highly publicized immigration raids carried out in a U.S. city in recent history. Shortly after midnight on Sept. 30, some 300 agents from Border Patrol, the FBI and other agencies stormed the 130-unit apartment complex. SWAT teams rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and hurled flash-bang grenades. They arrested 37 immigrants, most of them Venezuelans, who authorities say were in the country illegally. Agents also zip-tied and, for several hours, detained many U.S. citizens.
Soon afterward, President Donald Trump’s administration released a slickly produced video of the operation. Officials said they had captured two “confirmed” members of Tren de Aragua, including one on a terrorist watch list. Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser and architect of the nationwide immigration crackdown, declared that the building was “filled with TdA terrorists,” that the raid had “saved God knows how many lives” and that it was “one of the most successful law enforcement operations that we’ve seen in this country.”
A ProPublica investigation, however, has found little evidence to support the government’s claims. ProPublica has discovered the names of 21 of the detained Venezuelan men and women and interviewed 12 of them. We also spoke with dozens of their relatives, friends and neighbors. And we reviewed U.S. public records databases and court websites, examined court documents and social media accounts, obtained audio and video recordings made that night, and attended immigration court hearings.
Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names. ProPublica was nonetheless able to identify one of them, Ludwing Jeanpier Parra Pérez, from a press release that did not connect him to the raid. Parra denied that he is a member.
“I don’t have anything to do with that,” Parra, 24, said during an interview from an Indiana jail where at least 17 of the men were taken after the raid. “I’m very worried. I don’t know why they are saying that. I came here to find a better future for me and my family.”
Although officials said they had intelligence about guns, drugs and explosives in the building, they have not revealed evidence that they seized anything illicit. The legal justification for agents forcing their way into apartments throughout the building is unclear. In interviews, former SWAT team members and other law enforcement experts questioned the decision to have agents descend on ropes from a helicopter — a tactic that’s rare in urban settings because of the risk to agents and the public. And veteran gang investigators said the post-operation hype reflects a political obsession with Tren de Aragua by the Trump administration that is distorting the threat the gang poses. […]
Much more at the link.
Damage and trauma:
During the raid, panicked tenants hid under beds, climbed into elevator shafts and jumped out of windows, residents said. Some managed to avoid capture. Six Venezuelan men said agents hit or kicked them. A law enforcement dog bit a Nigerian tenant, leaving blood on the floor of an apartment, according to interviews and a phone video of the aftermath. Charging into an apartment nearby, agents forced Jean Carlos Antonio Colmenares Pérez to his knees. His 6-year-old nephew clung to him, sobbing.
Reality check:
None of the residents interviewed by ProPublica said they knew of Tren de Aragua members in the building. But several acknowledged the presence of Venezuelans involved in criminal activity, who one resident described as “malandros,” slang for hoodlums.
Former residents described seeing men openly carry handguns inside the building at parties where Venezuelans danced to loud electronic music. Others said there was drug dealing — by U.S. citizens as well as immigrants — and prostitution. Longtime residents said the Venezuelans involved in illegal activity preyed mainly on their countrymen.
“There were all kinds of people in there,” one Venezuelan man said. “There were humble families and working people. But there were also bad people.”
Pierce R. Butlersays
StevoR @ # 262, quoting abc.net.au: The Pleiades star cluster or Seven Sisters is part of many Indigenous groups’ songlines, as well as being important in cultures around the world.
A book on North American indigenous beliefs I came across in the ’70s (I think) included a star chart showing how some western tribes saw entirely different figures from the European ones in the “Taurus” part of the sky, including a pattern they called “Coyote”. The Pleiades, per the caption, was dubbed “Coyote’s Dung”.
StevoRsays
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : yes. A lot of differnet cultures have very different views of our skies and their own differnet constellations. There’s a whole field of ethnoastronomy which one of my friends and someone who appears on the radioand teache scourses is an expert on.
The Aboriginal art group at the centre of “white hands on black art” allegations is suing the publisher of Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper for $4.4 million.
The APY Art Centre Collective (APYACC) has alleged Nationwide News and journalist Greg Bearup defamed the internationally recognised organisation in 33 newspaper articles, according to court filings.
Racist comments in a group chat sank the nomination of White House staffer Paul Ingrassia, 30, to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but he’s now failing upward to become deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration.
Senate Republicans have spent months effectively rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s most outlandish and unqualified nominees, but Paul Ingrassia was a bridge too far, even for GOP senators. There was no great mystery as to why.
The president tapped the right-wing lawyer and former podcast host to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but Ingrassia’s history of radicalism [“radicalism” is too mild a word], including a group text in which Ingrassia acknowledged his “Nazi streak,” derailed his nomination […]
But as the dust settled on the fiasco, there was one question that still needed an answer. When Trump chose Ingrassia for the OSC job, he was serving as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. Given the revelations about his record, would the president and his team show him the door or not?
Now we know. Politico reported:
Paul Ingrassia, a conservative activist who withdrew his nomination to oversee a government watchdog agency last month after POLITICO reported he made racist comments in a group chat, said Thursday he is moving to a new job in the administration. The 30-year-old lawyer had been serving since February as White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. But in an email obtained by POLITICO, he told colleagues that he is leaving to become deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration.
According to the email Ingrassia sent, Trump personally called him into his office Wednesday night to offer him the GSA job.
[…] The president hired a right-wing lawyer with a record of extremism, then offered him a promotion. At that point, the right-wing lawyer’s record generated additional scrutiny, and the White House learned, among other things, about a message in which Ingrassia wrote, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.” This made him politically radioactive to Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Less than a month later, Team Trump decided to give him a different promotion.
In other words, as the first year of the president’s second term nears its end, Trump and his team decided these revelations were not disqualifying.
In the wake of Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes, there’s been an intensifying public conversation about the right’s antisemitism crisis. By any fair measure, the White House’s latest reward for Ingrassia makes that crisis worse.
Trump personally chose the racist wannabe-Nazi dude.
Russian missiles and drones struck dozens of apartment buildings in Kyiv on Friday, killing six and injuring 35 people, including children and a pregnant woman, in the Ukrainian capital, according to government officials.
“My condolences to their families and loved ones,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on the social media website X early Friday. “About 430 drones and 18 missiles were used in the strike, including ballistic and aeroballistic missiles. This was a deliberately calculated attack aimed at causing maximum harm to people and civilian infrastructure.”
The president added that debris from one missile damaged the Azerbaijani Embassy, while the Russian barrage also targeted Kharkiv and Odesa.
Zelensky condemned the “wicked attack” and said in a separate post that the long-range Patriot missile system “neutralized” 14 Russian missiles overnight. During the counterattack, 405 Russian drones were shot down, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
“Among them were two aeroballistic missiles and six ballistic missiles,” Zelensky’s post read. “And we will continue strengthening this component of our air defense — with systems capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.”
Zelensky said that while the addition of the Patriot missiles has strengthened Ukraine’s air defense, “it is not enough.”
“Ukraine is responding to these strikes with long-range strength, and the world must stop these attacks on life with sanctions,” Zelensky wrote in his original post. “Russia is still able to sell oil and build its schemes. All of this must end … We need reinforcement with additional systems and interceptor missiles. Europe and the United States can help. We are counting on real decisions. Thank you to everyone who helps.”
[…] In October, Zelensky and President Trump finalized a deal for the U.S. to give Ukraine 25 Patriot air defense systems, before he received more earlier this month.
Trump is NOT asking the DOJ to investigate his ties to Epstein.
Trump is not supposed to be directing DOJ investigations.
Trump said Friday that he will direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s past involvement with a number of Democrats, including former President Clinton.
Trump cast his decision as an effort to fight back at Democrats, who the president argued have used the disgraced financier as a weapon against his White House.
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Summers served as Treasury secretary under Clinton and was also a top economic adviser to former President Obama. Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and a top Democratic donor.
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!” he continued.
[…] Emails House Democrats released Wednesday show Epstein telling associates in the 2010s that “of course” Trump knew about his relationship with underage girls and that Trump “spent hours” at Epstein’s home.
The House is expected to vote on legislation calling for the government to release all files related to Epstein after a discharge petition launched by Democrats secured its decisive 218th signature with the swearing in of new Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) this week.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he would speed up a vote on the matter to next week, rather than holding it in December. The measure is unlikely to become law, however, as its passage in the Senate is far from certain.
[…] In a 2011 email released Wednesday, Epstein wrote that Clinton “never” visited his private island.
Global figures and top business owners, including Clinton, Trump, former Prince Andrew and Elon Musk, among others, have come under scrutiny for their links to the disgraced financier.
The controversy has also been troubling for Trump, because it has divided his MAGA base, with a number of influential lawmakers such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) backing the discharge petition and advocating for the release of all files.
I don’t think Trump’s attempt to direct investigations into only Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files is going to work.
“These Jeffrey Epstein Russian ties sure are interesting!”
Well, well, well, these House Oversight Committee emails from the Jeffrey Epstein estate sure are hair-raising, none so much as Epstein’s claims of talking to Russia about Trump before and after the 2016 election, via Russian diplomat to the UN Vitaly Churkin, whom he met with at least eight times [!]. And then after Churkin died (maybe of a heart attack, who can say!) in February of 2017, Epstein attempted to get in touch with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov with more Trump “insights.”
And then there’s Epstein’s implications that he’d kept in touch with Trump after the election, even visiting him at Trump Tower, and maybe perhaps (unclear!) seeing him at Thanksgiving, along with Eva Andersson-Dubin and her husband Glenn*, David Fizel, and “hanson.” (Victor Davis, probably, and not the band.)
And in another email chain from December 2017, a guest of Epstein’s claimed they didn’t want to risk running into Trump at Epstein’s Paris apartment. And in other emails, sent just days after the election, Epstein claimed he was headed for New York, as “Trump gives many new things to do.”
Was the name-dropping old pedo putting on airs […] or did the two get back together after the election? Somebody check the Trump Tower lobby cameras!
Prior to the 2016 election, in chitchats with author Michael Wolff, it sure sounded like Epstein hated Trump as bitterly as anybody can hate anybody.
And in December of 2015, Epstein tried to go public with the dirt he had, emailing then-New York Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr., asking him if he wanted pics of Trump with girls in bikinis. Thomas, by the way, was the reporter who wrote that 2002 New York magazine “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery” piece where Trump gave that famous quote, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
But for whatever reason, the New York Times was not interested, and Thomas later told his higher-ups that he never got the pictures. And Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out in January 2018, after Trump unsuccessfully tried to stop its publication. And though Epstein was an off-the-record source for it, recording hours of tape, Wolff’s book did not go into detail about their relationship, and Wolff did not release his tapes until after Epstein’s death. It’s an OOF, but also professional journalists respect “off the record,” and Epstein was perhaps too valuable of a source to burn. And as much as Epstein had come to develop a disgust with Trump, once he was elected there was no upside to getting on the bad side of the most powerful man in the world, and a dog who had never barked.
Yet Epstein was eager to blab behind the scenes, and to the Russians.
“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was head of the Council of Europe at the time, and also chair of the Nobel committee.
This all sure shifts the plot, if Epstein was still on the inside even after Trump got elected, and advising the Russians right before Putin and Trump met in Helsinki. And we already knew he was still close to Steve Bannon, who allegedly still has 15 hours of tape of Epstein talking.
From Wolff’s 2021 book, Too Famous: The Rich, The Powerful, The Wishful, The Notorious, The Damned:
And there was another Trump aspect he [Epstein] seemed to be rushing back to the United States for [in 2019]—if only to gossip about. The journalist E. Jean Carroll had, in the past weeks, described in a new book and in an article in New York magazine how in the mid-nineties Trump had raped her in a dressing room in the department store Bergdorf Goodman. Epstein told one of his callers that he had seen Trump shortly after this happened and Trump had regaled him with the torrid details. [!] Trump’s move now, Epstein theorized, would be to deflect from this story by reviving the rape charges against Bill Clinton. He was eager to discuss with Bannon.
Remember how in 2018 the world was shocked by that tongue-bath Trump gave Putin, and how he not only refused to rebuke Russia for attempting to meddle in the 2016 election, he even said Putin said he didn’t do that, and Trump believed him, over the word of his own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee? […] And Trump crowed that Putin had “an interesting idea” for how to handle the real spies. Putin would help him catch them!
In other emails, Epstein also said that Trump “never got a massage,” but he was alone with one of Epstein’s girls “for hours.” […] Trump had already put himself in compromising positions so many times, slobbering over young girls on Howard Stern and busting into the Miss Teen USA dressing room, etc., that even if Trump never did anything with Epstein’s girls but ramble about Peter Luger’s steakhouse, it all looked blackmail-bad enough. And all of this talk was even before the grab-em-by-the [P-word] tape. Imagine if Epstein/Russia dirt, the ]P-word] tape and the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal shush-payments had all broken in the same week, right before the election! It might actually have mattered. […]
Meanwhile, unknown to Epstein or not, probably not, the Trump family was already working its own channel to Russia, including on June 9, 2016, with that Trump Tower Treason Meeting about “adoptions” between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a passel of Russian spies.
Hey, did we ever get those adoptions?
And so at the same time Epstein was claiming to Wolff that he hated Trump bitterly, he was implying to others that they were close, and he kept himself close to his circle, lunching and gabbing with Peter Thiel and real-estate investor Thomas Barrack, being best friends and client of Alan Dershowitz (soon to also be Trump’s first impeachment lawyer), and living next door to Howard Lutnick.
And the Russians are among the most proficient spies on earth. Putin is a spy himself! We can only assume the Russians knew everything everybody was saying. […]
Meanwhile, it’s one more layer of urgency to releasing all the Epstein Files. As long as Trump has secrets that he does not want the world to know, Putin has a hold over him. Perhaps the truth would set Trump and the rest of us free! […]
*Epstein helped broker the sale of Glenn Dubin’s hedge fund to JP Morgan. Epstein had previously dated Andersson-Dubin and was the godfather of the couple’s children, even bestowing upon one of them, Celina, a $50 million trust in 2014 (later revoked), and fantasized about marrying her.
Virginia Giuffre accused Glenn of raping her, and the Dubins’ former private chef Rinaldo Rizzo gave evidence in the civil case against Ghislaine Maxwell, describing an encounter with an allegedly trafficked 15-year-old Swedish girl at the Dubins’ home in 2005, who was weeping that Ghislaine Maxwell had stolen her passport and was trying to force her to have sex with gross old man. The Dubins deny any wrongdoing.
None of the main slime snews organizations had the honesty to present Rep. Adelita Grijalva’s rebuke of mofo mike johnson’s antics. Most people are living in an information desert. So, I thank Lynna for all the info she provides and curates here!
‘Seattle’s Mamdani’ Katie Wilson Clinches Mayor Win, Fox News Being Super Normal!
[…] we’ll simply start with righties’ freakout over Katie Wilson’s win in the Seattle mayor’s race, and then move on from there.
On Thursday, with only a tiny number of votes remaining to be counted, incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded to Wilson in what he described as a “delightful” phone call. He said, “I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still.” Harrell added that his administration is looking forward to working with Wilson on the transition. As of Friday morning, Wilson had a 2,018 vote lead over Harrell, well over the half-percentage-point threshold that would trigger an automatic recount.
Fox News took it super well, with a headline and subhed calculated to push all the fear buttons of viewers who know that progressives love communism, hypocrisy, and crime. [Screen grab of Fox News headline.]
Fox’s Murdoch-owned stepsibling, the New York Post, put even more emphasis on the claim that Wilson is a Marxist bum who basically lives in her parents’ basement […] [screen grab of US News headline]
Golly, why did Seattleites elect basically a vagrant to be mayor? Would you be surprised to learn that both of the Murdoch outlets were exaggerating, in an attempt to turn “affordability” in Seattle, one of Wilson’s top campaign issues, against her?
Wilson ran on tackling the high cost of living for working folks in Seattle, pointing out that she and her husband pay about $2,000 a month for daycare three days a week for their toddler daughter. In October, she acknowledged that before she ran for office, she and her husband managed to juggle their work schedules to allow one of them to always be at home, but that they decided they’d need daycare while she ran. She said that to make that possible, her parents, both professors who live in New York state, “send me a check periodically to help with the child care expenses” every couple of months, but declining to go into the specific amounts, because she didn’t keep track.
So hey, a story about how expensive Seattle is, even for well-educated people with a little kid, became a rightwing fable about a coddled commie hipster layabout who has no idea how other people get by. Like, as long as you ignore the part about how up until she ran for mayor, she and her husband couldn’t even think of having part-time daycare. [good point]
[…] a new poll released today shows that 70 percent of Americans believe raising children is too expensive, a huge jump from last year? […] That’s nationwide, not just in Seattle.
In a victory speech yesterday at Seattle’s Labor Temple, Wilson thanked her supporters […] also reached out to those who opposed her — though maybe that doesn’t include Murdoch outlets. “I say this is your city, too. I am a coalition builder. I know that we are in this together and we cannot tackle the major challenges facing our city unless we do it together.”
Wilson, who isn’t shy about describing herself as a democratic socialist, listed a number of terrifying goals for her administration, without even admitting that they will inevitably lead to Soviet-style slavery and oppression, at least in the imaginations of Fox News viewers:
“I want everyone in this great city of ours to have a roof over their head. I want universal childcare, pre-K through 8 summer care. I want world class mass transit. I want great, safe public spaces where kids can run around with abandon. I want stable affordable housing for renters. I want social housing. I want much more land and wealth to be owned and stewarded by communities instead of corporations. I want a robust economy, with thriving small businesses, great living wage jobs, and strong rights for workers. I want a city where everyone has the basics and a dignified life, including healthy food, access to health care, and supportive communities. I want a city where your health and your life expectancy and your children’s future doesn’t depend on your zip code or your race.”
[Sounds like Finland]
Okay, but doesn’t she know that such things are simply not possible unless you’re a Scandinavian social democracy? You can’t just go around taxing the wealthy, as Wilson has called for, because they will all close their businesses and move to Galt’s Gulch, and please ignore that Massachusetts’s millionaire tax has brought in lots of revenue without any such exodus happening. Didn’t Wilson notice that after Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2014, every last restaurant has closed? OK, so that never happened, and the minimum wage in the city is now at $20.76 without bringing about Armageddon. […]
In addition to electing Wilson, who has not yet declared the dictatorship of the proletariat but would like more parks and better schools, Seattle also elected progressive Democrat Erika Evans as city attorney, replacing Republican incumbent Ann Davison, who like Harrell pushed tough on crime rhetoric and punitive measures against homeless people […] Voters also elected progressives to all three open seats on the nine-member City Council, although neither Fox nor the New York Post bothered to suggest any of them were out of touch nepo babies.
As of blogtime this morning, Donald Trump has not yet threatened to send the military to take over Seattle, oust its elected leaders, and maybe install an oligarch to manage the city, but he might be a little distracted at the moment, the end.
shermanj @321, you’re welcome. Thanks for the appreciation.
In other news:
[…] Ken Starr […] delivered that year [1998] to the Congress his report on the affair and the cover-up and all the ways in which Bill Clinton should be impeached. We had long debates about public versus private conduct and the power imbalance between a president and a White House intern. Lives were dragged into the spotlight, destroyed, and later slowly and painstakingly rebuilt over decades.
Ten years after that whole mess, Starr was hired to help get Jeffrey Epstein out of trouble. […]
Starr’s job was to argue that the federal government was overstepping its bounds by interfering with a local case. He and Epstein’s team then worked out a very lenient deal whereby Epstein avoided federal charges by pleading guilty to a couple of state crimes. He got a year in the Palm Beach County Jail under a work-release program, which meant he mostly just slept there at night. [This arrangement still angers me.]
Epstein was so grateful that he and Starr apparently remained friends for years, right up to Epstein’s death in 2019. The two would trade emails, exchange holiday greetings, and visit each other. Epstein at one point also asked Starr for legal advice for a college professor friend who was accused of groping someone.
And so it is we find ourselves wondering: Would Ken Starr have cared as much in 1998 if Monica Lewinsky had been 14 instead of in her early 20s when Bill Clinton was doing unmentionables at her?
[…] It wasn’t so much the sleaziness of the affair for Starr as it was the political affiliation. Epstein’s money probably didn’t hurt, either.
This week the House Oversight Committee in its brilliance released 20,000 pages of Epstein’s emails from the years immediately before his arrest and suicide. And in that tranche of emails (which would be a lot shorter if someone stripped out a lot of the header information so we didn’t have to wade through it, good God), you can find the obsequious notes that Epstein and Starr exchanged. Emails in which they discussed plans to get together. Emails in which Epstein invited Starr and his wife to visit him in Florida and on his rancid sex island. Emails in which the two men planned to get together for lunch in New York. All of it in the tone of a couple of old college buddies catching up after a long separation. [screen grab of email, with “hugs” mentioned]
“Hugs”? “Yuletide hugs”? God, that is so gross. Remember, at this point Starr knew what Epstein was. He had not argued in 2008 that Epstein was innocent of the accusations against him, just that the federal government should not have been involved in prosecuting a local matter. And yet here he is, all but begging Epstein to hang out with him and his wife.
[…] There are also emails where Epstein solicits legal advice from Starr for a friend and professor at the University of Arizona who was the subject of a Title IX investigation for “inappropriately” touching someone at an event in Australia. Starr’s advice: Be nice, this sounds like an internal discipline matter, not a full-on Title IX investigation.
And Starr would know, because this was after he was forced out of the presidency of Baylor University for — dum dum dum — helping to cover up a series of sexual assaults by members of the school’s football team.
And in 2018, Starr and Epstein got onto an email chain with journalist Michael Wolff. The writer was working on a book on Donald Trump’s presidency and wanted some insight from Starr on what it might take to indict a president for crimes. Starr responded:
“Happy to do so. Feel free to give Michael my email address. Hugs, Ken.”
Boy, Starr offered Epstein a lot of hugs during the decade-plus they corresponded. Well, Starr wasn’t an underage girl, so we suppose he didn’t fear Epstein using the opportunity to grope him.
Starr died a few years after Epstein. We hope the two are getting to spend lots of time together someplace a great deal warmer than south Florida.
Ironically, Epstein in the emails claimed that, contrary to much speculation, Bill Clinton never went to his sexxx island to get himself all sexxxed up by some underage girl. Imagine if Ken Starr turns out to have been closer to Epstein than Bill Clinton was? Every head on the Right might explode. […]
“Lawsuit: HVAC Guy Claims Working With Women Is Against His Religion”
You know, I cannot find a single picture of former HVAC technician Paul Ostapa anywhere on the whole internet — and that’s a tragedy for every one of us, because, apparently, he is just the most irresistible man on earth.
The Latham, New York, dreamboat is suing Trane U.S. Inc, his employer of 16 years, for religious discrimination, after he was fired for “insubordination” due to his refusal to work with a recently hired female technician if there were not other men in the room or vehicle with them — which, he says, violated his “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Ostapa, you see, abides by the Billy Graham Rule, which holds that a married man cannot ever be alone in a room or car or whatever with women other than his wife. [Also a Mormon rule.] You may remember this rule from the time we had a Vice President (Mike Pence) who abided by it. Although even he did not claim he couldn’t be alone with a woman in a work-related context — he just avoided dining alone with women other than his wife or being at events where alcohol was being served without her. It’s still weird, but it’s more manageable than, say, refusing to repair an air conditioner with one or needing to get off a bus when it’s just you, a female bus driver and a little old lady.
Anyway, after his company hired this female technician — referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Doe — Ostapa told his supervisor, Mr. Audette, that he would not be able to work alone with her because of his religion. Audette, according to Ostapa, agreed to accommodate him.
Mr. Audette laughed at first, telling Paul that he would not have to worry about being attracted to Jane Doe (Paul would later learn that Jane Doe is a lesbian). Paul quickly retorted that his sincerely held religious beliefs based on Scripture must be obeyed irrespective of the woman’s looks or sexual preferences and that they were not contingent on the potential for sinful conduct. As Scripture compels Paul to believe, his presence alone with a woman carries with it the appearance of evil from which he is to abstain. Paul further explained that the purpose of the teaching is to protect his reputation by insulating myself against false accusations.
Ultimately, Mr. Audette agreed to the accommodation Paul requested.
So, to be clear, his religious belief is that he needs other men around him while working, because this woman, who is just trying to do her damn job, might accuse him of rape. Or someone else might accuse them of having an affair. Is that a religious belief, or is that paranoia? […]
One day, one of Ostapa’s fellow technicians got up to go do something during work, leaving him alone with his female co-worker. This caused him “great inner conflict and emotional turmoil,” after which he had to do a whole lot of praying. Then, on another occasion, his dispatcher informed him that Jane Doe would be joining him on his job site the next day.
Oh, the horror! Ostapa told the dispatcher that he had a special dispensation to not have to work alone with women.
The dispatcher, in turn, filed a complaint against Ostapa, which ultimately led to his dismissal for insubordination. Ostapa and his lawyers from the Liberty Counsel (natch) say that this violated his rights under Title VII, which requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations for religious beliefs.
But the key word there is “reasonable.”
Reasonable accommodations can be something like being allowed to pray at a certain time of day, have certain days off from work, have dietary accommodations, the ability to wear certain clothes or wear one’s hair a certain way, etc. etc. They can’t be something that hinders the ability of someone else to do their job or that, frankly, allows the holder of said sincere religious beliefs to discriminate against someone for their gender or for anything else. […]
Aside from that, this only makes sense as a belief if the only way one can cheat on one’s wife, sexually assault someone, or be accused of such is to be alone in a room with a woman. Jerry Falwell Jr., for instance, got into trouble involving the pool boy he watched his wife bang.
We certainly know of more than a few very holy, homophobic men who have found themselves embroiled in sex scandals involving absolutely no women at all. Also, meth.
[…] There is also the fact that this is not an actual tenet of Christianity, or even any particular sect of Christianity. Ostapa and his lawyers claim that this religious belief comes from the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. In that story, this guy Potiphar’s wife developed a thing for one of his slaves, Joseph, and kept sexually harassing him all of the time. She eventually cornered him when they were alone one time, ripped his cloak off and tried to bang him. After he turned her down, she claimed he had tried to rape her.
I am not a religious scholar here, but it seems like the issue in that scenario was the sexual harassment and the false accusation and not, you know, the part about “being alone in a room with a woman.”
Also, according to what I have read from other Christians, including his own grandson, it’s not even clear that Billy Graham ever intended anyone to follow this “rule,” other than himself and those who worked in his ministry, owing to the fact that he was a traveling evangelist and wanted to avoid any scandals or the appearance of impropriety. The rule is sexist as hell, obviously, but it at least made slightly more sense for him — given how often religious leaders find themselves in trouble for sexual assault and extramarital affairs — than it does for a random HVAC tech in Latham, New York.
All of that being said, even if it were a “sincerely held religious belief” that made any kind of sense, it is not the kind that can be reasonably accommodated without infringing on Jane Doe’s rights as an employee and making things extremely uncomfortable for her and any other women the company might hire in the future. Also, if it were a universally or even commonly held belief, it would make it almost impossible for any woman to succeed in many professions […]
This is likely the reason why there has not yet been a single successful “religious accommodation” lawsuit pertaining to the Billy Graham rule.
That unfuckingbelievable raid on the Chicago apartment building, with the DHS goons rappelling from helicopters and trashing every single apartment there, zip-tying the children, and putting Black people on one bus and Venezuelan people on another — you remember, the one that to my knowledge never even made the front page of the New York Times — didn’t lead to any criminal charges, presumably because there were no goddamn criminals, DHS thugs fucking excepted. (Pro Publica)
More details concerning what Jeffery Epstein said about Trump:
[…] “recall ive told you ,, — i have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous”
[…] She [Kathy Ruemmler] said, “Trump is so gross.”
And Jeffrey Epstein — Jeffrey Epstein! Pedophile child rapist! — said Trump — Trump! — is “worse in real life and upclose.” [sic]
[…] “he feels alone. and is nuts !!! , I told everyone from day one. evil beyond belief. mad, and most thought i was speaking metaphorically. […]? lies after lies after lies.” […]
“Despite Trump’s Denials, Climate Change Still Every Bit As Real As Epstein Files”
“USA skips UN climate summit, but Gavin Newsom’s there.”
We think we may have mentioned once or twice that Donald Trump hates clean energy and has Hereby Decreed that climate change is not real. […] On his first day in office, he withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement (for the second time), and since then he’s tried to revive the dying coal industry, and ordered his flying monkey army underlings to reverse every last bit of climate-related policy that Joe Biden put in place.
As a result, it’s no surprise to anyone that the USA is officially absent from the UN’s annual climate summit being held this week and next in Belem, Brazil. In fact, a lot of the diplomats at this year’s COP30 summit are relieved, saying they would far prefer a complete absence of Trump at the meetings than to have the US there pressuring other countries to reverse whatever slim progress they’re making on climate. [!]
[…] You know who’s the most prominent American politician at COP30? California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s taking advantage of Trump’s absence to point out that California — with what he says is the world’s fourth-largest economy — is doing a hell of a lot to transition to clean energy. […]
Clean Energy Is Affordable Energy
On energy policy Newsom is making exactly the right points at COP30, pointing out that in ignoring the climate crisis and trying to quash clean energy, Trump is “doubling down on stupid” at a time when clean energy is now growing so rapidly that it’s on the way to eclipse dirty energy, according to a new forecast finding that fossil energy will will be pushed into “terminal decline” by 2030.
The only question is whether that transition can be accelerated in time to minimize the additional damage humans do to the climate, beyond the mess we’ve already locked in. To move that transition forward, Newsom says, the smart move is to talk about clean energy as the economic powerhouse it’s already set to be, at least in the rest of the world.
“It’s about affordability. It’s about time we frame it accordingly,” Mr. Newsom said of his efforts to ramp up renewable energy in his state. “We’re here to frame it in economic terms, in cost-of-living terms.” […]
The New York Times Sucks (Again)
For an illustration of just how difficult it can be to actually make that case, though, look no farther than the very New York Times article about Newsom at COP30 where we got the quote. Always being New York Times-y, the Grey Lady immediately grumps that economic messaging about clean energy never broke through for that one other guy:
The Biden administration’s sweeping investment in electric vehicles and renewable energy did not resonate with voters in 2024. “We have some work to do as a party, as a nation,” Mr. Newsom said.
[…] Worse, the Times’s discussion of Newsom at COP30 then pivots away from considering clean energy as an affordability issue — a point its excellent climate desk regularly discusses — in favor of a far easier cheap shot. […] Instead, the piece suggests Newsom’s a big ol’ hypocrite because (like Biden and just about everyone working on climate) he recognizes that the world still runs on oil while we build out the clean energy infrastructure needed to replace it, shame on him. Gotta get bothsides in there.
In fact, concerns about the cost of fuel in California forced Mr. Newsom to go easy on oil and gas lately. Just two years ago, Mr. Newsom was a combative critic of the fossil fuel industry. In 2023, the state sued ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and others, alleging that they had misled the public about climate change.
But this year, Mr. Newsom enacted changes to make it easier to drill for oil. Asked about that contradiction on Tuesday, he said it was a “pragmatic” move endorsed by the State Legislature.
Not mentioned by the Times? The new drilling was part of a big package of legislation that also increases renewable energy and cuts pollution. [!]
After that, Newsom’s pledge to sue to prevent Trump from issuing new permits for coastal oil drilling off California rings a bit hollow, by design, because is there really any difference between Newsom and Trump, huh? […]
Clean Energy Works, And California Is Leading
But Fuck The New York Times, as ever, and let’s get back to why Newsom at COP30 matters, shall we? Speaking at a presser on the first day, Newsom said, “I’m here because I don’t want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference.” Newsom won’t mind if the world considers California a kind of representative-in-exile for the climate-sane United States that was replaced by the Trump regime. “I think the world sees us in that light, as a stable partner, a historic partner … in the absence of American leadership. And not just absence of leadership, the doubling down of stupid in terms of global leadership on clean energy.” [!]
Why yes, he has been using that phrase in multiple interviews. It’s a good phrase.
As the LA Times points out, California is doing a hell of a lot of things that an an advanced economy should be doing on energy, and thriving while doing it.
California’s carbon market and zero-emission mandates have given the state outsize influence at summits such as COP30, where its policies are seen as both durable and exportable. The state has invested billions in renewables, battery storage and electrifying buildings and vehicles and has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% since 2000 — even as its economy grew 81%. [!]
[…] Newsom pointed out that even oil-dependent countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are (reluctantly) going greener, and that Trump seems intent on handing the future of energy development to China, which makes no damn economic sense at all.
[…] Not surpisingly, the White House had nothing but lies to counter with, accusing Newsom of going “all the way to Brazil to tout the Green New Scam, while the people of California are paying some of the highest energy prices in the country.” […]
Here Comes The Sun (And Wind, And Storage, And Geothermal)
[…] we’re gonna be positive here: All we have to do to join the rest of the world in that cleaner, better future is get rid of the liars and grifters currently running things, who only won a small slice of the vote last year. […]
Here’s a key takeaway:
Fossil demand has been flat for industrial energy since 2014, for buildings since 2018, for road transport since 2019, and may peak for electricity this year. Two-thirds of countries have already seen peak fossil demand in end-use sectors, & half the world has seen a peak in fossil fuels for electricity. […]
If current trends continue in renewables deployment and electrification, fossil fuel demand will be in decline by 2030. That implies disruption for the fossil fuel sector and the rise of new electrotech winners.
There’s so much more. The analysis notes that the tech has already advanced so rapidly in the last decade that the portion of global energy demand that can be electrified has jumped from just 25 percent in 2000 to 75 percent right now, and that’s not including additional innovations that will keep shrinking the sectors that still rely on fossil fuels. […]
And of course there’s China, which keeps setting new records for renewable energy manufacturing and deployment, and which has seen carbon emissions stay flat or decline for 18 months straight even as its economy expands. Yes, China still relies too much on coal, and even its explosion of clean energy isn’t enough to put it on track to meet its Paris goals. But analysts note that China has a history of promising only small gains on climate and then over-delivering in results. The days when American climate deniers could say “China’s doing nothing” are long in the past […]
[…] And if Gavin Newsom doesn’t get his shit together on trans folks, I’m looking forward to the 2028 candidate who embraces clean tech and affordable energy for all of us.
“Bondi says Justice will investigate relationships to Epstein suggested by Trump” [A suggestion that does not include Trump himself!”
[…] Trump wrote on Truth Social that he wants Bondi and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and LinkedIn founder and prominent Democratic donor Reid Hoffman. He also called for them to investigate the banking company JPMorgan Chase “and many other people and institutions.” Trump suggested that those connections deserve more scrutiny than his own relationship to the disgraced financier.
[…] Earlier Friday, Trump said in a social media post that Democrats should not waste their time trying to connect him to Epstein […]
[…] Trish Wexler, corporate communications for JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement that the bank regrets “any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” Wexler said. “… We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.” [I snipped other examples]
“Deliver a promise the American people have awaited for far too long,” they implored lawmakers in a letter.
Four women who have accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual contact signed onto a letter sent Friday to Congress by survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, demanding the release of all the files on the accused sex trafficker.
They were joined by four relatives of Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken Epstein accuser who died by suicide in April.
“Dear Esteemed Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives,” the letter began. “You have the ability to vote to release the Epstein files, and with it, deliver a promise the American people have awaited far too long. We implore you to do so.”
Writing “there is no middle ground here,” the letter writers said the crimes committed by Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and their co-conspirators, “exposed a double standard of justice, where rich and powerful men and women evade repercussions.”
The Trump accusers who signed the letter are Alva Johnson, Natasha Stoynoff, Karena Virginia, and Amy Dorris.
Alva Johnson sued Trump over the alleged misconduct, but dropped the suit in 2019 citing fears for her safety. She said at the time she still stands by her allegations. Trump has denied engaging in inappropriate behavior with all four women.
While it is well-documented that Trump and Epstein were once friends, the president has repeatedly denied any involvement in — or prior knowledge of — Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. […] Trump has never been charged with any criminal activity involving the now dead Manhattan financier. […]
Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.
That’s in reference to Trump publicly asking Bondi to investigate only the Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files.
Commentary:
[…] Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, highlighted Bondi’s tweet as evidence of Trump administration officials “corrupting” the Justice Department. As Vance summarized, (1) presidents aren’t supposed to direct attorneys general to open criminal cases, especially under explicitly partisan circumstances; (2) the DOJ doesn’t publicize criminal investigations; and (3) attorneys general definitely don’t assign cases like this by way of social media.
[…] Making matters worse, The New York Times reported: “Bondi’s decision to press forward with the investigation is a complete turnaround from a memo issued by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. in July that said that officials had thoroughly scrutinized the Epstein files and found nothing in them that could sustain opening further inquiries into anyone.”
In other words, federal law enforcement officials told the American public months ago that there was no further need for investigations into anyone. Four months later, Trump published a ridiculous rant on his social media platform. And within four hours, his loyalist AG assigned a federal prosecutor to investigate Democrats at the president’s behest.
White House critics have spent much of the year accusing Trump of effectively seizing control over federal law enforcement and calling the shots at the Justice Department. Friday’s developments appear to have removed all doubt. […]
The Republican leader of the Indiana state Senate announced Friday that his chamber will no longer meet in December as planned to vote on redistricting, citing a lack of support from his members even after months of pressure from the White House.
The announcement greatly diminishes the likelihood of redistricting the Midwest state. Indiana is the second Republican state to recently resist the push from President Donald Trump to create new congressional maps that would favor Republican candidates in the 2026 elections. […]
Indiana Republicans have been under pressure to redraw the state’s congressional districts since August. Vice President JD Vance has made two trips to Indianapolis to speak with lawmakers and legislative leaders have met with Trump in the Oval Office.
[…] The Senate’s rejection means that lawmakers might not be able to redistrict at all before the 2026 midterm elections. Lawmakers in both chambers will convene for their regular session in January, but the deadline to file to run for Congress in Indiana is in early February.
Trump wants Republican-led states to redraw congressional districts to boost the party’s chances of winning more seats in next year’s congressional elections. The stakes are high, because Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House and impede Trump’s agenda. Trump’s trying to buck historical trends, in which the president’s party typically loses seats in the midterms.
Republican-led legislatures or commissions in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio all have adopted news districts designed to boost Republicans’ chances in next year’s elections. Voters in California have countered by adopting new districts drawn to improve Democrats’ chances of winning more seats. And the Democratic-led Virginia General Assembly also has taken a step toward redistricting with a proposed constitutional amendment.
[…] While struggling to round up enough support, Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins announced earlier this month that Republican lawmakers were ending a petition drive to call themselves into special session for congressional redistricting.
Recent redistricting efforts also have stalled in some Democratic states despite pressure from national party leaders.
[…] In Maryland, where Democrats already hold seven of the eight U.S. House seats, Democratic Senate President Bill Ferguson said last month that his chamber won’t move forward with redistricting. He expressed concerns that an attempt to draw eight Democratic districts could backfire with losses in other districts and lead even more Republican-led states to retaliate with their own redistricting.
But Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, kept the effort alive this month by forming a commission to consider mid-decade redistricting.
From regulating the price of chicken to levying fees on cigarettes, Hamas is seeking to widen control over Gaza as U.S. plans for its future slowly take shape, Gazans say, adding to rivals’ doubts over whether it will cede authority as promised.
The Georgia election interference case against President Donald Trump and others will proceed after all, a prosecutor announced on Friday, potentially reviving the investigation after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ disqualification had all but killed it. Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia — which a judge had tasked with finding a new prosecutor — announced his own appointment.
Authorities arrested 21 protesters Friday outside a Chicago-area federal immigration facility that activists say functions as a de facto detention center and is plagued by inhumane conditions.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday designated four European left-wing groups as terrorist organizations, following through on his vow to crack down on leftists after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The networks targeted by Trump’s Republican administration all appear to be based in Europe, with no operations in the United States.
A unanimous Nevada Supreme Court on Thursday revived the criminal case against six prominent allies of President Donald Trump who falsely claimed to be legitimate presidential electors amid Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election. The justices concluded that Attorney General Aaron Ford properly brought the forgery case in Las Vegas, overruling a lower-court decision that found the case should have been brought in Carson City, where the pro-Trump elector nominees signed the false documents.
Texas A&M University System regents voted Thursday to limit how instructors may discuss matters like gender identity and race ideology in classrooms, tightening the rules in a conservative state where debates over academic freedom have flared for months.
The European Commission will unveil a “digital omnibus” package later this month […] officials are planning far-reaching changes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the benefit of artificial intelligence developers.
[…]
European privacy regulators have already been spoiling Big Tech’s AI party in recent years. Meta, X and LinkedIn have all delayed rollouts of artificial intelligence applications in Europe after interventions by the Irish Data Protection Commission. Google is facing an inquiry by the same regulator and was previously forced to pause the release of its Bard chatbot. Italy’s regulator has previously imposed temporary blocks on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Chinese DeepSeek over privacy concerns.
Those same tech giants are racing ahead in the U.S., without an equivalent blanket privacy law barring them from feeding AI with citizens’ data.
[…]
Draft changes would create new exceptions for AI companies that would allow them to legally process special categories of data (like a person’s religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or health data) to train and operate their tech. The Commission is also planning to reframe the definition of such special category data, which are afforded extra protections under the privacy rules.
Officials also want to redefine what constitutes as personal data, saying that pseudonymized data (where personal details have been obscured so a person can’t be identified) might not always be subject to the GDPR’s protections, a change that reflects a recent ruling from the EU’s top court.
Finally, it wants to reform Europe’s pesky cookie banner rules by inserting a provision into the GDPR that would give website and app owners more legal grounds to justify tracking users beyond simply obtaining their consent.
The draft proposal could still change before the Commission officially unveils its plans on Nov. 19. Once presented, the omnibus package has to pass muster with EU countries and lawmakers, who are already sharply divided on whether to touch privacy protections.
The Justice Department posted pardons online bearing identical copies of President Donald Trump’s signature before quietly correcting them this week after what the agency called a “technical error.”
The error being getting caught. With all the noise they have been making about Biden’s signatures for Trump to get caught not directly signing them funny. It’s too insignificant of an issue for it to be anything else unless Trump actually tries to undo pardons that Biden signed or retroactively negate some of his executive orders.
“In some ways, 2024 was this anti-Me Too election. Donald Trump and the people around him were proud of the fact that they were unaccountable,” says Chris Hayes. “But now, with the release of these Epstein emails this week, it’s a pretty start reminder that there was a Me Too movement for a reason.” Tara Setmayer and Faiz Shakir join to discuss.
Video is 10:18 minutes
Update to information regarding what used to be MSNBC links: “Welcome to MS.NOW, our new digital home. Same mission. New site.” The site is now part of Versant.
“The Trump administration is desperately searching around for a solution to their political situation and they found one that is a truly brilliant idea,” says Chris Hayes. “‘How about we remove some of the tariffs on goods people buy that are driving prices up?’ Now, if only they could find the clown that imposed those tariffs in the first place.” Rep. Brendan Boyle responds to the news, adding, “the brilliance will take your breath away. Congratulations President Trump for putting out part of the fire that you yourself started about six months ago, but already, damage has been done to our economy.”
[…] Courier Newsroom released a searchable database Friday, providing access to the 20,000 documents in which Trump is mentioned in more than 1,600 of them. […]
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was interviewed on Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. When asked by The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg whether he believed Vice President JD Vance to be a “fascist,” Buttigieg replied with a withering critique. [Video]
Buttigieg: If it’s convenient for him to be a fascist, he’ll be a fascist. Maybe later on, he’ll go back to being a Silicon Valley Democrat. He’ll be whatever he needs to be. Right? I mean, this is a guy who went from Donald Trump is Hitler—that’s what he said—to I have seen the error of my ways. He’ll be something new later on, maybe.
With roughly two months before Florida lawmakers convene for the 2026 session, Gov. Ron DeSantis is making it clear that he expects a new congressional map to emerge from the legislature.
“Stay tuned,” DeSantis posted to social media Thursday night, responding to a post summarizing House Speaker Daniel Perez’s claim that redistricting is “not planned.”
Perez, speaking to Politico earlier this week, insisted that there was “no plan yet” to redraw the state’s congressional lines.
“We’re not there yet. We haven’t had that discussion yet,” Perez told the outlet. “Redistricting hasn’t been a conversation that we’ve had yet.”
Despite those assurances, DeSantis has repeatedly signaled he expects Florida to redraw its lines in a way that benefits Republicans, further cementing GOP control of the state’s congressional delegation. Republicans currently hold a 20-8 advantage in the U.S. House.
How many seats Florida might gain remains unclear. Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power has suggested the state could pick up as many as five additional seats, while DeSantis has claimed, without evidence, that Florida was “gypped” out of an extra congressional seat due to an unfavorable census under the Biden administration.
[…] DeSantis is signaling a partisan gerrymander in Florida while criticizing California for doing much the same. […]
For DeSantis, aggressive map-drawing could backfire. With voter sentiment shifting and Democrats consolidating gains in other states, partisan redistricting in Florida is no longer a guaranteed path to expanded GOP control.
Sometimes I picture the ragged remains of humanity, huddling in caves, hiding from whatever species supplants us as the planet’s dominant life form […] flipping through the charred remnants of a history textbook, landing on a picture of an adjudicated rapist spritzing an Al Qaeda leader with cologne in the Oval Office, and realizing it was likely somewhere around here when our civilization took that big wrong turn […]
HOW MANY WIVES YA GOT? joshed the rapist to the terrorist, because that’s what passed for diplomacy back then. We were already pretty shell-shocked by the relentless kakistocracy, but little did we know we were in for an exceptionally healthy national debate about whether to reevaluate those stodgy social norms vilifying child molestation.
Because the American electorate, in their wisdom, had reinstalled a pedophile in the highest office in the land, you see.
[…] Congratulations on your life, Megyn Kelly; you barreled past off-ramps at “grab ‘em by the p[P-word]” and “my daughter is a piece of ass,” only to run out of gas in the middle of “Jeffrey Epstein got a bad rap” country. […]
I never thought I’d live to see our Attention Whore in Chief scamper away from the press, especially given his starring role in this newest batch of emails from the Epstein estate, where Trump appears in 1,628 different documents, more than anyone else. […]
Okay, so he “knew about the girls!” So he “spent hours” with one of the victims! Perhaps they were simply exploring a shared passion for drawings of barnyard animals. [Embedded links to the “barnyard animals” reference, and many other links, are available at the main link.]
Admittedly, rape seems the likelier option, given the other rapes and the history of leching on underage girls, including at least one he personally fathered (sorry, Tiffany, you weren’t hot enough) […]
We have to assume the unreleased files contain even viler details, given the desperate measures the Reich has taken to keep them concealed. Lauren Boebert in the Situation Room […]
[…] I’m sure Ghislaine Maxwell earned all that special treatment for lots of things beyond her silence. Loads of child abusers get puppies to play with in prison […]
Oddly enough, putting the worst human being in the world’s most notorious child sex trafficker’s Rolodex in charge of our economy hasn’t worked out, though I’m sure this planned series of “affordability speeches” will clear everything right up.
[…] A couple more reminders that the doddering old man who has unconstitutionally usurped congressional taxation powers thinks magnets are magic should give the ol’ consumer confidence index just the jolt it needs. And if not, hey, we can just stop reporting the numbers, like with jobs and inflation. Remember how Covid went away when we stopped testing for it?
At least he’s finally rolling back the tariffs on coffee and bananas. Yeah, those tariffs raised prices on consumers, but all the ones he’s keeping don’t, because, well, nobody knows, really. Tariffs are the magnets of the economy, if you will.
[…] I can’t say I feel awesome about unrestrained nuclear strike authority resting with a 79-year-old child molester who can no longer navigate a softball interview with Laura Ingraham without rambling about the need to replace the talentless American workforce with foreigners.
In the midst of all this, he expects the Washington Commanders to name their stadium after him, a stadium he got booed out of, incidentally. I can’t claim any expertise here, but I imagine the brand peaked some time before the self-inflicted recession and those 1,628 new links to the sex trafficker.
MAGA Republican senators voted themselves a half-million-dollar treason bonus as compensation for the emotional labor of enduring legal scrutiny of their participation in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and end American democracy forever […]
just look at all the fun places Kash Patel gets to fly on my dime! Vegas! Nashville! Wrasslin’ shows! Country concerts! And after a long, hard week undermining public safety with ideological purges of federal law enforcement, you can’t expect a guy to unwind at just any private, elitist, luxury hunting resort! Only the Boondoggle Ranch will do, presumably because the staff has been trained not to complain when you tip with challenge coins.
Speaking of the FBI, Deputy Director Dan Bongino couldn’t pass a standard background check, but Kash waived the requirement, because BROS BEFORE NATIONAL SECURITY, amirite?
Seems the doors of the U.S. Treasury have been flung open for any enterprising MAGA grifter to eat their fill. Mike Flynn wants $50 million, but I bet Pam Bondi can talk him down to 45. Kristi Noem figured out a way to funnel her chums a healthy cut of DHS’ recently engorged advertising budget. Oh, and now members of the Coast Guard can purchase the official wine of a child molester who doesn’t understand how magnets work, if they’re so inclined.
When Bill Pulte isn’t busy firing the watchdogs investigating his clownish corruption, he’s feeding his boss ego-stroking memes to get him to endorse the staggeringly idiotic idea of 50-year mortgages. Which worked, of course. […]
Getting back to high-profile Republican pedophiles real quick, we learned retch-inducing new details about Matt Gaetz’s crimes on, coincidentally, the one-year anniversary of his nomination to head the Department of Justice. It’s actually a small miracle those files made it all the way to the AG’s desk.
Britain suspended some intelligence sharing with the United States over the whole “regular extrajudicial murders” thing [a reference to Pete Hegseth and Trump having military forces blow up civilian boats in international waters.]
Apparently envious of the massive defamation payouts levied against rival disinformation platforms, Glenn Beck’s th’Blaze decided to accuse a not-exactly-random CIA officer of being the uncaught Capitol Hill pipe bomber based on the super-real and mega-accurate science of “gait analysis,” as conducted by Some Guy on the Internet, reminiscent of the time Fox Nooz based the entire Big Lie on the mutterings of a “cactus artist.”
Tucker Carlson suggested a Lutheran pastor who participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler was a bad Christian, which must have delighted his new BFF Nick Fuentes.
On the heels of their shiny new pardons, Mark Meadows and the Fake Electors announced their nationwide “Impunity” tour, playing all the classic hits from their previous stymied insurrection, plus new material off the Mid-Decade Redistricting album. […]
Providing security will be Stewart Rhodes, who hopes to get back into the domestic terrorism business, this time leading a cornered, flailing autocrat’s officially sanctioned pet militia.
Meanwhile, Paul Ingrassia’s self-professed “Nazi streak” cost him the nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, forcing him to retreat in shame to…a different job in the Trump Administration. [See comment 316]
The point is, it’s clearly gonna take a few more blue waves to wash the skidmark of fascism out of the American experiment’s tighty-whities. But between last week’s election results and all recent generic congressional polls, I’m pretty sure we’re up for it. […]
[…] Ken Paxton continues to be the worst
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not abusing the power of his office by suing the makers of Tylenol, he is abusing the power of his office by trying to shut down a nonprofit that works to increase civic participation and voting by Latinos.
And now the group is fighting back. Jolt Initiative sued Paxton to try to stop him from revoking their nonprofit charter.
Paxton’s efforts are a transparent effort to suppress the Latino vote by deliberately conflating voter registration drives with illegally registering noncitizens to vote. Now, Paxton’s filing against Jolt didn’t actually allege that they registered noncitizens to vote. No, it’s that holding voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”
Huh? Well, since citizens can register to vote at the DMV, having voter drives near the DMV, of course, means you are trying to register noncitizens. No, really, that’s Paxton’s argument.
Paxton’s stretching here because let’s face it, the only way he and his pals will continue to hold power in Texas is by suppressing the vote. […]
Flock data is a public record, and that is not great!
A few months ago, you might have heard about Texas deputies reportedly using Flock Safety, an automated license-plate reader, to track down someone who had allegedly had a self-managed abortion as part of a “death investigation” and possible prosecution.
Sure, the deputies said they were just trying to find her to check on her welfare, and that’s why they reportedly conducted a nationwide search of over 83,000 Flock cameras and reviewed her text messages about the abortion.
So, what could be worse than cops tapping into a giant network of surveillance cameras whenever they feel like it? Glad you asked.
How about if, at least in Washington state, everything from those Flock cameras are public records and therefore can be requested by anyone? Why should law enforcement have all the fun of using a dystopian surveillance tool to track people? Better to just throw open the doors to every bad actor!
And speaking of bad actors. Eight Washington state law enforcement agencies had already shared access to their Flock networks directly with U.S. Border Patrol.
So, a private company built a vast network of surveillance cameras. Which police have access to. And maybe in some places, anyone does. And maybe in other places, Border Patrol does as well. This surveillance state sucks.
“RFK Jr. Wanted Olivia Nuzzi To Have His Unvaccinated Polio Babies And Other Things We Didn’t Need To Know”
It could be said that, in the year of our lord 2025, we have overused the term “cringe” to the point that it no longer has any meaning. […]
But there is just no other term that fully captures the mental and physical feeling, the full stomach lurch, of reading the New York Times’ swooning, overwrought profile of political writer Olivia Nuzzi, who worked at New York magazine until September 2024, when it was revealed that she had been having a sextual relationship with none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — which appears to be a major plot-point in her soon to be released book, American Canto.
[…] join me as we delve into the hate-read masterpiece that is Jacob Bernstein’s Olivia Nuzzi Did It All For Love — which, yes, is the actual title of this piece. […]
It begins!
Olivia Nuzzi loved him. She loved the politician, even though she was a political reporter and he was then a presidential candidate she had written about. She loved his eyes, “blue as the flame.” She loved that “the sight of something as trivial as a rose” could move him to tears. She loved his insatiable appetites and his “particular complications and particular darkness.”
But she said “I love you” only after he said it first. He called her “Livvy” and wrote her poems. He said he wanted her to have his baby. He promised to take a bullet for her.
Look, I try not to judge other people’s romantic inclinations (not that I succeed), but all of that sounds terrible. […] 71-year-old RFK Jr. telling you he wants you to have his baby, despite the fact that older paternal age is something that, unlike vaccines or circumcision or Tylenol, is actually known to be associated with a higher risk of autism; any Kennedy at all bringing up the concept of taking a bullet, when you think about it …
[…] However, I am going to need to see those poems.
You could argue that referring to Kennedy and other players in the book by monikers like “the politician” is literary. It also allows her to construct a world where everyone is a sketch and proof is beside the point. Nuzzi makes clear in the book that she realizes there are people who will disagree with her version of events. She does not try to prove them. When I asked, for example, whether the text messages with Kennedy still exist, she said, “I don’t have anything to say about that.”
Not saying someone’s actual name is very literary. Like Daphne du Maurier or Carrie Bradshaw.
Nuzzi, 32, lives in a tiny house in the heart of Malibu where lizards crawl into her kitchen and the King James Bible and “The Divine Comedy” — two books she was reading while she was writing “American Canto” — sit on her dining room table. She drives around in a white Mustang convertible, like a Lana Del Rey song come to life.
See, it’s clever, because Lana Del Rey has a song called “White Mustang.”
Here she can hike in peace, though she feels hunted. Drones fly overhead; she wonders if it’s merely a coincidence.
I’m gonna say it’s a coincidence. Who is it that would be following Olivia Nuzzi around with drones, anyway? […]
In the book, she describes Trump as a monster who “succeeded by making even those who said they loathed him behave sometimes quite like him.”
Why was he so willing to keep talking to her?
“I certainly don’t think he’s a careful reader,” she said, sucking on a vape stick as she drove toward her “favorite rock,” off the Pacific Coast Highway. “There’s a clip once where I said something to the effect of: He loves attention, women and magazines. In that order.”
Keep in mind that I am saying this as an adult woman with bangs who plays the ukulele and collects creepy Victorian medicine bottles — there really is such a thing as trying too hard to be quirky. Taking someone writing an article about you to visit your “favorite rock” is trying too hard to be quirky.
Nuzzi tried to convey that this comment was a joke, but she cannot entirely discount the possibility that being a woman and looking like the modern iteration of a Hitchcock blonde contributed to the access she got.
She steered the Mustang onto a patch of dirt on the side of the road and put on a black leather jacket that she pulled from the back seat. The rock she loved was at the edge of a vertiginous cliff, where water rolled and crashed.
Get it? Vertiginous? Because Hitchcock blonde?
“A politician’s greatest trick is to convince you that he is not one,” Nuzzi writes in her book. “And what is a politician? Any man who wants to be loved more than other men and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.”
Either that or a person of any gender who runs for office.
She writes that the first few times Kennedy said he loved her, she did not say it back. Yet she knew she felt the same. “I love him, I thought. Oh no. I love him so much.” They spoke often and were intimate enough for her to see him flossing his teeth, his dopp kit overflowing with prescriptions.
[…] I do have some questions about the prescriptions, though, given that his whole deal is supposed to be raging at Western medicine and what have you. If he is taking anything other than horse-grade Ivermectin … the people have a right to know.
She writes that despite being “sober” for decades, Kennedy told her that he still uses psychedelics, and even smoked dimethyltryptamine, or DMT [
1], a powerful drug on which people are known to have what feel like near-death experiences. She told him she “liked uppers. I told him that I took Adderall.” [!]
That’s not what sober is though? That, I am pretty sure, is not just not drinking or doing heroin. […]
They chose favorite parts of each other, she writes: He chose her mouth. She chose his nose. They shared a “common language, common skepticisms, common ideas about what was beautiful, common beliefs about what was valuable.” She didn’t care that he was 39 years older than her. She liked him just the way he was. They both “moved through the world with amused detachment and deep sensitivity, contradictions that worked somehow in concert.”
Ew.
All I can say is, if you have “common skepticisms” with RFK Jr., you actually have more problems than the fact that you are having a sexting affair with RFK Jr..
I’m not wrong.
She describes providing him with advice about how to manage campaign issues, including the impending news that Kennedy dropped a bear carcass in Central Park.
There is not a good way to manage that, as evidenced by the fact that I do not even recall how he managed that. I just remember the bear carcass.
Oh! I have to tell you. As I was reading this, something inside me asked “But where is Carole Radziwill in all of this, and does she have something to say about RFK Jr.’s carcass habit?”
I realize you guys are not going to know what the fuck I’m talking about, but Carole is a RHONY alumni who was married to Anthony Radziwill (whose mother was Jackie O’s sister, Lee Radziwill). As it turns out, she did have something to say about RFK Jr.’s carcass habit.
“He had that weird thing about roadkill, always,” she said on a podcast this past October. “He would pick it up from the road all the time and leave it in his minivan, and sometimes he’d forget. There’d be like a skunk under the seat. His minivan always smelled of death.”
Would Nuzzi have been willing to trade in her sexy Lana Del Rey White Mustang for Kennedy’s Minivan of Skunk Death? We may never know.
But I digress!
I will note here that the timing for Nuzzi’s book is really something else, given that RFK Jr.’s wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, just released her own book — for which she’s been making the rounds the past couple weeks — a few days ago. And by “the rounds” I mean that she has been on Tucker Carlson’s internet show, the podcast hosted by Stephen Miller’s wife, and a bunch of other deeply embarrassing places. I would feel bad for her, except for that and the fact that she is now also openly embracing her husband’s conspiracy nonsense and drift to the Right … perhaps in the hope that doing so will prevent him from having another affair.
Go ahead and finish the rest if you like, I’m going to stop here or we’ll be here all day with this and I know none of us want that for ourselves. We, much like any lady hoping for a romantic connection with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., need that about as much as we need measles, whooping cough, polio or any of the other vaccine-preventable illnesses he’s so eager to see us all die from.
It seems like just a few days ago that we wrote about an effort by certain senators to grift millions of dollars out of the Treasury as “compensation” for Special Counsel Jack Smith looking (rightfully, we should emphasize) at their phone records as part of his investigation into Trump’s January 6 attempted coup.
That’s because it was just a few days ago that we wrote about this. In the Trump era, the amount of grift, chicanery, legerdemain, jiggery-pokery, crookedness, and flat-out hanky-panky being used by Trump allies to suck all of America’s money out of our Treasury like a Galactus-sized Roomba is so vast and so constant that we cannot keep up. Oh, we wrote about one scheme on Monday? Well, now it is Saturday, a dozen new schemes by Trump insiders to clean out America’s bank accounts have emerged, and there will be several more by the time we finish typing this sentence.
Here is a big one, courtesy of ProPublica, which is doing some of the best journalism of the Trump era. It involves Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, a Republican consultant who worked on her last campaign for South Dakota governor, and a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign from DHS that skipped the federal government’s normal competitive bidding process because the agency deemed it part of the “national emergency” at the southern border.
Oh, did we mention that the Republican consultant, Ben Yoho, is married to fascist Chatty Cathy doll Tricia McLaughlin, who serves as Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS? Well, consider it mentioned.
Do all involved know how shady it is? We think so. Here is how ProPublica described a recent shoot for an ad that featured Noem riding a horse around Mount Rushmore while threatening any undocumented people in the country with a big ol’ heap of American justice:
The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.
Yes, an LLC registered in Delaware days before it was awarded the deal is the official recipient of $143 million of that big $220 million contract. DHS claims they have no say over any subcontractors the contract holder might hire. And the office funding the contracts for this and other ads is the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin.
So in this scenario, we are expected to believe that a subcontractor whose CEO just happens to be married to the head of the DHS office handing out the money got a piece of this hundred-million-plus-dollar contract. Since contractors aren’t required to reveal subcontractors, the mysterious Delaware company essentially masks where this money is going, giving McLaughlin some plausible deniability. [!] [Shady as hell]
[…] is the lack of transparency shady as hell? Oh yes:
“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law. […] “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.
For her part, McLaughlin vigorously denied she had anything to do with the contract and claimed she had recused herself from any dealings with it. But here’s the thing about Tricia McLaughlin: She lies a lot. She lies at as impressive a clip as anyone else in the Trump administration, up to and including our special-brained boy himself.
Elsewhere just on Friday, news emerged that Michael Flynn, the one-time National Security Advisor turned Q-Anon loon turned 2020 election denier, has decided that the federal government should pay him $50 million for his troubles. And the Trump government is reportedly giving it some serious consideration.
Bloomberg reports that the Department of Justice has been engaged for several months in settlement talks to resolve Flynn’s lawsuit over his allegedly wrongful prosecution. An earlier lawsuit was dismissed last year because the people who staffed the government under Joe Biden were not complete fucking idiots. [embedded links to other sources are available at the min link]
Then Trump won the election, Flynn refiled the lawsuit, and suddenly DOJ has changed its mind. The only question is probably how much money the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for, the entire $50 million or some other insane amount of money. [!]
The DOJ is also negotiating with Stefan Passantino, who had sued the House January 6 Select Committee for harming his reputation. Buddy, you worked in the first Trump administration as (allegedly) an ethics lawyer, you worked to get the state of Georgia to throw out its election results in 2020, and Cassidy Hutchinson fired you because all your advice would have gotten her charged with perjury. Any reputational damage is entirely of your own doing.
Of course, neither Fynn nor Passantino has the nerve to ask for anywhere near the $230 million Trump is demanding the nation pay him as compensation for all the suffering he endured when the Justice Department investigated him for all the crimes he committed. […]
And this was all just in the last couple of days. [Can] anyone could add up the amount of dollars being just handed out from the Treasury right to Trump and his cronies […]
The next president is going to walk into the Treasury and find it resembles a bank vault post-heist. Even the copper wiring might have been ripped out of the walls and flown down to Mar-a-Lago.
Congratulations, Chicago! Following 56 days of Border Patrol Commander Gregory “Millimetternich” Bovino in residence, he has high-tailed it out of the windy city for the warmer embrace of Charlotte, North Carolina, after posing for a photo op with agents in front the local landmark sculpture Cloud Gate. [photo at the link] And instead of “cheese” they all shouted “Little Village,” the largely immigrant neighborhood they’ve been terrorizing in particular. What fun they have all been having on their field trip!
And now it’s not clear who in Chicago is reporting directly to Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Perhaps Judge Sara Ellis will let Bovino ring in for a Zoom call about it.
[…] In spite of DHS being forbidden from using “riot control” type weapons like chemical irritants unless they were in imminent danger, witnesses say, agents have continued to go around using them, including spraying a one-year-old in the face with pepper spray while she was out with her parents getting groceries at Sam’s Club last Saturday, just two days after Ellis’s order. [video]
And then, they say, agents pointed weapons and fired tear gas at people who came out to protest that incident, and Greg Bovino himself came out and wielded a can of tear gas at them, though this time didn’t personally throw it. [….]
And witnesses say, since Judge Ellis’s order, agents have shot pepper balls at a man while he was driving a car (!), and pointed guns and shot pepper balls at people for honking their horns and recording them. Scary shit. […]
These losers are starring in some kind of masked-domination fantasy reboot of the Battle of Midway and the London Blitz, but one where the Nazis were the good guys and won. And instead of taking over Chicago, they’re harassing and assaulting children, priests, and the elderly. Are they winning hearts and minds yet?
On X, Noem claimed that DHS were the victims in all of these incidents, of course. But did the agents have their body cameras on like the judge had ordered? Did the guy they arrested actually fire any shots (or even exist), or was it DHS themselves setting off flash-bangs as a pretense to wild out? Hope we will find out soon in court! Will Judge Ellis take away all of DHS’s gas if they are lying, like she said she would, or hold any agents personally responsible for violating her order? We shall see.
Meanwhile BP [Border Patrol] goon squads have continued to terrorize the community with their chaos, like riding through in their armored caravans to snatch away people who pass the Kavanaugh test, even an 11-year-old, and a children’s day care teacher in front of toddlers.
And there’s good reason to not trust any of DHS’s version of events.
In a deposition two weeks ago, Bovino lied about teenage protestors hitting him with a rock before personally chucking tear gas canisters at them […] He lied about getting busted in the nuts so hard he was bedridden for two weeks and his nuts needed an MRI, he lied that his agents were in some kind of mortal peril before they tear-gassed babies and toddlers and etc. etc, and he said that he had never seen a single example of too much force from his agents, they had been “exemplary.” Even when shooting a priest with pepper balls in the face from the roof of their shit-soaked detention center!
And DHS goons lied about the incident where they shot Miramar Martinez, claiming that she’d pointed a gun at them, only to have to walk that back in court. Then the agent who shot her and had claimed she rammed his truck drove it to Maine, and had the scuff marks buffed out. That judge would also like some answers.
And DHS was lying when it said that the five story apartment building it invaded — with Blackhawk helicopters and attack dogs, in the middle of the night on a school night — was full of Tren de Aragua gang members and criminals. In fact, in spite of zip-tying dozens of people and even holding children in vans for hours, turns out there were ZERO criminals. ZERO people with even arrest records. And many were US citizens, and children.
Lies on lies, just as Trump / Hegseth have been lying about those 29 boats they blew up in the Caribbean being full of “narco-terrorists,” and then the two in the Pacific, and about Venezuelan Presidente Nicolás Maduro directing Tren de Aragua to empty out prisons and asylums into the US. Most drugs come over the Mexican border […]
It is all about establishing the hemisphere as Trump’s to fuck with, from Greenland to the “Eastern Pacific” to the tip of Argentina. And all the people therein, to commit as many crimes against humanity as he wants! […]
And Bovino may have moved on, but President Trump et al. insist there will be no let-up in Chicago, far from it. On Thursday he or whoever does his tapping pounded out: [social media post that is just more propaganda]
[…] And DHS sources told the Chicago Sun-Times that DHS forces plan to be back fourfold in March. [!]
But judges are trying their darnedest to get the government to follow its own rules. On Thursday a federal judge toured the Broadview ICE facility, with translators, to make sure it is complying with the list of improvements federal Judge Robert Gettleman ordered last week.
And on Friday, four police officers were injured, and 21 protestors, including faith leaders who have been denied access to their cherished Christian detainees, were arrested after scuffles broke out at the Broadview ICE facility. Agents were nasty, pushing and shoving, slamming people to the ground and sitting on them, and at one point violently grabbing a priest who was simply standing there. But at least the protestors were not sprayed, gassed or shot in the face? Hooray? [social media posts, with videos]
[…]
“The cheap health insurance promoted by Trump officials has this catch”
Robert Hays, an industrial electronics salesman in Arkansas, thought he’d purchased conventional medical insurance. So did Essie Nath, 67, a retired cafeteria worker in Wyoming. So did Martin Liz, 47, a Key West chef.
Each enrolled in the kind of private health insurance that Trump administration officials have promoted as an alternative to plans sold under Obamacare.
The difference between the two options became all too clear after Hays, Nath and Liz required surgery: Their cheaper policies left them facing bills of tens of thousands of dollars. Hays is facing bills of $116,000 for neck surgery required […]; Nath had heart failure and got bills of $82,000; Liz is stuck with bills of more than $100,000 for a knee replacement.
“These policies are a horrible idea,” said Ken Swindle, an Arkansas-based attorney for Hays. “People think they’re getting comprehensive medical coverage, but they’re not, and they often don’t realize that until it’s too late.”
With enhanced government subsidies for Obamacare plans expiring this year and millions of Americans facing soaring insurance costs, many are expected to consider enrolling in the kind of “short-term” plans bought by Hays, Nath and Liz.
Unlike most insurance, these plans are not required to cover preexisting conditions or even basic needs such as maternity care and mental health. Their coverage is so full of holes that five states have banned their sale, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group. Even some major insurers have questioned whether relying on the short-term plans is a good idea, warning that many consumers could mistake them for comprehensive coverage. The Biden administration referred to them as “junk” plans.
[…] Some insurers are preparing for new customers. Last month, UnitedHealth and its subsidiary, Golden Rule Insurance, announced new sales incentives to agents selling the short-term plans.
“This fall, we are celebrating … with a high-impact incentive designed to reward your hustle,” the announcement said. [JFC! Beware!]
Short-term plans, which were previously limited to a duration of four months, were vastly expanded in 2018 by the Trump administration, which saw them as an alternative to ACA plans, which they opposed. To make the short-term plans more accessible, the Trump administration ruled that a short-term policy could last as long as three years. [!]
[…] Even some insurance companies wondered whether this relaxation of regulations was a good idea. Cigna executives raised objections to the proposed rule, worrying that consumers would end up with a cheaper short-term plan but “find themselves in need of certain benefits or protections.” Aetna suggested adding more consumer protections to the short-term plans. The largest health insurance company, UnitedHealth Group, however, recommended approval of the proposed rule “as quickly as possible.” [yep, that sounds like UnitedHealth]
[…] Incentivized by larger sales bonuses, brokers were using deceptive marketing materials to sell short-term policies, the report said. It “is unclear what kind of value consumers are getting for their premium dollars,” it said, “other than a false sense of security.”
Last year, debate erupted again when the Biden administration reversed the Trump rule and restored the four-month limit on the policies. This year, though, the Trump administration announced it was again coming up with its own definition of “short-term” and would not prioritize enforcement of the Biden-era rule.
[…] Hays assumed his insurance would cover the operation. He even got “prior authorization” from the insurer, he said.
But a few months later, while Hays was still wearing a neck brace, he got a call: His claims had been denied. The insurer said that his neck problem was “pre-existing” — that is, it had occurred before his policy took effect — and so it wouldn’t be covered. The company has claimed that the injury had come from a previous car accident, he said, though his doctor wrote a letter disputing that the injury had been preexisting.
“It just threw me completely,” Hays said. “How did they give pre-authorization and then they’re telling me none of this is going to be covered?”
[…] in December 2022 Liz realized he needed surgery for both knees. He’d already been preparing for a left-knee replacement when, rushing to take out the garbage, he tore his ACL in his right knee. He got the right knee fixed first, leaving the already-planned left-knee surgery for another day.
When his policy ended in March 2023, Liz re-upped his coverage with National Health Insurance. His insurance agent assured him that the next surgery would also be covered, he said, and he even got approval of the surgery from a company working on behalf of the insurer.
In June 2023, surgeons replaced Liz’s left knee at a cost of more than $100,000. The insurer, though, refused to reimburse him. It said it had the right to cut off coverage in cases of “fraud or intentional misrepresentation.”
[…] “It’s a very distressing situation,” Liz said. “It’s a lot of debt.”
It sounds like the insurance companies are running a scam. They are also using tactics that routinely allow them to avoid paying. This is a Trump-supported grift.
“Don’t call it MSNBC. MS NOW takes on Trump’s Washington.”
“Going it alone without NBC’s name or deep bench of reporting talent, the newly rebranded cable news network is staffing up. MS NOW wants you to know that nothing has changed — except for a few things.”
Ali Vitali isn’t naturally a morning person, but fortified by an early bedtime and stockpiled cans of sparkling orange-flavored Celsius energy drinks, she makes her gig work. “I’m contractually a morning person,” she said just after her show, aptly titled “Way Too Early,” wrapped one morning this month at 6 a.m.
Vitali, 35, is the first daily face of a new version of MSNBC, one that — as of Saturday — has a different name and a different logo. Nothing about her show, her sleep schedule or her broader remit as the network’s resident Congress-whisperer will change. But viewers now find her on a network with a peacock-less logo and a new name: MS NOW.
NBC owner Comcast started late last year spinning off its cable news networks MSNBC and CNBC, plus other entertainment and sports brands such as the Golf Channel and USA Network, into a new company called Versant. While CNBC is keeping its name, MSNBC is assuming a fresh moniker — short for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.”
To thrive without the deep bench and financial backing of NBC, MS NOW intends to keep serving up liberal opinion and news analysis in prime time to its Donald Trump-fatigued, Rachel Maddow-obsessed viewers. But without the support of the 99-year-old network with which it has always shared a name, it has to figure out how to gather and report the news that fuels its shows, website, podcasts, and social media.
To replace NBC News’s roster of reporters and hosts, MS NOW is building a newsroom of its own. The network says it is the rare process of bulking up in a news ecosystem battered by persistent layoffs and shrinking resources.
The network hired Scott Matthews from New York’s WABC as senior vice president of newsgathering and tapped Politico Senior Managing Editor Sudeep Reddy as its Washington bureau chief. After Reddy joined in June, he was flooded with emails from journalists looking for work or excited about building something new. “There were days where, between every meeting, I would get another handful of emails from people inquiring,” he said. “I have 300 backlogged messages of people I still want to meet with.”
Altogether, Reddy has hired more than three dozen reporters in Washington, including Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Leonnig [Good!] from The Washington Post, who soon after starting at the network broke the story — alongside former NBC reporter Ken Dilanian — that Trump border czar Tom Homan had been caught in a bribery sting operation. (No charges were filed.)
The reporters hired across the country include NBC misinformation reporter Brandy Zadrozny and national correspondents Jacob Soboroff [Good!] and David Noriega; it also poached Eugene Daniels from Politico, Rosa Flores from CNN, and Jacqueline Alemany from The Post.
Steve Kornacki, the data whiz who has been an election mainstay for years, decamped from MSNBC for NBC News and NBC Sports ahead of the corporate schism. Ali Velshi filled in on election night and won the network high marks with viewers. Just over 2.88 million viewers watched MSNBC, according to final numbers released Friday by Nielsen, putting the network just behind the usually dominant Fox News and well ahead of CNN.
Partnerships with AccuWeather and Comcast’s Sky News, plus continued crossover programming with CNBC, will replace the weather and global news that NBC previously supplied.
The editorial independence that comes with the split has been a draw for some of the reporters newly hired on, according to several MS NOW and NBC staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the split candidly. For nearly 30 years, MSNBC functioned as what one staffer described as the “editorial page” of the NBC News operation — a home for opinion and analysis while NBC reporters did the heavy lifting of gathering the day’s news. MS NOW aims to break its own stories while maintaining the opinion-driven prime-time lineup that draws its loyal audience. “Nobody’s calling our shots except good news judgment about what the public needs to know,” Leonnig said. [I hope they are correct, and that they succeed.]
[…] building a news operation from scratch, alongside a major branding change, is no easy feat. And there have been growing pains.
One staffer said there was a recent ordeal when a reporter hired to work for MS NOW had a scoop and staffers were nervous about discussing it in Slack where NBC News personnel might also be able to see it. Since then, MS NOW has a separate Slack workspace and decamped to its own office spaces.
[…] To counter the perception that the network is watched almost exclusively by liberals, MS NOW shared data — based on Nielsen and MRI-Simmons data — showing that its audience consists of 50 percent registered Democrats, 26 percent Republicans and 24 percent independents. That data has not only guided the network internally, it said, but also helped it court new hires.
[…] For now, MS NOW is leaning into its energy as something of a born-again start-up. Leadership has involved reporters in hiring decisions, asking them to recommend colleagues and help build out the team — an unusual approach in an industry where hiring is typically top-down. “They made us a part of the building process,” Vitali said. […]
The desperate search for a 5-year-old girl swept into the Pacific Ocean as her father drowned attempting to save her continued Saturday, as southern California braced for more heavy rainfall that brought life-threatening floods to the region.
At around 12:50 p.m. Friday, the young girl’s father was attempting to rescue her after she was pulled into the ocean by waves that were 15 to 20 feet high at Garrapata State Beach in Monterey, according to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office. A lifeguard was able to pull the man from the water, but he was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Saturday’s search efforts are being led by the sheriff’s office, the U.S. Coast Guard and several other agencies. The girl was last seen wearing a white shirt, according to the sheriff’s office.
In northern California, a 71-year-old man was killed in Sutter County after his car was swept away by the overflowing Pleasant Grove Creek, according to the California Highway Patrol.
“Signage indicating the road was flooded was displayed in both directions on Fifield Road,” the highway patrol said. “The California Highway Patrol urges motorists to never cross flooded roadways for any reason.”
Southern California continues to brace for more inclement weather as a strong Pacific storm enhanced with moisture from an atmospheric river brings moderate to heavy rain to the region Saturday. Around 23 million people are still under flood watches across the region, including San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
The “unusually strong storm system” is expected to bring “widespread rain” to the region through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. The National Hurricane Center’s Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch shared imagery of a cold front extending from southern to central California.
[…] The heaviest rain will fall through Saturday afternoon, with rainfall rates potentially approaching one inch per hour. Isolated thunderstorms will also be possible and there is a moderate risk for flash flooding, mudslides and debris flows, especially near burn scar areas.
[…] Winter Weather Advisories remain in place for the southern Sierra Mountains, where up to a foot of snow will be possible Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning in areas above 7,000 feet.
The active pattern over the Pacific will continue, and northern and central California will see another round of rain and mountain snow late Sunday into Monday. Some rain will also expand into southern California Monday afternoon and evening. […]
Perfect for explaining deep time to creationists. Justlook at those lahar deposits.
.
Myron Cook:
“Explore Numerous Layers of Petrified Trees: Yellowstone National Park”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=N0o_D5Ay1vg
birgerjohanssonsays
Longest Straight Line You Can Sail On A Boat Without Hitting Any Land (32000 km)
Astronomers have discovered that the solar system may be moving through the cosmos over three times faster than was previously theorized. The discovery could have implications for the standard model of cosmology, our current best model to explain the structure, composition and evolution of the universe.
The team behind this research reached its conclusions using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope network and two other radio telescopes to map the distribution of radio galaxies, which they then used to measure the motion of the solar system.
… (Snip) ..
“If our solar system is indeed moving this fast, we need to question fundamental assumptions about the large-scale structure of the universe,” team member Dominik J. Schwarz, a cosmologist at Bielefeld University, said. “Alternatively, the distribution of radio galaxies itself may be less uniform than we have believed. In either case, our current models are being put to the test.”
Twenty-one members of the US House of Representatives, led by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, have introduced a resolution declaring that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in one of the most direct and sweeping challenges yet to Washington’s long-standing support for Israel.
Filed on Friday, the measure argues that Israeli forces have carried out “acts constituting genocide” under international law, citing mass civilian killings, forced starvation, widespread displacement, and what it describes as the “systematic destruction” of Gaza’s health, water and civil infrastructure.
It also points to public statements by senior Israeli officials that it says demonstrate clear genocidal intent, including former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s 9 October 2023 declaration that “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would enter Gaza, announcing a complete siege of the enclave.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, said the scale of destruction in Gaza made recognition unavoidable.
The government shutdown has not only failed to address impoundment, it has not even led to any movement to fund healthcare subsidies expiring at the end of this calendar year.
[…]
Congress has struggled to pass a full budget for nearly my entire life. The last time this happened was literally 1997. A “budget” in this case means passing bills authorizing appropriations for various government agencies for a full fiscal year before the start of that fiscal year.
[…]
This [week’s] small package of appropriations bills has been referred to as a “minibus”—since it has some features of Omnibus legislation, but the package of funding priorities only covers a handful of agencies and/or programs. Most notably among them: SNAP. The goal posts have been moved by the crisis—now it’s supposed to be a victory […] these are supposed to be the most uncontroversial of funding priorities. The flipside then, is that it’s even less likely that the “more controversial” funding priorities will be properly funded […] This is a smaller, more subtle, way in which passing this legislation was “caving”.
[…]
To cooperate with funding bills in the midst of an impoundment crisis is inherently one-sided. This problem seems to have been mitigated by… Democrats not succeeding to accomplish their funding priorities at all.
[…]
Where does this leave us? It seems to imply electoral change as the only thing that will reduce the scale and scope of impoundment. Democrats are clearly hoping that the 2026 midterms yield results like election night two weeks ago. The chaos of the Trump administration and its deep unpopularity clearly speak to these possibilities. Yet, waiting more than a year for a new congress is a costly endeavor. […] there could be more mess caused by this annually impounding mess than any subsequent government could hope to tidy up. […] That kind of lasting fix to this worsening turmoil certainly would require far bolder leadership than congressional Democrats—especially Senate leadership—currently show.
“DHS and ICE have created something the Founders feared: a roving license for agents to search anyone, anywhere, at any time.”
Related video at the link.
This summer, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested George Retes, a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, during an immigration sweep as he was driving to work. Although Retes repeatedly told the officers he was an American and showed them proof, ICE detained him for days, strip-searched him and forced him to provide a DNA sample — all without charges. (Weeks after Retes’ story became public, the Department of Homeland Security said that he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement,” challenging agents and blocking their route “by refusing to move his vehicle out of the road.”) Retes has teamed up with our organization, the Institute for Justice, and brought claims for damages alleging violations of his constitutional rights. But that is not the end of the story.
Now, as ICE ramps up this type of data collection, Retes and countless other Americans are at risk.
In addition to our DNA, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recently and quietly authorized ICE officers to forcibly collect and retain intimate identifiers: our fingerprints and digital images of our faces. Combined with other technologies, the department is creating a general warrant for our persons, the kind of abuse that ignited the American Revolution. [!]
A DHS document, meant to ensure our privacy, lays out the facts. An app called Mobile Fortify allows ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to photograph and scan anyone they “encounter” in the field, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. If there isn’t a photo match, officers can collect people’s fingerprints, which are then checked against DHS biometric records. Once DHS has that sensitive data, the app feeds it into CBP’s Automated Targeting System — an enormous watch list that merges border records, passport photos and prior “encounter” images. CBP retains every nonmatch photograph for 15 years, meaning that even if you’re an American citizen mistakenly stopped on the street, the government has your biometric records for a generation.
Mobile Fortify is just the latest cog in a much larger machine. When ICE agents arrest someone like Retes — citizen or not — they routinely swab their mouth to collect their DNA. Like faces and fingerprints, the government uploads those DNA records into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), where they sit indefinitely. So, if ICE mistakenly arrests a U.S. citizen like Retes, his genetic information can remain in federal hands forever.
None of this should be happening.
In constitutional terms, DHS and ICE have created what the founders decried as a “general warrant”: a roving license for agents to search anyone, anywhere, at any time. The American Revolution was, in many ways, a rebellion against that kind of arbitrary power. Before the Revolution, British authorities used “writs of assistance” — open-ended warrants that allowed customs officers to enter whatever homes, shops or ships they wished to hunt for untaxed goods, without particular targets. In 1761, Boston lawyer James Otis denounced these writs, arguing that they placed “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” That outrage eventually led to the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,” and that those warrants must be specific — not general. [!!]
So how did we get here? Our drift from the founders’ vision comes from a century’s worth of constitutional rot.
First, the Supreme Court narrowly interpreted what the Fourth Amendment protects. Starting in the Prohibition Era, the court began reading the amendment narrowly, allowing federal agents to trespass on private property and to wiretap suspected bootleggers without a warrant. Then, starting in 1967, the Supreme Court began asking whether a search violated some malleable “reasonable expectation of privacy,” rather than simply if the government was purposely collecting information about Americans. And that “reasonable expectation of privacy” test? It didn’t come from the Constitution at all — it came from an 1890 tort essay by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis about gossip and tabloid photographers. It had nothing to do with restraining federal agents.
Those blind spots inform the regulations allowing mass surveillance. And when challenged, courts routinely defer to agencies that claim necessity while quietly expanding their power to surveil everyone.
American surveillance has been normalized under the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. After all, the word “privacy” implies that anything you voluntarily expose to the public (like your face) gets no constitutional protection. And because the test tracks social norms, the government can expand surveillance and then point to that new normal to claim that the public’s “expectations of privacy” have “diminished.” Its logic is circular: more cameras, databases and data-sharing yield lower judicial protection. The result: Mass surveillance becomes its own constitutional permission slip.
Second, the courts treat warrantless biometric collection based on how intrusive it feels or how useful it seems to the government. In Maryland v. King, the court upheld warrantless DNA swabs from people arrested for serious charges as it serves a legitimate public interest and is “minimally intrusive.” But a painless search is still a search — and a cheek swab reveals family ties and genetic traits, then lives in government databases indefinitely. The King decision tolerated swabs only when officer discretion was tightly confined. ICE’s sweeps are the opposite: “Encounter” means anyone an agent chooses to stop — no reasonable suspicion, no warrant, little oversight. Mobile Fortify digitizes the very general warrant abuses the founders forbade.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in King, warning of a “genetic panopticon” that would be turned against the innocent. He was right. To defend this new biometric surveillance regime, CBP says that this dragnet is about identifying criminals that enter our country. But that is not what the system actually does. Under the banner of immigration enforcement, the government is assembling vast databases of facial scans, fingerprints and DNA that sweep in millions of American citizens who, by definition, cannot violate immigration law. They are now folded into immense repositories built for a mission they have nothing to do with.
With the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, we should honor the limits that made us free. Congress should halt warrantless biometric collection and require prompt destruction of citizens’ records. Courts should restore the Fourth Amendment’s original guarantee: Searches must be particular and justified — not open-ended, not perpetual. George Retes’ case shows what happens when we forget.
A drastic new message adorns the walls of the Iranian capital, usually reserved for war heroes and weapons.
“There is a water shortage!” reads the government poster’s slogan, inside a water container that is nearly empty. “It’s fall and there is still no rain.”
That’s not news to Erfan Ensani, 39, who returned home from a long day working in the textile section of the city’s central bazaar last week to find his taps running dry.
Iran is facing its worst water crisis in decades. With no end in sight and authorities warning they may even have to evacuate the capital of 10 million people, residents like Ensani are scrambling to respond.
“We didn’t have water for three days. The pressure was so low that nothing came out,” Ensani, who, like many residents, works two jobs to make ends meet, told NBC News in a recent interview in Tehran.
“The water company says we should buy pumps to solve the problem and also get a storage tank to keep some water. But that’s expensive, especially now when the economy is bad,” Ensani said.
Everyone in his building is fed up, Ensani said, with some neighbors even traveling across the city to their relatives’ houses just to take a shower. Families with kids have an even more difficult time. […]
President Masoud Pezeshkian said two weeks ago that extreme measures may need to be taken if there is no rain by late November.
“Even if we ration, if it doesn’t rain again, then we won’t have water at all,” he said, according to a video posted on the website of the semiofficial Tabnak news agency.
“They’ll have to evacuate Tehran.”
Tehran is now in its sixth year of drought, while temperatures that exceeded 122 degrees Fahrenheit over the summer led to power outages and an enforced public holiday.
The reservoirs that the capital depends on for water are now at only 5% of their reserve capacity [!]
[…] Iran’s 12-day war with Israel last summer also damaged water infrastructure, which has exacerbated the problem, according to Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi, who warned two weeks ago that the government may have to resort to cutting water off completely on some nights to deal with the crisis.
[…] “The authorities have known about this problem for years, but nothing has been done,” Sadegh Razavi, a Tehran restaurant owner, said. “In a country as rich in resources as ours, it’s sad that we have no electricity in the summer and now a water crisis, too.”
The prolonged drought along with years of overconsumption, an inefficient agricultural sector and mismanagement — including decades building mega-dams of questionable utility — have led to the problem, analysts say.
“I don’t call it a crisis anymore. This is a state of failure. That’s why for years I’ve referred to it as water bankruptcy,” said Kaveh Madani, the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
“A crisis is a state that you can mitigate, you can go back to normal at some point if you put forces together. But the damages we are seeing to the ecosystem, to the nature and even to many parts of the economy and infrastructure are irreversible.”
The current situation was not a surprise to researchers based in North America who studied Iran’s water supply and the strains on it.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Ali Nazemi, an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal.
In a 2021 study in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, Nazemi and other researchers warned that the Islamic Republic was overdrafting groundwater in nearly four-fifths of the landscape, which was causing Iran’s land to sink, its soil to grow more salty and its salt lakes to disappear. […]
Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, said climate change has exacerbated the problem, but the biggest issue is how water use is governed.
[…] “The problem is mismanagement and systemic corruption in the system that basically allows powerful organizations to even build dams or diversion tunnels without even getting permits.”
Nazemi said that dynamic is worsened by inefficient irrigation methods and aging urban water infrastructure that leaks.
There have been early warning signs.
Lake Urmia, which was once the sixth largest salt lake in the world, is desiccated and causing dust storms. Zayandeh Rud, the largest river in Iran’s central plateau, is no longer a permanent river.
But there is no quick fix to the problem, and government officials have begun proposing more drastic solutions.
Aliabadi, the energy minister, warned Wednesday that overconsumption of water will be punished, noting that he had a plan to cut electricity to households still filling their swimming pools.
“All the options are related to emergency management only,” Madani, of the United Nations University, said.
He added: “The most effective one is reduce consumption by the citizens. To get there, you need to earn their trust. You need to increase transparency in your system. Have a proper communication channel. This is very hard for a country that has gone through a war recently.”
Well, I guess Trump is no longer Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jesus.
There was a time when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) compared President Donald Trump to Jesus Christ and called him “the greatest President of my lifetime.”
Those days are over. As I wrote back in July, Greene has been increasingly critical of Trump’s second term in office: She has railed against his decision to launch strikes on Iran, his renewed support for Ukraine, and his backing of H-1B visas, which allow employers to sponsor immigrants for high-skill jobs, mostly in science and tech fields. Greene has alleged these decisions betray MAGA’s supposed “America First” philosophy. And while she has been calling for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files for months now, she recently turned that talk into action, becoming one of only four Republicans to back a discharge petition that would force a vote requiring the DOJ to release the full files. (The petition finally got its last vote this past week, and the vote on the legislation is expected in the House on Tuesday.)
[…] On Friday night, [Trump]t officially disavowed Greene in a Truth Social rant, claiming, “all I see “Wacky” Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” He went on to call her a “ranting Lunatic,” and claimed her change of heart “seemed to all begin when I sent her a Poll stating that she should not run for Senator, or Governor, she was at 12%, and didn’t have a chance (unless, of course, she had my Endorsement — which she wasn’t about to get!).” Greene ruled out runs for both offices earlier this year, and her current term in the House ends in 2027. But according to Trump, “if the right person runs” against her, “they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”
About 12 hours later, Trump couldn’t help but send one more break-up “Truth”: “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!” he wrote.
Greene clapped back within the hour. “President Trump just attacked me and lied about me,” she wrote on X, attaching screenshots of texts she claimed were to him and his assistant explaining her calls to release the Epstein files. “Apparently this is what sent him over the edge.”
“I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him,” Greene continued. “But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”
In other posts, Greene claimed Trump was attacking her due to her refusal to take money from the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and a bill she recently introduced seeking to end the H-1B visa program. […] on Saturday, Greene wrote on X that she was receiving threats from people who were “being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world. The man I supported and helped get elected.”
Apparently, these threats have been enough to force Greene—who, as my colleague David Corn has pointed out, previously liked social media posts calling for the executions of former House Speaker and current Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former President Barack Obama—to turn over a new leaf. On CNN on Sunday morning, she appeared with her tail between her legs. “I would like to say humbly that I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics,” Greene told host Dana Bash. “It’s very bad for our country. And it’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.” [Social media post and video]
When Bash pressed Greene about her prior support for those violent social media posts, she replied: “Of course I never want to cause any harm or anything bad for anyone…I think America needs to come together and end all the toxic, dangerous rhetoric and divide, and I’m leading the way with my own example, and I hope that President Trump can do the same.”
But for all her claims that she has changed, Greene still seems to possess a fealty to Trump that she can’t entirely shake. When Bash asked Greene if she thought she and Trump could repair their relationship, Greene replied: “I certainly hope that we can make up…I’m a Christian, and one of the most important parts of our faith is forgiveness, and that’s something I’m committed to.” [social media post and video]
[…] Is the anger of MAGA and Greene a sign of a more lasting break with the president? Even with all the drama, it’s highly unlikely. According to Greene herself, dissent within MAGA isn’t proof of its weakness, but its supremacy. “Contrary to brainwashed Democrat boomers think and protest about, Trump is not a king, MAGA is not a cult, and I can and DO have my own opinion,” she wrote last month.
But whether Trump feels the same way remains to be seen.
With critical federal subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, the cost of health insurance that is purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is about to explode — in many cases, doubling or tripling what people have been paying.
But the folks who’ll get hit with those mammoth increases aren’t living in poverty — at least, not as the federal government defines it. Instead, they are among the millions and millions of Americans who earn “too much” to qualify for Medicaid, yet nowhere near enough to cover the sky-high cost of health care on their own. [True]
They are, in many cases, the struggling working class, and some of them reside firmly in what is usually defined as the middle class. […]
More than 24 million Americans, including nearly 2 million in California, have health coverage this year through the ACA marketplace. Almost all of them receive enhanced subsidies — the big discounts on health insurance premiums that Democrats voted into place during the pandemic. Without the subsidies, millions of workers likely will no longer be able to afford their policies, experts say.
It’s one reason why so many congressional Democrats fought Republicans to a budget-shutdown stalemate for weeks, trying to forge a deal under which the discounts would be extended. This week, a handful of Democrats finally broke ranks, putting the GOP in charge of what happens next. The government will reopen, and the budget process almost certainly will go forward without the enhanced subsidies that have allowed so many U.S. citizens to retain their health care coverage.
After becoming one of eight Senate Democratic Caucus members to vote with the Republicans to open the debate on a House-passed funding bill, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said, “I have long said that to earn my vote [to reopen the government], we need to be on a path toward fixing Republicans’ health care mess and to protect the federal workforce.” [Sorry Tim Kaine, but Republicans will never really be on that path. They will say that they are, but they are lying.]
[…] Republicans [offered] nothing but a vague promise to schedule a future vote on them in the House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by the GOP.
The fallout could be vicious. Marketplace shoppers are, for the most part, working people and families who don’t have health care coverage through their employer. That vast list includes small business owners and their employees, independent contractors, farmers, gig economy workers […]
Obamacare was highly ambitious but pretty straightforward. It expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income Americans and created the ACA marketplace for moderate-income workers […]
In many cases, it did so by offering discounts on insurance premiums that are calibrated to how much those workers earn.
The pandemic turbocharged the discounting process. In 2021, as millions of people lost their jobs and the health plans that went with them, the Democrat-controlled Congress dramatically enhanced the ACA premium subsidies to make plans more affordable. The number of marketplace enrollees more than doubled, from 11 million to 24 million, as individuals and families turned to the ACA as a way to help them buy insurance on their own.
[…] those above Medicaid poverty levels, but still working poor — could choose a plan and often pay zero in monthly premiums, and even people whose prepandemic income was several times the federal poverty level could still receive enough of a discount to afford a plan.
That’s the part of Obamacare that is about to go away. In fact, it’s part of a triple whammy. Not only does the Trump administration want to kill the enhanced tax credits that function as critical marketplace subsidies, but it also plans to jack up the required contribution from people at most income levels. And all of this is taking place amid huge spikes in the price of premiums from health insurers in the marketplace — more than 25%, on average.
[…] without the enhanced subsidies, a single person earning $23,000 a year would see their health premiums jump from $0 to $920 annually, or about a quarter of their typical food budget for the entire year.
And a couple with a combined income of $85,000 and a mid-tier health plan would see premium payments soar from $7,225 per year to a mind-numbing $21,339 [!!]. Adding in the expected rate hike from the insurance companies, KFF reported, the annual total of premium payments could come to $28,561 — nearly $2,400 a month for those two people. That’s about a third of their combined income for the year. [!]
This is why Democrats were willing to fight, even at the risk of being blamed for the government shutdown. This is why they held out for six weeks. And this is what is now on the verge of being lost.
It’s always possible that the Republican-controlled Congress will relent to some extent on marketplace subsidies. […] the end of enhanced credits on the health care exchange could deeply affect some Republican states and traditional voter blocs, including farmers and small business owners.
Beyond that, neither the first nor second Trump administrations ever advanced a plan to replace Obamacare, despite the president’s deep antipathy toward the program and repeated promises to come up with something better. [Graph]
“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” Trump told reporters this week. “We’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time.”
Working people have heard many versions of that sentiment from Trump through the years. They also know what they see: With Congress poised to gut Medicaid and, now, the middle-income marketplace subsidies that brought affordable health care premiums to millions, it’s a more elusive goal than ever — and they’ll be the ones suffering for it.
Health care in the USA is going to be, even more that it was before, a luxury for rich people only.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, one of the Senate’s loudest and most consistent voices on the climate crisis, landed in Belém, Brazil, this week as the lone, official federal U.S. presence at the COP30 climate summit, which began Monday. And he had to fight to make it happen. […] according to Whitehouse, the State Department refused to sponsor his United Nations credentials, making it “just logistically really challenging” to even get badged — a serious departure from usual practice. [!]
Politico reporters Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman detail how this wasn’t just a mistaken mangling via red tape, but rather a deliberate effort by the Trump regime to keep official U.S. lips zipped regarding climate — at COP30 and elsewhere — unless those officials are saying that climate change is malarkey. Trump essentially told the rest of the world during his Sept. 23 U.N. speech that everything scientists have told them about the climate crisis, about greenhouse gases in general, is wrong. His Cabinet minions and other underlings have kept repeating that perilous, wacko assertion.
[…] The senator isn’t just angry about the Trump regime’s failure to have a hefty, official U.S. presence in Belém. He’s furious about the vacuum it leaves behind for the future. For instance, China registered 789 delegates for COP30.
[…] White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers reiterated Trump’s criticism of clean energy efforts as the “Green New Scam,” saying the president “will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”
This retreat from the greener policies of the Joe Biden administration is no surprise since it’s been clear that making things worse was the only kind of climate action that was going to be on the Trump agenda from the minute he lied the oath of office in January and declared that the U.S. would (again) withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
However, there are U.S. leaders in Belém. A coalition of 100 governors, mayors, and other top city and state officials made the trip to Brazil as part of the U.S. Climate Alliance. One of them, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, blasted Trump for disregarding COP30. “While [the U.S.] skips the world stage, California is showing up —leading, partnering, and proving what American climate leadership looks like,” he said.
Former Vice President Al Gore, who is also attending the summit, took note of that sentiment in an interview Thursday with Politico. “There are two schools of thought” about the U.S. absence, he said. “The first says it’s damaging that no one from the U.S. government is here. But the other school of thought is, since [Trump is] so psychopathically focused on destroying any potential solutions to the climate crisis, it’s just as well that he has stayed away and that his minions are not here either.”
In Belém, pointing to images on a huge projection screen showing recent disasters worsened by global heating, Gore said that it is “…literally insane that we are allowing this to continue. […]
As if to underline the insanity, while the Trump administration has declined to send a formal delegation to Brazil, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright flew to Greece this week to promote the sale of more American natural gas.
Beyond the credential fight, Whitehouse argues the U.S. is deliberately losing the economic race against China. In an interview with AFP, reported by Journal de Bruxelles, he said the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel favoritism is “a huge self-administered blow” that undercuts American leadership in solar, wind, battery storage, and EVs. The subtext is stark: by ceding global clean-tech momentum to others, Trump isn’t just squandering an opportunity to show global leadership in the greatest crisis humankind has encountered, perhaps ever. He instead seems absolutely eager to sabotage our future.
Rain hammered the sprawling encampments across Gaza on Saturday, turning roads into rivers, soaking freezing families inside their tents and forcing people to sweep dirty water from their shelters as it pooled around their beds and belongings.
The storms arrived as cold weather set in, adding new urgency to humanitarian concerns for the strip’s 2 million residents, and as tensions flare up in Israel within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet.
Sana Abu Harad, 38, cried out as she pointed to her shivering child and the drenched set of beds on the wet and muddied floor inside her tent in a Gaza City camp.
“Everything is underwater,” she told NBC News. “Why must this little child sleep in floodwater? I struggled so much just to get this tent, and now nothing protects us. Where will I live with my children now?”
The crisis has been compounded by the collapse of water and sewage systems after two years of Israeli strikes destroyed key infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of people crowded into areas with almost no toilets, drainage or sanitation. [Photos at the link]
In Gaza, where an estimated 90% of the population has been displaced, more than 1.5 million people “urgently require emergency shelter assistance,” the United Nations’ migration agency IOM said last month. [!]
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense agency, said Saturday that the enclave was facing a “true catastrophe” due to the heavy rains. [!]
“The mixing of rainwater with sewage has caused an environmental disaster and will lead to health catastrophes,” he told NBC News. “There is no sewage system, no rainwater drainage system, and no water reservoirs; all of them have been destroyed by Israel, along with all the infrastructure.” [!]
The U.N. said last week that Israel has rejected over 100 requests for the entry of relief materials, including “blankets, winter clothes, and tools and material to maintain and operate water, sanitation and hygiene services.” [!!]
COGAT, the Israeli body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza, said on X last week that “hundreds of trucks carrying food, water, fuel, gas, medicines, medical equipment, tents, and shelter supplies enter the Gaza Strip every day.” [Obviously not enough.]
The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Monday on a U.S. proposal for a U.N. mandate for an international stabilization force in Gaza, which has faced pushback from Russia, China and some Arab countries.
Tensions have flared up in Israel over a joint statement in support of the resolution, organized by the U.S., which said the ongoing peace process “offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
The reference to Palestinian statehood has incensed two far-right members of the Israeli Cabinet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who on Saturday pressed Netanyahu to disavow it.
[…] Smotrich said in an X post that Netanyahu must “make it clear to the entire world” no such state would ever exist.
Netanyahu is reliant on continued support from ultranationalists to maintain his majority.
[…] The deployment of an international security force inside the enclave has proved a major obstacle in advancing negotiations for the next phase of the ceasefire, as well as Hamas’ disarmament, the future governance of Gaza, and the remains of three Israeli hostages that have yet to be returned from Gaza.
With Gaza’s infrastructure still in ruin and storms battering its makeshift camps, those living there can only hope for future conditions to improve.
Ma’in Albuhteiti, 50, sleeps inside his Gaza City tent with seven of his children, but was awoken at 3 a.m. as rain swept over his family.
“Look at the bedding, the furniture, and the state of things,” he said. “We were completely flooded, we couldn’t move.”
“If there were proper shelter for us, we would go, we cannot manage,” he continued. “The situation is extremely tragic, and all the rain is pouring on us.”
“SNL takes on the Epstein files as Glen Powell hosts”
“The Epstein files were lampooned on the show’s cold open, a series of MacGruber sketches and Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che.”
It’s hard not to feel like Glen Powell is everywhere these days. He hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time this weekend as “The Running Man” appeared in theaters, just over a month after his show, “Chad Powers,” appeared on Hulu. During the monologue, Powell leaned into that perception.
[…] Olson’s [Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition, an Indianapolis-based consumer and environmental advocacy nonprofit] organization is running a campaign to persuade Indiana lawmakers to place a moratorium on new data centers and to redesign electricity rates to protect residential consumers from rate increases related to data center development.
[…] Election results last week confirm a similar dynamic in much of the country. Democrats won races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and for two open seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, campaigns in which data centers and rising electricity costs were issues. Media outlets noted this pattern, including in an insightful report from Jael Holzman of Heatmap and a look ahead to next year’s elections from Marc Levy and Jesse Bedayn of the Associated Press. [embedded links are available at the main link]
Much of the discussion is about data centers, which are often large developments used to support cloud computing or artificial intelligence. But the underlying issues are broader, touching on the power of tech companies. For people who live near proposed data centers, there is an additional sense of powerlessness, which Inside Climate News has documented across the country, including the backlash to a plan for a huge data center in Bessemer, Alabama.
“It’s about big tech,” Olson said. “To steal Bernie’s words, [it’s about] these big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government right now.” [chart]
[…] A common theme is that residents feel frustrated when powerful companies want to make changes that would alter local landscapes.
Olson said he agrees that there is some overlap between opposition to data centers and large renewable energy development, but he views the latter as more of a rural phenomenon, while concern about data centers is rising almost everywhere.
Google scrapped its plans for a large data center in Indianapolis in September amid local backlash. In northwest Indiana, residents in the small city of Hobart have organized to oppose two data centers, raising concerns about the projects’ electricity and water consumption.
It’s notable that the opposition tends to highlight concerns about high electricity bills, but doesn’t talk as much about data centers’ negative climate impacts. Indiana can see the ramifications as officials push to delay the retirement of coal-fired power plants so the state can meet an expected surge in electricity demand, driven, in part, by data centers. […]
[There are] examples in Denmark and Finland of data centers harnessing their waste heat to contribute to district heating systems for local communities.
[…] AI and data center developers can make community benefits part of their proposals. This could mean working with local leaders to find ways to address local needs through philanthropy.
[…] corporate leaders need to make sure that development does not harm the most vulnerable consumers by driving up costs of water and electricity. […]
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved a proposal from the utility American Electric Power to create a new rate category for data centers that have electricity demand of at least 25 megawatts. Businesses in this category have special requirements, including that they must sign a 12-year contract. The practical effect is that data centers that close or use much less power than planned will still need to pay, which can help to shield other customers from covering the costs of lines and other infrastructure built to serve these large projects. [I snipped other examples.]
Supposedly they were tolerated because they were very good at raising private funds for Russian troops at the front.
THE DAY OF THE RUSSIAN MILBLOGGER SEEMS TO BE OVER
The Putin regime has decided that it’s time to bring down the people who support its aim of conquering Ukraine, but who complain about the maladministration and corruption inside the military from the front to the command.
Existing legislation is being used to cast them as ‘foreign agents’ – barely a step down from terrorist in the Russian system. This is step one in getting them to stop voluntarily speaking out before the next stage of imprisonment and likely death.The fact that the regime is willing to silence even what could be described as constructive criticism and one of the last bastions of free speech. It has been a vent, a way for the military to see its complaints are being aired while supporting the overall war aim.
That Putin is now at the point of crushing even this tells you how weak the military and the regime have become. Zero opposition of any kind, none whatsoever will now be tolerated.All that can do in the long run is demoralise what’s left of the morale in the Russian army.
Now I’m not especially bothered about any of that. Anything that destroys the Russian army and intensifies the decline of the regime is all good news to me. Yet it shows us clearly that the terror of internal repression is now extraordinarily complete. This is now Stalinism, a vast dead hand of oppression and state controlled economic activity designed to maintain Putin’s power. It will only hasten the end.
The U.S. military took out another alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing three “narco-terrorists” as the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and its strike group arrived in the Caribbean on Sunday.
The vessel was struck in international waters on Saturday and was purportedly operated by a designated terrorist organization, U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) announced on Sunday. It is unclear which terrorist organization the U.S. military is referring to.
[…] The strike was disclosed the same day as the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford, which has more than 4,000 sailors and carries F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets as well as long-range Tomahawk missiles, at the Caribbean Sea.
[…] Since early September, the U.S. military has struck 21 alleged drug-smuggling boats in both the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 83 people, whom the administration has called “narco-terrorists.”
[…] Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new military and surveillance campaign in the Western Hemisphere, dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” to counter “narco-terrorists” in the Southcom area.
[…] “I sort of made up my mind,” Trump told reporters. “I can’t tell you what it is, but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.”
You can tell that Trump is more of less bullshitting here, but it is a fact that US military is still killing people in civilian boats in international waters. The count of dead people is now up to 83.
President Trump on Friday said he has “no idea” what was analyzed when he underwent an MRI during his physical examination last month, potentially raising more questions about some secrecy surrounding the president’s health.
“I have no idea what they analyzed,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One while en route to his Mar-a-Lago resort. “But whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well, and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.” […]
@377 Lynna, OM: There is another reason why the war bloggers are in trouble. Everything not pro-state, pro-Putin, pro-war has been shut down and people arrested. For the officials in the Russian state security who are responsible for arresting people this is a problem. With the war not going in Russia’s favor they are not about to risk stopping arrests. They might get shipped to the front themselves if they run out of targets. So now they are arresting the people who are pro-war, pro-Putin but don’t follow the official state line exactly. The longer this goes the smaller the deviance that will get a person arrested.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday said the Trump administration is planning to have all Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries reapply for the program due to alleged fraud.
The secretary said after receiving data on SNAP recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”
“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she asked during a Thursday appearance on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” [Newsmax of course! Ever willing to spread propaganda and disinformation.]
[…] Every state has a periodic recertification process that requires SNAP or food stamp recipients to update their whereabouts and earnings, according to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Most municipalities require updated data every six to 12 months. […]
The Trump administration claims that deceased people are receiving checks is probably false, or it is at least greatly exaggerated. I remember when DOGE doofuses claimed that deceased people were receiving social security checks. They were wrong. DOGE doofuses misunderstood how the software worked.
JM@ 380
This is pretty much how Stalin’s purges played out
.
“Lets Talk About Frieren”
Scroll past the first 2 minutes for a detailed analysis of Stark, Fern and Frieren in D& D terms (only for D&D enthusiasts).
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vUSfxU8tHco
birgerjohanssonsays
The Donald is doing social media again.
“Demented Trump Wants Military To Invade Chicago Over Vacant Real Estate”
The empty mall DJT references does not exist.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zkcHHrtEbYY
birgerjohanssonsays
Hailey Alexis has lived many years in Germany before going back to Florida and posted many videos about differences.
I did not know they came into existence by literally absorbing the souls of women. And the part about the pentagram was deleted by his lawyers, so I feel no wiser.
As I am not living inside the USA I do not know the extent to which the partial release of Epstein files, or the yo-yo tariffs or the whole ‘skilled immigrant visa’ things have caused friction within the MAGA crowd.
.
I have come to regard them as a monolithic cult. Please inform me if there is real, serious friction or if this is just media hype/ wishful thinking.
birgerjohanssonsays
Random ruminations.
My beef with the Martians in War of the Worlds is not that they were into genocide – practically every civilisation seems to be into that – but that they used suboptimal tripods for locomotion.
Had H G Wells never counted the legs of arthropods?
US President Donald Trump has called on House Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files, in a reversal from his previous position.
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night.
The shift from days of Trump fighting the proposal comes as the House is expected to hold a vote this week on legislation that would force the Justice Department to release the files to the public.
Supporters of the proposal appear to have enough votes to pass the House, though it is unclear whether it would pass the Senate.
Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing a measure that would force the US justice department to make public more documents from the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein case.
The major shift in Trump’s position comes as potentially dozens of Republicans were willing to break ranks in the vote.
Republican Representative Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that as many as 100 Republicans could vote in favour.
Known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the aim of the bill is to make the justice department release all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump posted the statement shortly after landing at Joint Base Andrews following a weekend in Florida.
More at the link.
Kind of pointless…he could just tell Blondi to release the files and have done, so it looks like he’s trying to get out in front of the vote so he can look like he’s leading on the issue instead of being hammered by it.
birgerjohanssonsays
whheydt@392
Read the fine print – it is about the documents they are “legally allowed” to have. He is starting up a lot of investigations so the documents pertaining to them will not be aitomatically turned over.
“The sudden resurrection of the Georgia conspiracy case against Trump and 18 co-defendants is an unwelcome turn of events for the president and his allies.”
Related video is available at the link.
When […] Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, there was an aura of invincibility around him. For three years, he’d fended off almost all of the legal challenges he faced, successfully delaying multiple federal criminal cases and avoiding jail time in New York. The Supreme Court had granted him a seeming blank check for any official acts he’d taken, or would take, in the White House.
The only charges left were those from a sprawling 2023 indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, in which Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators were accused of crimes that included racketeering and numerous counts of conspiracy around the 2020 election. The indictment said the goal was to have Trump declared the winner in Georgia, even though he lost.
[…] that case was on ice, and because it was a state and not a federal case, it remained out of Trump’s power to influence. But last week, the case suddenly resurfaced as one of several legal threats to Trump’s allies that could keep his attempted power grab in the spotlight during his second term.
Fani Willis — who eventually admitted to a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she’d appointed to lead the investigation — was ultimately removed from the case for the “appearance of impropriety.” [Jumped up charges. Trump cult followers and then the Trump administration targeted Fans Willis.]
The frozen case suddenly thawed on Friday when Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, announced that he’d be taking over the case from Willis. The presiding judge had given the council the task of finding a new prosecutor by Friday or dropping the case altogether. Skandalakis, who said in a statement that he took on the role himself after several prosecutors declined, did not indicate whether he’ll be moving forward with the case anytime soon. But his not letting it be dismissed on a technicality seems encouraging.
[…]. The pardon Trump signed earlier this month doesn’t automatically protect those alleged to have violated state law by trying to funnel Georgia’s electoral votes to Trump. […]
Georgia wasn’t the only swing state where Republican electors signed off on fake documents intended to get Congress to throw the election to Trump. Criminal cases were filed in four other states: Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan. The Michigan case was tossed out in September by a state district judge. And an Arizona judge’s decision to send the case back to a grand jury will stand if state Attorney General Kris Mayes doesn’t appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court within the next week.
[…] the Nevada Supreme Court ruled last week that the case against the fake electors could continue in Clark County, preventing Attorney General Aaron Ford from having to restart the process. And in Wisconsin, while the fake electors themselves weren’t charged, the case continues against the three members of the Trump campaign accused of helping devise and execute the plot. Then came the announcement on Friday that the Georgia case, at least for now, is still alive. There’s hope yet that there will be accountability for the men and women who attempted to subvert American democracy.
There’s a chance that the pardon Trump recently signed shielding those in the fake electors scheme from federal charges could be used to try to dismiss at least some of the state charges against those fake electors. But even if that proves successful, other parts of the indictment would remain against several of the alleged co-conspirators in Georgia, putting the spotlight back on how the president sought to ignore the will of the voters to remain in power. [!]
I only have a reasonable suspicion that it seems likely that enough time has passed for the magat administration to ‘sanitize’ all the epstein files, removing all material implicating tRUMP. And that is why, after all the ranting, tRUMP now wants them released. It would be interesting to see some factual information either proving or disproving this.
JMsays
@390 birgerjohansson: There are a couple of things going on at once.
1. MAGA was never a unified movement. Trump is not organized or clever enough to setup a centralized cult. It is really a bunch of independent splinters that only look unified when they all line up behind Trump at the same time. Each splinter has it’s own perspective of what is really important.
2. There are some real hard right breakaways. Some of the politicians associated with MAGA are hard right flake jobs. There are people that go hard with whatever idea or conspiracy attracts their attention. For a while they aligned with Trump but some of them have gotten obsessed with new things.
3. There is some fundamental conflict between the top and bottom that didn’t exist in his first term. His first term was a lot more real right wing populism. This time he has surrounded himself with rich people and/or yes men. The end result is more pandering to wealthy/corporate interests and less actual populism. Look at Trump carving lots of exceptions to his tariffs to suit big donors but treating inflation as a Democratic myth.
4. There is a good chunk of the Republican base that buys into every child abuse conspiracy that comes along. These are the people that believed Rocket Pizza conspiracy. Now they are doggedly following an actual conspiracy that Trump would rather they didn’t and accidentally doing some good.
5. The press is playing it up. Political infighting gets good ratings.
Despite the lopsided results of the Proposition 50 vote in California, Donald Trump’s Justice Department has filed suit against California’s redistricting plan, condemning the move as a “power grab.” The DOJ raised no comparable concerns about Republican-led redistricting schemes in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina.
In other campaign news, as reported by New Jersey Globe:
In New Jersey, where Rep. Mikie Sherrill easily won her gubernatorial campaign two weeks ago, the Democratic congresswoman will formally resign from Congress this week. A special election to fill the U.S. House vacancy will be held in the new year.
In public, Donald Trump and his team boast with pride about their success in tackling inflation, reducing the cost of living and addressing consumers’ concerns about affordability — despite the fact that none of these things has actually happened.
In private, however, the Republican White House seems to realize it has a problem. The Wall Street Journal reported:
President Trump and his advisers are rushing to try to lower prices for U.S. consumers after voters sent a warning shot to Republicans this month over the high cost of living. Following the recent election, Trump’s aides have urged the president to focus on affordability, and they are drawing up plans to attempt to address voters’ frustrations, according to administration officials.
With this in mind, [Trump] on Friday signed an order exempting a variety of products from his reciprocal tariff policies, including coffee, beef and bananas.
Asked about the policy shift, Trump told reporters on Friday night that the move was intended to “bring down some of the foods” whose prices have become “a little bit high.”
Democratic Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement the Republican administration is “finally admitting publicly what we’ve all known from the start: Trump’s Trade War is hiking costs on people.”
[…] [Trump] and his team are putting “out a fire they started and claiming it as progress.”
[…] For the last year, the White House’s line has been relatively consistent, [claiming, falsely that]: Tariffs do not and will not hurt American consumers. The costs will either be paid by foreign countries or companies will forgo some profits, but American consumers won’t feel the pinch.
In recent days, however, Trump and his team quietly acknowledged what has long been true: their tariffs made a bad problem worse. Indeed, Friday’s reversal was, for all intents and purposes, a confession that his policy isn’t working and needed to be undone, at least in part.
The White House’s new “affordability” agenda, in other words, involves abandoning a failing policy that was making it harder for Americans to afford things […]
“Among the most scandalous of the president’s pardons were his commutations for Jan. 6 rioters, whom he’s still assisting for unrelated felonies.”
[…] the president has issued another round of pardons for Jan. 6 rioters. The New York Times reported:
President Trump issued pardons this weekend to two people convicted of crimes stemming from the events of Jan. 6, 2021, but not directly tied to the attack on the Capitol. … The pardons were announced online on Saturday by Ed Martin, a longtime supporter of the Jan. 6 rioters who is the Justice Department’s pardon attorney. And they were part of Mr. Trump’s continuing efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 and to depict those who took part in the storming of the Capitol not as criminals, but rather as victims of a weaponized justice system — much like he sees himself.
A Kentucky man named Dan Wilson, for example, had already received a pardon from Trump for his Jan. 6 crimes. But as part of the same investigation, investigators discovered a cache of illegal weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home — firearms he was not legally permitted to have due to previous felony convictions. [!]
Wilson’s lawyers insisted the presidential pardon applied to the gun charge; prosecutors and a federal judge disagreed; so Trump re-pardoned him.
If that weren’t quite enough, the president also pardoned a Florida woman named Suzanne Kaye, who was sentenced to prison for threatening to shoot FBI agents.[!] From the Times’ account:
[FBI] agents reached out to Ms. Kaye by phone three weeks after Jan. 6, court papers say. … But before the meeting took place, the papers say, Ms. Kaye posted a series of videos online threatening the agents. One of the videos, the documents say, showed her taking a drink from a nearly empty whiskey bottle and declaring that if the agents showed up at her home, she would exercise her ‘Second Amendment right’ to shoot them.
Taking stock of the broader circumstances, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut explained via social media, “Trump is now pardoning January 6th rioters for unrelated crimes, just to reward them for their violence to keep him in power. The Republican Party is in the full-time business of endorsing and incentivizing political violence.”
Poised to lose a House vote this week calling for the Justice Department to release its Jeffrey Epstein files, President Trump snookered a good chunk of political media by declaring in a social media post last evening that the House should vote to release the files.
Knowing he’s going to lose the vote — and knowing that the vote itself won’t be enough to pry the files loose unless the Senate agrees and he doesn’t veto it — Trump tried to redefine the setback by withdrawing his opposition to the vote, but not actually releasing the Epstein files. [!]
But who in the world would be fooled by this?
The whole reason the House is voting is because the Trump DOJ — run out of the White House — won’t cough up the files. That is to say: Trump won’t release the files.
It’s not an about-face or a reversal. It’s a sham.
But It Gets Worse … It Always Gets Worse
Trump’s inane new position — that he wants House Republicans to vote to demand that he release the Epstein files that he refuses to release — comes after the president on Friday ordered the Justice Department to re-investigate everyone’s contacts with Jeffrey Epstein except his own.
While Trump has already broken the Justice Department — robbing it of its independence, capacity, and reputation — the demand to weaponize the Epstein case against Democrats will require a new level of Orwellian reality-denial by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
What’s groundbreaking about the new and improved Epstein investigation is that it wasn’t just career prosecutors but Bondi and Patel who said only a few months ago that there was nothing more to investigate. Trump is making them reverse and contort themselves in a degrading display of cult devotion that exceeds anything we’ve seen from them up to now. At this point, the only thing more cravenly loyal they could do is to investigate and indict themselves.
Bondi’s immediate public response to Trump’s demand: “Thank you, Mr. President.” She has turned the investigation over to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, who now faces his own loyalty test.
Same link as in comment 409, plus an embedded link to more details.
Perhaps the Most Important News Since Friday
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — in a troubling and convoluted ruling — appears to have backed its way into not blocking U.S. District Judge James Boasberg from resuming contempt of court proceedings against the Trump administration in the original Alien Enemies Act case. I’m sorry if you had to read that sentence twice, but you have to read the fractured court ruling several times to make sense of it. Chris Geidner gives it his best shot.
This is a critical case in the closely watched question of whether federal judges will hold the line on Trump’s attacks on their constitutional role. If a district judge like Boasberg can’t proceed to investigate the administration for contempt in a historically important case where it was blatantly contemptuous, then the battle to sustain an independent judiciary will have been lost before it had barely begun.
Excerpt from the embedded link:
[…] because the panel’s ruling allows contempt proceedings to continue, Friday’s ruling has the effect of sending the matter back to Boasberg — nearly seven months after it first went up to the D.C. Circuit.
It is a complicated mess of a ruling in an already procedurally complex matter, but the takeaway is not only that Boasberg will once again have jurisdiction over the contempt proceedings but that a majority of the court went on the record Friday backing him.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins appeared on Fox Business Monday, where she blamed the Biden administration for the skyrocketing costs of beef under President Donald Trump and addressed Omaha Steaks CEO Nate Rempe warning that Americans could soon pay $10 for a pound of beef. [video]
Rollins: Of course, no one knows, really. But the idea that we won’t get prices down until 2027, I think there are a couple of important factors here, Maria. The first is this: that we are suffering from the last administration’s literal, literal war on cattle.
[…]The latest giveaway in the works seems to be for Michael Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser for approximately 10 seconds in 2017. Flynn, of course, voluntarily pleaded guilty—twice!— for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador in 2016. Of course, Flynn then wanted to unwind that deal, and Trump’s first-term Department of Justice was happy to oblige.
Flynn also got pardoned by Trump at the end of Trump’s first term, but none of that is enough for his pain, don’t you see?
What would ease Michael Flynn’s pain? How about a cool $50 million?
Seems about right. And Trump’s second-term DOJ appears just as happy to oblige as the first time around.
Flynn’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, says the disgraced MAGA minion “seeks accountability” and his “30-year career of service and integrity was unblemished until zealots on the January 6 Unselect Committee peddled fabricated claims against him to advance a political agenda. Their actions destroyed his reputation, threatened his livelihood, and cost him millions — while protecting their enablers.”
Huh. That 30-year unblemished career contained former President Barack Obama firing Flynn from his job helming the Defense Intelligence Agency back in 2014 for what is delicately described as “mismanagement and temperament issues.” And then there’s the whole lying to the FBI part […]
In what is no doubt a coincidence, Flynn’s lawyer has also represented Trump, including in a fairly disgusting motion to dismiss when Trump was sued by Marcus Moore, one of the police officers harmed by Trump’s insurrection enthusiasts on Jan. 6. It was chock-full of how much Trump just love love loves him some law enforcement, but not enough to, say, pay damages or consider not pardoning those same insurrection enthusiasts.
Surely it is also just a coincidence that Binnall also represents another Trumpworld denizen who wants you to give him money. That would be one former White House lawyer Steven Passatino, a real gem of a guy who (allegedly!!) tried to pressure Cassidy Hutchinson to protect Trump when testifying to Congress about Jan. 6. Passatino is sad about a leak or something, who can say? But give him cash, please.
The DOJ is turning into quite the piggy bank for the worst people around. And the worst of all, of course, the biggest pig at the trough, is Trump himself. Trump wants the DOJ to give him $230 million for the horror of being prosecuted, having his supporters pick up all the bills, getting the Supreme Court’s conservatives to give him immunity, and getting back into office, where he is basically untouchable.
Because Trump has his former personal attorneys stashed everywhere, he’s in luck! The person at the DOJ who can sign off on that $230 million payout is none other than Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former Trump criminal defense attorney.
These settlements are grotesque, funneling taxpayer dollars to MAGA folks to settle their grudges. Indeed, they are an order of magnitude worse than the $5 million wrongful death settlement given to Jan. 6 insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt’s family. That was entirely unwarranted as well, but it says a lot that she literally died for Trump’s insurrection and her family got 10% of what Flynn is demanding and just a hair over 2% of what Trump believes he is owed. [!]
These people are all grifters, but now they’re playing with house money. Why wouldn’t they grab up every last dollar they can?
Taxpayers are funding this entire scam.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @345 quoting Courier Newsroom:
20,000 documents in which Trump is mentioned in more than 1,600 of them
From that link.
The US House Oversight Committee on Wednesday announced a massive document dump from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate […] 20,000 documents come in the form of […] screenshots of emails, and heavily redacted spreadsheets.
birgerjohansson @397 citing Meidas Touch 53s in, who cites WSJ.
Congress released a cache of documents this week that were recently turned over by Epstein’s estate. Among them: more than 2,300 email threads
[…]
The Journal’s analysis didn’t identify messages that any of the U.S. presidents wrote directly to Epstein or received emails from him, just references to them by Epstein or his conversation partners. […] Trump’s name appeared in more than half of the email files, often in shared news stories about his policies during the 2016 election and his presidency—a time when Trump talk was inescapable.
[…]
The congressional production also included pages from books, reports and other miscellaneous documents.
The 1,600 “documents” mentioning Trump is ambiguous. A subset could be more than half of the 2,300 “email threads” (the WSJ title says 2,300 messages!?). “Email files” is ambiguous.
WSJ just did a name search and filtered out false positives like “trump card”. They should have quantified the news stories unless they were trying to undermine the “more than half” suggestiveness.
Russia’s vast defense-industrial complex, once considered a backbone of its global power projection, is showing signs of systemic failure under the combined weight of war, sanctions, and internal dysfunction.
The accumulated problems are starting to jam up the system. Even the defense industry companies are starting to have to cut back production, a terrible sign for a country in a war.
According to Defence Blog, major Russian defense manufacturers—such as tank producer Uralvagonzavod, aircraft builder United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), and drone developer Kronstadt—are struggling to meet state contracts under increasingly unmanageable conditions. Companies report mounting debt, stalled procurement cycles, and legal disputes with suppliers.
Kronstadt, a key developer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as the Orion, has faced over 600 million rubles (approximately $7 million) in lawsuits since the summer, Defence Blog notes.
Uralvagonzavod, the flagship of the Russian tank industry, has announced a large-scale reduction in staff – in some units, the number of employees may be reduced by up to 50%.
Uralvagonzavod is a big heavy industry conglomerate. It isn’t clear yet if the reduction will be in tank construction. This is one of the most important companies in Russia in general and critical for supporting the war. That they would be reducing staff for any part of the company is a bad sign.
A federal magistrate judge has ordered the Justice Department to turn over grand jury materials to former FBI Director James Comey as he fights criminal charges, pointing to possible government misconduct as reason to grant the unusual relief. [!]
Judge William Fitzpatrick referenced several apparent missteps by Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney hand-picked by President Trump to pursue charges against his foe, that may have threatened the proceeding’s fairness.
He said that Comey’s right to due process outweighs the typical secrecy afforded to grand jury proceedings, directing prosecutors to hand over the materials by the end of Monday.
“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick said. “However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”
[…] Though Fitzpatrick did not name Halligan, a different federal judge confirmed at a hearing last week that Halligan was the only prosecutor to present evidence against Comey to the grand jury. Fitzpatrick also said that just one prosecutor was present.
The judge wrote that “the prosecutor” made at least two statements to grand jurors that seemed to be “fundamental misstatements of the law.” [!!]
The remarks themselves were redacted in the court filing. But Fitzpatrick said they came in response to grand jurors’ questions and were directly related to communications involving Comey.
One of the remarks, the judge said, implied that Comey does not have a Fifth Amendment right to decline to testify at trial, which may have led grand jurors to believe that it is Comey’s burden, not the government’s, to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
That statement was made in response to “challenging questions” from grand jurors, Fitzpatrick continued, suggesting grand jurors may have believed that even if Halligan could not answer their questions, Comey would later have to.
The other remark “clearly suggested” to grand jurors that they did not have to rely on the record before them and could be assured that the government had more, and possibly better, evidence that would be presented at trial, the judge said.
[…] Fitzpatrick said the record seems to indicate that the grand jury did not review the actual indictment that was ultimately returned, throwing the case into “uncharted legal territory.”
[…] Either way, the confusion is reason enough to allow Comey access to the materials, Fitzpatrick determined.
And an FBI agent’s testimony could also be cause for alarm, the judge said.
Comey’s charges center around a brief exchange in his 2020 testimony with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), where the former FBI director seemed to affirm 2017 testimony that he never authorized anyone to be an anonymous source in news reports.
[…] “The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
Fitzpatrick’s ruling comes as Halligan’s appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is under intense scrutiny.
Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have challenged her installation, and a federal judge is expected to rule on whether she is lawfully serving in the post before Thanksgiving. […]
It’s a clown show in the courts when it comes to Trump administration appointees and cult followers.
The 1,600 “documents” mentioning Trump is ambiguous. A subset could be more than half of the 2,300 “email threads” (the WSJ title says 2,300 messages!?). “Email files” is ambiguous.
WSJ just did a name search and filtered out false positives like “trump card”. They should have quantified the news stories unless they were trying to undermine the “more than half” suggestiveness.
True!
JM @414, glad to hear that fundamental cogs in the Russian war machine are damaged or failing.
The Trump administration is proposing to narrow which bodies of water qualify for Clean Water Act protections.
The administration proposed a new definition Monday for what counts as a “water of the United States” and is therefore subject to federal pollution regulations under the Clean Water Act.
The issue is a controversial one, with developers, farmers and others calling for including fewer bodies of water to make it easier for them to operate.
Environmental activists, however, argue more bodies of water deserve protection in order to prevent pollution that can flow to important waters.
“There will be less that will be regulated by the federal government,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters.
Waters of the U.S. require permits for pollution, as well as activities such as filling and dredging. […]
In general, large, permanent bodies of water such as oceans and lakes are considered waters of the U.S., but wetlands and streams have been more contentious.
That’s a developing story. We will probably see more commentary soon.
“Pressed on federal efforts to address consumer costs, the White House has exactly one talking point — and it’s demonstrably false.”
When it comes to inflation, affordability and Americans’ concerns about the cost of living, Donald Trump has spent months fighting a losing war. The president keeps lying, and the public keeps getting annoyed.
The White House, however, believes it has one key piece of evidence on its side. [video]
“Go to Walmart and other companies, and in every case it’s about 25%, a Thanksgiving meal and surroundings are 25% lower than it was under the Biden administration,” Trump falsely claimed. “That’s a big fact, and that comes from Walmart and others.” [Whoa. That’s extremely misleading.]
In reality, the claim is neither big nor a fact, as the president really ought to understand by now.
The truth is simple: Walmart lowered the cost of its Thanksgiving dinner by reducing the number of items included in the package and replacing brand-name products with value products. Consumers will pay less, in other words, because they’ll get less, no thanks to the White House’s misguided agenda.
And yet, the day after Democratic victories in this year’s elections, Trump boasted online, “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under Biden, according to Walmart. … So the Democrats [sic] ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!”
A couple of days later, after the president repeated the lie at a White House event, a reporter explained reality to him. “I haven’t heard that,” the Republican replied, shortly before condemning the truth as “fake news.”
In the days that followed, he continued to peddle the same falsehood. Members of his team, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, faced similar difficulties reconciling the talking point with the truth.
That leading administration officials, including the president, keep trying to mislead the public about one of the issues Americans care about most is obviously indefensible, but I’m also struck by the bigger picture: Pressed on federal efforts to address consumer costs, the White House has exactly one talking point — and it’s not true.
“Oh, THOSE Epstein Files? Trump Always Supported Release Of THOSE Epstein Files!”
“He’s not mad. Don’t put in the paper that he’s mad.”
[…] Donald Trump on Sunday night called on Congress to release all the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein. (Which he does not actually need Congress to make happen if he wants that to happen so badly.)
Being Donald Trump, he made the announcement with a 270-word rant on Truth Social. He needed every one of those 270 words to tell everyone how little he even cares about the Epstein files that may reveal just how involved he was with the dead financier’s years-long scheme to pimp out underage girls to all his wealthy friends.
Really, he doesn’t care. Just look at how little he cares: [social media post]
Flailing very powerfully, Mr. President. Flailing at levels no one has ever seen before.
The reversal comes after months of Trump and his allies dragging the whole crisis out in, we don’t know, the hope everyone would forget about it? […]
First, House Speaker Mike Johnson found increasingly ridiculous excuses, including keeping the House in recess for a full two months, to not swear in newly elected Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, who provided the 218th vote on a discharge petition that would force Johnson to put releasing the files up to a full vote of the House.
Then the government shutdown ended, leaving Johnson with no choice but to bring the House back into session. Grijalva was immediately sworn in, and she made signing the petition her first official act. Trump needed a new trick.
He tried dragging Republican congresswoman […] Lauren Boebert into the White House Situation Room, where various high-level government officials (Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Vice President JD Vance, among others) tried to strong-arm her into not signing. Boebert, who has been a very loud voice for releasing all Epstein files for a long time, refused.
Then Trump ordered Bondi to investigate Democrats who might have been involved with Epstein, presumably in the desperate hope that people will care more if Bill Clinton, who has been out of office for a quarter of a century, ever visited Pedophile Island. Bondi quickly agreed, because she’s a suck-up with zero self-respect, and assigned a bona fide US attorney to lead the investigation.
One problem with that line of attack […] is that the House [Congress critters] had released 20,000 pages of Epstein emails that had come into their possession. Somewhere in those pages was an email from Epstein saying that Clinton had never visited his island. So that line of attack was out the window.
Then Trump spent the weekend trying to figure out his message. On Friday he ranted that Epstein is the “Democrat’s problem,” and the Democrats are just trying to distract from their “SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT” that had much of the party furious with the Senate at the beginning of the week. Because Democrats can’t be concerned with two issues at the same time, apparently.
Then, after a full weekend of golf and fuming at his dollar-store Xanadu in Florida, Trump made his “I’m not mad, I’m laughing” post calling on Congress to release the files, and here we are.
The reason for Trump’s sudden reversal is likely a pretty simple one: despite holding back their signatures from the discharge petition, a large majority of the Republican caucus in the House was set to join with the Democrats in voting yes on a bill authorizing the release of the files. If enough senators also voted for the release, there would be big enough majorities to override any Trump veto.
So in the end, Trump apparently figured he’d get out ahead of it. Of course, if he really wanted to get ahead of it, he would order Bondi and Patel to bypass Congress and release the files themselves. Maybe they need a little more time to scrub the files of all references to him, who knows.
[Good points, also made by shermanji in comment 404.]
Or possibly Trump was told that because Bondi has opened some sort of investigation into any Democrats who might have been buddies with Epstein, she might be able to hold the files back by claiming they are evidence in a possible crime. So it costs him nothing to call for their release now; his attorney general can say no, and he can throw up his tiny hands and say that he’s powerless to do anything.
He’s Trump, so he might still wriggle out of this jam. But boy, he has handled it about as badly as it could be handled. He spent years encouraging the dumbest members of the Republican coalition […] in their outlandish conspiracy theories about gangs of elite pedophiles running child-fucking rings across the nation. […]
Republicans like Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene — who Trump now apparently hates partly because of her stance on releasing the Epstein files — rode that wave into office. Then once in office, they didn’t give up. Trump seems to have not seen this coming, which is no surprise. We suspect that Trump every year doesn’t see winter coming.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what the White House is calling “an unfortunate accident,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday after poking his eye with a mascara brush.
Briefing reporters, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that alcohol played “any role” in the cosmetics mishap.
“We expect Secretary Hegseth to make a full recovery,” she said. “He is already working from his hospital bed, texting plans for the invasion of Venezuela to random people in his address book.”
Several members of the Trump administration sent Hegseth their thoughts and prayers, while JD Vance offered him a makeup tutorial.
Lynna, OM@ 418
“Trump seems to have not seen this coming, which is no surprise. We suspect that Trump every year doesn’t see winter coming.”
He has the planning horizon of a goldfish.
For instance he told Texas governor Greg Abbot to gerrymander Texas. Because, as we all know, there is totally no big, Democrat-run state that might retaliate in kind.
.
Greg Abbot in turn failed to consider the map of Republican-voting areas included large numbers of hispanics that since have been antagonised by ICE’s racial profiling, with American citizens caught in the dragnet. Years of Republican efforts to attract hispanic voters have been ruined in a few months and those ‘safe’ Republican areas are not so sage anymore. In fact, it is feasible the redristricting will be a failure!
“The Senate was poised to confirm the White House’s choice for IRS chief counsel, right up until Trump decided he no longer supported him.”
The list of Donald Trump’s failed nominees has quietly become rather long. It includes a variety of notable figures, tapped for positions large and small, including Matt Gaetz, Dave Weldon, Ed Martin, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Chad Chronister, Kathleen Sgamma, E.J. Antoni and Paul Ingrassia.
Late Friday afternoon, the list grew a little longer. Politico reported:
[…] Trump abruptly withdrew Donald Korb’s nomination for IRS chief counsel on Friday. While Trump didn’t explain his decision, right-wing political activist Laura Loomer reposted Trump’s announcement on her X account, along with the hashtag ‘#LOOMERED.’ Loomer, who’s sidelined several administration officials, chastised Korb on Wednesday for praising Democrats and donating to them.
[So now, “Loomered” is a verb?]
The Republican-led Senate was preparing a confirmation vote on Korb (he’d already been approved by the Senate Finance Committee) and by all appearances, he was likely to be confirmed — right up until Trump decided he no longer supported his own nominee.
For the IRS, this wasn’t exactly good news. The tax agency has struggled to an almost cartoonish degree to hold onto a leading officials in recent months, and Korb, who was the IRS chief counsel during the Bush/Cheney administration, was poised to fill an important vacancy.
But just as notable is how often right-wing influencers appear to be steering the White House, especially when it comes to personnel decisions.
In September, for example, far-right influencers targeted a Navy commander. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired her soon after. Around the same time, CBS News reported that online conservatives played a role in helping oust FBI officials who’d been deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.
In July, the Army rescinded a job offer to a top cybersecurity expert in response to complaints from a far-right influencer. A few weeks earlier, Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, a F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, was poised to become a vice admiral and take command of the Navy’s 7th Fleet. Then, far-right influencers complained. Then, Hegseth blocked the Navy admiral’s promotion, which had already been approved by Trump.
In some instances, even federal prosecutors have been ousted in response to complaints from right-wing influencers.
These are just some of the recent examples. Over the course of 2025, there have been a great many other instances in which prominent conservative activists and media personalities have played a direct role in shaping policy, blocking personnel, orchestrating firings and even forcing resignations.
It’s a problem that so many amateurs have posts in the White House and throughout the administration. But it’s just as big a problem that they’re taking direction from other amateurs with conservative media megaphones. [Like Laura Loomer!]
“As the agency’s acting administrator exits, it’s hardly unreasonable to wonder whether FEMA can survive the president’s second term.”
As 2025 got underway, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had a perfectly fine administrator in place. Two days after Donald Trump’s second inaugural, the White House appointed Cameron Hamilton as the acting FEMA chief, and he appeared to be a reasonable choice. He not only had experience as a Navy SEAL and former combat medic, but he was also the emergency management specialist at the State Department during Trump’s first term and worked as the director of the Emergency Medical Services Division at the Department of Homeland Security.
Hamilton, however, was fired in May because he testified before Congress that it would be in the public’s interest if FEMA continued to exist. [!]
He was soon after replaced by David Richardson, who had no background in emergency management and who, on his first day as the agency’s acting chief, told the agency’s staff that he would “run right over” anyone who got in his way. [!]
Richardson’s tenure wasn’t exactly a great success. Indeed, The Washington Post reported that FEMA insiders found their unqualified boss was “often inaccessible.” After deadly floods swept through parts of Texas Hill Country in July, the agency struggled to coordinate a response — because they couldn’t reach Richardson.
Now the only running Richardson is doing is running for the exit, after just six months. The Washington Post reported:
David Richardson on Monday resigned as acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to people familiar with the situation, ending a brief tenure leading an agency the administration had publicly expressed a desire to dismantle. … In recent months, current agency employees said Richardson spent limited time in daily operations meetings and shrank away from his role.
It’s the latest in a series of setbacks for the agency. Not only have some senior FEMA officials resigned in frustration in recent months, but dozens of employees warned Congress and the public in late August that the Trump administration’s plans for the agency run the risk of creating another Katrina-level disaster in the coming months and years.
Highlighting additional red tape and bureaucracy imposed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, NOTUS published a brutal report along these lines in September, noting, “The Trump administration has the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a doom loop, according to current and former employees frustrated with its direction.”
All of this, of course, comes months after Trump said he saw FEMA as an unnecessary department that should be “TERMINATED.” Around the same time, Noem, whose department oversees the emergency response agency, added, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” [!]
The White House has since hedged on the agency’s demise — but all things considered, it’s hardly unreasonable to wonder whether the agency can survive Trump’s second term.
“The White House’s recent interactions with Pakistan, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia offer a case study in how U.S. foreign policy is not supposed to work.
Last week, The New York Times reported on Pakistan’s very effective efforts to curry favor with the White House: It invested heavily in lobbying contracts with Donald Trump’s former business partners and confidants and lavished the American president “with the kind of public accolades and big-ticket business deals he relishes.”
It worked. The Republican rewarded Pakistan with a low tariff rate and the White House’s relationship with Islamabad “blossomed.”
One day later, Axios reported how officials in Switzerland also managed to benefit from reduced trade tariffs: The Swiss deployed a delegation of industry tycoons to the White House bearing gifts, including “a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.” [Trump is so gullible!]
The report added, “Trump loves such pampering, and the word’s out among nations and companies seeking his favor. Tributes fit for a king — especially gold — catch his eyes and his heart.” (The Swiss gold bar, which sounds a bit like the gift that helped land former Sen. Bob Menendez in prison, was stamped with “45” and “47” in homage to Trump’s presidential terms.)
The charm offensive also worked: Late last week, as part of a larger agreement, the Republican administration reduced the tariff rate on Swiss goods from 39% to 15%.
And one day after the Axios report ran, The New York Times published a related report about the American president’s relationship with yet another foreign country:
,b>The Trump Organization is in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments, according to the chief executive of the Saudi company leading the development. The negotiations are the latest example of President Trump blending governance and family business, particularly in Persian Gulf countries. … Mr. Trump is set to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington next week.
A related Washington Post report noted that the Saudi crown prince is poised to be rewarded with a black-tie dinner in the White House’s East Room on Nov. 18. The gathering “will have all the trappings of a state visit and wrap a packed day of programming at the White House surrounding Mohammed’s trip, including a meeting with Trump. Members of Congress, administration officials and U.S. business leaders have been invited.” [!]
And while tariffs aren’t the principal concern in Riyadh, the Saudi crown prince is reportedly planning to negotiate the terms of a mutual defense agreement with the White House and potentially advance a deal to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
The Times’ report concluded, “That sets up a scenario in which Mr. Trump discusses matters of national security with a foreign leader who is also a key figure in a potential business deal with the president’s family.”
The broader dynamic isn’t altogether new. Qatar, for example, rewarded Trump with a luxury jet and soon after reaped the rewards. Just last month, the American president was caught on a hot mic having an interesting chat with the president of Indonesia, where the Trump organization is building a golf resort.
The point, however, isn’t that the problem is new; the point is the problem seems to be getting worse. Foreign governments are learning how to receive favorable treatment from the Republican White House, through flattery, gifts, lobbying, private business deals or some combination thereof.
We already knew that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was an agricultural expert because of his years of experience as a soybean farmer investing in soybean farmland that he rents out to tenant farmers.
But we digress. Fresh on the heels of his doing his best Oliver Wendell Douglas impression for Martha Raddatz recently, he spent this past Sunday morning on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox “Business” show defending the rising cost of beef by blaming … who else? … undocumented immigrants.
[….] Bartiromo kicked things off by talking about affordability and the high cost of living, which she called “another issue that the Biden administration brought you,” in keeping with the tendency of Donald Trump officials to blame everything on everyone but themselves. Bartiromo […] played a clip from the head of Omaha Steaks telling her that he thinks the price of ground beef will go above $10 a pound by the middle of 2026. Which, as hamburger enthusiasts, we’ll admit would suck.
Bessent, perhaps the nation’s most visible example of Resting Smug Face, blamed the price increase first on the beef market being “a very specialized market [that] goes in long cycles,” whatever the hell any of that is supposed to mean. Then he hit us with this:
“Because of the mass immigration, a disease that had been — that we’d been rid of in North America made its way up through South America …”
Sounds bad! What disease? […]
“As these migrants brought some of their cattle with them. So part of the problem is we’ve had to shut the border to Mexican beef because of this disease called the screwworm.”
[…] We’ve heard some dumb stuff over the years about migrant caravans heading for the US border, but we do not ever recall hearing that the migrants were bringing cattle with them. Is it Bessent’s contention that migrants have been driving cattle through the Darian Gap, across Mexico, across the Sonoran Desert, and somehow catapulting them over the 30-foot-high border wall […] Did we miss the video footage of cows riding on tops of trains with migrants, or being driven across the Rio Grande by drovers yelling at them in Spanish? Have we missed scenes of dusty, exhausted Hispanic refugees wailing in agony as they are separated from not only their children, but also their beloved Bessie?
You can watch the start of this segment at the 5:31 mark in this video, or if you did something naughty over the weekend for which you need to be punished, you can watch the whole thing: [video]
[…] we looked this up. The screwworm is a parasitic fly that implants its larvae into the flesh of warm-blooded animals, particularly livestock. It can also find its way into humans, though that is apparently very, very rare. You definitely do not want it to infect the nation’s cattle supply. […]
Bessent is correct that the screwworm was eradicated in North America in the mid-1960s. And yes, this latest infestation has spread across Mexico to the northern part of the country. The next stop is obviously Texas, where there is much freaking out and discussion of what to do.
But blaming the infestation on migrants bringing cattle with them as they make the trek north? Whew, that is some serious xenophobia [!]
A mere 24 hours after Bessent’s appearance on Bartiromo’s show, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sat […] was asked about the same issue. Rollins blamed the high cost of beef on a few things, including the screwworm (which she claimed is under control south of the border). But mostly she blamed it on Joe Biden’s “literal war on cattle.” [video]
Who can forget when Joe Biden kept drone-striking America’s cattle herds in an effort to reduce greenhouse gases. Truly they were the Venezuelan drug boats of the Biden administration.
In Major Breakthrough, U.N. Security Council Adopts U.S. Peace Plan for Gaza
“Russia and China abstained. The vote provides a legal mandate for the Trump administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire to rebuild the war-ravaged enclave after two years of war.”
The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war.
The Council’s vote was also a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. For the past two years, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has raged, the United States had been isolated at the United Nations over its staunch support for Israel.
The U.S. resolution calls for an International Stabilization Force to enter, demilitarize and govern Gaza. The proposal, which has attached Mr. Trump’s 20 point cease-fire plan, also envisions a “Board of Peace” to oversee the peace plan, though it does not clarify the composition of the board.
The resolution passed with 13 votes in favor and zero vetoes. Russia and China, either of which could have vetoed the resolution, abstained, apparently swayed by the support for it from a number of Arab and Muslim nations.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who addressed the Council before the vote, called Gaza “hell on earth” and held up a copy of the resolution, describing it as “a lifeline.” After the vote, Mr. Waltz thanked the Council for “joining us in charting a new course for Israelis, Palestinians and all the people in the region alike.”
Security Council resolutions are considered legally binding international law, and although the Council does not have a mechanism for enforcing such resolutions, it can take measures to punish violators with penalties such as sanctions.
“It’s a win-win,” said Richard Gowan, the U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, a conflict-preventing organization. “It’s a diplomatic victory for Trump but also a recognition that the U.N. matters.”
Still, the path forward is still plagued by many uncertainties, with Israeli strikes continuing in Gaza and outbreaks of violence erupting in the West Bank. Among the next steps would be naming members of the Board of Peace, the body in charge of overseeing the transition in Gaza, and clarify under whose authority the stabilization forces would operate.
The resolution says that if the Palestinian Authority, which partly governs the West Bank, undergoes reforms and the redevelopment of the shattered Gaza Strip advances, the conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
That language drew objections from Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying on Sunday that “our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory has not changed.”
The resolution went through multiple revisions in negotiations last week and faced significant pushback from many Council members, including Europeans, who demanded more clarity on Palestinian statehood and the Board of Peace.
At one point late last week, objections by China and Russia, which typically coordinate their positions around resolutions by the United States, threatened to derail the U.S. resolution altogether. Russia drafted its own 10-point counterresolution on Gaza, which called outright for Palestinian statehood and said the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza should be joined as a state under the Palestinian Authority. […]
The resolution also allows the World Bank, a U.N. entity, to allocate financial resources for the reconstruction of Gaza and calls for the establishment of a dedicated trust fund for this purpose.
The resolution authorizes the Board of Peace to oversee Gaza at least until the end of 2027 and says that the enclave would be managed day-to-day by a “technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians from the Strip.”
The International Stabilization Force would be responsible for destroying military infrastructure in Gaza and decommissioning militant groups’ weaponry.
It would coordinate with Egypt and Israel to train and support Palestinian police personnel, protect civilians, work to secure humanitarian corridors and secure border areas.
“U.S. Will Sell F-35 Jets to Saudi Arabia, President Says”
President Trump said on Monday that he planned to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns from national security officials in his administration that a sale could create an opportunity for China to steal the planes’ advanced technology.
“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Mr. Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office, explaining that the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”
“Physicians for Human Rights -Israel noted that Israel has refused to provide information about hundreds of Palestinians detained during the war.”
The number of Palestinians dying in Israeli custody surged to nearly 100 people since the start of the war in Gaza, according to a report published Monday by a human rights group that says systematic violence and denial of medical care at prisons and detention centers contributed to many of the deaths it examined.
The picture that emerges from the report by Physicians for Human Rights -Israel is consistent with findings by The Associated Press, which interviewed more than a dozen people about prison abuses, medical neglect and deaths, analyzed available data, and reviewed reports of autopsies.
AP spoke with a former guard and a former nurse at one prison, an Israeli doctor who treated malnourished prisoners brought to his hospital, former detainees and their relatives, and lawyers representing them and rights groups.
Of the 98 prisoner deaths PHRI documented since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack that ignited the war, 27 occurred in 2023, 50 in 2024 and 21 this year, the most recent on Nov. 2. PHRI says the actual death toll over this timeframe is “likely significantly higher,” noting that Israel has refused to provide information about hundreds of Palestinians detained during the war.
Fewer than 30 Palestinians died in Israeli custody in the 10 years preceding the war, PHRI says. But since the war, the prison population more than doubled to 11,000 as people were rounded up, mainly from Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The number of prisoners dying grew at an even faster rate over that period, PHRI data shows.
PHRI documented deaths by interviewing former detainees and prison medical staff, examining reports prepared by doctors who observed autopsies at the behest of dead prisoners’ families, and confirming dozens of fatalities through freedom of information requests.
“The alarming rate at which people are killed in Israeli custody reveals a system that has lost all moral and professional restraint,” said Naji Abbas, a director at PHRI.
Last year, the head of Israel’s prison system, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, boasted that he had degraded prison conditions to the legal minimum. Under pressure from rights groups, conditions improved slightly. […]
Eight reports seen by the AP showed a pattern of physical abuse and medical neglect.
In one, a 45-year-old man who died in Kishon detention center, Mohammad Husein Ali, showed multiple signs of physical assault, likely causing brain bleed, according to the report. The potential use of excessive restraints was also noted. His family said he was healthy before he was detained from his home in the West Bank. He died within a week of being imprisoned. […]
“U.K. officials vow to “get on the front foot” as populist Brexiteer Nigel Farage picks his next target: the European Convention on Human Rights.”
The U.K.’s political right wants to quit another European institution. Battle-scarred Remainers are leaving nothing to chance this time.
With ministers struggling to stop undocumented migrants arriving on British shores, the poll-topping “Mr. Brexit” Nigel Farage has been pushing hard for another nuclear option: leaving the European Convention on Human Rights altogether.
The Conservative Party is jumping on the bandwagon too — and that’s putting Britain’s Labour government, haunted by the failed 2016 campaign to keep Britain in the EU, in fight-back mode.
Opponents argue ECHR departure is the only way to control asylum claims, which successive governments have struggled to reduce. The convention became part of U.K. domestic law in 1998, and allows people to appeal against government immigration decisions on human rights grounds. It means asylum-seekers can invoke Articles 8 — protecting a right to family life — and Article 3 — the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment
.
Supporters insist quitting the convention won’t actually solve the highly visible problem of small boats landing on British shores. They warn that walking away from the ECHR would weaken human rights protections for British citizens — and damage the country’s standing on the world stage. […]
More at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna you are doing a great work. Please do not burn out yourself. Looking for every news story of the horrors of the Trump presidency… not a fun task.
France plans to arm Ukraine with as many as 100 advanced Rafale fighter jets, the leaders of the two countries said Monday.
Kyiv’s commitment to purchase the Rafales was included in a letter of intent signed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy upon the latter’s arrival at Villacoublay military airport near Paris. The deliveries are projected to be made over the next 10 years, Zelenskyy said in a statement.
Monday’s deal is the latest attempt by Ukraine to beef up its aerial fighting capabilities, having signed a letter of intent last month exploring a similar fighter jet deal with Sweden. The pact with France also lays the groundwork for Kyiv to acquire SAMP-T air defense systems, radars for air defense systems, air-to-air missiles and aerial bombs, Zelenskyy said.
“This is a new step,” said Macron at a news conference alongside the Ukrainian leader. “This agreement reflects France’s will to place its defense sector at the service of Ukraine’s and Europe’s security.”
Zelenskyy called the agreement “historic” and said his country “valued France’s support.”
While the new jets provide a potential boost for Kyiv, they will hardly tip the scales on the battlefield in the short term. […]
Overnight on Sunday into Monday, Russian strikes killed at least three people in the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine, according to local authorities.
Asked if the fighter jet deal was too late to help beat back Russian advances, Macron said these types of deals are “always seen as too early or too late.”
“We’ve already deployed Mirages jets and several countries have contributed to Ukrainian aviation,” Macron said
.
The French president did not give a timeframe for the delivery of the first fighter jets and said that he hoped Europe would step in to help finance the Rafale purchases.
Kyiv is facing an imminent cash crunch, and while much of the European Union wants to help Ukraine by leveraging €140 billion worth of frozen Russian assets, member states have so far proved unable to come to an agreement. […]
[They] took down a congressionally mandated report on missing and murdered Native Americans from the [DoJ]’s website nearly 300 days ago […] It’s still not back […] The act was signed into law by […] Trump in his first term.
[…]
On Feb. 3, more than a dozen tribal leadership and advocacy organizations sent a letter to the administration and several high-ranking lawmakers who work on tribal affairs, urging them to preserve tribal members’ legal status as a political class rather than a suspect racial class, and exempt tribal nations from DEI-related crackdowns. Less than a week later, […] the Not One More Report was no longer available
[…]
“They think they’re a race […] They are ignorant to the fact of the trust and treaty obligation that we have to our tribal communities.”
[…]
“The Trump administration continually, and […] purposefully misunderstands the difference between Native people and tribal nations […] Tribal nations are not just another constituency. They’re sovereign nations[“]
@411 Lynna posted about ‘Agriculture chief tells whopper of a lie about beef prices’ The first is this: that we are suffering from the last administration’s literal, literal war on cattle.’
the domestication process is often wrongly thought of as initiated by humans—with people capturing and selectively breeding wild animals. But the study authors claim that the process begins much earlier, when animals become habituated to human environments.
[…]
tameness has […] long been associated with traits such as a shorter face, a smaller head, floppy ears and white patches on fur—a pattern that Charles Darwin noted in the 1800s. The occurrence of these characteristics is known as domestication syndrome, but scientists didn’t have a comprehensive theory to explain how the traits were connected until 2014. […] many of the physical traits that co-occur with domestication trace back to an important group of cells during embryonic development called neural crest cells. […] these form along an organism’s back and migrate to different parts of the body […] biologists hypothesized that mutations that hamper the proliferation and development of neural crest cells could later result in a shorter muzzle, a lack of cartilage in the ears, a loss of pigmentation in the coat and a dampened fear response—leading to a better chance of survival in proximity to humans.
[…]
[Based on] nearly 20,000 photographs of raccoons across the contiguous U.S. from the community science platform iNaturalist. The team found that raccoons in urban environments had a snout that was 3.5 percent shorter than that of their rural cousins.
A train track between the Polish cities of Warsaw and Lublin was destroyed in an “unprecedented act of sabotage” over the weekend, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Monday, noting that the railway is “crucially important for delivering aid to Ukraine.”
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Poland’s interior minister Marcin Kierwiński said that two separate incidents took place over the weekend – one confirmed act of sabotage, and one that was deemed “highly probable” to be sabotage. No arrests have been made so far in relation to the incidents.
Apparently Poland can’t pin this on Russia yet. There is some possibility of local nut jobs. There is likely a better chance Poland’s government will suppress information if they don’t want to risk triggering a war.
If this does turn out to be sabotage by Russians, it may indicate a new risky phase of the war. One where Putin is desperate enough to see what he can get away with in NATO countries. If he tries that it will eventually become a general NATO vs Russia war. The NATO countries will not put with continuous sabotage and eventually something too public would happen.
Sublimation converts the ice directly into gas without it becoming liquid. The result is a very narrow, deep drilling channel. “The icy moons have no atmospheres to speak of, so that, driven by the suction effect of the strong vacuum of space, the gas and dust samples rise through the borehole to the surface,” reports Tino Schmiel, Head of the Satellite Systems and Space Sciences research field at TU Dresden.
At last, space lasers, overseen by Tino Schmiel, with a Yiddish surname. =)
In the first experiments on laser drilling in granular ice and dusty ice presented here, maximum drilling depths of 25 cm were achieved. If the ice cover of an icy moon is to be examined or a comet nucleus drilled through, holes several kilometers deep must be drilled. This raises the question of whether the drilling progress observed here can be maintained in the long term. This will most likely not be the case, as the following mechanisms, which only come into play at greater depths, counteract the drilling progress. [*snip*]
I am not really ‘parasocial’ – I wished Freeman Dyson and James Lovelock merry Christmas because I admired their work. And had a bit of back and forth with snail-mail. They were retired, and had time to answer. Plus, researchers rarely need to fear deranged fans the way Judie Foster et al do.
birgerjohanssonsays
Look at this map of tax rates. Then compare it with a list of the most happy countries in the world.
Rachel Maddow relays a series of stories that in any normal administration would be a shattering cascade of scandals, but in the perpetually disgraced Trump administration is merely a string of ordinary headlines of entirely typical waste, corruption and incompetence.
MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff reports on a community training event in Charlotte, North Carolina where residents learned protest and resistance tactics to respond to ICE raids and arrests taking place in their city.
Rachel Maddow shares the story of the small town of Newport, Oregon figuring out that the Trump administration was planning to install an ICE prison at their airport, turning out residents in droves to protest and demand answers. Oregon State Rep. David Gomberg joins to talk about the effort to find out exactly what is going on.
“When it comes to consumer benefits, the differences between the Biden and Trump administrations are stark.”
They weren’t the kind of policies that generated front-page headlines, but during Joe Biden’s presidency, the Democrat was practically obsessed with helping American consumers. From bank fees to medical debt, credit card fees to student loans, the Biden White House couldn’t magically undo post-pandemic inflation, but it did try to give regular people a break.
To that end, the Democratic administration also set out to help American passengers by barring airlines from imposing hidden fees and even took steps to force airlines to compensate flyers for flight disruptions.
“I really want this to be known as the period when we did the biggest expansion in passenger rights since deregulation, and I think we can hit that mark,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last year.
So much for that idea. NBC News reported:
The Trump administration has officially withdrawn a proposal that would have compensated airline passengers for significant delays caused by issues within a carrier’s control. Though the move was announced in September, the Transportation Department formalized it in the Federal Register on Monday. It said it was withdrawing the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking submitted under President Joe Biden in December.
[…] “The proposal, which was never enacted, would have aligned U.S. regulation more closely with airline rules in Europe,” NBC News added.
From a consumer perspective, the developments are discouraging, but they’re also part of a larger pattern.
When Biden and his team took steps to ensure medical debt wouldn’t affect Americans’ credit ratings, Republicans opposed the move; then a Trump-appointed judge reversed the policy. Last month, the Trump administration took new steps to make sure that medical debt does affect Americans’ credit ratings.
Biden and his team tried to make it easier for consumers to cancel services and subscriptions. Then Republicans balked at this, and Trump-appointed judges reversed that policy, too.
A couple of years ago, Biden and his team announced a pilot program to allow some Americans to file their taxes directly to the IRS — for free. Last week, Team Trump confirmed that the Direct File program is dead.
I realize that this isn’t exactly a hot-button political issue, but I wonder how voters would react if more people realized the dramatic differences between the Democratic and Republican administrations when it comes to consumer benefits.
birgerjohanssonsays
This link about a bronze-age city in steppe country halfway between the West and China attracted my interest. The silk road has sometimes been closed due to migrations and wars. We know that at the time of Herodotos it was closed, as the Aechemenid Persian empire did apparently not trade further east, nor is there any mention of it during the time of Alexander the great.
Yet 1600 BC there was a 160 ha city at the Irtysj river at eastern Kazakhstan. If a (pre-written record) trade route existed between East and West it would have supported cities along the route and explain why the onset of the Iron age war simultaneous in East and West due to cultural exchange.
The Epstein files: there are caveats and Republican shenanigans to consider:
Epstein Politics Shift on the Hill
President Trump’s absurd effort to avoid an appearance of defeat by suddenly backing today’s expected House vote to force the Justice Department to turn over the Epstein files — that Trump already has the power to release — has changed the political calculus on the Hill, especially on the Senate side.
Not only has Trump’s move made it acceptable for GOP House members to vote yes to releasing the files, but new reporting makes it look likely that Senate Republicans will no longer bottle up the legislation to protect Trump.
“Now a growing number of GOP senators are open to giving the bill a vote,” Politico reports, “and some are wondering whether it might simply be sent to Trump’s desk by unanimous consent.” […]
[…] Even if Trump is forced to sign it [the bill to release the files] to keep up the appearance of having dodged a stinging defeat, there’s no reason to think the Justice Department will release anything damaging about Trump.
In the short term, no enforcing mechanism exists that would incentivize Justice Department officials or the Trump White House to abide by Congress’ demand. The Trump DOJ certainly won’t prosecute anyone for defying Congress. It’s not clear that the GOP-controlled Congress itself could enforce its demand, either legally or politically. Practically, there’s no real way for Congress to know if the Trump administration buries damaging documents or files.
Trump and the White House also seem to be leaving themselves a pretty big out. In his social media post suddenly declaring he didn’t care if the House Oversight Committee got the Epstein files, Trump caveated it by saying they “can have whatever they are legally entitled to.”
“Legally entitled to” is doing a lot of work there. The Trump White House and his DOJ will make that determination and can use it to throw a broad protective blanket over any evidence damaging to Trump.
That language was echoed to Politico by an unnamed White House official: “This idea that the federal government is in possession of documents that they can legally hand over with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, and we’re keeping them from the public is a fallacy, like, it’s not true.”
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) is defending the White House using similar language: “the Department of Justice has turned over what they’re legally allowed to turn over.” [bullshit and propaganda]
All of which suggests managing expectations in this lawless new world where accountability and enforcement mechanisms have been removed. No need to throw one’s hands up and surrender, but the Epstein files scandal isn’t likely to have the denouement we’ve become conditioned to expect, not so long as the Justice Department is sidelined and Republicans control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Quote of the Day
There’s no small amount of schadenfreude in watching the Trump White House, hoisted on the petard of its own conspiracy-mongering, fretting that even releasing all the Epstein files won’t quiet the mob it whipped up: “Are people ever going to be satisfied? No, because people in this country genuinely believe that the federal government is in possession of a list of pedophiles who work with Jeffrey Epstein. And that is just not true.”–unnamed White House official
I Sense a Trend Here …
– TPM’s Josh Marshall: Trump Has the Look of the Weak Horse; People Are Acting Accordingly
– WaPo: Trump faces a splintering GOP — and rare dissent from his party
– Politico: 7 signs Trump is losing his groove
– WSJ: Trump’s Grip on Republicans Shows First Signs of Slipping
– Michelle Goldberg: The MAGA Crackup Might Finally Be Here
– Trump Uses DOJ for Epstein Damage Control
The NYT, on the 217 minutes between President Trump’s demand on Friday that the Justice Department investigate Democrats for the connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s public acquiescence:
Ms. Bondi’s statement was an unmistakable demonstration of Mr. Trump’s near-total success in subordinating the Justice Department’s post-Watergate independence to his will. Friday was a milestone of sorts. The department was deployed, in effect, as an arm of the president’s rapid-response operation to help him muscle through a damaging news cycle, current and former officials said.
New York Times: “Some Democrats and supporters of the National Endowment for the Humanities are questioning what they see as gutted procedures and a tilt toward handpicked projects.”
Since its creation in 1965, the National Endowment for the Humanities has distributed more than $6.5 billion to support more than 70,000 projects, from landmark works like Ken Burns’s documentary “The Civil War” to small local efforts in every corner of the country.
But now, six months after the Trump administration canceled virtually all grants approved during the Biden administration, the nation’s largest public funder of the humanities appears to be transforming into a vehicle narrowly tailored to the [Trump’s] agenda.
Many of its nearly 50 grant programs have been paused or ended, according to an examination of its website. About two thirds of the staff has been laid off and, last month, most members of the scholarly council that must review a majority of grants were abruptly fired by the White House. [!]
Still, the money has been flowing out the door.
The agency recently announced what it said were the two largest awards in its history, which together consume nearly 10 percent of its annual budget of $207 million. Both went to handpicked recipients.
One of them — $10.4 million to the conservative Jewish educational group Tikvah, for a project aimed at combating antisemitism — was awarded after the scholarly council voted against it, according to five people with direct knowledge of the discussion, who were granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
The council members said there were questions about the vagueness of the Tikvah application and concern that the project tipped into advocacy, which the agency is supposed to avoid. […]
hundreds of smaller discretionary “chairman’s grants,” which can be awarded without scholarly review.
Most of those given so far have gone to scholars with ties to conservative or religious institutions. Four of them — including $30,000 for a project called “Meritocracy vs. Equity: The Declaration of Independence in Tension With Critical Race Theory and D.E.I.” — were awarded to people whose names have not been revealed.
[…] Democrats say they see an abandonment of the agency’s longtime mission of supporting thoroughly vetted projects that reflect the broad variety of American culture.
In a letter to Mr. McDonald sent this week, Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the congressional subcommittee that oversees the endowment, decried what she called the “rapid destruction” of the agency’s systems of scholarly review. Recent grantmaking, and the lack of transparency around it, suggested “a concerningly irresponsible approach to awarding taxpayer dollars,” she wrote.
In an interview, Ms. Pingree connected changes at the endowment to Mr. Trump’s efforts to exert control over the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution and other federal cultural organizations. […]
This story first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States.
“The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Tate posted on X before the trip in February — one of many times he has sung the president’s praises to his fans.
But when the Tate brothers arrived by private plane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they immediately found themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement once more, as Customs and Border Protection officials seized their electronic devices.
This time, they had a powerful ally come to their aid. Behind the scenes, the White House intervened on their behalf.
Interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica show a White House official told senior Department of Homeland Security officials to return the devices to the brothers several days after they were seized. The official who delivered the message, Paul Ingrassia, is a lawyer who previously represented the Tate brothers before joining the White House, where he was working as its DHS liaison.
In his written request, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, Ingrassia chided authorities for taking the action, saying the seizure of the Tates’ devices was not a good use of time or resources. The request to return the electronics to the Tates, he emphasized, was coming from the White House.
The incident is the latest in a string of law enforcement matters where the Trump White House has inserted itself to help friends and target foes. […]
law enforcement experts said it is highly unusual for the White House to get involved in particular border seizures or to demand authorities give up custody of potential evidence in an investigation.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that in my 30 years working,” said John F. Tobon, a retired assistant director for Homeland Security Investigations, which typically analyzes the contents of electronic devices after they’re seized by Customs and Border Protection. “For anyone to say this request is from the White House, it feels like an intimidation tactic.” […]
Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, said in a text message: “Mr. Ingrassia never ordered that the Tate Brothers’ devices be returned to them, nor did he say — and nor would he have ever said — that such a directive came from the White House. This story is fiction, simply not true.”
When questioned about whether Ingrassia had asked authorities to return the devices, even if he did not order them to, Paltzik declined to comment, explaining that “the word ‘ask’ is inappropriate because it is meaningless in this context. He either ordered something or he didn’t. And as I said, he did NOT order anything.” […]
Trump had nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but the 30-year-old lawyer’s chances for Senate confirmation imploded after Politico reported that he had sent a string of racist text messages to fellow Republicans and described himself as having “a Nazi streak.” Paltzik, his lawyer, raised doubts about the authenticity of the texts but said “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”
In a post on X announcing he was withdrawing from his Senate confirmation hearing because not enough Republican lawmakers were supporting him, Ingrassia said he would “continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again.”
Last week, Ingrassia announced he was moving to a new role within the administration, after Trump called him into his office and asked him to serve as deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration. […]
The Tates left the United States in late March.
No criminal charges have been filed against the brothers in the United States, though a lawyer representing four anonymous defendants sued by them in Florida filed court papers this year suggesting that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating the pair. […]
Allegations of sexual abuse and violence have swirled around Andrew Tate for almost as long as he’s been in the public eye. In 2016, Tate was booted off the cast of the British version of the “Big Brother” reality series around the time a video emerged of him whipping a woman with a belt.
[…] “The tate family support trump FULLY. MAGA!” he posted on social media after meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in 2017.
Tate moved to Romania a year after his brief foray in reality TV, in part, he said, because he believed authorities there investigate sex crimes less aggressively.
“I’m not a … rapist but I like the idea of being able to do what I want,” he said.
But in 2023, prosecutors in Romania accused the Tates of operating a criminal group that trafficked women, including some who alleged the brothers led them to believe they were interested in relationships but instead forced them into filming online pornographic videos. Prosecutors also said they were investigating allegations that the Tates trafficked minors. Andrew Tate was charged with rape. The Tates have denied the allegations, and the initial charges against them were sent back to prosecutors by a court because of procedural issues.
The Tates face similar allegations in Britain. […]
woman has also sued the Tates in Florida, accusing them of luring her to Romania to coerce her into sex work. The Tates have denied the allegations, and last month a judge dismissed most of her claims but allowed for her to refile. […]
On March 19th, I submitted a request to the DC Metropolitan Police Department for body camera footage from a call they’d responded to two days earlier at the United States Institute of Peace. I just wanted to understand what the police had done (or not done) to allow the complete takeover of a privately-owned building. […] The process, as I’m learning, is frustratingly slow.
[…]
I wondered what the responding MPD officers had witnessed and what made them decide to act on behalf of the federal government instead of the people they’re paid to serve.
[…]
In early July a District Attorney let [my lawyers] know approximately eight hours of footage existed, but it would take another three months of back and forth to see any of it. Finally on October 10th [MPD] sent […] about five minutes of footage in total, and mostly show officers moving up and down stairwells, the butts of officers in front of them, and various people in the building walking through hallways. […] The privilege log [includes] explanations for withholding the footage. For example, it unironically states at one point: “Such footage would assist individuals intent on unlawful acts against USIP or the employees thereof to gain entrance to the building and the offices within and to evade or counter any law enforcement response.”
[…]
why harp on the events of one day when so much has happened since then? And could the full footage really yield anything impactful? I believe that barreling forward without pausing to take stock of the damage only seeks to normalize the pace at which it’s happening. If we don’t dig deeper into how entities outside the federal government capitulated to their will, it won’t be possible to formulate lessons for the future. Since we’re going through these terrifying and unprecedented times whether we like it or not, we ought to extract any meaning possible.
O’Brien writes that he interacted with members of the MPD and observed them getting orders from Kenneth Jackson, the DOGE-installed Acting USIP President, “to get a locksmith and ordering MPD officers to remove myself [and other USIP staff] from the building.” […] “I observed members of the MPD giving each other high-fives and fist bumps as I was escorted from the USIP headquarters building.” He also testifies that he “observed MPD officers bring a Halligan tool”—a tool used for lockpicking
[…]
“The USIP headquarters building is not a high security facility […] Once an individual is inside the USIP headquarters they generally have unrestricted access.” He adds: “The USIP headquarters held numerous events that were open to the public, something you would not see at the high security facilities I have worked at. There were no restrictions on members of the public photographing or videotaping inside the USIP headquarters building.”
[…]
So what comes next? The defense must submit their opposition […] We’ll see if they’re willing to share any more of the footage
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #452…
A “Halligan tool”, better known as a “Halligan Bar”, is a fire fighting entry tool. It’s as much a “tool used for lockpicking” as a sledgehammer. It has a spike and wedge with striking surfaces opposite them designed so that you can get a start to prying open a window or door and use a sledgehammer to drive the point in far enough to get good leverage. Because of what you use it for, and how it is used, it is sometimes referred to as a “Hooligan bar”. I used to own one as part of my emergency supplies.
re whheydt @454: Or you could watch Chicago Fire because the firefighters regularly carry such a tool and use it in the course of their work. That way, you could see it in action, although not real-life, but it is presented very realistically. For sure not a “lockpicking tool”.
whheydtsays
Re: johnson catman @ #455…
I took a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) course run by my local fire department. We got shown a Halligan Bar (and numerous other tools) and how they work.
FYI… For anyone and everyone in the US, I strongly recommend going through CERT training. It’ll teach you what you need to know about how to respond to start picking up the pieces (e.g. urban search and rescue) after disaster strikes. The instructors will put emphasis on the locally likely types of disasters. It includes how to recognize when NOT to go into buildings (because you don’t want to get trapped a become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution). The course also included hands-on use of fire extinguishers, not just a lecture on how to use them on various sorts of fires. Being in California, much of the course I took dealt with post-earthquake response.
WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release all its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.
The near-unanimous vote, 427-1, will put enormous pressure on the Republican-controlled Senate to act.
Nothing I can see in the article on who the lone “No” vote was.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 457
They must have updated the article:
“Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no.”
“The new lines, which were designed to help the GOP gain up to five House seats in next year’s midterm elections, triggered a nationwide redistricting battle.”
A panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using its new congressional map, which Republicans drew earlier this year in an effort to shore up the party’s narrow House majority in next year’s midterm elections.
The ruling, signed by Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, ordered Texas to use its previous map that was drawn in 2021 instead.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” Brown wrote in the ruling.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the map into law this summer, said in a statement the state will “swiftly appeal to the United States Supreme Court,” teeing up a legal fight that could decide control of the House.
The court’s decision is a major blow for Trump, who called on Texas Republicans to draw a new map that could result in the party gaining up to five seats […]
The ruling particularly focuses on the arguments made in an early summer letter from the Department of Justice, which urged the state to redraw maps and threatened legal action if they did not dismantle so-called “coalition districts,” which are majority nonwhite congressional districts made up of voters of different races and drawn in order to adhere to the Voting Rights Act.
In the opinion, Brown rules that the Justice Department made a “legally incorrect assertion” that these districts were unconstitutional [!]. So, the decision by Texas to redraw its map in response to the letter means “the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” making it “likely” the plaintiffs could prove that Texas racially gerrymandered the latest map.
[…] “The court reproduces the letter in full and then spends several pages explaining how gobsmackingly wrong it is.” [!]
[…] Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, which filed the suit, celebrated the decision.
“The state of Texas is only 40 percent white, but white voters control over 73 percent of the state’s congressional seats,” [!] Johnson said in a statement. “This is a victory for the voters of Texas and for the fight to preserve democracy nationwide.”
Abbott decried the ruling in a statement, arguing the lines were drawn “for no other reason” than to “better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences.” […]
[I snipped details regarding redrawing congressional map in other states.]
The new maps in California, Missouri and North Carolina are also facing legal challenges. The Texas ruling all but ensures that the fight for control of Congress next year will run, at least in part, through the courts.
[…] the Republicans’ map redrew two districts in the Austin area currently represented by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar, a young progressive, and Lloyd Doggett, a more moderate lawmaker who’s served in public office for about a half-century.
[…] The court’s decision Tuesday would also be a boon for the winner of the Houston-area special election to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, which will be decided during a January runoff. The winner would likely have had to face longtime Democratic Rep. Al Green if the new lines are in effect, but they’d have a smoother path to re-election if not.
And it could ease the minds of Democrats in the Dallas area, where Reps. Julie Johnson, Marc Veasey and Jasmine Crockett have been weighing how to deal with a significant redraw in North Texas.
[…] Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House Tuesday, where he was asked why anyone should trust the man who is widely accused of ordering the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. [video]
Trump: He’s done a phenomenal job. You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial—a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.
“Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, faces multiple charges in Florida, including lewd/lascivious molestation, according to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office.”
A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol was arrested on child molestation charges, according to Florida officials, who said he tried to use an anticipated Jan. 6 payout to silence the victim.
Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, was taken into custody in Tennessee in August and extradited to Florida on charges of lewd/lascivious molestation, lewd/lascivious exhibition, and transmission of material harmful to a minor.
[…] Johnson was among the roughly 1,500 people Trump pardoned earlier this year in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office began investigating him in July […]
Deputies spoke to the mother of the victim, who said she was going through her son’s messages on Discord and found an “inappropriate” conversation involving Johnson, the affidavit states. The mother asked her son about the messages and asked if Johnson had ever said or done anything inappropriate, it says.
The child said that Johnson had molested him three times between April 2024 and October 2024, beginning when he was 11 years old, according to the affidavit.
The child said he confronted Johnson, and Johnson apologized and told the child not to tell anyone “since he would get in trouble,” the affidavit says. Johnson allegedly mailed the child an iPhone “and told him to keep it a secret,” the document states.
The sheriff’s office said in the affidavit that Discord messages showed Johnson sneaking to the child’s home to bring him food and hang out with him. He also allegedly told the child that “since he was pardoned for storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and he was being awarded $10,000,000 as a result of being a ‘jan 6’er’ … that he would be putting him in his ‘will’ to take any money he had left over,” according to the affidavit.
“This tactic was believed to be used to keep [the victim] from exposing what Andrew had done to him,” the affidavit says.
Trump has discussed the possibility of compensating Jan. 6 rioters, but no one has received any payments. In May, the administration reached a settlement of just under $5 million with Ashli Babbitt’s family. An officer fatally shot her during the riot as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.
Johnson was arrested in 2022 and faced four charges in connection with the Jan. 6 riot after the Justice Department said he breached the building through a broken window.
Court documents from that case said that Johnson, who referred to himself as “American Terrorist” and “Proud j6er,” engaged in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” for more than four hours.
The documents stated that after breaching the Capitol, he encouraged other rioters to follow and yelled, “We haven’t accomplished anything here. This door is still closed. We haven’t accomplished anything yet. … We need to go through that f—ing door. We’re not done yet. We’re not just breaking and entering.”
He also spread false theories about the riot and called for another attack, according to the documents. He pleaded guilty in April 2024 and was pardoned.
Johnson is due back in court Dec. 10 on the child molestation charges.
Another Jan. 6 defendant pardoned by Trump, who was seen firing a gun into the air outside the Capitol, was recently arrested on kidnapping and sexual assault charges, and another Capitol rioter pardoned by Trump was arrested for making death threats against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
“More than 800 Newport residents turned up at a city council meeting to protest the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to build an ICE facility in their town.”
Two weeks from now marks the official start of Dungeness crab season off the coast of Oregon. Dungeness crab is one of the world’s great seafood delicacies. There’s nothing like it. But the path to get that delicious crab to your plate is a tough one.
Fishing for Dungeness crab is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. It’s difficult work. It’s risky work. The busiest port for Dungeness crab on the whole West Coast is the cool, beautiful little town of Newport, Oregon, with a population just above 10,000.
Last week, the people of that small town discovered something very worrying. For years, there was a U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter based at a small municipal airport in Newport. It was right there, in case the Coast Guard needed to spring into action to help one of the vessels doing the very dangerous work of the Newport fishing fleet.
But for some reason, the Trump administration just took the rescue helicopter away. That crucial resource has now been moved from their airport to a new location, one that is 30 minutes away by air.
In response to the move, a member of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives laid out the stakes quite clearly, saying “We aren’t saying people might die — we’re saying people will die.” […]
Local leaders told everyone that they thought the Trump administration, through the Department of Homeland Security, was laying the groundwork to convert the Coast Guard facility at their little airport, where the rescue helicopter had been, into a possible U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prison. According to those officials, a federal defense contractor had contacted the city about leasing land at the facility.
Immediately, people in Newport started raising hell. They did not want an ICE prison, and they certainly did not want to give up their rescue helicopter to get one.
So, the town called a council meeting, and judging from the turnout at that meeting, that was a smart decision. The Newport fire chief said more than 800 people showed up for that meeting, and many were forced to stand in overflow rooms or hallways. Again, that was the turnout in a town with a population of just 10,000.
After that meeting, we learned that the defense contractor that had contacted the town about leasing land at the facility has now backed off and said they’re out.
This is all still a live issue, and the rescue helicopter is still not returned, but the fight is joined in this small town in Oregon.
As one Newport city councillor put it, “Maybe somebody thought, ‘Oh, it’s a small place, it’s rural, they’re probably quiet, we can overpower them.’ … We’ve been underestimated.”
[…] When a reporter pressed Trump on his obvious conflicts of interest; and [regarding] the crown prince [Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman] on intelligence pointing to his role in orchestrating the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump interrupted to dismiss ABC News’ correspondent as “fake news.”
Moments later, Trump suggested that Khashoggi had it coming. [Video]
“You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of the slain Washington Post journalist. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [Salman] knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.”
It’s hard to even know where to start with comments this disgusting. <bThe torture and dismemberment of a journalist, for example, does not fall under the “things happen” category. For that matter, intelligence officials from Trump’s own country have concluded that the Saudi crown prince was very much involved in the murder plot.
As for the idea that the reporter’s question might “embarrass” Trump’s “guest,” it’s not the job of the free press to protect the feelings of foreign authoritarians.
Trump soon after whined about a reporter asking the Saudi leader “an insubordinate question,” as if members of the free press were somehow the crown prince’s employees.
As the event continued, the American president horsed around with the crown prince as if they were a pair of kids having a good time. Grabbing his guest’s hand, Trump specifically said: “I don’t care where that hand’s been.” [JFC]
It’s occasionally tempting to think the Republican has hit rock bottom, but then he finds a way to drill a hole in the bottom of the barrel and fall even lower.
“Six agreements that the Education Department signed will effectively move some grant programs to other agencies.”
The U.S. Education Department is handing off some of its biggest grant programs to other federal agencies as the Trump administration accelerates its plan to shut down the department.
It represents a major step forward for the administration’s dismantling of the department, which has mainly involved cutting jobs since […] Trump called for its elimination with an executive action in March.
Six new agreements signed by the Education Department will effectively move billions of dollars in grant programs to other agencies. Most notable is one that will put the Department of Labor over some of the largest federal funding streams for K-12 schools, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities.
Opponents have urged against such a shake-up, saying it could disrupt programs that support some of the nation’s most vulnerable student populations. Some argue that other agencies don’t have the expertise that schools and families rely on at the Education Department.
[…] Department officials said the programs will continue to be funded at levels set by Congress [less efficiently, we assume]. They did not say whether the changes would bring further job cuts at the department, which has been thinned by waves of mass layoffs and voluntary retirement offers.
[…] The action leaves in place the Education Department’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio and its funding for students with disabilities, though McMahon has suggested both would be better managed by other federal departments. Also unaffected is the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which works with students and families who bring allegations of discrimination.
McMahon and her staff have spent months hammering out the deals, which allow the department to lop off large parts of its footprint without action from Congress. It’s being done through formal agreements that agencies often make with one another when their work overlaps.
[…] Under the new plan, Labor will oversee almost all grant programs that are now managed by the Education Department’s offices for K-12 and higher education. Along with the $18 billion Title I program, that includes smaller funding pools for teacher training, English instruction and TRIO, a program that helps steer low-income students to college degrees.
[…] Another deal will put Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents who are attending college, along with management of foreign medical school accreditation. The State Department will take on foreign language programs. Interior will oversee programs for Native American education.
McMahon has increasingly pointed to what she sees as failures of the department as she argues for its demise. In its 45 years, she says it has become a bloated bureaucracy while student outcomes continue to lag behind. She points to math and reading scores for the country’s K-12 students, which plummeted in the wake of pandemic restrictions.
[…] The new deals are part of a broader plan to prove that America’s schools and colleges can operate without the department. […]
The Senate on Tuesday agreed by unanimous consent to approve a House-passed bill requiring the Justice Department to release all unclassified records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
[…] The bill will head to the president’s desk for signature, once the upper chamber officially receives the bill from its House colleagues.
[…] Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Tuesday evening received unanimous consent to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act upon receipt of the legislation from the House, only hours after the lower chamber voted 427-1 to approve it. […]
“As industrial operations move to the state, residents find that their drinking water has been promised to companies.”
In 2019, Corpus Christi, Texas’s eighth-largest city, moved forward with plans to build a desalination plant. The facility, which was expected to be completed by 2023, at a cost of a hundred and forty million dollars, would convert seawater into freshwater to be used by the area’s many refineries and chemical plants. The former mayor called it “a pretty significant day in the life of our city.
In anticipation of the plant’s opening, the city committed to provide tens of millions of gallons of water per day to new industrial operations, including a plastics plant co-owned by ExxonMobil and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, a lithium refinery for Tesla batteries, and a “specialty chemicals” plant operated by Chemours. The facilities went into operation, but the desalination plant stalled out in the planning process, and its projected costs ballooned to more than a billion dollars.
In the meantime, the city suffered through a multiyear drought, and local reservoirs reached alarmingly low levels. Residents were prohibited from watering their lawns or hosing down their cars; industrial operations, largely exempt from drought restrictions, kept drawing the water they had been promised. Officials predicted that Corpus Christi might enter an official water emergency—triggered when water demand is projected to exceed supply within six months—by the end of 2026.
This September, the city council met to vote on whether to proceed with building the desalination plant. The hearing started around noon; by midnight […] Some opponents of the plan voiced concerns about its costs. Others were worried about environmental ramifications. Desalination results in large amounts of salty sludge that must be disposed of. Dumping it in the nearby bay risks harming the ecosystem and destroying the fragile local fishing industry; injecting it underground risks causing small earthquakes. Supporters argued that, without the desalination plant, the local economy would collapse. Around 1 a.m., the council elected to pull funding for the project; where, exactly, Corpus Christi’s water will come from is currently an open question. […]
Charles Perry, a Republican state senator from Lubbock and the legislature’s leading water expert, believes that […] that Texas may face an annual water deficit of up to twelve million acre-feet by 2050. […]
Part of the problem is the state’s antiquated approach to water policy. Texas follows the rule of capture, also known as absolute ownership, which allows landowners to draw as much water from below their property as they’d like, even if this has a negative impact on neighboring properties. Critics argue that the rule of capture incentivizes over-pumping […] “Property owners in Texas can’t prevent someone next door with a bigger pump and a deeper well from sucking groundwater from underneath their property,” Glennon told me. “Instead of a private-property right, absolute ownership is more of a circular firing squad.”
[…] The issue came to the forefront when Kyle Bass, a hedge-fund manager who cemented his reputation by betting against the subprime-mortgage boom, in 2008, announced plans to intervene in the looming water crisis. Like Perry, he believed that the worrying projections in the 2022 Water Plan weren’t ominous enough. [I snipped a lot of explanation and details.]
In some ways, the past year in Texas has looked like a preview of what future water wars could bring: agriculture pitted against industry pitted against municipalities; the wetter parts of the states fighting to protect “their” water from thirsty and fast-growing cities. [True!] […] people are coming to understand that finite groundwater supplies are interconnected, and that draining an aquifer in East Texas could affect the drinking water in Houston. […]
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he planned to go Turkey on Wednesday to try to revive peace talks with Russia that have been stalled since the summer. Ukrainian and Russian officials have not held direct negotiations for months, and efforts to end the war have reached a stalemate since the last round of talks between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in August.
Meta did not break the law when it bought its nascent rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, a federal judge said on Tuesday, handing a major win to the $1.51 trillion company and dealing a blow to the government’s efforts to rein in the power of tech giants.
A Tennessee judge on Monday temporarily blocked the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis, siding with state and local lawmakers who argued that Gov. Bill Lee had overstepped his constitutional authority in sending troops to the city.
NBC News:
Hundreds of federalized National Guard members sent to Illinois and Oregon will return to their home states as early as this week, a defense official told NBC News on Monday.
President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador has spent months courting Washington. He has met with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago; formed an alliance with the Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a Trump supporter; and pressed to allow U.S. military bases in Ecuador. But voters at home delivered Mr. Noboa a sharp rebuke. They soundly rejected a national referendum on Sunday that he had backed, aimed at authorizing a foreign miliary presence in Ecuador.
The Justice Department is suing California over legislation that bans federal agents from wearing masks and requires them to identify themselves, claiming the laws threaten the safety of federal officers as they conduct anti-immigrant operations in the state.
he complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, refers to a pair of bills that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September. One of them, the No Secret Police Act, bars officers from wearing masks on the job, with exemptions for the California Highway Patrol and SWAT teams, and for medical reasons, while the No Vigilantes Act requires nonuniformed federal agents to have visible identification. […]
re whheydt @456: My comment was not directed at you. The “you” was a generalized “you” for people that might want to see a Halligan Bar in operation as opposed to looking at pictures of one. No insult or slight was meant to be directed at you. It was merely a suggestion of an alternate means of observing the use of the Halligan Bar.
birgerjohanssonsays
NB! “Trump’s Georgia Prosecution Is Finally Back On Track”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=b4HG_rwvNGc
The prosecution under Georgia jurisdiction concerns Trump, Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell and many others.
whheydtsays
Re: johnson catman @ #474…
No offense taken. People now have a couple of different ways to learn about Halligan Bars.
birgerjohanssonsays
I just learned that a court has slapped the fingers of Greg Abbot for trying to gerrymander Texas.
“The GOP’s Midterm Chances Just CRATERED”
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=20RBFu56UJw
.
A Trump-appointed judge put Texas’ redristricting on hold. With other changes, the House could get a very substantial Dem majority.
Marshall Islands becomes the first country to launch a Universal Basic Income program. Every resident (about 33,000 people) will receive $200 every 3 months. This works out to being about 11% of GDP per capita. If the US did that same percentage, the UBI would be about $770/mo. [Korea IT Times article]
[…] The US is funding it. It’s paid out of the Compact Trust Fund as part of the 2023 Amended Compact of Free Association with the US which we are capitalizing for our military use of their islands. Remember all the nuclear testing? […]
They are however already considering tax reforms via implementation of a VAT next year. If they did this, that would likely be used to boost the UBI and create a progressive outcome for a VAT implementation. The UBI would serve to more than 100% rebate the tax for those consuming below the average.
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
Epstein Files Vote Is A Huge Loss For Trump | “Quiet Piggy” | Dictator Besties | A Flying McDonald’s
“Quiet Piggy”…
OK if this is the level of discource to be used for the White House, so be it.
…consodering his girth DJT should be referred to as ‘The porcine POTUS’ or Mr. Big Pig Orangeface.
birgerjohanssonsays
Comedian Flips the Script on Donald Trump in Brilliant Fashion (it starts at the 3.12 mark)
The racist stuff about Black people and watermelons is BS. But it is true for guinea pigs!
“My guinea pigs going wild for watermelon rind”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/xUlXo8O4LHc
@492 birgerjohansson: You repeated the link from comment 491.
KGsays
Interesting results from Denmark’s regional and municipal elections. I haven’t seen full results yet, but the governing “Social Democrats” – who have adopted racist hard right policies on migration and integration – lost the mayoralty of Copenhagen for the first time in over a century. The new mayor will come from the Socialistisk Folkeparti (“Green Left” is its name in English for some reason), supported by other left and green parties. Amusingly, the Graun’s article says:
Among the reasons cited by analysts for the Social Democrats’ decline in Copenhagen were voter fatigue over the prime minister’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration, which have partly inspired a newly unveiled asylum and migration policy in Britain. [My bolding]
“Voter fatigue”, eh? What’s that when it’s at home? I think the word the article’s writer was searching for was “disgust”.
Question: Will Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood take heed of the collapse of the last plausible argument for copying far right policies and rhetoric in order to retain power?
Answer: Will they, fuck.
We are certain that without a credible, objective, unbroken chain of custody, the epstein files being released are as dubious as the hunter biden laptop harddrive that was passed around by many partisan hacks. Adding to the liklihood of ‘sanitizing’ and ‘misplace some’ is the 30 days tRUMPs flunkies have before they need to release them.
We have found only 2-3 articles that touch on this critical subject.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Trump SPIRALS After Epstein Vote Delivers Crushing Ending Blow To His Term”
Bombshell about grand jury: Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan took the stand briefly Wednesday, saying only two grand jurors reviewed the final indictment it handed up against former FBI Director James Comey. Comey’s attorney then argued Halligan’s testimony indicates, “there is no indictment” against his client.
We have now wandered into WTF range. Halligan never actually showed the entire grand jury the final indictment.
“The Supreme Court already ruled against the Ten Commandments in classrooms. […] lawsuits against new Republican-imposed displays keep winning.”
For Republican officials eager to impose the Ten Commandments on public school students, it’s been a difficult year. In June, for example, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Louisiana law from taking effect, unanimously ruling that the state-sponsored religion law was “facially unconstitutional.” [related video at the link]
In early August, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a similar Arkansas law on Ten Commandments displays in schools.
Now Texas has joined the club. The New York Times reported:
A federal judge ordered some public school districts in Texas on Tuesday to remove Ten Commandment displays from their classroom walls by next month, a victory for families who had argued that the posters infringed on their religious freedom. The ruling from Judge Orlando L. Garcia … applies to 14 public school districts, including ones in Fort Worth, Arlington and Conroe.
[…] The ruling comes roughly three months after a different federal court reached the same conclusion in a related case filed by several Dallas-area families and faith leaders.
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which helped bring the case, said in a statement, “All Texas public school districts should heed the court’s clear warning: It’s plainly unconstitutional to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Families throughout Texas and across the country get to decide how and when their children engage with religion — not politicians or public-school officials.”
[…] when officials in Kentucky approved a very similar law nearly a half-century ago, the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools are unconstitutional.
The Decalogue, the justices ruled in Stone v. Graham, is “undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths” but that displaying it “serves no … educational function.”
So why would Republicans in several states take a step that the Supreme Court has already rejected? It’s likely because they’re confident that the newly politicized high court and its dominant far-right majority will simply overturn the Stone precedent, doing fresh harm to the wall that’s supposed to separate church and state in this country.
These GOP officials are almost certainly aware of the First Amendment, just as they’re almost certainly aware of the Supreme Court precedent that says they cannot legally do what they’re trying to do. But since the court has moved sharply to the right in the course of the last 45 years, GOP officials in Texas and others are counting on Republican-appointed justices to clear the way for more government-imposed religion in public schools.
That hasn’t happened — at least not yet — which is why these state measures keep losing in court in the meantime.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday refused to commit to releasing all of the Epstein files, giving a cagey answer that suggests it may be a long time before we ever see the documents related to the accused child sex trafficker.
Bondi’s comment came at a news conference, in which a reporter asked whether the investigation President Donald Trump ordered into the deceased Epstein’s ties to Democrats would preclude her from releasing documents in accordance with the bill Congress passed on Tuesday.
Bondi did not give a yes or no answer, and instead chose to defend her office’s handling of the files.
“We have released 33,000, over 33,000 Epstein documents to the Hill, and we will continue to follow the law and to have maximum transparency,” Bondi said—refusing to answer the question asked of her. [video]
She and her minions—including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, who flanked her at the Wednesday news conference—have done everything in their power to keep the documents under wraps.
[…] That bill is now on Trump’s desk awaiting a signature.
However, Politico reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson may be pressuring Trump to veto the legislation.
If Trump follows Johnson’s advice, it’s a move that could be a political disaster for the embattled president and the GOP—as Americans overwhelmingly say the files should be released and that they believe Trump is hiding something by keeping them concealed.
Ultimately, if Trump signs the bill into law, the DOJ would be required to release the documents within 30 days. Any delay or questionable redactions would just fuel the speculation that Trump has something to hide in the files. […]
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-flees-to-argentina
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-3/#comment-2282987
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that it will reduce air traffic by 10% across 40 ‘high-volume’ markets beginning Friday morning to maintain safety during the ongoing government shutdown.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-3/#comment-2282964
“Trump’s tariffs are finally scrutinized — and they don’t hold up”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-3/#comment-2282960
Why it matters that Trump thinks Americans need to show ID to buy groceries
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-3/#comment-2282944
Neal Katyal is far more well-informed than the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-3/#comment-2282941
Trump’s HHS orders state Medicaid programs to help find undocumented immigrants
Cartoon: Ass kicking
https://www.msnbc.com/all
‘Dummymandering’: Blue wave threatens MAGA redistricting scheme
Video is 8:32 minutes
‘Emperor has no clothes’: Chris Hayes reacts to ‘electoral drubbing’ for Trump, GOP
Video is 14:08 minute
Just beautuful scenery and animal footage here –
Southern Lingnan series: Chinese Pangolin Five and half mins long.
Reuters link
“Tesla board to shareholders: Pay Musk or else”
LOL
Mexican President Sheinbaum presses charges against man who groped her on street
The EU heads to the COP30 climate summit with watered-down goals and dwindling green consensus.
Here is an anridote to depression.
A comfy basket.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16wf8tRBz4/
Late Night with Seth Meyers
“Trump Blames Shutdown for Huge Democratic Wins; Zohran Mamdani’s Historic NYC Victory: A Closer Look”
(the loud noise is me purring like a cat)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sZcJNlxnHBI
Jimmy Kimmel
“Trump’s Very Bad Election Night as Democrats Win, Republicans Cry Fraud & Longest Shutdown Ever ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=g18MTRquc_A
Stephen Colbert
A Mayor Victory
“Dems Sweep! | Mamdani: New York Will Be The Light | Sherrill, Spanberger Declares Victory ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fno04Z2k6Ok
Re @ 12
Trump could not get a decent nickname for Newsom. He could have gone for Nasty Newsom, Neggy Newsom or Nihilist Newsom, N is the easiest letter of all to find slurs that go with it.
Also, it is time to put pressure on the more amorphous Democrats in DC to live up to the new higher expectations, or get primaried.
It is no longer enough to be slightly less bad as the others.
Vblogger reacts: “Female Gooners Must Be Stopped!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eP6rQ2hRdOU
And Iced by The Minotaur is a real book! At least True Blood had an interesting plot.
JD Vance’s analysis of the 2025 elections has one obvious flaw
“To understand this week’s results as nothing more than “a couple of elections in blue states” is to miss the importance of what actually happened.”
Following a legendary run, Nancy Pelosi to retire from Congress at the end of her term
Pelosi was wise to give up the speakership before she actually retired.
Washington Post link
“Layoffs rise to recession-like levels through October, new report says”
“Employers have announced 1.1 million job cuts so far this year, the highest reading since the pandemic, a private firm reports.”
OMG, the photos that accompany this report! So much tawdry, garish and trashy decor surrounding Trump in his degraded version of the White House.
Trump’s tacky Oval Office decor is oozing outside
I snipped text describing Trump’s other depredations, including paving over the Rose Garden, “renovating” the bathroom near the Lincoln Bedroom with gaudy marble and gold fixtures, and tearing down the East Wing to begin construction on a ballroom.
Despite vow to protect health care for veterans, VA losing doctors and nurses
This is now a dire situation.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug’s letters home from The Second Civil War
NB! Music history.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ very first gig. After a hate campaign in the Tory ‘gutter press’ they eventually became the most demonised pop band in British history.
‘Religious freedom’ is just another Trump con job
With false claims about gas prices, Trump adds to his list of self-defeating lies
“American consumers know that gas prices haven’t ‘plummeted.’ So why is the president trying to fool them into believing otherwise?”
This might be a dementia-related problem. Trump has falsehoods stuck in his head and he plays them on a loop. He is saying what he wishes were true, not what is actually true.
Oh FFS.
Trump makes an overdue discovery: ‘They have this new word called ‘affordability’’
“After Democrats scored election victories, the president started talking about ‘affordability.’ […] his assessment is rooted in nonsense.”
Related video at the link.
Lots of infighting and circular firing squads at the Heritage Foundation:
Link
Quote of the Day
“Obviously some of these conditions are, in my word, disgusting. To have to sleep on the floor next to an overflowed toilet, that’s obviously unconstitutional.”–U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman of Chicago, who ordered the federal government to provide bedding, hygiene supplies, daily showers, clean toilets and three meals a day at the ICE facility Broadview
Here are the 40 airports on FAA’s preliminary list for cuts, reductions amid shutdown
https://www.wonkette.com/p/border-patrol-chief-gregory-bovino
Czechia to slash military aid to Ukraine, says likely next FM
“A pivot away from Kyiv would be a ‘Christmas gift’ to Putin, outgoing government said in response to the comments.”
Link
Trump ties his anti-filibuster crusade to a plan to pass ‘voter reform’
If the president convinces Republicans to scrap the filibuster, what would he want to pass? Legislation specifically targeting elections
House speaker says GOP is excited to rig midterms
Bloomberg Law link
New York Times link
“Popular AR-15 ammunition made at an Army-owned facility was far more likely than any other to turn up in a government database tracking evidence from gun crimes, new data shows.”
Mallen Baker
“Was THIS The Week Trump Became A Lame Duck President?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wPVo-tqUV1A
Federal Judge Orders Trump Administration To Fully Fund SNAP Benefits In November
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/snap-benefits-november-trump_n_690d0f23e4b0799004d41165
Two anniversaries in a day.
Today is the 90th anniversary of the first flight of the Hawker Hurricane prototype. The aircraft outnumbered the Spitfire two to one as the Battle of Britain began.
.
50 years since the very first gig by a band called “Sex Pistols”.
Scathing Atheist 662
Roast of the Town Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vZJFSFJ7kdA
Re: birgerjohansson @ #38…
Plus… About 80% of the German aircraft losses during the Battle of Britain were to Hurricanes. Generally, speaking, the faster Spitfires arrived first and got in dog fights with the Bf-109 fighter escort cover. Then the slower Hurricanes arrived and went after the–now unprotected–bombers.
@Lynna #26:
Gosh, someone at Heritage had principles? No, of course not.
Posted on 2024-12-09:
Heritage Foundation Plan To Fight Antisemitism Has Hilariously Ironic Problem
Rando:
Sky Captain @41, thanks for that additional information.
Sky Captain @42, Teen Vogue was a good source. Now that Vogue has stripped Teen Vogue of their entire politics team, I expect that we will see a very restricted view of “issues that matter most to young people.” WTF? That is so condescending.
In other news, The Washington Post reports:
Depending on your skies cloudiness & darkness status might be worth looking up about now..
Source : https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/northern-lights-may-be-visible-in-22-us-states-nov-6-7-2025
Associated Press:
Supreme Court majority lets Trump administration enforce new gender policy for passports
“Transgender and nonbinary Americans said they want passports ‘that allow them to travel without fear of misidentification, harassment, or violence.’ ”
MSNBC:
Link
Oz shows he’s no math wizard
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/maga-still-out-of-its-fcking-gourd
MAGA Still Out Of Its F*cking Gourd Over Zohran And Other Election Night Losses
The excuses for Republicans’ resounding and humiliating losses on Tuesday are getting more copey and strangey.
More examples, with video are available at the link.
Washington Post:
In 1979, a mining test ravaged the Pacific seafloor—44 years later, new evidence reveals it’s likely forever
Nature – Long-term impact and biological recovery in a deep-sea mining track
Brandon Bishop (Seismologist):
Oh, yes! God Awful Movies.
“GAM531 Shadowbuilder”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RfPM66hibbQ
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 53
Goddamn it !
“Trump Fumes After BRILLIANT Protest Statue Appears In Switzerland”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oGAF59MKd6A
Inside the Chieftain’s Hatch Snapshot: Ransomes MG2 (the smallest tracked vehicle ever)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=URuKOdAqCaM
Single mothers in China find a new kind of partner – other single mothers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/07/single-mothers-in-china-find-a-new-kind-of-partner-other-single-mothers
I seems researchers found the biggest spider web of all time in a cave, a 100m^2 web inhabited by a colony of spiders from two different species. They are part of a rather unique underground ecosystem:
https://subtbiol.pensoft.net/article/162344/element/8/272838//
How Bowhead Whales Live For More Than 200 Years
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z4WXTBTUQII
Also, rays and skates get bored in captivity.
Doesn’t Trump look tired – and old?
Like here frex at the 5 minutes & 51 seconds mark – Colbert intro – Air Travel Pain Intensifies | FIFA’s Fake Peace Prize | Americans Need To Lose 135 Billion Pounds. Yt clip is 11 mins long to nearest minute in total temporal length.
Inspired by of c – Looks tired featuring a much younger female leader. Under a minute by three secs
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-07/neighbours-nazi-salute-guilty-damien-richardson/105985852
LNP pollies are saying SussAnne Ley has their full support – wthat means she’s so gone already.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-07/ley-leadership-speculation-liberals-cold-water/105983516
Wonder which of the dregs of the leftovers there will replace her? She sure didn’t last long – no suprise from such a misognyist party. She ain’t even a Julie Bishop despite their relative ranks reached.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
Republicans scramble as Trump’s enters his ‘lame duck era’
Video is 6:45 minutes
Trump discovers new concept: ‘They have this new word called affordability’
Video is 7:29 minutes
Fodor’s Travel link
“There’s an Excellent Chance That Thanksgiving Travel Will Be a Total Disaster”
Fox News criticized for publishing AI-generated videos of SNAP recipients
Washington Post link
“Labor Department social media campaign depicts a White male workforce” [OMG, those images!]
Propaganda alert.
Images and reporting on the issues are also available at The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Images and reporting on the issues are also available at The Chicago Sun Times: “The government is too dumb — or too confident — to even bother hiding its racism.”
NY Times: To Preserve Records, Homeland Security Now Relies on Officials to Take Screenshots
So stupid I don’t know what to say. It’s too stupid and obviously intentional to allow that it is a honest mistake, this was done so that officials could forget to capture messages that they don’t want to be public or officials could miss them while reviewing megabytes of screenshots.
They got caught using Signal and it’s delete history feature and had to come up with something. This is entirely unworkable but just barely can be said to be an attempt to comply with the law.
Cornell reaches $60 million deal with Trump administration to restore funding
“Cornell is the latest Ivy League school to announce a settlement with the federal government to restore research grants.”
AI stocks head for more than $1 trillion in losses this week
“The Nasdaq is on track to record its worst week since the April global market plunge tied to Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs.”
Tech billionaire Marc Andreessen bet big on Trump. It’s paying off for Silicon Valley, by ProPublica.
Posted by readers of the ProPublica report:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/chicago-judge-rules-ice-goons-officially
Much more at the link, including videos, proof that an ICE agent destroyed evidence in the case of the woman he shot; evidence that detainees are being held with inadequate places to sleep, no mattresses, in cells with no clocks. They haven’t been getting enough food, water, or hygiene products, are being denied access to medical care, lawyers, telephones, and translators and translated documents, and have been getting disappeared into the system without being entered into the Detainee Locator System; evidence that US citizens are being arrested, etc.
New York Times:
Link
More at the link.
Trump pardons former Tennessee House speaker and his aide, who were convicted on federal corruption charges
“Glen Casada, a Republican, was sentenced to 36 months in prison after being convicted on 17 charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
Update to my 130 and 232 on previous page: Teboil is now preparing to shut down its operations in Finland, as a result of US sanctions on its parent company Lukoil. The planned sale of Teboil to Gunvor was revoked after the US Treasury rejected it flat out as a way to circumvent sanctions. It now seems highly likely there won’t be another buyer that passes the muster.
lumipuna @77, thanks for the update. You were right to note that the previous Lukoil arrangement was a shady deal, an attempt to continue operating in Finland without sanctions.
As you previously pointed out, now there will be disruption in Finland’s distribution of petrol. I hope that part of the difficulties is resolved soon.
Deep inside a mountain, Britain prepares for Russian onslaught
“Military planners travelled to Bodø, nestled between the sea and snow-capped peaks of the Arctic Circle, to war-game out the response to Kremlin threats.”
Much more at the link.
Link
Vivek Ramaswami thinks he is part of the White club…
Phil Moorhouse:
“Why Do People Join Groups That Hate Them?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HeQfB7JXn0s
-In Sweden we have a Black murderer in prison who is a Nazi. The other Nazis tolerate jim because they all hate Jews.
Washington Post link
“U.S. steps up presence in Gaza to support fragile ceasefire”
“The move relegates Israel to a secondary role in determining how and what humanitarian relief can enter Gaza, according to people familiar with the transition.”
New York Times link
“James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97”
Yes. Yes, raising the next generation is absolutely the collective responsibility of the present generation.
There is enough money for everyone. Therefore, if someone does not have enough money, that means someone else has too much money. And taxation is the way we collectivise taking money away from people who have too much, to use for the benefit of people who don’t have enough, by investing in universally available public services, benefitting from economies of scale, so the base level of public services artificially reduces the lower threshold of “enough”.
Civilised societies do not spontaneously spring into existence. The world into which we are born is only the way it is because of other people’s hard work, and we are born owing a debt to all those who have gone before us, the fruits of whose labours and whose discoveries and inventions we take for granted. We can best repay this debt by working to ensure the next generation will be born into a better world than ours. Once we have done our fair share towards this, we may even receive a dividend in the form of the improvements our children made for our grandchildren.
We all have the same basic needs. Once these are satisfied, and the most efficient way to do this is collectively, then we are in a position to indulge our individual desires.
I learned something new today.
Nick Cave is not only a musician, he is also an author. His book The Death of Bunny Munro will be filmed.
Nick Cave – Wikipedia
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cave
Re: blueizlagirl @ #84…
That clip you are citing is not real. It’s an AI construct.
Reuters: Kremlin dismisses speculation that Lavrov has fallen out of favour with Putin
Apparently he didn’t attend one of the Russian security council meetings, which would be like not showing up for a cabinet meeting the US. Plus his travel has not be disclosed and he is not attending some international meetings that would be normal for him to go to. He could just be sick but it isn’t a good sign. If he is sick enough to require this for several weeks there is a good chance he has to retire for medical reasons anyways.
re JM @87: If Lavrov has fallen out of favor with Putin, he may soon have an accidental defenestration.
@ whheydt, #86: I know it’s AI generated, but, still, my point stands: it’s by no means an unreasonable demand. Or just pay us more, and once we can afford to pay more tax, you won’t have to pay so much tax in order to raise the same total amount.
But, by economy of scale, something you as a taxpayer get at the taxpayer’s expense can end up working out costing you less in extra tax than you would have spent if you had paid for it yourself. Common needs are best met collectively.
Re: blurislagirl @ #89…
I’m not arguing against the underlying point, that we–collectively as a society–should provide a safety net for those in need, and that it is, on the whole, more cost effective to do it collectively. I merely point out that the example cited is fake and intended to inflame passions against those points.
High-profile Democrat rips JD Vance’s ‘bullsh-t politics’
Some details from earlier reporting:
What JD Vance said:
Followup to comment 92.
Trump administration says it will fully fund SNAP while court appeal plays out
The administration has asked a federal appeals court for an emergency pause on a judge’s order to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Israel says another set of remains of a hostage has been turned over in Gaza
“Before Friday’s handover, Hamas had returned the bodies of 22 hostages since the start of the current ceasefire.”
Serbia passes law to build Trump hotel in Belgrade
“Belgrade approves controversial development to please the U.S. president, critics say.”
Authorities are considering whether to charge an Indiana homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman working as a house cleaner after she mistakenly went to the wrong address.
The chicken shit gun owner can use “Castle Doctrine” as a defense. What a fucking backwards country that I am glad I don’t live in.
@ whheydt, #90:
And I’m saying, it should be inspiring people to start going out and making those demands in real life.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
‘Grow a spine’: Jasmine Crockett rips Mike Johnson’s ‘petulant child’ stunt
Video is 8:02 minutes
Trump REELS as groceries gaffe, SNAP fight, and ‘Great Gatsby’ optics collide
Video is 8:17 minutes
Another outrage to women, this time…the President of Mexico: Mexico President Sheinbaum presses charges after street groping incident
Lynna, OM@72,
I’m coming across articles predicting that the “AI bubble” is close to bursting – possibly resulting in the deranged uncle of global economic meltdowns. They cite poor returns for companies adopting AI; the tech giants’ bloated valuations, vast planned expenditure on data centres (I’ve seen it claimed that they will depreciate faster than they can produce revenue!), and multiple incestuous dealings among themselves; and the more general combination of a booming stockmarket with spreading belt-tightening in the middle class and outright destitution among the poor. If it happens, it will cause great suffering, but is also likely to make Trump so unpopular* no amount of gerrymandering and intimidation will keep Congress in Republican hands; Trump and those around him will face the alternatives of continuing as a lame duck administration, or an outright coup – most likely, I would guess, in the form of simply refusing to seat the new Congress.
*And of course will have similar effects on other incumbents everywhere.
James D. Watson was a great scientist. James D. Watson was a complete shit. There is of course no contradiction between these statements.
Palantir CEO Not Sure if His Company Is Involved in Caribbean Bombing, but if It Is He Is Proud
Link
Cartoon: Real American
Cartoon: Actually affordable health insurance plans
KG @ #99 — The fact that there is deemed to be an “AI bubble” is indicative of what’s looming. Bubbles always burst. Recall the “Dot-com Bubble” in the early 2000. But though that bubble burst, we still have the Internet and it’s bigger than ever. Some of the major players will barely hiccup, of course. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia will adjust. But a lot of small time “consultants” will go bust. AI and in particular genAI are probably here to stay and continue to evolve as there is value in the technology, just not the “god send” that sometimes portrayed.
Supreme Court issues emergency order to block full SNAP food aid payments, by Associated Press
Followup to comment 105.
Posted by a reader of the article:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/uh-oh-donald-trump-classing-up-the
Health insurance cost update, as reported by the Washington Post:
New York Times link
“How the Trump Administration Is Giving Even More Tax Breaks to the Wealthy”
“The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service are issuing rules that provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax relief to big companies and the ultrarich.”
New York Times link
“In March, the U.S. government sent more than 200 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.”
More at the link, including photos.
Trump is complicit in the torture.
Link
Scientific Frontline – Ceramic Material that Protects Against Radiation
New Yorker link
“The Human Toll of the Suspension of SNAP”
Followup to comments 77 and 78.
Romania and Bulgaria scramble to protect Russian refineries as Trump sanctions loom
“Both countries are mulling sanctions extension requests for their Lukoil-owned facilities. But deeper problems lie ahead.”
List of different kinds of unreliable narrators. My favv: The Murderbot (at the bottom)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EY83Ztm8B/
Mediaite
Oregon grocers they couldn’t offer 10% off to SNAP recipients, so they got creative
Expressing Emotions in Sweden (vs The Netherlands)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=O72dij1iEKw
Phil Moorhouse
“Elon Musk Exposed on Tolkien Ignorance (Yes, Really):
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=72VN5pRTZmY
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-08/police-allowed-neo-nazi-protest-outside-nsw-parliament/105987780
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-07/school-sorry-over-dress-up-charlie-kirk-halloween-costume/105984618
Huh, Kirk was a horrible scary human being so, I can kinda see that but then so was Hitler with similar views as Kirk and yeah, dressing upas him wouldn’t be okay either so anyhow..
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-new-glenn-escapade-mars-launch-webcast
I guess some NASA people are still working despite the shutdown..
The Young Turks has this clip – YouTube Is Censoring Videos Of Israel’s War Crimes (under ten minutes long) the first part of which is disturbing if well discussed & worthwhile until it segues into .. what the .. Ana Kasparian? Seriously? Anti-vaxxy or very adjacent to, really?
Scott Manley discusisng awhole lot more than the title suggests here – Seize The Night! – FAA Bans Daytime Rocket Launches – Deep Space Update – November 7th. just over 25 minutes.
On the ESCAPE singular dual mission aboiut to fly hopefully tonight / today here – The Final Countdown | ESCAPADE Mission to Mars 3 misn plus of scientist interviews.
Megyn Kelly doesn’t think Muslims should hold office in America. There’s a word for that.
“Amid an ideological civil war over antisemites in the MAGA movement, the right-wing podcast superstar unleashed a xenophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani.”
Newsweek: Donald Trump Proposing 50-Year Mortgages Sparks Backlash
This is Trump’s proposal to deal with excessive housing costs, make mortgages even longer. It probably won’t actually help but until there are actual terms spelled out and we see how many banks are interested it’s hard to say. This will probably reduce monthly payments slightly in exchange for adding another 20 years of payments.
It’s the sort of thing that would make sense to Trump because he buys property without intending to pay off the loan anyways. He just pays for a while, threatens or goes bankrupt, and then demands to renegotiate with the bank.
The Hill: Republicans scramble for ideas to reopen government after pressure tactics fail
At this point there is no widely popular plan, just a bunch of proposals. Several of the proposals would be out of the question for the Democrats. The significance here is that the Republicans are throwing out ideas to deal with the situation as the elected Republicans want to find a way out. The Republicans are less organized and more desperate then the Democrats on the shutdown at this point.
Of course having the Senate agree to a plan doesn’t solve the problem on it’s own but there would be a lot of pressure on the House Republicans if the Senate does advance some plan. At that point the House Republicans cant even say it’s the Democrats refusing.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ross-douthat-somehow-not-worst-person
“Ross Douthat Somehow Not Worst Person On ‘Did Women Ruin Everything Ever?’ Panel”
“Meet Helen Andrews.”
Followup to comments 46 and 105.
Washington Post link
Trump administration orders states to pause paying full SNAP benefits
“A memo issued by the Agriculture Department warns states that if they do not comply with the new orders, they will face consequences.”
New York Times link
“Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land”
“The Justice Department moved an inquiry that appeared initially focused on the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan to South Florida and is beginning to recruit line prosecutors.”
New York Times link
“On ‘S.N.L.,’ Trump Sidesteps Calamities and Unconscious Visitor”
“Nikki Glaser hosted this ‘Saturday ‘ Live episode, while Pete Davidson returned to update viewers on the boat he bought with Colin Jost.”
Videos are available at the link.
Videos are also available on YouTube
YouTube link
NBC News:
Link
Some air traffic controllers have reported to their supervisors that they cannot afford to buy gas. They can’t drive to work because they aren’t being paid.
More details:
Wielding obscure budget tools, Trump’s ‘reaper’ Vought sows turmoil in public health
And when those projects fail, Republicans will blame Democrats.
Conservation groups blast Trump’s pick to lead key environmental agency
Cartoon: Performative Christianity
For anyone who wants to take a look… Kilaeua is running a lava fountain at the moment. See here: https://www.youtube.com/usgs/live
Britain, France and Germany deploy anti-drone teams to Belgium
“Airports in Brussels and Liège suspended flights last week due to unidentified drones, and other UAVs overflew the port of Antwerp.”
Kyiv targets Russia’s energy supply after massive attack on Ukraine power grid
“Emergency power cuts have been introduced in a number of regions of Ukraine,” Energy Minister Svitlana Vasylivna Hrynchuk said.
White House gloats after BBC boss quits over Trump coverage ‘mistakes’
“Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, steps down after days of torrid headlines for the state broadcaster — and a direct attack by the Trump administration.”
More at the link.
The lava fountain at Kilaeua ended after about 5 hours. During that time, 8-9 million cubic meters of lava was erupted and eruption rate was 650 cubic meters per second. (Basalt has a specific gravity very close to 3, so some 24-27 million tonnes in 5 hours.)
NB
During the Swedish night, I got messages some asshole Democrat senators voted with the Republicans to betray their voters.
If this is true, EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT WHO VOTED WITH THE REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE PRIMARIED!
The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it has given in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/09/bbc-attack-trump-telegraph-tories-tim-davie-resignation
“Democrat ENDS SCHUMER CAREER By Doing UNTHINKABLE!”
I agree. This is a failure of leadership.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lN_8BdHWbUA
Kamala Harris has learned nothing.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1GJuoVt2bA/
The Onion
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxUSl7YiCCodAjdBGhS8kQW_9jQTKwqvYz
I want to post about something more cheerful than the Democratic surrender monkeys, so here is a nautical view from Stockholm.
Candela P-12 – Why Cities Are Betting on Boats That Fly!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BqHUOcT4F5c
Here is something to save you from dangerously high levels of blood pressure after reading the news.
.
20 Minutes of Adorable Kittens 😍
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=y0sF5xhGreA
Two shameful capitulations to fascism – by 8 so-called Democratic senators in the USA, and by the top executives at the BBC. Tim Davie, who has resigned as BBC director-general, is himself a Tory – he stood unsuccessfully as a Tory local councillor – but I’d bet Starmer will make sure some trans-hating pro-genocide Trump-arselicking shitbag is appointed to succeed him.
More cats
“I Made The Ultimate Heated Cat Shelter! (DIY)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sM82YBcmS_A
“20 Minutes of Adorable Puppies 🐶”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VAH-ixdFWFs
Word of the day:” Primary ”
It can also be used thusly: “seven Democratic senators got primaried”.
From Youtube:
“We are now living in a world where the former Al-Quaeda guy running Syria is less corrupt than the American president.”
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxRYKFPhYU6WNnuak8goR2A3N9euFO7QS4
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-delays-launch-of-new-glenn-rocket-carrying-nasa-mars-probes-may-seek-exemption-from-faa-order-for-next-try
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-04/hektoria-glacier-antarctica-retreats-fastest-pace-recorded/105968782
Birger at 142:
I get that you meant Sunday night, but I had a slightly amusing mental image of a cultural event called Swedish Night. As you may know, 6 November (last Thursday) is officially marked in Finland as the Swedish Day, when Finland-Swedes celebrate their heritage and the Swedish history of Finland. I understand this date was chosen in early 20th century, based on Gustav Adolf’s Day.
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/office-of-space-commerce-faces-an-uncertain-future-amid-budget-cuts-and-new-oversight
So the asteroid that the Lucy spacecraft flew past in April thsi year now has some name dsurface feature shere including Mungo :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geological_features_on_52246_Donaldjohanson#/media/File:Donaldjohanson_Offical_Name.png
Lumipuna @ 156
Thank you!
Via :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geological_features_on_52246_Donaldjohanson
Predictable but stillinfuriating and disgusting :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-10/trump-pardons-rudy-giuliani-and-others-in-fake-electors-scheme/105993118
A more wholesome topic than US politics (the critters below do not live in North America, their ecological niche is approximately that of your possums)
“What Do Hedgehogs Do At Night? “(Caught on Camera)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=AwzyHaQU9zY
@ 162
Yum! Earthworms!
Forgotten Weapons
‘Adventures in Surplus! Finnish M28 “Ski Trooper”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xK_Bo2KIBrM
This thing has done a lot of travelling!
More senate betrayal rage management content.
“Gentle Giant Golden Retriever Attacked by Tiny Kitten”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VwUe98WpJkQ
“A special log in the middle of a remote boreal forest”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TIl2iGdF-Lo
Voters Prepared to Block Nigel Farage with tactical voting
.https://youtube.com/live/2fJJwIsEQXQ
Demise of key IRS program shreds Trump’s claims about ‘affordability’
“The end of IRS Direct File offers timely evidence that the Republican administration isn’t actually interested in trying to address affordability.”
CNN: Supreme Court declines to revisit landmark same-sex marriage precedent
There are certainly some on the court that would like to overthrow this but apparently not enough.
‘Existential threat to democracy’: Reagan-appointed judge resigns and condemns Trump
“What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly,” Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote.
Followup to comment 149 and others up-thread.
As the Senate advances a plan to end the government shutdown, what happens now?
Related video at the link.
Trump Completes Jan. 6 Autocoup With Mass Preemptive Pardons
Trump getting booed at the Commanders game.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iu4j537hox5huj4bwnwgub4z/post/3m5a7te2sva2q
Video at the link.
3 solid minutes of booing. 3 solid minutes of schadenfreude.
Video at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/your-pre-and-post-democratic-capitulation
More details regarding the maybe-end-the-shutdown deal:
There are more embedded links to additional sources available at the main link.
Why Senate Democrats caved on shutdown—and why their excuses are BS
Videos at the link.
Florida’s anti-woke plan for education at the university level is a failure … an all encompassing failure on many levels:
Link
Cartoon: The aftermath
Cartoon: Good old journalistic ethics
Cartoon: Someone else’s train wreck
‘No Separation Between Church and State’: Inside a Texas Church’s Training Academy for Christians Running for Office, by ProPublica.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This article was co-published with Fort Worth Report and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/nobel-peace-prize-committee-says
Satire.
Why We Might Live in a “Barely Habitable” Universe
(Incidentally solving Fermi’s Paradox)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hj7a4mPkbsY
.
Anton Petrov
“Magnetic Anomaly 600 Million Years Ago (Maybe) Helped Complex Life Evolve”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eCqxi-wif5c
Targeting Obama, Trump promotes a satirical item about the ACA as if it were real
“There were already concerns about the president being too gullible to do his job. Over the weekend, he made those concerns far worse.”
New York Times:
New York Times:
Good news, as reported by MSNBC:
New York Times:
Trump’s wannabe dictator buddies get special treatment.
Washington Post:
‘Inflation is way down’: Trump team lays a rotten egg
Followup to comment 173.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/president-baby-hands-attends-nfl
A hack impacting Jaguar Land Rover was so bad that it hurt the U.K.’s GDP, Bank of England says
“The hack is estimated to have cost the company nearly $2.5 billion and delayed manufacturing for weeks.”
Governments and Billionaires Retreat Ahead of COP30 Climate Talks
“Worldwide, every other week seems to bring a new climate-related crisis. Increasingly, the response has seemed to be a dulled acceptance.” By Elizabeth Kolbert
Excerpts from a longer article are presented below. There’s more at the link.
Wholesome nature video to cheer you up.
“Martin to the lake on a windy day – surprising ending”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YTVkK9skFy0
Facebook diagram – who dominates the world.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DE61yFMkC/
Phil Moorhouse
“Farage’s New Brexit Promises vs REALITY!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ktPmwcszJEg
BRING THE POPCORN
“MAGA Civil War Erupts As Trump Trades Blows With Marjorie Taylor Greene”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=n7j4oI2nfx0
Bloomberg Law: Shutdown Deal Would Let Senators Sue for Jack Smith Searches (1)
Essentially the Republicans have figured that they don’t have a case against Smith so they are going to rewrite the law and let the Senators make a spectacle of the investigation. If this passes it will be a huge shield for Senators against the law because it becomes nearly impossible to investigate them without telling them. What modern investigation doesn’t involve communication records?
Politico: ‘Sold POTUS a bill of goods’: White House furious with Pulte over 50-year mortgage
Apparently Pulte is one of Trump’s few personal friends in the administration and can arraign a casual meeting anytime he wants. This lets him go around the bubble the rest of the administration tries to keep around Trump to keep him from hearing random ideas. “rest of administration” here probably means Stephen Miller. It doesn’t always work because Fox News feeds Trump some ideas and Laura Loomer has gotten private meetings that have resulted in firings.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Abuse of pardon power becomes a key feature of Trump corruption of the Justice Department
Video is 9:21 minutes
Maddow: Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (again)
Video is 10:02 minutes
Kash Patel’s MI5 letdown adds to beleaguered FBI chief’s list of embarrassments
“After months of missteps and failures, the last thing Patel needed was another embarrassing report that casts him in an unflattering light.”
Politico:
Good news.
Summary by Steve Benen of new reported by New Republic and NBC:
Good news.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-good-now-the-trump-tariffs-are
Trump requests Supreme Court overturn E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and defamation verdict
“An appeals court last year upheld a lower court’s judgment that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s, and later defamed her after she went public with her allegations.”
Russian forces ride into key Ukrainian city through fog on battered vehicles, video shows
“The video, likened to a scene from ‘Mad Max, ‘was geolocated by NBC News to Pokrovsk, where fierce battles have been taking place as Russia pushes to capture the city.”
Video and still photos are available at the link.
Why Trump’s talk about sending out tariff rebate checks makes so little sense
“As the president pushes ‘dividend’ checks from tariffs, there’s an accounting maxim he still doesn’t understand: ‘You can’t spend the same dollar twice.’ ”
It’s a problem that Donald Trump suddenly endorsed misguided 50-year mortgages. How he was convinced to support the idea makes it even worse.
Related video at the link.
Only a Fraction of Republicans’ Much-Touted $50 Billion Rural Health Fund Can Help Struggling Hospitals Pay Their Bills
Oh FFS.
Link
A video about CV 90 in Ukraine. It is obviously seen from the Ukrainan point of view, but the fact that most of the vehicles remain and function after all this time proves it is reliable and can survive a lot of combat damage (by contrast, Soviet-heritage troop transports were not designed around survivability but about low cost so as many as possible could be available for WWIII). I do not know if this version have programmable 40 mm shells.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qb8pJHJlPG8
Ukraine will host EU summit to unblock membership bid
“Diplomats are looking at ways to move Kyiv’s application forward despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s veto.”
Washington Post link
“BREAKING: Democrats Gain After Utah Judge STRIKES DOWN GOP Map”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=34hvZ3LbfBo
I usually do not publish links to this Youtuber since it tends to get quite technical, but you need some good news.
Sigh. As expected.
Republicans demand tougher abortion restrictions to extend Obamacare funds
Watch Obama show how a real president should act
“China removes two popular gay dating apps from Apple and Android stores”
A classic move by dictatorial leaders who feel insecure, alongside ethnic repression.
.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-removes-gay-dating-apps-blued-finka-apple-android-lgbt-rights
Becoz of c he does..
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-12/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-overturn-e-jean-carroll-verdict/105998988
“Polska” (Poland) comes from namesake tribe, ultimate meaning “field”.
Slovakia = land of slavs.
Slovenia = land of slavs.
Norge (Norway)= northern way.
Danmark (Denmark)= march of danes.
Sverige (Sweden)= domain of swedes.
New York = not old York
York = Jor-vik, Jor bay.
“Trump Screws Over His Scumbag Friends By Giving Them Pardons”
They may now lose their 5th amendment rights for their state charges if the accept the pardons!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4LAnI_H4-k
Re: birgerjohansson @ #217…
Before York was Jorvik, it was the Roman camp of Eboracum.
@ 213
Watch as the Dems cave on this too. “Abortion just isn’t a winning issue anymore, besides it alienates pro-life Dems.”
God Awful Movies
GAM532 Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible – Adam and Eve
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Digoa534uw
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-honors-those-who-helped-others-152
Politico:
Sam Lawler (Orbital dynamicist):
She’s in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Aurorasaurus map had crowdsourced sightings down to Florida!
Oops. here’s Sam Lawler’s original thread, at the instance she’s on, without the redirect from my instance.
For once from a Southern hemisphere source here – possible aurorae visible tonight :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-12/chance-of-aurora-as-peak-solar-activity-winds-down/105983750
@ ^ Never guess I hadn’t refreshed to see the latest comments before posting this would you?
“Mathematical model indicates Neanderthal disappearance can be explained by genetic dilution”
We are their descendants!
New project: trick the Nazis into regarding the muscular, blond-or red-haired Neanderthals as the original northern master race, so they donate funds to reconstructing the full genome instead of using the money to buy weapons for the race war.
.https://phys.org/news/2025-11-mathematical-neanderthal-genetic-dilution.html
https://www.msnbc.com/all
Epstein files return to haunt Republicans as crucial vote approaches
Video is 7:20 minutes
Meet the Democrat who toppled a MAGA sheriff in a key swing county
Video is 7:40 minutes
House Democrats released an email in which Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims.
Same video, “Epstein files return to haunt Republicans as crucial vote approaches,” as is highlighted in comment 229, tops this report from Steve Benen.
Officials in the U.K. have reportedly “paused” sharing some intelligence with the U.S., fearing that military strikes against civilian boats are illegal.
Related video at the link.
CNN: Trump says United States doesn’t have people with ‘certain talents’ to fill jobs domestically
Trump has triggered a MAGA complaint storm over this. Trump has spent so much time listening to a handful of billionaire friends and fellow grifters that he is forgetting the issues that brought him to popularity in the first place. At the same time Trump has actually imposed fees that make H1Bs less viable. His administration is flip flopping on these issues so fast that it’s policies end up being incoherent.
Big Coverup Exposed in Bogus Mortgage Fraud Cases
Followup to comment 230.
More details:
Link
If Trump can’t do tariffs, we will lose a squidzillion dollars
Pete Hegseth’s war on ‘beardos’ gets even weirder
Pete Hegseth only accepts his version of Christian Nationalism as real.
The MAGA people are going to be really upset if emails are uncovered showing he knew what Epstein was doing.
.
Oh, so that happened this morning…and they don’t care.
.
“Trump Gets AWFUL NEWS as Epstein SECRET EMAILS are UNCOVERED”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-lOCIrqy8uw
Drill, baby, drill—unless Republicans ask you not to
Followup to comments 230 and 235.
More details.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/epstein-files-with-trump-in-em-coming
Masked Israeli settlers attack Palestinian villages and IDF soldiers in the West Bank
“Israeli civilians ‘attacked IDF soldiers who were operating in the area and caused damage to a military vehicle,’ Israel’s military said in a statement.”
South African finance minister rebukes Trump’s claims of Afrikaner persecution
“The White House has repeatedly pressured the administration, and no U.S. officials will attend the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-orders-ice-to-arrest-67000
@237
You’d think that since those “nordic pagans” in the armed forces tend towards white supremacy, you’d think Kegsbreath be more supportive. But America’s bigotries have always been of a Christian flavor, so I can see why he’d be miffed.
New Yorker link
“The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands”
Re: birgerjohansson #228:
Book Excerpt: Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries 10e by Kenneth Feder:
Wikipedia – Nazi archaeology
Newly discovered RNA molecule could limit protein aggregation and prevent neuronal damage
(It has the potential to prevent Alzheimer’s and other diseases)
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-newly-rna-molecule-limit-protein.html
Supreme Court extends temporary pause on $4 billion in SNAP payments for November
“A deal in Congress to end the government shutdown includes full SNAP funding through September and could mean the Supreme Court will not have to issue a ruling later.’
A few more days of pain, and lack of food, for SNAP recipients.
New York Times:
Adelita Grijalva is finally sworn in as Trump scrambles to derail Epstein files measure
“As the Arizona Democrat becomes the newest member of Congress, the White House still hopes to kill the discharge petition she immediately signed.”
Followup to comment 250.
Link
Link
Trump might bury economic data
Posted by readers of the article:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-50-year-mortgage-scheme-instantly
Josh Johnson on The Daily Show: YouTube link
Washington Post link
“U.S. allies begin to push back on Trump’s Caribbean military strikes”
House will vote to undo provision letting senators sue over Jan. 6-related searches
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: U.S. troops not liable in boat strikes, classified Justice Dept. memo says”
“Trump administration lawyers said that U.S. military personnel engaged in lethal action in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution.”
We all know it is murder.
Think I mentioned this in a previous thread last week but the spider species Aulonia albimana :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulonia_albimana
was recently rediscovered in the UK after being feared to be nationally extinct and not seen since 1985 and there’s a good yt clip on it here -with interview with the co-re-discoverer at the 3 min 25 secs mark – total clip length is 9 mins.
Also an informative discussion of this spider here complete with, I reckon, great photo :
https://elearncollege.com/environment-and-conservation/wolf-spider-seen-after-40-years/
I do like the idea of the spider being seen as a symbol of hope here!
Bad political news from Oz altho’ with a metaphorical silver lining in that it probly sentences the LNP to further political destruction and irrelevance :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-13/liberals-ditch-net-zero-commitment/106003712
Been coming for a while now & likely means current LNP leader Sussan (not a typo for once) Ley will be going soon too.
Good political news from the USoA :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-13/us-vote-on-epstein-files-release-to-go-ahead/106005544
This Monday’s epsidoe of Planet America here – titled
Longest US government shutdown in history nears endgame but show covers more than just that and lasts half an hour.
Seems its really the three thousand and seven sisters actually :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-11-12/pleiades-seven-sisters-star-cluster-telescopes-astronomy/105993350
Seagrass in huge trouble in gamay (Botany bay) but maybe biochar will help?
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-23/localised-extinction-risk-for-seagrass-in-gamay-botany-bay/105903236
Here’s hoping that actually works..
Stephen Colbert
“Of Course [Trump] Knew About The Girls” | Probably Illegal $1 Coin | The Ghost of Abraham Lincoln
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7101_QewqMM
The Daily Show: Epstein Emails Implicating Trump Surface as Ghislaine Maxwell Gets VIP Treatment in Prison
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XW1BmWYYF1M
Making churches a branch of Fox News was a mistake.
“The Bible Belt Is Splitting in Half — And Pastors Are Terrified”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=V3zwc29M6CE
“The 2026 Senate Elections Based on NEW POLLS in Every State.”
If GOP does just a little worse than in this map in Alaska and Nebraska, Republicans will not have a majority, even if the veep votes.
(The map avoids being overly optimistic, which I appreciate)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=npuvyd2Allk
MSNBC
Lawrence: Trump says 65% of Americans are ‘FOOLS!’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGnfLs-G2p4
Also, the truth about the end of the shutdown is more complex. The criticism should be aimed at the three senators who surrendered without attempting to get anything in return.
The Onion
Study Finds Most Americans Can’t Find Where They Are Being Deported On Map
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xwFv4e-1PDE
“Right-Wingers PANIC Over Election Losses With Unhinged Attacks On Women”
WOW. They are saying the silent part out loud.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jBRok7mjGJo
“A wealth of genes for seed improvement uncovered in living fossils ”
I am reminded of the necessity to feed people despite climate change hurting crop yields
.https://phys.org/news/2025-11-wealth-genes-seed-uncovered-fossils.html
Building The CAT ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND // “Catio”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gvrd27jFm5M
Mini X-ray
Tabletop particle accelerator could transform and materials science
.https://phys.org/news/2025-11-tabletop-particle-medicine-materials-science.html
Stephen Colbert’s Cyborgasm: A.I. Matthew McConaughey | “Walk My Walk” |Russian Robot Fail
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gd9EcuS6GVY
@260 StevoR: I do appreciate that what should be a happy moment for Trump signing off on ending the shutdown is actually borderline panic. The shutdown didn’t go as easily or as well for Republicans as they had hoped but in the end they didn’t have to make major concessions.
For Trump whatever gain he may have wrung from the shutdown is obliterated by Epstein problems. Things leaking to the press, the Maxwell prison situation and the looming vote must have him on the edge. The whole thing has made it clear his claims not to be deeply involved are a farce even to the far right. The administration is flailing about looking for anybody they can pressure into not voting for the discharge.
Considering how long they have and that they only need to get one or two votes it won’t surprise me if Trump finds a way to block the discharge. It’s already done massive damage and isn’t going to get better. Even if he manages to dodge this vote it will loom over him for the rest of his time in office. The Democrats can try to force this again and again, Trump will have block it every time.
Re; JM @ #274…
As I understand it, the discharge petition is now a done deal, so trying to get individuals to withdraw their support will have no effect. The House now has to vote on the underlying bill within 7 “Legislative days”. This is expected to have to take place by early December. On top of that, there are reports of several Republicans who didn’t sign on to the discharge petition that plan to vote in favor of the underlying bill.
Poltico: Jeffrey Epstein claimed he gave Russians insight into Trump
Something else in the Epstein information that Trump might want to keep buried. It appears that Epstein was talking to the Russians about how best for the Russians to handle Trump. It isn’t clear from what is released so far how much Epstein actually talked to them.
Epstein was also giving people in the Trump administration advice on how to handle international politics. At the same time he was giving other governments advice on how to handle Trump.
That is an amusing bit. Epstein at least thought he was manipulating Trump. Given Epstein’s history he would certainly try once Trump was in the White House.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
Shutdown ending as House passes bill to reopen government
Video is 4:21 minutes
Never-before-seen Epstein emails: Trump ‘spent hours’ with victim inside house
Video is 8:45 minutes
Via DW News :
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/irans-drought-a-disaster-in-slow-motion/a-74700581
Sorta related to that – Real Life Lore is a good, factually reliable yt channel in my view and does go into things in reasonable depth – as ironic as that wrod might be here – Why Iran is Rapidly Dying or should that be drying? 39 mins long.
Scott Manley
Blue Origin Cancels Launch Due To Solar Storm – What Are The Risks? – a dozen mins long.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/the-paris-climate-agreement-isnt-perfect-but-its-done-more-than-you-think/a-74556928
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-new-glenn-escapade-mars-launch-webcast
3 hours from now by yt count. Where it has just passed 3 am. dangnabbit.. Guess I won’t be seeing it live myself. Sttill. Hope otheerswatch & enjoy. Go ESCAPADE!
Zeteo yt SHORT Ms Rachel: It Should Be Controversial To Stay Silent on Gaza – here She’s right y’know. Huge respect. Truth from two good humans.
‘We’ve got notebooks full of ideas’: Republicans peddle dubious promises on health care
“After 16 years of broken promises, GOP leaders insist they’re serious this time about presenting health care proposals. That’s very difficult to believe.”
Also fulli interview Mehdi Hasan w Ms Rachel
Ms Rachel DEFENDS her support for Gaza’s kids – 30 mins long and isn’t it .. I don’t have the words . that she has to?
Trump’s Top Officials Spent Wednesday Trying to Pressure Boebert
OOPS! Pam Bondi’s Office Admits To Judge That They Made Major Mistake
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3aFtRIZW5IM
ICE’s attacks on immigrants are about to get much worse
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug asks, do you have dementia?
@283. Ms Rachel -18.05 mark:”& our translator I remembered she had said “Thankyou for seeing our children as human.”<//i>
https://www.wonkette.com/p/anti-abortion-rights-creeps-get-increasingly
“Anti-Abortion-Rights Creeps Get Increasingly Creative With The Plots To Institute A National Ban”
^ Like that’s somethig special .. exceptional .. & somethow it is..
@290.
That people cannot see that other people are also people has to be right up there as Humanity’s biggest flaw and explanation for our inhumanity to the other people who are also Humanity.
“I Can Spot AI Art Instantly – 5 Ways You Can Too”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EyrlM5Qa5pw
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sean-hannity-learns-all-about-the
“Sean Hannity Learns All About The Epstein Files!”
“With the help of liberal radio superhero Stephanie Miller.”
Washington Post link
“EXCLUSIVE: FIFA will use Kennedy Center free of charge for World Cup event, contract says”
“The Kennedy Center booked the World Cup draw at President Donald Trump’s urging. It will occupy much of the campus and displace planned performances.”
When Trump talks about ‘trillions,’ does he understand what the word means?
“The president keeps using the word “trillions,” but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.”
That’s a childish tactic.
Saving Christmas Island from invasive ants.
“They Released Millions of Ant Killers on Crab Island – And the Change Was Instant”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=fh0to9P5PMc
“Why Women LOVE This Fanservice Anime”
‘My Dress-Up Darling’ has two persons with unusual hobbies. The boy makes traditional Japanese dolls, the girl likes cosplay. Eventually, the boy helps with tailoring strange outfits to her specifications. It puts some anime tropes upside down.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pF1yqExVhC8
Onion headline that could be real
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxFAWzn7K8IHYgsJ06RSosLGhxUXl1ONwy
CNN: Hearing on Lindsey Halligan’s authority as US attorney in James Comey and Letitia James cases
Quick run down on the hearing. Here is the important part:
This is significant. In Halligan’s special appointment Bondi has sworn she reviewed and approved documents that apparently don’t exist. That might get the case chucked on it’s own.
Re StevoR at 262: I just learned to identify the Pleiades cluster during this northern fall (in October, before the weather here turned very cloudy and rainy). In Finnish it’s called Seulaset or “the sieve holes”. In my suburban environment under optimal conditions, I was barely able to directly see one or two of the stars. But in side eye view, the whole cluster suddenly became visible as a fuzzy blot.
Supposedly, the Māori have separate names and mythological roles for nine stars of the Pleiades. I learned this some years ago, after stumbling on Maisey Rika’s music on YouTube. One of her albums is dedicated to the Pleiades folklore and titled “Nga mata o te ariki Tawhirimatea”, one of the Māori names for the cluster. I very much like her music, and the aesthetic of Māori language. She also has some music videos with amazing visuals.
New York Times:
CBS News:
Assocciated Press:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Associated Press:
“I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime
Much more at the link.
Damage and trauma:
Reality check:
StevoR @ # 262, quoting abc.net.au: The Pleiades star cluster or Seven Sisters is part of many Indigenous groups’ songlines, as well as being important in cultures around the world.
A book on North American indigenous beliefs I came across in the ’70s (I think) included a star chart showing how some western tribes saw entirely different figures from the European ones in the “Taurus” part of the sky, including a pattern they called “Coyote”. The Pleiades, per the caption, was dubbed “Coyote’s Dung”.
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : yes. A lot of differnet cultures have very different views of our skies and their own differnet constellations. There’s a whole field of ethnoastronomy which one of my friends and someone who appears on the radioand teache scourses is an expert on.
Aka Archaeoastronomy it seems : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoastronomy
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/apy-art-centre-collective-the-australian-newspaper-sued/106000020
“Jeffrey Epstein advised Steve Bannon during 2018 pro-Trump media campaign”
Of course he did.
(Looks at photo) – are Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller really human? I recall that alien in the first Men In Black film who wore a human as a skin.
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/jeffrey-epstein-steve-bannon
Music! This lady has an independent mind, turning down big contracts twice to avoid corporate back-seat driving.
“Robyn: Dopamine review – complex emotions, instant euphoria: no wonder pop’s A-list love her”
.https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/nov/13/robyn-dopamine-single-review
https://www.msnbc.com/all
Epstein survivors keep the pressure on Congress
Video is 8:26 minutes
Many Republicans expected to vote with Democrats on releasing Epstein files
Video is 7:47 minutes
Link
“Paul Ingrassia’s history of radicalism made him politically radioactive. The president rewarded him with a promotion anyway.
“Despite ‘Nazi streak’ controversy, Ingrassia lands a new gig in the Trump administration
Related video at the link.
Trump personally chose the racist wannabe-Nazi dude.
Russia blitzes Kyiv with drones, missiles, killing at least 6
Trump says he will ask DOJ to investigate Democrats, business leaders with ties to Epstein
Trump is NOT asking the DOJ to investigate his ties to Epstein.
Trump is not supposed to be directing DOJ investigations.
I don’t think Trump’s attempt to direct investigations into only Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files is going to work.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/but-his-emails-russia-russia-russia
“BUT HIS EMAILS! RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA!”
“These Jeffrey Epstein Russian ties sure are interesting!”
This is one PZ will like. As I’m sure everyone will:
https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/3212b.png
None of the main slime snews organizations had the honesty to present Rep. Adelita Grijalva’s rebuke of mofo mike johnson’s antics. Most people are living in an information desert. So, I thank Lynna for all the info she provides and curates here!
I found a source for the message from Rep. Adelita Grijalva:
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/11/rep-grijalva-delivers-barnburner-after
The rival of SpaceX succeeds with landing a rocket
Blue Origin Landing Their Rocket on Their Second Attempt!
.https://youtube.com/shorts/XjSmNf3y37U
https://www.wonkette.com/p/seattles-mamdani-katie-wilson-clinches
‘Seattle’s Mamdani’ Katie Wilson Clinches Mayor Win, Fox News Being Super Normal!
shermanj @321, you’re welcome. Thanks for the appreciation.
In other news:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-and-ken-starr-sitting
https://www.wonkette.com/p/lawsuit-hvac-guy-claims-working-with
“Lawsuit: HVAC Guy Claims Working With Women Is Against His Religion”
Followup to comment 309:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/cover-up-tabs-fri-nov-14-2025
More details concerning what Jeffery Epstein said about Trump:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/imagine-if-your-famous-dead-pedophile
https://www.wonkette.com/p/despite-trumps-denials-climate-change
“Despite Trump’s Denials, Climate Change Still Every Bit As Real As Epstein Files”
“USA skips UN climate summit, but Gavin Newsom’s there.”
Followup to comment 318.
Washington Post link
“Bondi says Justice will investigate relationships to Epstein suggested by Trump” [A suggestion that does not include Trump himself!”
Trump accusers join Epstein survivors in plea to Congress to release files
“Deliver a promise the American people have awaited for far too long,” they implored lawmakers in a letter.
Followup to comments 318 and 330.
Pam Bondi posted:
That’s in reference to Trump publicly asking Bondi to investigate only the Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files.
Commentary:
Link
Indiana Senate won’t vote on redistricting, defying Trump’s push. By Associated Press
Reuters:
MSNBC:
NBC News:
Associated Press:
Politico:
New York Times:
Politico – Brussels knifes privacy to feed the AI boom
Scott Manley’s yt clip here –
Blue Origin Literally NAIL The Landing Of Their New Rocket as the ESCAPADE mission now flies. 16 mins long.
ABC News: Justice Department quietly replaced ‘identical’ Trump signatures on recent pardons
The error being getting caught. With all the noise they have been making about Biden’s signatures for Trump to get caught not directly signing them funny. It’s too insignificant of an issue for it to be anything else unless Trump actually tries to undo pardons that Biden signed or retroactively negate some of his executive orders.
Epstein scandal is a reminder of what sparked the Me Too movement
Video is 10:18 minutes
Update to information regarding what used to be MSNBC links: “Welcome to MS.NOW, our new digital home. Same mission. New site.” The site is now part of Versant.
Trump announces tariff cuts on food, citing high prices
Video is 6:46 minutes.
Cartoon: Trump island
The Epstein emails:
Link
Ron DeSantis says it’s Florida’s turn to rig election maps
A Rapist, a Pedophile, & the Dumbest Man Alive Walk Into a Bar. Bartender Says…
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-wanted-olivia-nuzzi-to-have
“RFK Jr. Wanted Olivia Nuzzi To Have His Unvaccinated Polio Babies And Other Things We Didn’t Need To Know”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-looting-of-us-treasury-officially
https://www.wonkette.com/p/greg-bovino-bids-chicago-adios-until
Washington Post link
“The cheap health insurance promoted by Trump officials has this catch”
It sounds like the insurance companies are running a scam. They are also using tactics that routinely allow them to avoid paying. This is a Trump-supported grift.
Washington Post link
“Don’t call it MSNBC. MS NOW takes on Trump’s Washington.”
“Going it alone without NBC’s name or deep bench of reporting talent, the newly rebranded cable news network is staffing up. MS NOW wants you to know that nothing has changed — except for a few things.”
Link
Perfect for explaining deep time to creationists. Justlook at those lahar deposits.
.
Myron Cook:
“Explore Numerous Layers of Petrified Trees: Yellowstone National Park”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=N0o_D5Ay1vg
Longest Straight Line You Can Sail On A Boat Without Hitting Any Land (32000 km)
.https://youtube.com/shorts/RZ3VvqmFM8g
Climatologist Simon Clarke answers the question What is the point of #COP30? and grades some of the nations policies.Almost 30 mins long.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-16/mystery-surrounds-missing-russian-foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov/106008516
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/solar-system/the-solar-system-may-be-racing-through-space-3-times-faster-than-expected-is-the-standard-model-of-cosmology-wrong
“Cell Vs The Homelander” #shorts
I’m cheering on the green homicidal alien this time.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/vOS3ffK-u9A
Mehdi Hasan yt SHORT here – What’s Next For Gaza After Israel’s ‘Fake Ceasefire’?
.
Source : https://www.newarab.com/news/rashida-tlaib-20-us-lawmakers-push-resolution-gaza-genocide
Nathan Tankus (US accounting wonk) – The longest government shutdown in U.S. history ends without ameliorating our constitutional crisis
Latest episode of Aussie ABC’s Planet America Congress to vote on Epstein files as shutdown ends -nearly 50 minutes long.
ICE’s biometric dragnet is a 21st century general warrant for your body
“DHS and ICE have created something the Founders feared: a roving license for agents to search anyone, anywhere, at any time.”
Related video at the link.
“Furious Pope STRIKES BACK against Trump Inside USA”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_vQCgu-14TE
Taps run dry as water crisis forces Iran to consider evacuating its capital
Related video at the link.
Well, I guess Trump is no longer Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jesus.
Link
Health insurance costs will skyrocket
Health care in the USA is going to be, even more that it was before, a luxury for rich people only.
Sen. Whitehouse Goes Solo to Climate Summit — and Says Trump’s State Dep’t. Tried to Lock Him Out
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:q3bbdtxch45wvfxrxpblphxn/post/3m5jt6hv4xs2i
Image at the link.
Heavy rain floods camps in Gaza, worsening conditions for displaced Palestinians
North Korean military aid to Russia dwindles
Washington Post link
“SNL takes on the Epstein files as Glen Powell hosts”
“The Epstein files were lampooned on the show’s cold open, a series of MacGruber sketches and Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che.”
More details and video excerpts at the link.
Videos are also available on YouTube. YouTube link to Weekend Update
Link to “Just about everyone hates data centers.”
Are Russian war bloggers imperiled?
You can tell that Trump is more of less bullshitting here, but it is a fact that US military is still killing people in civilian boats in international waters. The count of dead people is now up to 83.
Link
FFS.
Link
@377 Lynna, OM: There is another reason why the war bloggers are in trouble. Everything not pro-state, pro-Putin, pro-war has been shut down and people arrested. For the officials in the Russian state security who are responsible for arresting people this is a problem. With the war not going in Russia’s favor they are not about to risk stopping arrests. They might get shipped to the front themselves if they run out of targets. So now they are arresting the people who are pro-war, pro-Putin but don’t follow the official state line exactly. The longer this goes the smaller the deviance that will get a person arrested.
That’s going to cause chaos: USDA head says ‘everyone’ on SNAP will now have to reapply
The Trump administration claims that deceased people are receiving checks is probably false, or it is at least greatly exaggerated. I remember when DOGE doofuses claimed that deceased people were receiving social security checks. They were wrong. DOGE doofuses misunderstood how the software worked.
JM @380, good points.
JM@ 380
This is pretty much how Stalin’s purges played out
.
“Lets Talk About Frieren”
Scroll past the first 2 minutes for a detailed analysis of Stark, Fern and Frieren in D& D terms (only for D&D enthusiasts).
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vUSfxU8tHco
The Donald is doing social media again.
“Demented Trump Wants Military To Invade Chicago Over Vacant Real Estate”
The empty mall DJT references does not exist.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zkcHHrtEbYY
Hailey Alexis has lived many years in Germany before going back to Florida and posted many videos about differences.
“Things That Are Cheaper In Germany Compared to the USA”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dtG9xRH97P4
Should be ‘Hayley Alexis’.
Boruku:
“A Femboy Explains Femboys”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4I6i1aff1J4
I did not know they came into existence by literally absorbing the souls of women. And the part about the pentagram was deleted by his lawyers, so I feel no wiser.
Fun use of AI
“Trump Gets Skewered By His Own Truth Social AI Tool”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DaANJuBEE48
Gigguk: “Fall Anime 2025 in a Nutshell”
The descriptions start at 2.55 .
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=v7QXLK1fkn0
As I am not living inside the USA I do not know the extent to which the partial release of Epstein files, or the yo-yo tariffs or the whole ‘skilled immigrant visa’ things have caused friction within the MAGA crowd.
.
I have come to regard them as a monolithic cult. Please inform me if there is real, serious friction or if this is just media hype/ wishful thinking.
Random ruminations.
My beef with the Martians in War of the Worlds is not that they were into genocide – practically every civilisation seems to be into that – but that they used suboptimal tripods for locomotion.
Had H G Wells never counted the legs of arthropods?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv653v1vjo
More at the link.
Kind of pointless…he could just tell Blondi to release the files and have done, so it looks like he’s trying to get out in front of the vote so he can look like he’s leading on the issue instead of being hammered by it.
whheydt@392
Read the fine print – it is about the documents they are “legally allowed” to have. He is starting up a lot of investigations so the documents pertaining to them will not be aitomatically turned over.
Be careful with roombas
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19tU8FQPti/
Let’s Talk Elections
“Trump Melts Down as Indiana GOP Rejects His Map Plan ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aNXRRi4XbUU
Dan McGrath -one of the creative minds behind The Simpsons and King Of the Hill- has died of a stroke at 61.
Meidas Touch
“Trump’s DOJ Head Todd Blanche Accidentally Admits to COVER UP for Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VzKXkTLjE_U
BTW Trump is mentioned in more than half of the emails that have been released.
Germany Furious with China! No More “Trash,” Chinese Energy Giant’s Acquisition Fails.
(Methinks he is referring to Temu and Shein)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4kJX7vfiwxM
DJT was apparently triggered by a re-run of a Seth Meyers show and rage-tweeted about it. Hmm… High blood pressure + rage… I like where this is going.
Potholer54’s latest clip here – Can we adapt to climate change? (Hint: The answer begins with ‘Y’) but just get past the sart – it is good and make ssome exccellent points -a dozen mins long approx.
Chemical compound holds potential against Alzheimer’s disease
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-chemical-compound-potential-alzheimer-disease.html
Ultra-strong, lightweight metal composite can withstand extreme heat
.https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-ultra-strong-lightweight-metal-composite.html
.
One of the world’s oldest blood pressure drugs (hydralazine) may also halt aggressive brain tumor growth
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-world-oldest-blood-pressure-drugs
^ Guess its going to disappear nto the old thread / new thread overlap any sec now, sigh. Still.
Trump’s 2020 election cases aren’t totally dead
“The sudden resurrection of the Georgia conspiracy case against Trump and 18 co-defendants is an unwelcome turn of events for the president and his allies.”
Related video is available at the link.
I only have a reasonable suspicion that it seems likely that enough time has passed for the magat administration to ‘sanitize’ all the epstein files, removing all material implicating tRUMP. And that is why, after all the ranting, tRUMP now wants them released. It would be interesting to see some factual information either proving or disproving this.
@390 birgerjohansson: There are a couple of things going on at once.
1. MAGA was never a unified movement. Trump is not organized or clever enough to setup a centralized cult. It is really a bunch of independent splinters that only look unified when they all line up behind Trump at the same time. Each splinter has it’s own perspective of what is really important.
2. There are some real hard right breakaways. Some of the politicians associated with MAGA are hard right flake jobs. There are people that go hard with whatever idea or conspiracy attracts their attention. For a while they aligned with Trump but some of them have gotten obsessed with new things.
3. There is some fundamental conflict between the top and bottom that didn’t exist in his first term. His first term was a lot more real right wing populism. This time he has surrounded himself with rich people and/or yes men. The end result is more pandering to wealthy/corporate interests and less actual populism. Look at Trump carving lots of exceptions to his tariffs to suit big donors but treating inflation as a Democratic myth.
4. There is a good chunk of the Republican base that buys into every child abuse conspiracy that comes along. These are the people that believed Rocket Pizza conspiracy. Now they are doggedly following an actual conspiracy that Trump would rather they didn’t and accidentally doing some good.
5. The press is playing it up. Political infighting gets good ratings.
Steve Benen summarized a report on ms.now:
In other campaign news, as reported by New Jersey Globe:
Link
Trump issues another round of pardons for Jan. 6 rioters
“Among the most scandalous of the president’s pardons were his commutations for Jan. 6 rioters, whom he’s still assisting for unrelated felonies.”
Followup to shermanji @404.
Trump’s New [Gaslighting-the-Public scam]: The House Should Vote to Force Me to Release the Epstein Files That I Won’t Release
Same link as in comment 409, plus an embedded link to more details.
Excerpt from the embedded link:
Agriculture chief tells whopper of a lie about beef prices
Sure, let’s give every last MAGA creep a big payout
Taxpayers are funding this entire scam.
Lynna @345 quoting Courier Newsroom:
From that link.
birgerjohansson @397 citing Meidas Touch 53s in, who cites WSJ.
WSJ – The Epstein Email Cache: 2,300 Messages, Many of Which Mention Trump
The 1,600 “documents” mentioning Trump is ambiguous. A subset could be more than half of the 2,300 “email threads” (the WSJ title says 2,300 messages!?). “Email files” is ambiguous.
WSJ just did a name search and filtered out false positives like “trump card”. They should have quantified the news stories unless they were trying to undermine the “more than half” suggestiveness.
United24 Media: How Putin’s War Machine Falters Under Sanctions, Strikes, and Supply Shortages
The accumulated problems are starting to jam up the system. Even the defense industry companies are starting to have to cut back production, a terrible sign for a country in a war.
All of the big companies are delaying payments and employee salaries to cover for money they don’t have. As these delays get worse and carry down the chain everything starts to jam up.
Militarnyi: Russian Tank-Building Uralvagonzavod Announced Large-Scale Layoffs
Uralvagonzavod is a big heavy industry conglomerate. It isn’t clear yet if the reduction will be in tank construction. This is one of the most important companies in Russia in general and critical for supporting the war. That they would be reducing staff for any part of the company is a bad sign.
Judge orders DOJ to turn over grand jury materials to James Comey, cites ‘disturbing pattern’
It’s a clown show in the courts when it comes to Trump administration appointees and cult followers.
Sky Captain @413:
True!
JM @414, glad to hear that fundamental cogs in the Russian war machine are damaged or failing.
In other news: Trump proposes to narrow where Clean Water Act applies
That’s a developing story. We will probably see more commentary soon.
On Walmart and Thanksgiving costs, Trump’s ‘big fact’ is neither big nor fact
“Pressed on federal efforts to address consumer costs, the White House has exactly one talking point — and it’s demonstrably false.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-those-epstein-files-trump-always
“Oh, THOSE Epstein Files? Trump Always Supported Release Of THOSE Epstein Files!”
“He’s not mad. Don’t put in the paper that he’s mad.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/hegseth-rushed-to-walter-reed-hospital
satire
Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor Lindsay Halligan is in big trouble for her actions in the James Comey case, like lying to the Grand Jury.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VGng3a33ZOc
Lynna, OM@ 418
“Trump seems to have not seen this coming, which is no surprise. We suspect that Trump every year doesn’t see winter coming.”
He has the planning horizon of a goldfish.
For instance he told Texas governor Greg Abbot to gerrymander Texas. Because, as we all know, there is totally no big, Democrat-run state that might retaliate in kind.
.
Greg Abbot in turn failed to consider the map of Republican-voting areas included large numbers of hispanics that since have been antagonised by ICE’s racial profiling, with American citizens caught in the dragnet. Years of Republican efforts to attract hispanic voters have been ruined in a few months and those ‘safe’ Republican areas are not so sage anymore. In fact, it is feasible the redristricting will be a failure!
birgerjohansson @421, good points. And, LOL.
In other news; The unfortunate reason Trump withdrew his nominee for a key IRS post
“The Senate was poised to confirm the White House’s choice for IRS chief counsel, right up until Trump decided he no longer supported him.”
Trump-appointed FEMA chief resigns after six troubled months on the job
“As the agency’s acting administrator exits, it’s hardly unreasonable to wonder whether FEMA can survive the president’s second term.”
Foreign governments have figured out how to receive favorable treatment from Trump
“The White House’s recent interactions with Pakistan, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia offer a case study in how U.S. foreign policy is not supposed to work.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/scott-bessent-says-weve-got-cows
“Scott Bessent Says We’ve Got Cows”
New York Times link
In Major Breakthrough, U.N. Security Council Adopts U.S. Peace Plan for Gaza
“Russia and China abstained. The vote provides a legal mandate for the Trump administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire to rebuild the war-ravaged enclave after two years of war.”
New York Times link
“U.S. Will Sell F-35 Jets to Saudi Arabia, President Says”
Jet-powered microlight aircraft.
Sekiyado testflight 2025/11/08_2
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DXUuExL8Cac
Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged, physicians rights group finds
“Physicians for Human Rights -Israel noted that Israel has refused to provide information about hundreds of Palestinians detained during the war.”
Farage is gunning for Brexit 2.0. Can he be stopped?
“U.K. officials vow to “get on the front foot” as populist Brexiteer Nigel Farage picks his next target: the European Convention on Human Rights.”
More at the link.
Lynna you are doing a great work. Please do not burn out yourself. Looking for every news story of the horrors of the Trump presidency… not a fun task.
France plans to supply Ukraine with up to 100 Rafale fighter jets
“Kyiv looks to beef up air force.”
More at the link.
@431, thanks for the advice birger.
I post so much news that you may not notice, but I do take breaks from absorbing, editing, or posting any news.
Trump administration removes report on missing and murdered Native Americans, calling it DEI content
@411 Lynna posted about ‘Agriculture chief tells whopper of a lie about beef prices’ The first is this: that we are suffering from the last administration’s literal, literal war on cattle.’
and to expand on that:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-gives-bonkers-explanation-for-rising-beef-costs/
Arguing the beef industry is in “a perfect storm” that the White House “inherited” from the Joe Biden administration, the (treasury) secretary shot back that rising costs are a direct result of migrants entering the U.S. from Latin America.
Tomorrow they’ll probably be blaming it on vaccinations!
SciAm – Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication
O.K. good advice from @431 birgerjohansson regarding burn out.
Here is a comic (laugh and cry at the same time) take off at an old Sci-fi favorite tv show
https://cdn.prod.dailykos.com/images/1499491/story_image/TMW2025-11-17colorXL.jpg?1763335017
CNN: Polish train track that helped transport aid to Ukraine destroyed in ‘act of sabotage,’ prime minister says
Apparently Poland can’t pin this on Russia yet. There is some possibility of local nut jobs. There is likely a better chance Poland’s government will suppress information if they don’t want to risk triggering a war.
If this does turn out to be sabotage by Russians, it may indicate a new risky phase of the war. One where Putin is desperate enough to see what he can get away with in NATO countries. If he tries that it will eventually become a general NATO vs Russia war. The NATO countries will not put with continuous sabotage and eventually something too public would happen.
Scientific Frontline – TU Dresden develops laser drill to explore icy moons
At last, space lasers, overseen by Tino Schmiel, with a Yiddish surname. =)
From the paper:
Amanpour & co yt channel Al Gore on America’s Noticeable Absence at COP30 Climate Conference with some good – both positive and informative stats stated. Almost 7 mins long.
Feel a connection to a celebrity you don’t know? There’s a word for that”
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/nov/18/feel-a-connection-to-a-celebrity-you-dont-know-theres-a-word-for-that
I am not really ‘parasocial’ – I wished Freeman Dyson and James Lovelock merry Christmas because I admired their work. And had a bit of back and forth with snail-mail. They were retired, and had time to answer. Plus, researchers rarely need to fear deranged fans the way Judie Foster et al do.
Look at this map of tax rates. Then compare it with a list of the most happy countries in the world.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19J2eLDmcV/
But the conservatives know low taxes are the solution to poverty, earthquakes, baldness, flu and overcast summer vacations.
Stephen Colbert
“Jeffrey Epstein: Trump’s A Bad Guy | “Bubba” Was Neither A Clinton Nor A Horse | Trump: I don’t Care ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7WvAF8ET6AQ
Jon Stewart:
“Epstein Emails Reveal “Bubba” Bombshell About Trump & Republicans Pretend it is NBD.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaAuXttZbDM
…and if “pizza” is a code word for sex trafficking Stewart just found the evidence nailing Trump.
Aussie TV Channel 35 Worldwatch SBS News is shwoinga pressconference withthe Epstein victims now. Via France24news :
https://www.france24.com/en/
But cannot find the exact thing there right now..
https://www.ms.now/msnbc/watch/maddow-trump-weirdness-and-destruction-produces-ceaseless-string-of-bizarre-headlines-252252741740
Maddow: ‘Trump weirdness and destruction’ produces ceaseless string of bizarre headlines
Video is 5:02 minutes
https://www.ms.now/msnbc/watch/hundreds-show-up-for-training-to-resist-ice-protect-their-neighbors-252249669868
Hundreds show up for training to resist ICE, protect their neighbors
Video is 6:33 minutes
https://www.ms.now/msnbc/watch/we-expect-honesty-town-catches-trump-planning-ice-prison-demands-answers-252249157661
‘We expect honesty’: Town catches Trump planning ICE prison; demands answers
Video is 8:29 minutes
https://www.ms.now/morning-joe/watch/this-is-a-human-issue-epstein-survivors-speak-out-ahead-of-house-vote-252266053635
‘This is a human issue’: Epstein survivors speak out ahead of House vote
Video is 11:40 minutes
Trump administration scraps Biden plan to compensate flyers for flight disruptions
“When it comes to consumer benefits, the differences between the Biden and Trump administrations are stark.”
This link about a bronze-age city in steppe country halfway between the West and China attracted my interest. The silk road has sometimes been closed due to migrations and wars. We know that at the time of Herodotos it was closed, as the Aechemenid Persian empire did apparently not trade further east, nor is there any mention of it during the time of Alexander the great.
Yet 1600 BC there was a 160 ha city at the Irtysj river at eastern Kazakhstan. If a (pre-written record) trade route existed between East and West it would have supported cities along the route and explain why the onset of the Iron age war simultaneous in East and West due to cultural exchange.
.https://phys.org/news/2025-11-city-ravines-bronze-age-metropolis.html
The Epstein files: there are caveats and Republican shenanigans to consider:
Link
New York Times: “Some Democrats and supporters of the National Endowment for the Humanities are questioning what they see as gutted procedures and a tilt toward handpicked projects.”
National Endowment for Propaganda?
Link
The Handbasket – I’m suing DC Metro Police for body cam footage of US Institute of Peace raid
The Handbasket – Former USIP security chief says MPD gave ‘high-fives and fist bumps’ after raid
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #452…
A “Halligan tool”, better known as a “Halligan Bar”, is a fire fighting entry tool. It’s as much a “tool used for lockpicking” as a sledgehammer. It has a spike and wedge with striking surfaces opposite them designed so that you can get a start to prying open a window or door and use a sledgehammer to drive the point in far enough to get good leverage. Because of what you use it for, and how it is used, it is sometimes referred to as a “Hooligan bar”. I used to own one as part of my emergency supplies.
Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halligan_bar is the Wikipedia article on the Halligan Bar, with pictures.
re whheydt @454: Or you could watch Chicago Fire because the firefighters regularly carry such a tool and use it in the course of their work. That way, you could see it in action, although not real-life, but it is presented very realistically. For sure not a “lockpicking tool”.
Re: johnson catman @ #455…
I took a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) course run by my local fire department. We got shown a Halligan Bar (and numerous other tools) and how they work.
FYI… For anyone and everyone in the US, I strongly recommend going through CERT training. It’ll teach you what you need to know about how to respond to start picking up the pieces (e.g. urban search and rescue) after disaster strikes. The instructors will put emphasis on the locally likely types of disasters. It includes how to recognize when NOT to go into buildings (because you don’t want to get trapped a become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution). The course also included hands-on use of fire extinguishers, not just a lecture on how to use them on various sorts of fires. Being in California, much of the course I took dealt with post-earthquake response.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-bill-force-release-epstein-files-bipartisan-vote-rcna244301
Nothing I can see in the article on who the lone “No” vote was.
@ 457
They must have updated the article:
“Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no.”
The lone “no” vote was Clay Higgins of Louisiana.
Good news … for now: Federal court blocks Texas Republicans’ redrawn congressional map
“The new lines, which were designed to help the GOP gain up to five House seats in next year’s midterm elections, triggered a nationwide redistricting battle.”
Link
Pardoned Capitol rioter tried to bribe child sex victim with promise of Jan. 6 payout, officials say
“Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, faces multiple charges in Florida, including lewd/lascivious molestation, according to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office.”
A small Oregon crabbing town is taking on Trump over plans to build an ICE prison, by Rachel Maddow.
“More than 800 Newport residents turned up at a city council meeting to protest the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to build an ICE facility in their town.”
Trump being even more disgusting than usual:
Link
@whheydt #453:
LOL, and here I thought bump keys were cheating.
Lynna #464:
Which reminds one to worry where Trump’s hand has been.
Education Department takes a major step forward in the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle it
“Six agreements that the Education Department signed will effectively move some grant programs to other agencies.”
More details at the link.
Senate passes bill releasing Epstein files
A followup of sorts to comments 278 (StevoR) and 368 (me).
New Yorker link
“Texas’s Water Wars,” by Rachel Monroe
“As industrial operations move to the state, residents find that their drinking water has been promised to companies.”
New York Times:
New York Times:
New York Times:
NBC News:
New York Times:
MS NOW:
Link
re whheydt @456: My comment was not directed at you. The “you” was a generalized “you” for people that might want to see a Halligan Bar in operation as opposed to looking at pictures of one. No insult or slight was meant to be directed at you. It was merely a suggestion of an alternate means of observing the use of the Halligan Bar.
NB! “Trump’s Georgia Prosecution Is Finally Back On Track”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=b4HG_rwvNGc
The prosecution under Georgia jurisdiction concerns Trump, Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell and many others.
Re: johnson catman @ #474…
No offense taken. People now have a couple of different ways to learn about Halligan Bars.
I just learned that a court has slapped the fingers of Greg Abbot for trying to gerrymander Texas.
‘Daylight Atheism’ at Freethought Blogs might be somewhat in the shadow of other blogs but it deserves an audience:
.
“How many churches would feed a starving baby?”
.https://proxy.freethought.online/daylight/2025/11/18/how-many-churches-would-feed-a-starving-baby/
Let’s Talk Elections:
“The GOP’s Midterm Chances Just CRATERED”
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=20RBFu56UJw
.
A Trump-appointed judge put Texas’ redristricting on hold. With other changes, the House could get a very substantial Dem majority.
Republicans’ SNAP Problems Are About To Get MUCH Worse
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=m1sZPUrXohU
Animan:
“Winter 2026 Anime Is Insanely Stacked”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXh-XYtppyY
Scott Santens (Income To Support All Foundation):
Stephen Colbert:
Epstein Files Vote Is A Huge Loss For Trump | “Quiet Piggy” | Dictator Besties | A Flying McDonald’s
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XMbiwzL-Xmk
“Quiet Piggy”…
OK if this is the level of discource to be used for the White House, so be it.
…consodering his girth DJT should be referred to as ‘The porcine POTUS’ or Mr. Big Pig Orangeface.
Comedian Flips the Script on Donald Trump in Brilliant Fashion (it starts at the 3.12 mark)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=y3q_EHrU9iM
The racist stuff about Black people and watermelons is BS. But it is true for guinea pigs!
“My guinea pigs going wild for watermelon rind”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/xUlXo8O4LHc
Tim Miller: “Trump Crossed a Line Even MAGA Hates” (the attack on Thomas Massie)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EBZ0srpe6OM
After this, you deserve a few clips with Alaskan Malamutes.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/fykMhHhNRa8
“Embraer C-390 Ultra Short Landing Shocks Everyone at Airshow Display.”
Also, observe the righthand turn after takeoff.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cjbIQZBFJr8
.
A typical couch in a household with cats. “Gary has a problem.”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/NqsCTQ8GBgo
New York Vs. Trump | The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qjn2THpwRwc
50 “Meanwhile, In Canada” Photos
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=E9f4KbdTZ9s
Does anyone know how the vote count in Chile’s election is going?
“New cable design mitigates flaws in superconducting wires”
Conductor on Round Core (CORC) wires.
.https://phys.org/news/2025-11-cable-mitigates-flaws-superconducting-wires.html
Imagine if you could transport power between east and west without losses, powering the East when the sun is still shining on PV panels in the West?
The Trump era is the culmination of a trend that has been going on since 1973.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16jBbksL3w/
Marie Tharp Discovered Tectonic Plates. No One Believed Her. [STEM HISTORY]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-cO8vCxz4cE
“Sweden’s 88 Gripen Fighter Offer to Canada Just Shocked the Pentagon!”
The availability of alternative engines makes it possible to go ahead even if USA refuses to grant continued licence production of the current engine.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-cO8vCxz4cE
Heart-Stopping Airbus Landing at the World’s Most Treacherous Airport: Paro International Airport.
(Note how the aircraft literally has to zig-zag between mountins to get in position)
To quote Ali G: Respekk!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=O_tXDJsznw0
@492 birgerjohansson: You repeated the link from comment 491.
Interesting results from Denmark’s regional and municipal elections. I haven’t seen full results yet, but the governing “Social Democrats” – who have adopted racist hard right policies on migration and integration – lost the mayoralty of Copenhagen for the first time in over a century. The new mayor will come from the Socialistisk Folkeparti (“Green Left” is its name in English for some reason), supported by other left and green parties. Amusingly, the Graun’s article says:
“Voter fatigue”, eh? What’s that when it’s at home? I think the word the article’s writer was searching for was “disgust”.
Question: Will Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood take heed of the collapse of the last plausible argument for copying far right policies and rhetoric in order to retain power?
Answer: Will they, fuck.
We are certain that without a credible, objective, unbroken chain of custody, the epstein files being released are as dubious as the hunter biden laptop harddrive that was passed around by many partisan hacks. Adding to the liklihood of ‘sanitizing’ and ‘misplace some’ is the 30 days tRUMPs flunkies have before they need to release them.
We have found only 2-3 articles that touch on this critical subject.
“Trump SPIRALS After Epstein Vote Delivers Crushing Ending Blow To His Term”
Rick Wilson is co-founder of The Lincoln Project
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6OySqPjSPIM
CNN: Lindsey Halligan says full grand jury never saw final indictment it handed up against Comey
We have now wandered into WTF range. Halligan never actually showed the entire grand jury the final indictment.
Court rejects Texas law requiring display of Ten Commandments in public schools
“The Supreme Court already ruled against the Ten Commandments in classrooms. […] lawsuits against new Republican-imposed displays keep winning.”
Pam Bondi won’t commit to releasing full Epstein files