There is a temptation, I suppose, to assume that the ancient institutions will hold the line, that people in charge will push back against this and other outrages against democracy by Trump & the Republicans. That’s faith, though, and I’ll have none of it. We gotta raise a ruckus.

Also, the New York Times is dead wrong here — Merriam-Webster knows ‘whistleblower’ needs no hyphen.

I ain’t no lawyer but my vague understanding is that it’s illegal for the government to propagandize within the borders of these United States. Not that whether anything’s legal or not matters in this administration.

Schlicter is a straight-up fascist who wants to among other things “use the law to ensure blue submission” and “imprison dissenters” to achieve the aim, “force them to be like us”

Excerpt: In a 5-to-4 vote, the court said the preservationists who challenged the construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom did not have legal grounds known as standing to bring their lawsuit because they were not directly harmed by the project, estimated to cost $400 million.

Me again: This is a decision not based on or adjacent to the US Constitution, and the bullshit begins in the opinion’s first sentence: “In October 2025, the federal government started a project
to replace the East Wing of the White House.”

Donald Trump is not “the federal government.” Congress didn’t authorize this ballroom/military compound, and the President, being a tenant, not owner of the White House, has no legal authority to tear down existing buildings and build new ones. So “the federal government,” my unwiped ass.

This, like numerous earlier Supreme Court sidesteppings of the law and Constitution, are grounds for impeachment and removal from office. This must be a top priority, alongside impeaching and removing the President, if there’s to be any hope of America not simply flatlining.

What Hakeem Jeffries told me the House agenda will be next year if Democrats win

Excerpt: In contrast with the executive branch, which is required to preserve and ultimately make public a record of its inner workings, there are no laws to determine what the justices save, shred, burn or reveal, or when. The court does not share any information about policies or plans for records; a spokeswoman for the court did not respond to written questions.

Excerpt: Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church wrote on social media that Bel threw himself in front of a semi “after being teased by fellow students at Wright State about his ankle monitor.”

“I wish President Trump could hear the mom’s wails. The family wants people to know that this was a suicide and they want people to know that President Trump, (Stephen) Miller, and Markwayne Mullin’s inhumane immigration policies made this happen,” Ruby wrote.

Me again: Imagine you’re 20, legally in America, thinking you’re part of the country’s fabric, and then being illegalized and ankle-monitored and told you’ll be deported. Jaywalking the Interstate doesn’t seem like the most far-fetched response.

“Having a Green Card (officially known as a Permanent Resident Card) allows you to live and work permanently in the United States,” but…

Excerpt: ICE officials say they arrested Javar because he did not disclose a criminal conviction in the Philippines when he applied for a visa to move to the U.S. in 1995 to join his father, who was already living in the country as a U.S. citizen, according to ICE spokesperson Jason Chudy. That disclosure would have made him inadmissible at the time of his original application, he said.

Me again: Whether that’s true or false, it means that our federal government is employing people to scour through decades of foreign archives, looking for information that can be used against people like Javar, who’s been 30 years in the USA with no arrest, just living his life. How many people have that job description? How many thousands of work-hours have these federal employees spent, digging through old foreign-language records, searching and searching for a gotcha on each & every Green cardholder in America?

Excerpt: But the policies are an onerous, burdensome thing—that is exactly what they are. Four million more American adults will have to log their hours to get help with their groceries, along with the 4 million already doing so. As of January, 19 million will have to demonstrate that they are working, in training, or volunteering in exchange for health coverage. Assuming the new paperwork takes the average person two hours a month to complete—a lowball guess—President Trump and congressional Republicans are demanding 552 million hours of work a year from the country’s most vulnerable. The labor would be worth $21 billion at prevailing wages. It would be a full-time job for 265,384 employees.

Me again: This is kind of a ‘meh’ article, a specialty of The Atlantic, but it’s rare for anyone in media to even touch the topic: Relying on America’s safety net is damned near a full-time job, with paperwork, proofs, interviews, verifications, expected and unexpected letters in the mail, etc.

All the hurdles are supposedly to prevent fraud, but they keep help away from people who lack the time, patience, or (especially) the ability to endlessly navigate a system set up to prevent fraud instead of provide help.

Excerpt: The suit filed in October 2025 alleged that Bank of America, for years, ignored “a plethora” of evidence that Epstein was sexually abusing vulnerable teenage girls and young women for the sake of making a profit. It said the financial institution showed “absolute loyalty” to Epstein and conferred a veneer of institutional legitimacy that enabled him to operate an international sex-trafficking organization under the guise of noncriminal business activities.

The October lawsuit accused Bank of America of waiting far too long to alert law enforcement to Epstein’s suspicious behavior, endangering countless women.

It wasn’t until after Epstein’s 2019 death in a cell at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, that Bank of America filed suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, raising concern over $170 million in suspicious transactions between Epstein and Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, according to data released last year by the Senate Finance Committee.

Excerpt: It did not take a lot of special insight to suspect that recently installed CBS News boss Bari Weiss played some role in the production of a story the outlet ran on Monday, headlined “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks.” If you know even a little bit about Weiss, you know that such a story combines two of her favorite things: talking about people’s old tweets and blatant Islamophobia.

Just more capitulation to Trump, and pretty minor on the scale of things, but — are you still trusting Google to deliver ‘facts’ when you search, or to care about your privacy with all it knows about you?

Apple Maps follows Google in renaming Lake Ontario

Duh.

“Run the country like a business,” they said, but a business doesn’t usually throttle its revenue stream.

Excerpt: People like Mr. El-Sayed “see themselves not as citizens of a common nation fighting for every single person — whether they’re Jewish or Christian, whether they’re white or Black or brown — but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others,” Mr. Vance said. “And that is how, ladies and gentlemen, you destroy the United States of America.”

Me again: Isn’t Vance describing himself, and all Republicans?

Excerpt: Michael Boes, Steak ’n Shake’s “chief MAHA officer,” said the chain is responding to people looking for fast food they can feel good about. “This political movement didn’t come out of nowhere, right?” he said in an interview.

Steak ’n Shake’s revamp is led by Sardar Biglari, an activist investor and conservative figure who also owns Maxim magazine, insurance providers and oil companies. In April he hired Boes, a former Trump administration Health and Human Services staffer, to spearhead the chain’s new MAHA push.

Me again: Companies like Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby are outspoken about their right-wing politics, and companies like Cracker Barrel and Waffle House are so obviously redneck-friendly it goes without saying, but this is a new trend, I think — a reverse boycott, basically, as Steak ‘n Shake and Buc-ee’s almost literally announce that they don’t want my business, and anyone left-of-center should stay away. And they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t sustainable, profitable.

Prediction: Amazon will pay a fine that sounds huge but amounts to less than 1% of its annual revenue, the company will admit no wrongdoing, and nobody will be charged.

Excerpt: The Climate Change Superfund Act was signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2024 and required large fossil fuel companies to pay $75 billion over 25 years for projects to bolster the state’s ability to withstand the extreme weather associated with global warming.

Judge Brenda K. Sannes, an Obama appointee and chief judge for the Northern District of New York, ruled that the “unusual and sweeping statute” was unenforceable. She wrote in the 63-page decision that its ambitions surpassed the limits of state law.

Good thing America isn’t at war or anything.

Excerpt: Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Because of all the firings across the service over the past year, the Army, with more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers positioned across the globe, has fewer generals than at any point in recent history. Driscoll’s personal appeal to Trump just days before his exit was the most direct articulation of high-level concerns among Pentagon leaders about the strains facing the force—including Hegseth’s intervention in Army personnel decisions and the mounting demands of the Iran war.

Hegseth targets 7 more officers as his frustrated Army Secretary quits

Excerpt: More than half of the officers affected by Mr. Hegseth’s dismissals are Black or female in a force whose senior ranks are dominated by white male officers. Of the seven officers Mr. Hegseth removed from the Army two-star promotion list, two are Black and two are female.

The invasion and theft of Venezuela has barely been reported by American media, but you know in your heart it’s wrong, and that this deal is corrupt to the bone. The only thing known for certain is that this deal will make Trump personally richer.

Excerpt: “When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions,” he said. “It’s not constructive, but that’s their democracy.”

Me again: He’s a cold-hearted prick like all world leaders, I’m sure, but when it comes to dealing with America under Trump, this guy Carney has the right resolve.

America, be like Ecuador.

The cyclospora outbreak isn’t about lettuce. It’s about who is protecting you and your family from disease.

These companies charge whatever the market will bear, squeezing money from Americans’ health insurance, employers, Medicare if the patient is lucky, and whoever can’t afford the price becomes a corpse. Universal health care, now (and I wrote something more, but it would get me in trouble).

Excerpt: “Ultimately, it should be up to parents to decide whether they want their 6-month-old to get a raccoon bite, an opossum bite, or both at the same time. And don’t skip out on your turtle nips!”

Excerpt: In Nashville, the future of an ambitious series of bike lanes, called the East Nashville Spokes project, is up in the air after the Trump administration froze a $9.3 million grant, prompting a court battle that remains unresolved.

In Washington this year, the administration announced it was tearing out the 15th Street bike lane as “part of the president’s initiative to revitalize” the city. But in a 61-page ruling in April, Judge Amy Berman Jackson temporarily blocked the demolition plan citing an “absence of reasoned decision-making” in justifying the removal.

In Fairfield, Ala., a majority Black city of 9,500 people southwest of Birmingham, the administration canceled an $11.7 million grant for a bike and walking path, originally awarded under the Biden administration as part of a “sustainability and equity” program. Advocates had said that 17 percent of the families in the area do not have access to a car.

Excerpt: But dang it, LLMs are so undeniably useful. I have been writing code since I was 5 years old. I haven’t written a line of it since January. And for 20 years I did my own research, which is to say I read the papers, chased the citations down their rabbit holes, and built every argument myself. AI agents do all that now.

These were not lazy trades. They were correct trades, and I’d make them again tomorrow. Somewhere in the past year an LLM became my thinking partner, and I say that without embarrassment. I’m not the only one. Hundreds of millions of people reach for these tools every day, and they are not idiots.

Excerpt: The post claimed officers stated the donkey, named HeeHaw, ran up to them braying before they tried to tase him and then shot him dead.

I won’t say this unidentified cop is lying. It’s possible that Brianna Edwards pointed a gun at the cop, which could justify killing her. But if and when police bodycam footage is revealed, it’s not uncommon to find that cops were lying. It happens often enough that a headline like this, presenting the cop’s version of events as fact, is a dangerous gamble for any news media that wants to be trusted.

El Niño is a naturally-reccuring event, but…

Excerpt: “They will become more challenging as the climate warms, scientists say, adding heat to a planet where some extreme-weather events are already intensifying. El Niño is expected to persist into 2027, which is widely forecast to be the hottest year on record.

Excerpt: But perhaps the most alarming finding is that reefs, which protect coastlines from storms and support at least a quarter of marine life at some point in their life cycles, now have a much narrower window for recovery.

Excerpt: A rebellious teenager, Wendell was sent to Millersburg Military Institute, a boarding school near Lexington. He hated it. “The highest aim,” he recalled, “was to produce a perfectly obedient, militarist, puritanical moron who could play football.”

Dr. Steingraber’s Wendell Berry story