There’s an impersonator of Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the loose, and they’re using artificial intelligence to target high-level officials.
First detected in mid-June, the AI-powered scam involves voice and text messages that mimic Rubio. The messages are sent via Signal from an account labeled “Marco.Rubio@state.gov”—a fake email designed to look official. According to a State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post, at least five non-State Department officials have been contacted so far, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a sitting member of Congress.
Authorities still don’t know who’s behind the campaign, but the State Department believes that the goal is to trick powerful targets into sharing sensitive information and account access.
“The actor demonstrated extensive knowledge of the department’s naming conventions and internal documentation,” the cable noted.
In several cases, the imposter left voicemails and even invited targets to continue the conversation on Signal, a move experts say should raise red flags.
Former national security adviser Michael Waltz, who accidentally added a journalist to a Signal group chat about war plans.
“This is precisely why you shouldn’t use Signal or other insecure channels for official government business,” said Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley digital forensics expert.
But that warning might be too late. Signal has already caused trouble for the Trump administration. In March, former national security adviser Michael Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a Signal group chat about U.S. attack plans in Yemen. The fallout led to Waltz’s removal and a halt in using Signal for national security meetings. (Rubio has since taken over Waltz’s post.)
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth didn’t help either, with a report revealing that he shared details of a military strike in a separate Signal chat with his wife, brother, and personal attorney.
The Rubio impersonation isn’t even the first major scandal this year. In May, someone breached White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phone, pretending to be her in calls and messages to senators and business leaders. President Donald Trump downplayed the incident at the time, calling Wiles “an amazing woman” who “can handle it.”
The FBI hasn’t yet commented on the Rubio impersonation, which is a felony.
Meanwhile, the State Department is urging diplomats to report suspicious messages to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and other officials are being directed to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
“There is no direct cyber threat to the department from this campaign,” the cable read, “but information shared with a third party could be exposed if targeted individuals are compromised,” according to Reuters, which also obtained the memo.
The cable also referenced a Russian-linked hacker in April that targeted think tanks, Eastern European activists, and former State Department staff.
“Once malicious actors obtain phone numbers linked to an official’s Signal account, the impersonation part is easy,” Farid said.
But until the government stops relying on insecure messaging apps for sensitive issues, don’t be surprised if “Marco Rubio” keeps calling.
It's weird to blog about wtiches and ghost stories and batnados during the rise of a police state, but keeping room for wonder and whimsy and weird interests is part of how we resist the rise of a police state.
It’s difficult to keep track of all the ways in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is undermining public health. When it comes to the Food and Drug Administration, his assault ranges from firing the administrative staff who support drug safety inspectors to deciding that artificial intelligence will fix everything.
One of the Trump administration’s myriad purges of federal workerstook out the staff that coordinates travel for inspectors of foreign drug factories. While those eliminations might sound like small potatoes in the face of theterminations of top scientists and officials at the FDA, they make it much more difficult for those inspections to occur.
Most people who have ever had a normal job understand this. You can’t fire support staff without compromising the work of the staff they support. But since Kennedy, President Donald Trump, and former co-President Elon Musk have no idea how real jobs work, they’re probably unfamiliar with the concept. Still, these support staff cuts mean that managers, rather than support staff, are now forced to handle travel, budgets, visas, translators for FDA inspectors, and other tasks.
Guess what happens if FDA inspectors aren’t inspecting foreign drug factories that manufacture products for the United States market? You guessed it: Safety violations will go unnoticed and unaddressed. ProPublicadocumented that when FDA inspectors visited a Sun Pharma factory in India in 2022, they found metal shavings on equipment, contaminated drug vials, and unknown matter being mixed into drugs. Around the same time, a visit to an Intas Pharmaceuticals factory in India found manipulated testing records covering up the fact that things like glass were making their way into the drugs manufactured there.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, shown in October 2013.
So it appears Americans are going to experience the joy of taking drugs tainted by ground glass and god knows what else. Seems bad! But maybe things are better stateside?
Nope. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are planning to use artificial intelligence in the drug approval process. How? Well, Kennedy isn’t so clear on that part. He says AIwill be used to “look at the mega data that we have and be able to make really good decisions about interventions”—which is a word salad.
Kennedy’s toddler-level understanding of AI may also soon be imposed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS is currently a database that allows scientists to track reports of alleged side effects, and to use those reports as a jumping-off point for further research about the safety of a vaccine. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccineconspiracy theorists latched onto VAERS as a way to promote their anti-science beliefs.
Because anyone can report side effects about any vaccine to VAERS, that raw data is somewhat meaningless. It’s only after scientists review the data and determine whether the alleged effects are actually related to a vaccine that determinations can be made about safety. But since anyone can download VAERS data, anti-vaxxers ran to places like Fox News to report supposed vaccination-related deaths without acknowledging or understanding that those death reports had not been investigated or definitively linked to a vaccine.
Kennedy hasn’t been clear what AI would do with VAERS data. However, depressingly, the Verge islikely right that he will shovel the VAERS data into some AI system to review vaccine side effects.
This is a twofold problem. One, the administration’s deep love for AI as a replacement for people isunwarranted. Previous FDA dalliances with AI produced a bot that was supposed to help speed the review of medical devices. But the AI tool wasn’t connected to other FDA internal systems or external resources like medical journals. Well, who needs those, really? The tool also glitched out with basic tasks like uploading documents.
The notion that AI is ready for prime time and can undertake complex safety reviews is comical.
The second problem is Kennedy’s rabid anti-vaccine stance. He is frantically looking for side effects because his goal is tocurb vaccinations. He does not appear interested in using VAERS to ensure vaccines remain safe and available, so he no doubt doesn’t really care if AI produces slipshod work as long as he can wave around “proof” that vaccines are bad.
Fewer safety inspections, fewer guardrails on drug approvals, and conspiracy-fueled attacks on vaccines. Turns out, “Make America Healthy Again” means just the opposite.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday night that he nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
"He forged the Abraham Accords. He's forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other. So, I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize committee. It's nominating you for the peace prize, which is well-deserved," Netanyahu told Trump at a dinner at the White House, which Netanyahu was visiting as the pair attempt to find an end to Israel’s nearly two-year-long war with Hamas.
“Do It for the Bit” by Clay Bennett
Trump has long wanted to win a Nobel Prize because former President Barack Obama received one. But the prize has eluded Trump, who carries that chip on his shoulder daily and often rants about it in speeches.
Of course, getting nominated by Netanyahu—who has been charged with alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court—is unlikely to help Trump win the prize.
What’s more, Trump’s actions are completely unworthy of the Nobel, which is awarded to people or organizations that “have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses,” according to the Nobel Prize organization.
On the world stage, Trump has coddled Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, refusing to punish Putin for mercilessly bombing Ukrainian civilians, and instead blaming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the war Putin began.
Trump has also called for what amounts to ethnic cleansing in the Gaza strip, saying Gazans should leave so that the land decimated by Israel's war on Hamas can be taken over and redeveloped by the United States.
Trump has also supported Israel's campaign to bomb Iran, and has said he wants to take over Canada and Greenland—which he said he could do by force if necessary.
Safe to say, Netanyahu’s nomination was pure theater—an effort by the Israeli leader to make Trump happy so that he allows Netanyahu to continue his war against Hamas.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, must be jumping for joy because his apparent goal of making measles great again is finally becoming a reality.
The dangerous disease, which was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, is making a full and terrifying comeback. Over 1,277 cases have popped up this year alone, according to data from John Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation. The disease has hit 38 states and the District of Columbia. So far, there have been 155 hospitalizations and three confirmed deaths caused by measles.
Amid this worrying situation, Kennedy, in his new role, has steered pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention further away from vaccines. He has fired experts on a federal vaccine panel and canceled grants that fund research around critical vaccine research, all with President Donald Trump’s complicity.
Earlier this year, Kennedy posted on X about swimming in Rock Creek, a Washington-area waterway that is polluted with sewage runoff.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, who is known to swim in sewage runoff, has been telling pregnant women and children that they no longer need to get vaccinated against COVID-19. That move has put Kennedy knee-deep in legal trouble as well, with the serially shirtless grandpa being sued on Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other physician groups.
"We will not stand by while a single federal official unilaterally and effectively strips Americans of their choice to vaccinate with actions that thoroughly disregard overwhelming scientific evidence and decades of established federal processes," Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement obtained by Axios.
Then again, anyone who knows Kennedy and his cohort knows this was the goal.
And while Kennedy tried to distance himself from his statements during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year, we all know that actions matter more than words.
Martin County, nestled in northeast North Carolina, had 24,500 residents in 2010. By 2020, that number had dropped to 22,000. Like much of rural America, its population is steadily declining.
Politically, it’s followed a familiar trajectory. President Barack Obama carried the county twice by 5 points. In 2016, President Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton, 49.2% to 48.8%. And by 2020, Trump’s margin grew to 52% to President Joe Biden’s 47%. Last year, he won it by 55% to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%.
Now the county faces a very different kind of loss: its only hospital shut down in August 2023 due to financial strain, making the nearest emergency room 22 miles away—a 30-minute drive that, for some, is fatal. It’s even farther for more advanced medical services.
There were plans to reopen the hospital, but then Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid—framed as a crackdown on “fraud and waste”—shattered that possibility.
According to The New York Times, the impacts are felt acutely by Martin County residents, more than a quarter of whom are older than 65. The nearest hospital is in Greenville 40 minutes away.
Verna Marie Perry, 66, a former worker in the county’s adult and aging services department, told the Times that she now fields calls from friends in medical crises.
“Neighbors have called me crying moments after someone close to them died while being transported to the nearest hospital,” she said.
It’s a tragic reality made worse by the fact that some residents still can’t—or won’t—see the connection between their vote and the disaster now unfolding.
Cathy Price, 72, a lifelong Williamston resident and former nurse at the shuttered Martin General, told the Times that while she still backs Trump’s efforts to trim Medicaid, “we’re in a life-and-death crisis. People’s lives are on the line because of the hospital not being here.”
There it is: She voted to hurt other people, not herself. And even now, she clings to the fantasy that all of that “fraud and waste” must be happening somewhere else.
But the harsh reality is that there’s nothing remotely efficient about a hospital serving just 22,000 people. Rural hospitals aren’t profitable. They can only exist because of subsidies from urban areas—in effect, from liberals.
And for years, that was the deal: Blue America paid the bills so red America could have hospitals, schools, broadband, and clean water. In return, rural voters have voted to burn the country down.
Okay, then.
I feel for the 45% of Martin County voters who backed Harris. They tried to do what was best for their country and their county. As for Price and her fellow Trump voters?
Thehealth of U.S. childrenhas deteriorated over the past 17 years, with kids today more likely to haveobesity, chronic diseases and mental health problems like depression,a new studysays.
Much of what researchers found was already known, but the study paints a comprehensive picture by examining various aspects of children’s physical and mental health at the same time.
“The surprising part of the study wasn’t any with any single statistic; it was that there’s 170 indicators, eight data sources, all showing the same thing: a generalized decline in kids’ health,” said Dr. Christopher Forrest, one of the authors of the study published Monday in Journal of the American Medical Association.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought children's health to the forefront of the national policy conversation, unveiling in Maya much-anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” reportthat described kids as undernourished and overmedicated, and raised concerns about their lack of physical activity. But the Trump administration'sactions— including cuts tofederal health agencies,Medicaidandscientific research— are not likely to reverse the trend, according to outside experts who reviewed Monday’s study.
“The health of kids in America is not as good as it should be, not as good as the other countries, and the current policies of this administration are definitely going to make it worse,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara, a pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children's Hospital and UW Medicine in Seattle. He co-authoredan editorial accompanying the new study.
Forrest and his colleagues analyzed surveys, electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems and international mortality statistics. Among their findings:
Obesity rates for U.S. children 2-19 years old rose from 17% in 2007-2008 to about 21% in 2021-2023.
A U.S. child in 2023 was 15% to 20% more likely than a U.S. child in 2011 to have a chronic condition such as anxiety, depression or sleep apnea, according to data reported by parents and doctors.
Annual prevalence rates for 97 chronic conditions recorded by doctors rose from about 40% in 2011 to about 46% in 2023.
Early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms and loneliness also increased among American kids during the study period.
American children were around 1.8 times more likely to die than kids in other high-income countries from 2007-2022. Being born premature and sudden unexpected death were much higher among U.S. infants, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes were much more common among 1-19-year-old American kids than among those the same age in other countries examined.
The research points to bigger problems with America’s health, said Forrest, who is a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“Kids are the canaries in the coal mine,” he said. “ When kids’ health changes, it’s because they’re at increased vulnerability, and it reflects what’s happening in society at large.”
The timing of the study, he said, is “completely fortuitous." Well before the 2024 presidential election, Forrest was working on a book about thriving over the life span and couldn’t find this sort of comprehensive data on children’s health.
The datasets analyzed have some limitations and may not be applicable to the full U.S. population, noted Dr. James Perrin, a pediatrician and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who wasn't involved in the study.
“The basic finding is true,” he said
The editorial published alongside the study said while the administration's MAHA movement is bringing welcome attention to chronic diseases, "it is pursuing other policies that will work against the interests of children.” Those include eliminating injury prevention andmaternal health programs, canceling investments in a campaign addressing sudden infant death and “fueling vaccine hesitancy among parents that may lead to aresurgence of deadly vaccine-preventable diseases," authors wrote.
Officials from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Forrest said risks highlighted by the MAHA report, such as eating too much ultra-processed food, are real but miss the complex reality driving trends in children's health.
“We have to step back and take some lessons from the ecological sustainability community and say: Let’s look at the ecosystem that kids are growing up in. And let’s start on a kind of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, city-by-city basis, examining it,” he said.
Elon Musk is pretty cool with the fact that President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” gave a $1 trillion tax cut to gazillionaires like himself. What’s not great, according to Musk, is that Trumpdidn’t cut enough. So with the same unwarranted confidence he brings to all things, Musk hasdeclared he is starting the “America Party.”
Like all his efforts, Musk sees the creation of a new major party as a piece of cake, something no one else has yet succeeded at because they don’t have his big brain. So of course this will work, just as well as it worked with the Boring Company. You know, where Musk promised a network of high-speed underground tunnels where you could zip along at stupid speeds, but what we really got was a 2.4-mile stretch in Las Vegas where you get totoodle along in a Tesla driven by someone else.
Or maybe it will work as well as the efforts to get to Mars, where Muskonce promised crewed missions by 2024. Or perhaps it will turn out like his promises for full self-driving technology in Teslas, where we were supposed to be letting the Tesla computer entirely take over way back in 2016.
Per Musk, breaking the two-party system is “not hard tbh,” which are the words of a person who has paid no attention to American politics whatsoever until buying Trump the presidency. If Musk bothered to look around, he’d see that American politics has beennotoriously resistant to third parties, particularly celebrity-driven parties like the one Musk is proposing.
Musk also displayed his profound lack of understanding when hedeclared that the new party was needed to “represent the 80% in the middle.” In reality, there are very few things that 80% of Americans approve of, and Musk’s wholesale destruction of the federal government is not one of them.
Except Musk isn’t actuallygoing to try for widespread representation of those 80% at all. What he’s actually going to focus on are “just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.” Why? “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.
So, Musk will be handpicking seats to install representatives and senators by deploying his enormous resources, but that’s not about representing the people. Instead, it looks much more like Musk has simply decided to shift his locus of control from Trump to Congress, and will use those people he ushers into office to ensure he controls vote outcomes.
The market doesn’t seem too wild about Musk’s latest foray into politics, with Tesla sharestaking a bath as of Monday. This continues thetremendous drop in value Tesla has suffered since Musk made himself the face of the brutal cuts the Department of Government Efficiency unleashed. It turns out people do not like buying cars from aNazi-saluting goon who played a key role in the Trump administration’s dismantling of science, public health, safety, and more.
Unsurprisingly, Trump isnot impressed with Musk’s efforts, initially saying that it was “ridiculous” to start a third party because “we have a tremendous success with the Republican Party” and “starting a third party just adds to the confusion.” After he stewed on it some more, he made a Truth Social post saying that Musk was going “off the rails” and was now a TRAIN WRECK. Perhaps Trump willrenew his threatsto Musk that he’ll have him deported.
It isn’t clear at this point if the America Party effort will get Musk’s full attention, as DOGE did, or if he will treat it like one of his products, where Musk’s spectacular pronouncements always collapse into a series of broken promises made by a congenitally arrogant and lazy man. Either way, Musk’s efforts aren’t meant to help anyone except Elon Musk.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, must have had flight miles expiring soon, otherwise it’s hard to explain the extreme inopportune timing of his luxe family vacation.
Cruz was spotted on a relaxing tour of the Greek Parthenon Saturday as his constituents continued to suffer from deadly flooding, which has claimed at least 95 lives as of Monday—including 27 young girls from a nearby summer camp.
Meanwhile, while on vacation in Athens, Cruz was allegedly approached by a woman who said, “20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?”
“He sort of grunted and walked on. His wife shot me a dirty look. Then they continued on with their tour guide,” she told The Daily Beast.
Volunteers search for missing people along the banks of the Guadalupe River after recent flooding on July 6.
Cruz and his family are no strangers to dipping out when weather takes a turn for the worse. When Texas was hit with a massive winter storm in 2021 that left many without power and water, Cruz fled to Cancún, Mexico.
As for his timeline in Europe, Cruz reportedly jetted across the pond the day after a state of emergency was declared in Texas on July 3, and he returned on July 6.
Of course, as soon as he hit the ground, Cruz was quick to hop on Fox News to pretend that nothing happened.
“In the face of disaster, Texans come together. This is every parent’s nightmare, but we will come through this,” he wrote on X alongside a clip of him on Fox.
And while Cruz may be back to work, another bigger issue is brewing in Texas: the nearly 600 layoffs to the National Weather Service that likely contributed to the flood’s death toll.
In May, former NWS directors penned a letter warning that these cuts would lead to deaths in the case of extreme weather. Now, Democrats are calling for an investigation into whether these job cuts are directly linked to the growing number of deaths in Texas.
Regardless of who’s to blame, Cruz has an ongoing habit of jetting off when the going gets tough—a habit that unfortunately comes with receipts.
Over the weekend, 71 million people—anyone who has ever created an account on the Social Security Administration’s website—got an unhinged partisan email lying about how President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill “eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries.” It also floridly praised Trump for reaffirming his “promise to protect Social Security” and says that the newly signed law “helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned.”
We know that’s a lie. We also know the media knows it’s a lie. But they seem, as always, not ready to meet the moment. Rather than reporting on how there has never been such a nakedly partisan email from the SSA, and how turning agency communications into partisan boasts filled with lies undermines democracy, they’re desperately trying to explain it away.
Axios said it was “unusual for the agency to blast an overtly political message to its massive email list, which includes retirees and those who've signed up at their website.”
An elderly couple walks down a hall in November 2015 in Easton, Pennsylvania.
“Unusual” implies that there is a usual course of action this slightly diverges from, but that it’s also not wholly outside of the bounds of appropriate government communication. In reality, it’s unheard of. It’s tiresome to do the “Imagine if President Joe Biden did this” thing, but honestly, imagine it. The media would lose their minds. It would be “But her emails” combined with “Joe Biden is senile” times 1,000.
It’s not that past presidents haven’t had agencies blast out press releases touting their achievements. Here’s one that Axios dug up from 2010, in its attempts to characterize the Trumpy announcement as similar to past presidential communications. In the old press release, the then-head of Social Security praised President Barack Obama’s “commitment to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”
That example doesn’t really help Axios, though. First, the Obama-era announcement was a press release, not something sent to 71 million people’s email inboxes indiscriminately. Second, the 2010 statement was not about the passage of a partisan tax law, but rather, it was about how SSA now had new datasets available for researchers. And finally, of course, that 2010 announcement was not based on a lie.
Quite simply, the Big Beautiful Bill has no language in it whatsoever about eliminating federal income taxes on Social Security. In reality, the bill does give seniors an extra tax deduction—but only for four years, because the benefits should never last longer than Trump, only the tax cuts. But that deduction phases out based on income, and doesn’t apply to any Social Security recipients under 65, even though people are eligible to begin drawing Social Security at 62.
Axios isn’t the only outlet that should come in for blame here. The New York Times said that the Social Security Administration had “circulated an imprecise email,” as if it were internal communications about a potluck and it accidentally said Peggy was bringing chips, but it’s actually Timmy. CNN characterized it as “stray[ing] from the agency’s typically apolitical nature.”
Trump is now circulating his supposed evidence for how it gives everyone the tax break his email promised. That evidence is a scant little piece from Trump’s own Council of Economic Advisers. It’s dated as “June 2025” and comes in at 4 pages, including the title page. Rigorous analysis, this is not. But of course, it’s already getting reported as accurate.
When it comes to Trump, the mainstream media is constantly engaged in this sort of sanewashing, trying to paint Trump as just a bit off-kilter, a little more inclined toward some unusual styles of communication.
They know as well as you do that the actions of the administration and the president are so out of pocket, so repulsive, so partisan that it should be on the front page of every paper in America. But since this is Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, the media is going to keep giving him cover.
On Monday, in a pair of poorly written letters, President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on South Korea and Japan beginning on Aug. 1 if the companies within those countries do not "decide to build or manufacture product within the United States."
“We invite you to participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States, the Number One Market in the World, by far,” Trump wrote in the letters, which were overloaded with commas and filled with nonsensical capitalizations.
South Korea has expressed interest in negotiation with Trump, but said that it’s unclear what Trump even wants out of an agreement, which makes the negotiations difficult.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung delivers a speech to mark his first 30 days in office at Yeongbingwan of Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, on July 3.
“We’re doing our best, and the goal is to reach a genuinely mutually beneficial outcome, but at this stage, both sides still haven’t clearly defined what exactly they want,” South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung told the Singaporean outlet the Straits Times. “All I can say for now is that we’re doing our utmost.”
Trump’s letters come two days before the 90-day pause on his "Liberation Day" tariffs is set to expire, leaving Trump with several options: he can let the astronomical tariffs he placed on nearly every country on the planet go into effect, pausing the tariffs again, or some sort of middle ground where he puts a new and arbitrary tariff on imported goods if trade deals aren’t made in time. The letters to South Korea and Japan suggest he is going with the third option.
Economists say that imposing a 25% tariff on South Korea and Japan will be bad for the economy, as companies will merely pass down those taxes onto American consumers, spiking inflation to levels that could plunge the country into a recession. The United States imports billions of dollars worth of goods from South Korea and Japan, including machinery and mechanical appliances, transportation equipment, and chemicals, plastics, and rubber.
Trump, for his part, said when he paused the “Liberation Day” tariffs that he would make 90 trade deals in 90 days with countries.
But with two days to go before the deadline, not a single deal is fully signed. And the so-called "deals" Trump said are in the works with China, Vietnam and the United Kingdom are horrible for American consumers, as they will lead to increased tariffs on items imported to the United States from those countries that companies will almost certainly pass down to American consumers in the form of increased prices.
Of course, it's unclear if the new tariff threat against Japan and South Korea will ever even come to fruition. Trump has caved on nearly all of his tariff announcements, earning him the pejorative nickname TACO—which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. Indeed, in the letters he sent to the two countries, he said, "These Tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”
Nevertheless, the stock market responded negatively to Trump's latest trade mishegas, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling more than 500 points.
While the death count from the Texas floods continues to rise, with people still missing and more rain is expected to come, the Trump administration and Texas officials are busy playing the blame game.
More than 80 people have been confirmed dead and 41 are still missing—a catastrophic loss of life as a result of aggressive staffing cuts, Texas’ longtime dismissive attitude toward public safety, and extreme weather.
Much of the fight between the Trump administration and the state centers on whether the National Weather Service issued accurate and timely warnings about the flash flood that swept the Texas Hill Country early on July 4.
The NWSbegan providing early forecasts on July 1, and by the afternoon of July 3, it issued a flash flood watch—predicting up to 7 inches of rain. By that evening, the agency issued a “special weather discussion” explaining that flash flooding was likely and rainfall would exceed 3 inches per hour.
At 1:14 AM on July 4, the NWS issued a flash flood warning for Kerr County, tagged as “considerable,” which typically triggers alerts to be sent to mobile phones. And at 4:03 AM, the agencyupgraded the warning to a flash flood emergency, which is only issued when there is a severe danger to human life.
So that’s the NWS side of things. How about Texas?
Well, according to Gov. Greg Abbott, the NWS said it would flood, but it neglected to emphasize the severity.
People look through belongings at Camp Mystic along the banks of the Guadalupe River on July 6.
"The problem with that is that, to most people in the area, flash flooding would mean one thing, not what it turned out to be, because they deal with flash floods all the time. There's the potential for flash flooding, but there's no expectation of a water wall of almost thirty feet high," he said.
Also, according to Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr., the problem was that “this came at night when people were asleep in bed.”
It isn’t clear if Herring’s complaint was that the NWS warnings came while people were asleep or that the storm did, but either interpretation makes Herring look like a buffoon.
The state government also seems quite willing to place blame on local officials. Lt. Gov. Dan Patricksaid that local mayors and county officials are supposed to evacuate their residents if they feel the need.
And those local officials? They’re throwing their own residents under the bus. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly explained that the county doesn’t have its own warning system because it costs too much and “taxpayers won’t pay for it.”
And what does President Donald Trump think about all of this? Surely he’ll have somewords of comfort.
"I'll tell you, if you look at that, what a situation that all is. And that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn't blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe, and it's just so horrible to watch,” he said.
Trump is alsoplanning to visit the flood-ravaged area on Friday, an entire week after the flooding began.
Volunteers search for missing people along the banks of the Guadalupe River on July 6.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its stellar track record of being unable to coordinate messaging. While whining that it was “shameful and disgusting” that anyone would say that NWS cuts might be to blame, a White House spokesperson said that “NWS did their job, even issuing a flood watch more than 12 hours in advance.”
But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem kicked her own team in the teeth,saying that the “moderate” flood watch wasn’t enough because it didn’t predict the amount of rain.
Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas iscalling for an investigation into whether the staffing cuts at NWS played a role in the shocking death toll.
There’s no doubt that letting the untrained teen gremlins at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency gut government agencies contributed to this catastrophe. On the day of the flooding, the San Angelo NWS officewas down a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist. And the vacancy rate at the two local NWS offices is about double what it was before Trump took office.
But perhaps the most glaring evidence is that the NWS was also missing a warning coordination meteorologist, who had taken one of the retirement bribes that the Trump administration forced on federal employees. Warning coordinators liaise with local public safety officials, so the lack of that role likely compromised efforts to keep people safe.
There’s plenty of blame to go around here. Trump let his team gut the NWS, and it’s absurd to pretend that didn’t play a role here. But Texas’ desire to do things on the cheap can’t be discounted either.
No rules, no coordination, no accountability—just vibes. Seems to be working out just fine.
Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated that Kristi Noem oversees NOAA. The agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Laura Grimm is NOAA’s acting administrator.
MAGA influencers are short-circuiting after President Donald Trump's Department of Justice on Sunday leaked a memo saying there are no bombshell files about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and that the deceased financier indeed committed suicide in a federal prison.
"This systematic review revealed no incriminating 'client list,'" said the joint memo from the DOJ and FBI, which was obtained by Axios. "There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."
Trump and his aides—including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino—had previously said the government was sitting on an Epstein client list to protect the powerful people within it. Bongino also bought into the conspiracy that Epstein was murdered in a prison to keep damaging information about powerful people from coming out in a trial.
After Trump reentered the White House, Bondi tried to appease the base that was demanding the release of the purported Epstein files by holding a stunt at the White House where she gave a group of Trump-loving social media personalities binders it claimed were filled with the purported documents.
The binders, however, contained no new evidence and led to yet another MAGA meltdown.
When Trump’s MAGA base demanded more information, Bondi told Fox News that she had Epstein's client list "sitting on my desk right now to review"—a comment we now know to be a lie as the DOJ said in its memo that no client list ever existed.
MAGA influencers once again are incensed as they work out who they are going to blame for this latest let down: Bondi, Patel, Bongino, or Dear Leader himself.
"Blondi lied[.] She was always lying," right-wing bigot/influencer Laura Loomer wrote in a post on X, adding, "Who releases a statement about the Epstein files on the Sunday night of 4th of July weekend? Someone who doesn’t want you paying attention."
Laura Loomer arrives with then-candidate Donald Trump for a visit to the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in September 2024.
"Pam Bondi said the Epstein client list was on her desk to review for release to the public just a few months ago. Now the DOJ she leads claims that there’s no Epstein client list. Sorry but this is unacceptable," right-wing podcaster Robby Starbuck wrote in a post on X. "Was she lying then or is she lying now? We deserve answers."
"Dan Bongino either lied to us on his podcast for several years or he is lying to us now," Alexander Sheppard, a pardoned Capitol insurrectionist, wrote in a post on X.
And Mike Cernovich, a Trump fan who posed gleefully with the phony Epstein files at the White House in February, pleaded for Trump to release the files he desperately wants to believe exist.
“No one is believing the Epstein coverup, @realDonaldTrump. This will be part of your legacy. There’s still time to change it!” Cernovich wrote in a post on X.
Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk, the former co-president turned persona non grata in Trump-land, also mocked the Trump administration over the Epstein memo.
Musk, who just a few weeks ago said the Trump administration was sitting on the Epstein files because Trump was in them, posted a meme mocking those who believed the Epstein files would ever released as clowns.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin might be very skilled at Making Coal Great Again, but he’s not so solid on the whole First Amendment thing.
The EPA just put144 people on administrative leave for signing aletter of dissent about the agency’s policies. It follows a Marchopen letter where current and former EPA employees called both President Donald Trump and Zeldin out for their illegal dismantling of the core functions of the agency. However, the March letter was anonymous, and while some of the signatories of the more recent letter chose to remain anonymous, the 144 employees the EPA is now targeting signed the letter with their names and job titles.
In placing the workers on leave, the EPA didn’t hide the ball as to why they were being suspended. An agency spokespersonplainly said they were suspended as retaliation for their speech. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” said a spokesperson for the agency.
Here’s the thing. Government employees enjoy the protections of the First Amendment, even if the Trump administration doesn’t believe they should. Public employees are protected when speaking out about matters ofpublic concern, which Zeldin’shijacking of the EPA to, in his words, “drive a dagger through the heart of climate change religion” definitely is. There are a couple of caveats. If public employees are speaking in their official capacity about something that is normally part of their official job duties, then First Amendment protections don’t apply.
Environmental Protection Agency employees take part in a national march against the Trump administration’s actions, on March 25, in Philadelphia.
Here, just because people used their job title doesn’t magically mean they were speaking in an official capacity. The letter of dissent specifically does not purport to speak for the EPA but is instead directed to Zeldin. Additionally, it’s incredibly unlikely that anyone who signed the letter was doing that as part of their official job duties, unless someone’s job duty is to write public letters about the state of the EPA.
The right of public employees to speak out has tobe balanced by the employer’s interest in a workplace that is efficient and free of distraction. In other words, the speech of public employees may not be protected if it disrupts the workplace. But that’s a fairly high bar. If the speech interferes with the ability of superiors to discipline workers, impairs the employee’s job performance, or harms certain work relationships, then it may be disruptive enough that First Amendment protections don’t apply.
That might vaguely be what the EPA is asserting here whenit complained that the letter doesn’t represent the views of all the agency employees. That’s true, but the letter doesn’t purport to represent everyone at the EPA. It represents the people who signed the letter.
Normally, these 144 employees would have recourse via the independent agencies tasked with protecting federal employees. It’s a pretty slam-dunk case of retaliation for protected speech when your employer suspends you for saying something the employer doesn’t like. But the conservative majority on the Supreme Courtblessed Trump’s illegal removal of independent board members, which means that those independent agencies aren’t really independent any longer. Trump’s removal of Cathy Harris, the head of the Merit Systems Protection Board, left the MSPB with no quorum.
The MSPB is where federal employees goto challenge an adverse action, such as a firing or suspension. Without a quorum, employees canstill file appeals with the MSPB, and administrative judges can rule on those claims. However, if the employee or the agency disagrees with the ruling, they can petition the MSPB for review. If there’s no quorum, the board can’t review the ruling and issue a final decision. Put simply, even if these employees pursue relief through the MSPB, the EPA can just state it disagrees with the finding, and the entire process then stalls without a quorum.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin testifies at a Senate hearing on May 14.
Trump has also compromised the other path for federal employees to seek relief. TheOffice of the Special Counsel provides a secure channel for federal whistleblowers and protects federal employees fromprohibited practices, such as coercing partisan political activity. Federal workplaces are supposed to be free of partisan politics, but it doesn't get more partisan than suspending employees because you think they are “sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”
However.
Trump has nominated far-right troll Paul Ingrassia to lead the OSC. Ingrassia is a 30-year-old with a fervor for violent misogynist Andrew Tate and an affection for white nationalist Nick Fuentes. He appears to havecalled for Trump to declare martial law after the 2020 election, and might be a9/11 truther. Somehow, it doesn’t seem like Ingrassia, if confirmed, will ensure that federal workplaces remain nonpartisan.
Trump treats the presidency like an extension of his person, and his Cabinet has adopted that same framing: People voted for Trump, which means they preapproved anything he chooses to do. Any disagreement, therefore, means you are not respecting the will of the voters.
It isn’t surprising, with that mindset, that the administration is coming for the free speech rights of public employees. After all, how dare they speak out against Dear Leader?
Just because the GOP has signed on to Trump’s cult of personality doesn’t mean that federal workers have to do so as well.
A 27-year-old man was killed Monday after opening fire at aU.S. Border Patrolfacility in McAllen, Texas, authorities said.
Ryan Louis Mosqueda had an assault rifle and was carrying a utility vest when federal agents returned fire on Monday morning, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez told reporters Monday morning. Rodriguez said police received a call about the shooting around 5:50 a.m. and that Mosqueda fired dozens of rounds.
The shooting took place at a facility across the street from McAllen International Airport, which was shut down as a precaution.
The car belonging to the suspect with the words "Cordis Die" written on its door is towed away from the scene in McAllen, Texas, on July 7.
Law enforcement said afterward they found a second rifle, more ammunition and backpacks that the suspect had brought. Rodriguez said Mosqueda’s motive is currently unknown.
One officer was injured in the shooting, but Rodriguez said it was unclear if the injury was from shrapnel or a bullet.
Mosqueda allegedly pulled up to the facility in a white two-door sedan. Rodriguez said something was written on the car, possibly in Latin, but “what it means, or whether or not it is an underlying reason for him being here, I do not know.”
Mosqueda was linked to an address in Michigan, but was reported missing from a Weslaco, Texas, address around 4 a.m. Monday. Weslaco is about 20 miles from the Border Patrol facility.
“An hour and a few minutes later, he was at this particular location opening fire on the federal building and our federal agents,” Rodriguez said.
Additional information about the missing person report, including who reported it and the circumstances, was not immediately made available.
Going forward, the FBI will be handling the investigation, Rodriguez said.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump once again ratcheted up his destructive and nonsensical trade war, saying that the outrageously high "Liberation Day" tariff rates he announced in April will be put back in place for countries that do not reach trade deals before his arbitrary 90-day pause deadline expires on July 9.
"I am pleased to announce that the UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals, with various Countries from around the World, will be delivered starting 12:00 P.M. (Eastern), Monday, July 7th. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, President of The United States of America," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Letters” is how the administration refers to notices of tariff rates “and/or deals.”
This confirms a statement Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made on CNN earlier in the day when he said that if countries "don’t move things along, then on August 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.”
Trump also took his tariff threat a step further, saying in a subsequent Truth Social post that, "Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy." The 11 nations in the BRICS alliance have threatened to make their own form of currency, which Trump is seeking to stop.
Of course, who the heck knows what will happen with tariff rates, as Trump on Sunday appeared confused by reporters' questions about if and when the “Liberation Day” tariffs would go back into effect when the 90-day pause expires.
“Do the tariff rates change at all on July 9th or do they change on August 1st?” a reporter asked Trump.
“What are you talking about?” Trump replied.
When the reporter pressed again about what day the tariffs would go back into place, Trump responded with more word salad that didn’t answer the question.
“They're going to be tariffs. The tariffs are going to be the tariffs. I think we'll have most countries done by July 9th. Yeah. Either a letter or a deal,” Trump said.
Ultimately, if Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs—which were not only ridiculously high but were so shoddily done that even countries like the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands received tariffs—go back into effect, it will have horrible consequences for the U.S. economy.
When he first announced the tariffs in April, it sent the stock market into a tailspin, as investors worried that Trump's trade policy would plunge the United States into a recession.
But as it became clear that Trump almost always pulls a TACO (which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out), investors no longer responded with fear to Trump's tariff announcements, as they assume he will reverse them before they cause too much harm to the economy.
Indeed, the stock market on Monday has barely reacted to Trump's latest tariff threats, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 barely down.
If Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs do go into place, economists say the bottom will fall out.
“‘We haven’t seen price hikes yet’ is not the win some folks think it is. Our data are backward looking, and many of the worst tariffs are in the midst of a soon-to-end 90 day pause. Economic gravity still applies: Tariffs raise costs, and someone's going to pay,” economist Justin Wolfers told CNN.
Mirelys Casique’s line went quiet before the sound of stifled tears filled the speaker.
“We are the faces of the victims, of this pain,”she told Daily Kos from her temporary living quarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Casique, along with four other Venezuelan parents and the wife of a deported man, is currently seeking justice for her detained son. This was the only reprieve she had between endless days of knocking on doors and attending meetings at what Casique described as the United Nations’ “palace.”
Francisco Garcia Casique was abducted by ICE in the middle of the night and has been held in CECOT ever since.
“I don’t have the finest clothes, and I’m not very well-spoken. I don’t have a great profession, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have rights,” she told Daily Kos. “However, there have been many people here who have shown empathy, who have taken the time to investigate our children. They will do everything they can, but honestly, we haven’t received what we hoped for.”
Nearly two weeks prior, Casique and the other parents flew to Geneva in hope of getting the United Nations to intervene in President Donald Trump’s detainment of more than 250 Venezuelan men in El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison, CECOT.
“Of course, we are secondary victims, but we are victims because we are mothers, fathers, families that have been devastated. And, oh my God, how hard it has been to defend the innocent,” she told Daily Kos.
Casique is working on behalf of her 24-year-old son, Francisco Garcia Casique, who—while working as a barber in Texas as he attended mandatory immigration court hearings—was violently abducted by ICE in the middle of the night and later shackled and flown to CECOT.
Francisco, like many of the other detainees, has so far only been accused of being a Tren de Aragua gang member because of his tattoos. And while U.S. judges and the Supreme Court have attempted to intervene, men like Francisco still sit behind bars without a chance to prove their innocence.
Now Casique joins Karlyn Fuentes, Jetzy Arteaga, Angel Blanco, and Yosleidy Chaco in Geneva, though the lack of communication has made it difficult to know whether their sons—Francisco, Joen Suarez, and Carlos Alejandro Cañizales—are alive.
Karlyn Fuentes’ son, Joen Suarez
“I still couldn’t even say for sure that my son is there,” Fuentes, the mother of 23-year-old Suarez, told Daily Kos.
Soon after discovering their sons’ names on the deportation flight list, these parents formed what they now callCommittee for the Defense of the 252 Venezuelans Kidnapped in El Salvador. As of late June, more than 100 parents have joined the committee.
“We are a family of struggle—sisters in struggle—and we are always there for one another,” Artaega, the mother of Cañizales, said. “When one is in depression, the other is there. When one is calm, the other is crying. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat.”
The only person who can officially condemn human rights violations at the international level is the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
While Türk has called for the United States to carry out due process, the Venezuelan parents of those who have been detained present a unique challenge: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has a record of extreme human rights violations of his own.
In the past year, Maduro has been under fire for blatantly stealing an election from his challenger and imprisoning the opposition. The now third-time elected president also imprisoned a group of economists who reported data on the country’s declining economy.
On the outside, it may not seem fair to cast blame on these parents for the actions of their government. But as professor and Latin American political affairs expert David Smilde told Daily Kos, that’s unfortunately the way that it is.
Karlyn Fuentes holds up an image of her son, Joen Suarez.
“Nobody wants to listen to Maduro. [The U.N.] is really limited in what it can actually do with this because they’re such a stigmatized government,” Smilde said.
This may be why, when speaking with Daily Kos, the parents distanced themselves from their government, focusing instead on the heartwrenching stories of their abducted children.
The parents told Daily Kos that their trip to Geneva was funded by non-governmental organizations, but there are indications that funding came, in some capacity, from Maduro’s pocket—potentially making their association with the Venezuelan government hard to ignore. For instance, the family members appeared alongside Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Alexander Yánez Deleuze.
But Casique told Daily Kos that she’s not there to atone for the actions of her government.
“What fault do we have for the political and diplomatic problems happening?” she asked. “How long will we have to keep suffering?”
While the fate of their sons remains to be seen, these parents vow to continue holding each other up—for the sake of their children.
“One day you spend the entire day crying, praying to God. And the next day you tell yourself, ‘I have to get up,’” Fuentes told Daily Kos. “Because if I stay trapped in bed, there is no one to raise their voice for my son.”
Freelance journalist Juan Diego Ramirez contributed to this reporting.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional names of family members and to clarify the Venezuelan government’s potential role in the case.
Republicans are in for a long, hot summer in Washington, and the blistering sun is only partly to blame. Two new polls show Americans souring on President Donald Trump’s extreme policy agenda.
The polls, from KFF and Fox News, reveal concerning trends about the Republican base, including that non-MAGA Republicans now oppose Trump’s signature legislation, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed Congress earlier this week.
Five months into his presidency, voter confidence in the economy remains low. Despite Trump’s big talk of a new “golden age of America,” nearly 6 in 10 registered voters (58%) disapprove of his handling of the economy, according to Fox News’ poll. It also found that fewer than half (48%) say their family is holding steady financially.
If Trump’s troubles were limited to the economy, Republicans could distract voters by turning to the normally safe territory of immigration policy. Except now they can’t. Media coverage of Trump’s brutal deportation agenda has eroded voter support. Trump is currently underwater, on net, in his handling of immigration, according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling average.
Trump’s problems multiply when voters are asked about his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” his Medicaid-slashing, debt-exploding budget plan. Polls have shown for weeks that most Democrats and independents oppose it, but new data from health policy outlet KFF shows that nearly a third of all Republicans do too.
Overall, 61% of Republicans support Trump’s budget, but that support is concentrated in the party’s MAGA base. Meanwhile, 66% of Republicans who do not support the MAGA movement oppose the budget. Those frustrated Republicans open up an opportunity for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s primary organization for electing Democrats to the House, plans to launch a nationwide media campaign tying vulnerable House Republicans to Trump’s anchor of a budget. That campaign joins an ongoing effort by the Democratic National Committee to fill swing districts with billboards and local advertising touting the budget’s attack on health care and social services.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, shown on Feb. 1.
"From now until November 2026, the DCCC will continue to communicate the harm this bill will cause," the DCCC said in a memo. "Republicans will lose the [House] majority in 2026 and the Big, Ugly Bill will be the reason why."
Last month, a coalition of Democratic groups launched “Organizing Summer,” which DNC Chair Ken Martin described as a plan to invest over $1 million in winning various Virginia’s statewide elections this November. Unions are also investing heavily in linking Republican lawmakers with Trump’s budget plan, including a nationwide bus tour led by the AFL-CIO.
This year marks the first major test of Martin’s ability to use the DNC as an advocacy tool. With him opening the DNC’s financial floodgates and GOP lawmakers retiring rather than face angry voters, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is on the verge of becoming his party’s One Big Beautiful Blowout this year and next.
GOP leaders know they can’t hold the House of Representatives or the Senate in 2026 if their part of their base stays home or, God forbid, votes for a Democrat next year. But they can’t back down, either, for fear of enraging Trump. Republicans are stuck. And for once, Democrats are ready to pounce.
Banking for now on an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration, the city with the most lead service lines in the country doesn’t plan to finish replacing them until 2076.
Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap.
“It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine—low-income, Black households—that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it, but we never used our tap for just regular drinking.”
Now, as a senior policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Perry is part of a coalition thatfoughtfor stricter rules to force cities like Chicago to remove their toxic lead pipes faster. Last year, advocates celebrated a big win: The Biden-era U.S. Environmental Protection Agencymandatedthat water systems across the country replace all their lead service lines. Under the new rule, most water systems will have 10 years to complete replacements, while Chicago will likely get just over 20, starting in 2027, when that requirement kicks in.
But the city’s replacement plan, submitted to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in April per state law and obtained through a public records request, puts it 30 years behind that timeline.
Chicago’s plan adheres to statelawand an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration. It aims to replace the city’s estimated 412,000 lead service lines by 2076—completing 8,300 replacements annually for 50 years, starting in 2027.
The latest federal rule requires Chicago to replace nearly 20,000 pipes per year beginning in 2027—more than double the speed of the city’s current plan. Documents show city officials are aware of the new requirements, but have not yet updated their plans.
A delayed timeline will expose many more children and adults to the risk of toxic drinking water, and rising temperatures from climate change mayexacerbatethe risk by causing more lead to leach off pipes and into water.
For Perry, even 20 more years of lead pipes was a compromise.
“People are already being exposed—they’re being exposed daily,” Perry said. “There is no number [of years] that is satisfactory to me, but 20-ish years is better than 50.”
Chakena Perry waves at a May 2022 event in Chicago.
In recent decades, drinking water crises inWashington, D.C.,andFlint, Michigan, put the public health threat of lead on the national map. Lead pipes are a danger across the country, where about 9 million lead service lines need to be replaced to adhere to the new requirements. About a million of those are inIllinois—the most of any state in the country. Among the five U.S. citiesestimatedto have the most lead pipes—Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Milwaukee—only Chicago has yet to adopt the latest federal deadline. The rest plan to replace their lead pipes within a decade of 2027.
Lead can damage the human brain and nervous system, kidney function and reproductive health, and it’s also an underappreciated cause ofcardiovascular problems.
Lead is particularly harmful to children: It can hamper brain development and cause permanent intellectual disabilities, fatigue, convulsions, comas or even death. Lead exposure during pregnancy can also cause low birth weight or preterm birth.
In Illinois, the Metropolitan Planning Councilfoundthat people of color are up to twice as likely as white people to live in a community burdened by lead service lines.
Because of a three-year grace period in the 2024 EPA rule—theLead and Copper Rule Improvements, or LCRI—the city does not have to begin complying with the new replacement requirements until 2027. But Chicago’s plan outlines a timeline that starts the very same year and is significantly slower.
“I’m not sure what Chicago is thinking there,” said Marissa Lieberman-Klein, an Earthjustice attorney focused on lead in drinking water.
Chicago is facing a herculean task. Even with a 50-year timeline, it will have to start moving much faster than its current replacement speed: The city will need to replace more lead service lines annually than the total of 7,923 it managed over the past four years ending in March. Of these replacements, about 60 percent occurred alongside repairs for breaks and leaks or water and sewer main replacements.
Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Water Management, said Chicago is ramping up its replacement speeds. The city will replace 8,000 lines this year, she said.
“We have been and will continue to move as quickly as resources allow to replace lead service lines,” Vidis wrote in an email.
Asked about the feasibility of the current EPA rule’s 20-year replacement timeline, Vidis wrote, “We need substantial additional funding, particularly the kind available to help pay for private side replacements.” That refers to the city’s split ownership structure, where homeowners own one part of the line and the city owns the other.
Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the NRDC, said these financial woes are a reason for Chicago to put forward a more ambitious replacement plan.
Olson pointed out that $15 billion in national lead service line replacement funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law, expire next year.
“If Chicago isn’t beating down the doors to get that money, that is tragic, because that money could evaporate,” Olson said. “They should be front-end loading as much of the service line replacement as they possibly can.”
U.S. EPA spokesperson David Shark confirmed that Illinois water systems are currently under the new rule. But the agency did not answer specific questions about Illinois’ obligations between now and when the compliance deadlines start in 2027, citing pending litigation on the rule.
Illinois EPA spokesperson Kim Biggs wrote in an email that the state is operating under the replacement requirements included in the 2021 EPA rule and the state’s law until 2027.
Lead service lines were required by Chicago’s municipal code—reportedlyinfluenced by lead companies andthe plumbers union—for decades after much of the country stopped using them due to health concerns. According to a study published last year,two-thirdsof the city’s youngest children—under six years old—live in homes with tap water containing detectable levels of lead.
Drinking water is just one way that people are exposed to lead. It’s also found in soil and paint. But experts estimate that water could make up at least 20 percent of a person’s exposure.
When lead pipes corrode, the toxic material can dissolve or flake into water and poison residents without their knowledge. Rising temperatures due to climate change could beexacerbating lead risks, and researchers have found that childhood lead poisoning levelsspikeduring hotter periods.
Perry now lives in Oak Forest, one of Chicago’s south suburbs, but she also owns the home her mother lives in, on Chicago’s South Side. That home has a lead service line, Perry said, and she doesn’t know when it will be replaced.
The city has “a responsibility to the residents in the city of Chicago to protect them at all costs,” Perry said. “There’s no price that’s too high to pay for safe drinking water.”
Limbo: Navigating Evolving State and Federal Requirements
Chicago’s plan is based on a2021 state lawrequiring that water systems with 100,000 or more lead service lines—which includes Chicago—replace all of them within50 yearsfrom 2027.
At the time of its passage, this state law was stronger than the federal Lead and Copper Rule Revisions of 2021, which did not require replacement in most cases.
Experts and advocates criticized and evensuedthe EPA over that rule—enacted by the Trump administration in the final days of the president’s first term—saying it weakened existing efforts to achieve safe drinking water nationwide.
Near the end of President Joe Biden’s term, the EPA finalized the current rule. Most systems across the country must replace all their lead service lines before 2038, with deferral allowances for places with large proportions of lead service lines—like Chicago, which would likely get until mid-2049 to finish.
The EPAestimatedthat each year this rule will prevent up to 900,000 cases of low birth weight and 1,500 cases of premature death from heart disease. Many advocates praised the rule, while others noted that two more decades of lead pipesstill pose significant health risksin Chicago.
But according to the document the city submitted to the state, Chicago’s plan hasn’t yet caught up to the newer federal law. The plan acknowledges the faster federal timeline but notes that Chicago isn’t abiding by that yet.
The city, its plan states, will comply “if the regulations go into effect.”
Nationally, the regulation is already in effect, Earthjustice’s Lieberman-Klein said, and the EPA does not need to release any additional documents to make that true.
But what city officials might be thinking, she said, is that given the continuedrollbacksof many environmental and health regulations by President Donald Trump’s EPA, this requirement might eventually be wiped off the books.
“It’s possible Chicago is just looking at what this administration has been generally saying about rules promulgated by the previous administration, and it’s saying, ‘We’d like to wait and see what they say about this rule,’” Lieberman-Klein said.
Some congressional Republicanstried to revokethe lead pipe replacement rule legislatively, but they missed thedeadline to do so.
Last year, the American Water Works Association—a water industry organization—challenged the rule in court, alleging that its requirements are not feasible. Environmental groups stepped in to defend the rule, but it remains to be seen whether the EPA will do likewise. The agency declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Chicago’s water department cited the lawsuit as one of its reasons for submitting a plan that doesn’t account for the 20-year replacement timeline. But the rule isn’t on pause, Earthjustice’s Lieberman-Klein clarified.
“The litigation does not stay the rule or change its effective date,” she said. “It still went into effect at the end of October and nothing about the compliance dates have changed.”
Where Will Chicago Find the Money to Get Out the Lead?
Over the past few years, Chicago officials say each service line replacement has averaged about $35,000, although they plan to lower these costs by more frequently replacing the service lines for full blocks at a time. This ismuch higherthan national estimates, which range from about $4,700 to $12,000 per line.
Regardless, it will be no easy feat for Chicago to piece together the funds to finish the job quickly, and big proposed cuts to federal funding would make a challenging task even harder.
The Trump administration’s proposal for the EPA next fiscal year would cut the agency’s budget bymore than half. Part of that plan: slashing almost all the money for the low-interest loan program that states rely on to update water pipes.
Trump’sbudget proposalsays “the States should be responsible for funding their own water infrastructure projects.” Chicago’s plan notes that $2 million of expected funding for a program focused on replacing lead service lines in daycares serving low-income communities was lost this year in the blanket elimination of congressional earmarks.
Megan Glover, co-founder and former CEO of 120Water, an Indiana-based company that runs a digital platform to help water systems manage lead replacement programs, wasn’t surprised by the news. Federal funding is a concern for her company’s customers across the country, she said.
“All grants and earmarks, we’re kind of starting from a ground-zero standpoint,” Glover said. “All of that is kind of up for grabs at this point with the new administration.”
Anna-Lisa Gonzales Castle is director of water policy at Elevate, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on water and energy affordability that is also involved with local lead service line replacement programming. She said that ramping up replacement speeds will be a challenge, but homeowners shouldn’t be left on the hook for something that wasn’t their fault.
“We want to see the city move swiftly, and we want to see the federal government and the state bring resources to bear on this too,” she said. “It’s gonna be an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
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Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
The Fourth of July is meant to be a celebration of national pride. But in 2025, many Americans aren’t feeling especially patriotic.
A new YouGov survey shows that national pride is waning. Only 68% of Americans say they’re proud to be American, a sharp decline from 83% in 2024. Less than half (48%) say they’re very proud, compared with 56% last year.
Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to express pride in being American—and this gap has widened since last year. Eighty-two percent of Republicans say they’re very proud to be American, compared with just 27% of Democrats. In 2024, the difference was notable but narrower: 74% of Republicans versus 52% of Democrats. This change likely relates to who is in the White House.
Democrats’ declining patriotism has long mirrored the rise of President Donald Trump. In 2017, the year he first took office, Gallup found that about two-thirds of Democrats (67%) said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. But by 2020—just before Trump lost reelection—that number was just 42%.
Now that Trump is back in office, pride among Democrats appears to be falling again. But it’s not just about Trump. A longer trend predates his presidency.
Gallup’s data shows that national pride has been pretty steadily decreasing since at least 2001. The latest figures indicate that only 58% of Americans describe themselves as extremely or very proud to be American—the lowest in the survey’s history. A year ago, under President Joe Biden, that number was 67%.
The YouGov survey adds another perspective: Americans are disillusioned with their fellow citizens. When asked to describe the way most Americans are today using 22 adjectives, 50% chose “selfish”—up from 42% in June 2024.
Other common descriptions included “spoiled” (39%), “intolerant” (37%), “undisciplined” (37%), “gullible” (36%), and “reactionary” (34%). In 2024, only 26% used the word “reactionary.”
Few Americans feel patriotic, too. While 71% of Americans consider themselves at least somewhat patriotic, a divide exists between older and younger adults, according to YouGov. While 88% of those aged 65 and older feel at least somewhat patriotic, only 55% of people ages 18 to 29 do.
So why are young people—and many independents—so disengaged? It could be partly due to a sense of stagnation. Americans don’t just feel less proud—they also don’t feel hopeful about the country’s future. Another new YouGov/The Economist poll found that 58% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Only 35% believe it’s heading in the right direction.
There’s also growing skepticism about the American dream. Just 55% of Americans believe it exists, down from 60% a year ago, according to YouGov. And this year, only 36% feel it’s attainable for them personally.
Belief in the American dream also varies by age and economic status. Homeowners (44%) are much more likely than renters (28%) to say it’s within reach, and adults ages 45 and older (44%) are far more optimistic than those under age 45 (27%), YouGov finds.
All of this points to a broader, deeper sense of disillusionment. The patriotism gap between parties has grown wider under Trump. But the decline in national pride is larger than any one president's influence—and it’s increasingly rooted in generational shifts.
YouGov’s key finding? Nearly half of Americans (43%) believe the country is becoming less patriotic. If these trends continue, that number could only rise.
Any updates?
As heat domes, hurricanes, and wildfires loom, the Trump administration is moving to slash funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Both agencies are widely trusted by the public. According to new polling from Data for Progress, NOAA is viewed favorably by 61% of likely voters, FEMA by 59%, and state emergency agencies by 58%. Despite their popularity and crucial role in disaster response, these agencies now face major cuts, raising alarms among experts as extreme weather intensifies nationwide.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And Americans seem to get it. New YouGov polling finds that 50% of Americans are aware Trump’s legislation will increase the deficit, though 28% incorrectly say it will not affect the deficit or will decrease it. Given that they could soon feel the impact in their wallets, it’s no surprise that 53% of Americans oppose the legislation, according to YouGov. Just 32% are in favor of it.
A newNPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that the vast majority of Americans (76%) believe political divisions in the U.S. pose a serious threat to democracy. The concern cuts across party lines: 89% of Democrats, 80% of independents, and 57% of Republicans say the threat is real. The overall number is actually a big drop from August 2023, when 87% said political divisions threatened democracy. What’s changed? Mostly Republicans. Their sense of alarm has cratered, going from 88% under Biden to just 57% now that Trump is back in the White House.
Vibe check
As of Thursday at 1 PM ET, 44.9% of the public approved of Trump, while 51.4% disapproved—a net approval rating of -6.6 points, after rounding—according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling average.
It was April 2013, and Musk stood at a podium in a small committee room in the basement of the Texas Capitol. TheTeslaCEO asked the legislators gathered before him to change state law, allowing him to bypass the state’s powerful car dealership lobby and sell his electric vehicles directly to the public.
He painted a bleak picture of what could happen if they didn’t give him his way.
“We would, I’m afraid, we would fail,” Musk told the assembled representatives. “So for us, it’s a matter of life or death.”
Clad in a dark suit instead of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the younger Musk was unable to persuade lawmakers in Austin. That year,the bill he wantedto pass died.
More than a decade later, however, Musk’s fortunes inside the Texas Capitol have changed — dramatically.
Musk is now not only one of the richest people in the world, who,until recently, was a key member ofPresident Donald Trump’s second administration, but he’s also become one of the most powerful business and political figures in the state.
Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk at a Nov. 2024 SpaceX rocket launch from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
During this year’s legislative session, Musk’s lobbyists and representatives publicly advocated for almost a dozen bills that would benefit his companies. The Texas Newsroom identified these priorities by searching legislative records for committee testimony and other evidence of his public stances.
Musk wanted legislators to pass new laws that would make it faster and easier for homeowners toinstall backup power generators, like thekind Tesla makes, on their properties. He wanted them to create new crimes so people who fly drones or interfere with operations at his rocket companySpaceXcan be arrested. And he wanted to change who controlled the highway andpublic beach near SpaceX’s South Texas site so he can launch his rockets according to his timeline.
Musk got them all.
In a Capitol where the vast majority of bills fail to pass, all but three of Musk’s public priorities will become law. The two bills his lobbyists openly opposed are dead, including a measure that would have regulated autonomous vehicles.
Musk made gains even on bills he didn’t publicly endorse. Texas lawmakers followed the tech giant’s lead byrewriting the state’s corporate lawsandcreating a new officemodeled after the Department of Government Efficiency, the controversial effort he led in the Trump administration to cut federal spending.
By all accounts, Musk’s influence was great enough that he did not have to formally address lawmakers in person this session to make the case for any of his priorities.
Critics said these new laws will hand Musk’s companies more cash, more power and more protection from scrutiny ashis business footprint continues to expandacross Texas.
“The real harm is the influence of a private company on the decisions made by government,” Cyrus Reed, the conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, told The Texas Newsroom. The Sierra Club is part of a group suing the state over SpaceX’s activities in South Texas.
Contrary to his slash-and-burn tactics in Washington, D.C., where he bulldozed his way onto the scene after Trump’s reelection, Musk has played the long game to amass power in Texas. He still hasn’t succeeded in changing Texas law to allow for Tesla direct sales, but that hasn’t stopped him from steadily investing his personal and professional capital in the state over more than a decade. Most of his businesses, including the tunneling firm The Boring Company,social media giant Xand Tesla,are now headquartered here. While it’s still based in California, SpaceX operatesproduction,testingandlaunchsites across Texas.
Musk has also moved his personal home to the state, reportedly securing properties inthe Austin areaandSouth Texas.
In the Texas Capitol, Musk’s power is subtle but undeniable.
Calendars and emails obtained by The Texas Newsroom through public information requests show his company’s representatives met regularly with lawmakers backing his priority bills and invited Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to tour SpaceX. Patrick, who leads the state Senate, also penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting the rocket company’s request to increase its launches in South Texas.
Texas politics, with its long history of outsize characters, has never seen the likes of Musk, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.
“Even in the heyday of the [George W.] Bush era, you couldn’t find somebody who had such dramatic wealth as Musk, who also had the same level of access and business interests here in Texas,” Jones told The Texas Newsroom. “Today, Elon Musk is arguably the most powerful and influential private citizen in the country.”
“It’s All to Help Elon”
When lawmakers convened their 2025 legislative session in January, one of Musk’s top priorities was quickly clear. He wanted more control over thearea around SpaceX’s launch sitein South Texas.
Known as Starbase, the massive rocket testing and launch facility has come to dominate the small rural area between Brownsville, on the border, and the Gulf of Mexico. It is the launch site forStarship, the rocket meant to eventually take humans to Mars and the heart of Musk’s mission to make humans a multiplanetary species. The FAA recently gave SpaceX permission toincrease Starship launches fivefold.
Although SpaceX owns most of the land around Starbase, county officials retained the authority over access to the adjacent public beach, called Boca Chica. The county worked closely with SpaceX to ensure the area was cleared ahead of launches, but the company’s leaders did not have ultimate control over the process.
Musk then wanted state lawmakers to hand the new city the power to close Boca Chica Beach and the adjoining public highway during the week, a change the county officials opposed.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a newly elected Republican who represents the area, authored the legislation to shift control to Starbase. Dozens of SpaceX employees got involved in the effort, submittingpages of identical commentsto lawmakers in support.
Democrats succeeded in killing Hinojosa’s bill, prompting localactivists to celebrate. Their victory was short-lived. Late in the session, lawmakers decided instead to shift some of this power to the Texas Space Commission, which facilitates the state’s space exploration agenda.
The new law states that the commission’s board can close highways and gulf beaches with the approval of a local municipality, which, in this case, is Starbase. SpaceX retains a connection to the commission itself: Kathy Lueders, who confirmed that she left her job as Starbase general manager last month, still sits on the Space Commission board. She directed additional questions to the commission.
The Space Commission declined to answer questions on SpaceX’s potential future involvement with these discussions.
“The way I view it is SpaceX wanted a certain amount of power,” said Reed, with the Sierra Club. “And at the end of the day, they didn’t quite get it, but they got something pretty close.”
Thebillpassed along largely partisan lines. Republican state Rep. Greg Bonnen, who authored the bill, did not respond to a request for comment about the role Starbase may play now that it will become law.
Elon Musk and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Sept. 2014 at the SpaceX groundbreaking ceremony in Boca Chica.
Lawmakers passed several more bills to benefit spaceports, the sites where spacecraft launch, like SpaceX.
While Texas is home to multiple spaceports, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, SpaceX dwarfs the rest in size and scope of influence across the state and country, boasting large federal government contracts and a growing satellite industry.
Hinojosa was an author or sponsor on most of these bills; he did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this story.
Other than the beach closure legislation, many passed with the support of Democrats.
At SpaceX’s urging, Texas lawmakers passed a measure toban drones over spaceports. They also added spaceports to thestate’s “critical infrastructure” facilities, which already include airports and military bases. The law will make it a felony to intentionally damage or interrupt the operation of any site where a spacecraft is tested or launched. Similar critical infrastructure laws have been used in other statesto arrest people protestingoil and gas pipeline projects.
Bekah Hinojosa with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, a local activist group, told The Texas Newsroom the new critical infrastructure law will let Musk “militarize our Boca Chica Beach for his dangerous rocket testing endeavors."
The Sierra Club and other groups from South Texas, including a local Indigenous tribe, are suing the state, arguing that closing Boca Chica violates an amendment to the Texas Constitution thatprotects access to public beaches.
The General Land Office, the main defendant in that suit, declined to comment. In court filings, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues the state can still regulate beach access for public safety reasons and that it cannot be sued in this case because it has immunity. The case is pending at the Texas Supreme Court.
Onewill exempt certain military and aerospace issues from public meetings laws, allowing elected officials in some cases to discuss these topics behind closed doors. The proposal was so concerning to residents who live close to SpaceX’s facility near Waco, where locals say the company’s rocket testing hasspooked livestockanddamaged homes, that theysubmitteda dozen comments against it.
This law went into effect on May 15.
Anothernew law will make it harder for crew members and certain other employees to sue space flight companies. This, like most new legislation approved this session, will become law on Sept. 1.
SpaceX’s only significant public defeat during this year’s legislative session was the failure of a bill it supported to give spaceports atax cut. The measure would havecost nearly $14.5 millionover five years, according to an official estimate from the Legislative Budget Board.
Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, believes Texas is pandering to Musk.
“It’s all to help Elon,” said Jah, who added that his viewpoint is rooted in resisting policies that enable what he called “environmental plunder masked as ‘innovation.’” He has concerns that the state is investing in spaceports, most notably Musk’s, while carving out exceptions that prohibit public insight and input into what’s happening at those facilities.
“There’s this whole cloak of secrecy with whatever Elon is doing,” Jah said. “We will not and should not cease to launch satellites or explore space. But the way in which we do it matters a lot.”
“They Never Come Out of the Shadows”
This year, Tesla’s lobbyists publicly advocated against only two bills. Both died.
One was a GOP-authoredproposalintended to create a buffer zone between homes and large-scale energy storage facilitieslike the kind Tesla sells.
The other billwould have imposed more regulations on the type of cars thatMusk is rolling out as robotaxis in Texas, and would have required a public hearing if a collision involving an autonomous vehicle resulted in a fatality.
Bill author Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat, believes his legislation failed because it was not pro-industry enough.
“Tesla is the worst actor that I’ve ever dealt with in the Capitol. They’re subversive. They never come out of the shadows,” Canales told The Texas Newsroom. “Not only did I not hear from them, I didn’t expect to hear from them because that’s the way they operate.”
Lawmakers instead advanceda different bill, one with a lighter regulatory touch that was crafted with input from the autonomous vehicle industry.
It will require commercial operators, such as robotaxi and driverless big rig companies, to obtain authorization from the state. This approval can be revoked if the company’s vehicles endanger the public, including causing “serious bodily injury,” though it requires no public hearings in the case of a fatality, as Canales’ bill would have done. Autonomous vehicle companies will also have to develop plans for interacting with emergency responders.
Tesla took a neutral stance on the legislation. But the bill’s author, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, told The Texas Newsroom that Tesla’s team participated in work groups and stakeholder conversations with industry groups, trial lawyers and others.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk speak to reporters near a red Model S Tesla vehicle on the South Lawn of the White House on March 11.
Texas has been at the forefront of testing this technology for years, rolling out its first regulations in 2017. But with more autonomous vehicles hitting the streets, Nichols said it was time to clarify the rules and called his bill “a real opportunity here to actually improve safety.”
Nichols’ legislation initially died in the Texas House. But with less than a week before lawmakers packed up to go home, a House member added the entirety of Nichols’ bill as an amendment toanother transportation bill, which will become law Sept. 1.
Tray Gober, a personal injury lawyer who handles vehicle crash cases in Austin, said it’s smart to get new regulations for autonomous vehicles on the books. But he worries that Texas is rushing to give its blessing to a technology that has not been fully tested.
“We’re not talking about rockets crashing into the ocean. We’re talking about cars crashing into other people,” he said,comparing Tesla to SpaceX. “There’s going to be people that are hurt during this process of improving these systems, and that’s unfortunate. I think it’s viewed as collateral damage by these companies.”
When asked about concerns that there could be fatalities as the number of driverless cars grows in Texas, Nichols said, “There probably will be. Eventually there will be. I would not doubt that.” But he pointed to studies showingautonomous vehicles are saferthan human drivers.
“If you start looking at the breakdown of the fatalities on the roads and the crashes and the wrecks, what causes them? It’s not equipment failure. It’s driver distraction,” he told The Texas Newsroom.
Critics of these studies argue their scope is too narrow to make conclusions about the safety of self-driving technology. Citing safety concerns, some local lawmakers asked Tesla’s robotaxi rollout in Austin tobe delayed. The company continued with the launch butwithhuman monitorsin the passenger seats.
Many Democrats opposed Nichols’ proposal. But at least three other bills affecting Tesla got bipartisan support.
At times, the Sierra Club was fighting against Musk’s SpaceX bills while working with his Tesla lobbyists on clean energy legislation, said Reed, the club’s conservation director. For example, Tesla and the Sierra Club both supported legislation to createnew fire standardsfor battery energy storage facilities and address the environmental and financial challenges associated withdecommissioning them.
Tesla also backed a bill that had bipartisan support to make it easier for homeowners to install backup power generators, such as the company’sPowerwall.
Reed said Musk’s shift to the right has created interesting bedfellows, sometimes making it easier for Republicans to back some of the energy policies more traditionally associated with progressives.
He remarked, “It’s an interesting time in our country, right?”
Musk’s Indirect Influence
For all the bills Musk pushed to see pass, he also indirectly influenced the creation of new laws on which he did not take a public stance.
Texas lawmakers created thestate’s own DOGE officehoused under the governor, the name an homage to Musk’s controversial federal cost-slashing effort in Washington, D.C.
Musk himself took no public role in creating the new office. But at a signing ceremony for the bill, Gov. Greg Abbott explained he was the inspiration.
Texas legislators also rewrote the state’s corporate laws after Musk raised concerns about business codes in other states. Authored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes,the rewriteshields business leaders from lawsuits and establishes thresholds for the types of legal challenges shareholders can file.
Musk and his lobbyists never came out in support of the bill, but he has long complained that states needed to shore up protections for CEOs and other business leaders.
The legislation written in response was dubbed the “DExit” bill.
“Texas is much better than Delaware,” Musk posted onX in early April, just days after the bill passed the state Senate. “If Delaware doesn’t reform, it will lose all its corporate business.”
In an interview, Hughes told The Texas Newsroom he heard input from different groups in crafting the Texas legislation and could not remember whether Musk’s companies were involved.
Abbott signed the DExit billand a handful of other business bills into law on May 14. Standing behind him at a public ceremony marking the occasion were Hughes and a large group of business representatives.
Standing behind Hughes was a representative from Tesla.
Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
Republican lawmakers talked a big game about their opposition to President Donald Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which will strip health care and food stamps from millions while exploding the deficit with tax giveaways to the rich.
So-called "moderate" Republicans claimed to be against the massive Medicaid cuts that will cause millions of low-income Americans to lose their health insurance. And the hard-right "fiscal hawks" crowed about the more than $3 trillion the bill will add to the national deficit—so much that it will spike interest rates and make it more expensive for Americans to borrow money for home or car purchases.
Thousands of protesters stage a die-in in opposition to President Donald Trump’s Medicaid-slashing “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”
But in the end, they all caved, passing this dumpster fire bill to give Dear Leader a victory—pyrrhic as it appears to be.
Perhaps the biggest coward is GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted for the legislation after getting a “polar payoff” to ensure that her state won’t be hit as hard as others by the massive Medicaid cuts.
After voting for the bill, Murkowski said that she didn't actually like the legislation and wanted the House to amend it—knowing full well that it was unlikely to happen. Hard to find a more cowardly move than that.
"I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill,” she said.
But Murkowski’s colleague Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave her a run for her money on the coward scale. Hawley had been declaring for months that he wouldn't vote for any bill that would slash Medicaid.
“I’m not going to vote for Medicaid benefit cuts,” Hawley told reporters earlier this year.
Yet Hawley did just that—and without even needing a kickback like Murkowski’s in exchange for his vote.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin folded and voted for the bill after spending weeks declaring that its deficit busting was immoral and dangerous. Like Hawley, it took nothing for Johnson to prove that his commitment to reducing the deficit was all a ruse.
In the end, cutting taxes for the rich while screwing the poor is more important than anything for the GOP. And the caves were just as obscene over in the House.
There are far too many to list, but for the sake of brevity, here are the worst of the cowards in the House.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska—who isn’t even running for reelection and thus does not need to cave to Trump—voted for the bill after previously saying that the bill’s massive Medicaid cuts were a red line that he would not cross.
A cartoon by Jack Ohman.
"No bill is going to be perfect,” Bacon told reporters to justify his abhorrent cave.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who just a few weeks ago said that the Senate’s deep cuts to Medicaid were a “nonstarter,” also voted for the bill, saying that he hopes the cuts to the life-saving health care program will be delayed down the road. Really.
Meanwhile, Rep. Keith Self of Oklahoma, who on Wednesday called the bill “morally and fiscally bankrupt,” turned around less than a day later and, you guessed it, voted for the legislation.
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio—one of two Republicans to vote against the bill in the House the first time because it added too much to the deficit—voted for the Senate version of the bill that exploded the deficit even more, because he said that Trump made an artificial deadline and time had simply run out for him to fight for more changes.
Davidson told reporters that he put up “as strong of a fight” as he could and that he “hates to reward the Swamp” but couldn’t fight anymore. The true definition of a coward.
And Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who declared that he couldn’t vote for the bill and that there was nothing anyone could say to get him to vote for it, turned around less than a day later and voted for it.
While that is certainly a cowardly act, at least he admitted why he caved so easily.
“Well, we met with President Trump, and he did a masterful job laying out how we could improve it, how he could use his chief executive office—use things to make the bill better,” Norman said.
The day afterfamilies across the country gathered to celebrate Father’s Day, Francisco Romero huddled at dawn with 10 volunteers in a South Los Angeles parking lot. The group was preparing to patrol the neighborhood for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
There was a heaviness in the atmosphere, despite the comradery and smiles. During the group huddle, some reflected on the difficulty celebrating Father’s Day while families across the city were being separated by ICE. Another volunteer mentioned viral videos from the prior weekend showing apparent ICE presence in the nearby city of Bell, including “snatch and grabs,” in which unmarked vehicles surrounded pedestrians suspected of being undocumented and ICE officers pulled them inside.
“It’s psychological,” Romero said, speculating about the timing of the raids, which coincided with a holiday meant to celebrate family.
While L.A. residents — and much of the country — were transfixed for days by images of masked officers rounding up immigrants and protesters flooding downtown streets, this quieter, grassroots effort to protect vulnerable communities from these raids has continued to unfold. Volunteers like Romero patrol the streets across Los Angeles weekly, keeping watch with the aim of alerting the community to any ICE operations.
Such patrols are nothing new. Since thecivil unrestthat erupted after the beating of Rodney King in 1992, Unión del Barrio has operated community patrol networks to monitor for law enforcement activity and other potential dangers to residents in neighborhoods across California. But the environment has become more treacherous in recent weeks. There has been an increase in ICE operations across the city, including masked officers detaining suspected undocumented immigrants from local stores, street shops and neighborhoods. Their enforcement actions have led to protests in Los Angeles and pushback from residents and organizers alike.
In addition, Unión del Barrio — along with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — has drawn the attention ofRepublican Sen. Josh Hawley, who alleged in a letter sent to the groups in mid-June that they are providing “logistical and financial resources” in support of civil unrest and “aiding and abetting criminal conduct.” The letter calls on the groups to “cease and desist” their operations.
In response, Unión del Barriosaidin a June 15 statement, “The objective of Mr. Hawley’s letter was to intimidate us and compel Unión del Barrio to stop organizing the self-defense of our communities.”
Francisco Romero meets with Unión del Barrio volunteers in a South Los Angeles parking lot before heading out on patrol. Faces of volunteers who asked not to be identified have been obscured.
Many volunteers, including Aimee and Ruth, never interact directly with ICE, while those who do, like Romero, follow a strict protocol meant to protect them from arrest while they carry out their work. When Romero spots what he believes might be an ICE vehicle, he first calls for backup from fellow organizers before deciding whether to approach. In the past, he would tap on the car window and ask the officer to identify themselves.
“That was back when they would still roll down their windows. Now, they don’t,” he said.
The atmosphere of heightened fear has caused the members of the group to use extra caution when describing their work and when approaching ICE agents. When speaking among themselves or with the broader community, they avoid language that suggests they are “chasing out” or “following” ICE operations. Instead, they describe their efforts as “safely monitoring” ICE activity from a distance. When agents leave a neighborhood, organizers say the agents are “electing to do so,” often because they have lost the element of surprise, according to Romero.
The group has also gone to extra lengths to make sure community members are comfortable with their presence when they are on patrol. Each member of Unión del Barrio’s patrol wears a green shirt emblazoned with the group’s logo, so they are clearly recognizable. The volunteers are given magnets with the organization’s name to affix to the side of their cars. They travel in small groups. On this Monday in June, Francisco, Ruth and Aimee were assigned to patrol the residential neighborhoods north of Martin Luther King Boulevard. Aimee, who lives in the community, said she preferred to use only her first name for the safety of her friends and family; Ruth, a teacher, likewise asked that only her first name be used.
Aimee, who has volunteered with Unión del Barrio for the past six months, was looking through the back seat window when she noticed a car with blacked out plates. Romero decided the car was suspicious enough to merit an investigation to see whether it belonged to ICE officers.
The spotting of any car that is unmarked, has tinted windows or is deemed in any way out of the ordinary is enough to prompt the patrol team to turn back and retrace their steps.
That particular car turned out not to be a threat. But just two hours after Romero, Aimee and Ruth’s patrol had finished for the morning, Unión del Barrio posted a warning onsocial mediaabout ICE presence less than a mile away.
Romero pulls over during an early morning ICE patrol to coordinate with other volunteer units.
Unión del Barrio conducts two types of patrols: morning rides that monitor neighborhoods with large numbers of Latino residents or workers who may be targeted for immigration enforcement and patrols triggered by community tips about real-time ICE activity. The latter have become more frequent in recent weeks, as ICE operations have intensified. In both cases, the organization either verifies the activity directly or coordinates with trusted community members or other civil rights organizations before issuing public alerts on social media.
Despite heightened scrutiny of immigrant rights organizations in recent weeks by federal officials, a growing number of community groups and individuals are seeking them out for guidance. Unión del Barrio has received calls from across the state and country from individuals and groups requesting resources on preparing communities for incursion by ICE. The organization is planning a trip across California to provide training to allied community groups over the course of the summer. Romero estimates interest in those trainings has tripled in the last few weeks. Instead of taking Sen. Hawley’s allegations as a deterrent, “We see it as a new front of struggle,” said Romero, who has been with Unión del Barrio for 30 years and got his start as an activist against police violence.
But, according to Romero, ICE officers are altering their tactics to evade detection by community patrols. ICE used to commonly conduct operations in the morning but has now shifted its efforts to later in the day, when most patrol volunteers are working.
Another ICE innovation is the use of decoys — in which a suspected ICE vehicle leads patrol cars one way while other ICE operations move elsewhere.
Capital & Main reached out to ICE officials for comment for this story but received no response.
* * *
With about 15 minutesleft of the patrol, Romero headed towards Santee Alley just as businesses start to open. Ruth, who was riding shotgun, explained how Unión del Barrio has done more than patrol the community. They have been offering training to community members for months, including on how to prepare a plan in case one of them is detained by ICE. “So we know how to respond when ICE inevitably attacks us again,” she said.
Ruth also shared her motivation for volunteering: She sees how ICE’s increased presence in the community over the last few weeks has impacted her students, whom she calls “her kids.” They are why she continues to patrol.
Meanwhile, Romero was making a point that morning of staying within the speed limit and obeying traffic laws at every stop or turn. Sometimes, he said, he has the urge to “book it” to respond to an alert that ICE has been spotted. But he knows, now more than ever, that “any excuse to engage with us is an opportunity for them to break us.”
For most of its existence, Daily Kos has run on custom-built publishing platforms. That might’ve made sense a decade or two ago, but now it’s expensive, outdated, and difficult to maintain. Every small change or upgrade requires complex engineering work, even as the existing system demands constant upkeep. Just maintaining security patches has been a difficult process. New features have often been promised but rarely delivered. That’s on me—and yeah, it’s embarrassing.
But starting now, everything changes.
We’re officially migrating Daily Kos to WordPress—the world’s most popular and powerful open-source publishing platform, which powers major media outlets like The Nation, Time, Vogue, Variety, New York Post, Rolling Stone, Vox, Wired, and many more.
Our current system has served us well, but it’s old, brittle, and costly. By moving to WordPress, we’ll unlock access to a vast ecosystem of tools, faster updates, and modern features. That means better usability, more time spent building what you actually want, and less time patching legacy code from as far back as 2004.
I’ll have more to say about the migration in the weeks and months ahead, but this is truly game-changing. We’ll be able to tap into a huge library of community-enhancing plugins. Want account badges? There’s a plugin for that—no more months and months of custom dev work. Some of you would really like this plugin. We’ll have lots of options to choose from, depending on what we want to implement.
We can even build an app without spinning up a separate, expensive team.
All of this means a system that’s vastly easier to maintain and update. No more vague promises. No more spinning our wheels.
We’ve partnered with an experienced outside vendor to build and launch the new Daily Kos. The initial scope is a straight port of the existing site, with a refreshed homepage layout. No bells or whistles—yet. But once we’re live, and with enough community support, we’ll be able to add all sorts of great new features quickly and affordably by leveraging the plugin library.
While the timeline might shift depending on what we uncover during development, the vendor is confident we can launch early next year.
You help shape what comes next.
This isn’t just a migration. It’s an opportunity to rethink what Daily Kos can be—while staying true to our community roots.
That’s why we are forming a new Community Advisory Group, which will work directly with the product and leadership teams to help initially guide:
The features we prioritize for launch.
The legacy tools we keep, cut, or evolve.
What innovations we build next.
I’ve written before about how the economics of media have transformed—in a good way. In the past, when email list-building and advertising made up two-thirds of our revenue, you were the product. Our customers were campaigns, agencies, and media buyers.
Today, reader support and donations account for 80–90% of our revenue. That changes everything. Now we are the product, and you are the customer. That means we have to be fully responsive to your needs and priorities.
So we’re not just switching platforms—we’re empowering the community to help shape the future of Daily Kos.
We’re already inviting key community members—those who’ve demonstrated leadership in organizing and building this space—to join the advisory group. I’m genuinely thrilled to work with this new batch of pioneers. Like, so excited.
Honestly, one of the most frustrating things about our current situation with the Justice Department is that I’d planned to spend this summer talking and scheming with you all about the next evolution of Daily Kos—and fundraising to make it happen. I hate to have to ask you again for support.
But that’s part of the new revenue reality: You guys fund Daily Kos, and we also need your support to fund this migration. But it’s going to be so worth it. It’ll mean we can finally start delivering on the community’s long-standing wishlist—a wishlist you can define.
This is the future we’ve been working toward: more flexibility, more innovation, and, most importantly, more collaboration with you, the community that’s kept this site alive and thriving for over two decades.
In July and August, we’ll work with the advisory board and staff to decide what features we’ll carry over—and what we can let go. The less we port, the cheaper and faster the project will be. But nothing is gone forever! Thanks to WordPress, we can rebuild later, easily and affordably.
And then? We’re off to the races—working with you to bring the tools and features we all want.
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 260 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Over the years here on Black Music Sunday, I’ve featured many female jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B vocalists. I have been remiss in not covering an artist who excelled not only in music but also in film and television. On the anniversary of her birth, allow me to introduce Della Reese.
Delloreese Patricia Early was born on July 6, 1931, in Detroit. She would become known to the world as simply “Della Reese.”
The youngest in a family of six children, she grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where the Baptist church and gospel singing greatly influenced her career. At age six, Deloreese Patricia Early was singing in the church's junior choir.
For the next seven years Deloreese continued her gospel singing in the church. By the time she was 13, the singer had developed such vocal power and talent that she caught the attention of the legendary Mahalia Jackson. Known as the "Queen of Gospel Music," Jackson recruited Deloreese for her Mahalia Jackson Troupe gospel singers. "This opportunity to sing with the world's foremost gospel singer was a thrilling experience," Reese noted in a 1992 press release. "I will never forget the wonderful association which lasted for five consecutive summers, and the lasting things I learned from her ... how to communicate with people through song." The teenaged Reese toured with the gospel group from 1945 through 1949.
Although Reese studied psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit, singing remained very important to her. She formed a women's gospel group called the Meditation Singers during her first year at Wayne State. By the end of that year, Reese's mother had died and her father had become ill. Reese ended her college education to help support her family, working variously as a receptionist and switchboard operator, barber, taxicab driver, and even as a truck driver.
During this time Reese continued to perform with the Meditation Singers. She also had the occasional opportunity to perform with the Clara Ward Singers, the Roberta Martin Singers, and Beatrice Brown's Inspirational Singers. Reese did not consider singing as a career, however. In a December 1957 interview with Don Nelsen for the New York Sunday News, she said, "I was interested in singing, but I thouht of it as something to do when you didn't have anything else to do."
Since gospel singers made very little money, Reese thought a career in business would be the best way for her to earn a living. Nevertheless, she toyed with the idea of making music her profession. She knew that making a career as a singer would mean performing popular music in nightclubs; this caused her some distress, since the extravagance and excesses she associated with club life clashed with her religious beliefs. Yet when the Reverend E. A. Rundless of Detroit's New Liberty Baptist Church encouraged Reese to pursue a singing career, she put her reservations aside. A short time after Reese became a hostess-singer at a local bowling alley/nightclub, she won a contest in which newspaper readers voted for their favorite local singer. The prize was a week-long engagement at Detroit's famous Flame Showbar.
Her big break came when she won a contest that gave her a week singing at Detroit’s famed “Flame Show Bar.” That week soon became eight weeks. This experience and others exposed Reese to the talents and styles of such music greats as Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Al Hibbler, Billy Eckstine and others.
In 1953, Reese moved to New York City and became a vocalist with the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, and shortly thereafter, signed a recording contract with Jubilee Records. Reese had her first major hit with “And That Reminds Me (of you).” That same year, she was voted “The Most Promising Singer” by Billboard, Cashbox, and Variety, as well as the Disc Jockeys of America and the Jukebox Operators Association.
Reese signed a new recording contract in 1959, with RCA, and subsequently enjoyed her biggest hit, a tune adapted from Puccini’s La Boheme, entitled “Don’t You Know”. Acknowledgement from the music industry followed as she was nominated for a Grammy Award as best female vocalist. This led to Reese performing for the next nine years in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the thirty years that followed “Don’t You Know,” Reese has continued recording.
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Reese launched a successful television career. She appeared on many television shows that are now considered classics, including The Perry Como Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, as well as more than twenty appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Her success continued over the years, with numerous appearances on television and in movies. In 1994, Reese was tapped to star in the hit series Touched by an Angel. Reese was honored for her talents in 1994 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In addition to her singing and acting, Reese led a deeply spiritual life. In 1986, she was ordained as a minister by the Rev. Dr. Johnnie Colemon, and she gave weekly sermons at her church, Understanding Principles For Better Living, in Los Angeles.
The HistoryMakers presented this absorbing hourlong interview/documentary with Reese, hosted by Lorraine Toussaint. Reese has an amazing sense of humor—give it a watch:
In 1959, Reese signed with RCA Records and released her first RCA single, called "Don’t You Know?", which was adapted from Giacomo Puccini's music for La boheme, specifically the aria “Quando m’en vo” (Musetta's Waltz).
“Don’t You Know?” became her biggest hit, reaching the # 2 spot on the Billboard Pop chart and topping the R&B chart that year. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc
[Verse 1]
If you had a choice of colors
Which one would you be, my brothers
If there was no day or night
Which would you prefer to be right
How long have you hated your white teachers
Who told you to love only your Black preachers
Do you respect your brother's woman friend
And share with Black folk that are not of kin
[Refrain]
People must prove it to the people
A better day is coming for you and for me
With just a little more education
A little love for our nation
We can do it, we can make a better sociеty
[Verse 2]
Now some of us would rather cuss and make a big fuss
Than to do somеthing to bring about a little trust
Lord knows I hope we overcome our beliefs someday
It might help a little bit if you'll listen to what I have to say
And I will not have you hating your white teachers
Please don't only love your Black preachers
And learn that you can respect your brother's woman friend
And you got to share with Black folks other than those that are your kin
Reese sang blues as well as jazz and gospel. These two albums are a great example:
Journalist Donald Travis Stewart, known as Trav S.D., wrote about Reese the actor on his “Travalanche” blog: “A Different Della Reese.”
Towards the late ’60s Reese began to get her feet wet in acting on shows like Mod Squad and McCloud. I first became aware of her in the mid ’70s, when she was a regular on Chico and the Man, made an appearance on Sanford and Son, and was frequently on shows like Merv, Mike Douglas, and Dinah. She had a recurring role on the sit-com It Takes Two (1982-83) with Richard Crenna and Patty Duke, and a regular on The Royal Family (1991-92) opposite Redd Foxx.The Royal Family was exec produced by Eddie Murphy, who had worked with Reese and Foxx on the movie Harlem Nights (1989). Sadly Foxx died in the middle of the first season, meaning the end of the promising series. She also guested on shows like227, Picket Fences, etc. and starred in several other made-for-tv and theatrical films (often ones similar in theme to Touched By An Angel).
So by the time of Touched by an Angel, she was a beloved American institution and seeing her playing a mentor to an angel is very much analogous to Morgan Freeman’sseveral appearances as God, or the President, or whatever. Some might argue that Tess is a bit of a “Magical Negro” character, closer in spirit in some ways to the 1930s and ’50s than to the 2020s. It’s almost an Ethel Waters thing. A kindly, saintly spirit, gently nudging poor, erring mortals into more Godly directions by virtue of a pure, uncomplicated heart. There are worse things, no doubt, but there are also more progressive ones. Thus we remind you that, a quarter century prior to her best known show, Della Reese was already on her way to making history, and that’s what we like to celebrate.
In case you never saw Reese in “Harlem Nights”—she certainly doesn’t portray a character (a brothel Madam) in line with her real-life occupation as a reverend.
When Reese joined the ancestors, on Nov. 19, 2017, every major news organization reported her passing. The obituaries are too numerous to post here today, a quick Google search will lead you to them.
I hope you will join me in the comments section below for more of her music, and those of you who are fans, please post your favorites.
My wife found my PostSecret that you put up this Sunday and I was a little scared. She cried and told me it was the sweetest thing she has ever been a part of.
I sent it before we got married.
The young woman I speak of on the cards and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary last October and have an amazing 4-year-old that completes our beautiful family.
PS. . . I’m no longer scared that she knows all my secrets.
Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
It’s been a tumultuous 6 months with Donald Trump inhabiting the presidency, with a weakened federal government now incapable of addressing monumental problems like climate change, pandemics, education, basic security and safety, and even forecasting the weather.
As the United States reaches its 249th year of existence, it’s in a very precarious position. So how did we get here?
Elon Musk’s propaganda machine
The 2024 election made it clear why Elon Musk leveraged billions of dollars to purchase Twitter, which he has since rebranded as X. The wealthiest man in the world turned the site into a propaganda machine, amplifying conspiracy theories and bigotry.
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump
When he threw his support behind Trump, the site went all in on amplifying his campaign while escalating lies and falsehoods about Democrats, particularly President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Trump won the election, liberals and progressivesmounted a mass exodus to Bluesky. Conservatives responded with anger—because they vitally need to troll liberals, which they prefer over speaking with each other.
Attack on diversity
Trump is a racist and the biggest promoter of the “birther” conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama. In his first term, he praised Nazis as “very fine people.” And now in his second term, there’s just more of the same.
But instead of merely throwing around rhetoric where “woke” is a substitute for the N-word, Trump is using his power toroll back the very notion of diversity. He’s used executive action and internal government policy to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and has even taken to simply erasing the achievement of Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ people.
At the same time, he’s fulfilled—in part, at least—his campaign pledges to the most virulent racists by affirming his support for the pro-slavery Confederacy. Trump and his lieutenants like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are relitigating the Civil War and coming down firmly on the side that viewed Black people as property.
Musk’s government sledgehammer
By empowering Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency to infiltrate multiple government agencies, Trump advanced the longstanding right-wing mission to undermine effective government. Musk and his team of destructive operatives—like “Big Balls”—have tried to take down government agencies that millions of people rely on.
There has been significant resistance and a string of courtroom losses for Trump. But thanks to DOGE, the government’s ability to do things like send out Social Security payments and monitor hurricanes has been compromised.
Trust in the government was already in trouble, but Trump and Musk made it worse—all in the name of “small” government, even if that means that people have to die.
Scared men and predators
At the Pentagon, former Fox News host Hegseth continues to be the livingembodiment of the toxic masculinity that he represented on the right-wing network. The only problem is that it’s manifested in the mismanagement of the most powerful military in recorded history.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
With Trump’s blessing, Hegseth pounds the table on so-called “warrior” ethos while gossiping on group chats about missile strikes and making a mess of international diplomacy.
Simultaneously, the Trump administration has continued its outreach to the toxic right-wing manosphere by reportedlyadvocating for the release of influencer Andrew Tate, a misogynist who has been accused of rape in multiple countries. In other words, he’s the perfect hero for the Trump administration.
Never stop pushing conspiracies
Trump is a conspiracy theorist. For decades, he’s offered up half-baked, debunked theories on a litany of topics—like when he said that climate change was a Chinese “hoax”. Even though he and the GOP are in charge, the Trump teamstill insists that the “deep state” is out to get them.
The conspiracies are even worse this time around because they’re being fueled by Musk. He and Trumpbandied about the notion that gold at Fort Knox had been stolen, even though Trump’s last Treasury secretary did a weird photo shoot there just a few years ago.
There is no such thing as “white genocide,” but Trumpspent days harping on it, throwing a rhetorical bone to white supremacists who have pushed the conspiracy.
They love abusing and bombing people
Conservatism has a long-standing love affair with abusive behavior. The line goes back to figures like President George W. Bush, who promoted torture as U.S. policy with the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Now Trump has brought it back to the forefront by abducting and detaining immigrants, crowing about detention camps, and having his subordinates like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stage photo shoots in front of packed jail cells.
TheRepublican tradition of gleefully bombing people has resurfaced with Trump’s decision to inject the nation into the conflict between Iran and Israel. Like Bush, Trump is nowcomplaining about the media accurately covering his questionable declarations of success in his bombings.
Killing the economy
Trump inherited an economy from Biden that was on the mend, following years of Trump’s mismanagement during COVID-19. Instead of just taking credit for it, like he did with Obama’s economic recovery in 2017, Trump has gone on the attack.
He unilaterally imposed tariffs thathave already contributed to a fiscal slowdown and sticker shock. Businesses have had their hiring impacted while countries around the world are anticipating the shockwaves of an economic slowdown.
The last few Republican presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bush, and Trump—have all presided over economic pullbacks that were cleaned up by Democratic presidents.
Trump and his team, who spent years complaining about prices under Biden,have now said that cost increases are good for the economy, lest they offend Trump.
War on immigrants
President Donald Trump tours “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigrant detention facility in Florida reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps.
Trump hates immigrants. He launched his initial bid for the presidency based on bald-faced lies about Mexican immigrants being rapists and has pursued a policy of cruelty ever since. In his first term, he separated immigrant families. Now, he’s abducting immigrants and even forcing military occupationon American cities.
The desire to demonize immigrants or people sympathetic to immigration—a tradition that has been forever intertwined with U.S. history—is evident in all of Trump’s actions.
But now that the public has seen that Trump and the GOP overstated the threat of “immigrant criminals,” he’s losing ground on what past polls found were his strongest issues.
The United States is in a bad place, but that didn’t happen overnight. The right plotted and planned for the Trump-powered onslaught, even though he pretended that he was not connected to initiatives like Project 2025.
If the country recovers, it will take a very long time. Trump has an entire system behind him, from the Republican Party to propaganda machines like X and Fox News.
They can be defeated, but the fight will have to be sustained.
Several provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order on elections have run into obstacles in court. But others are quietly moving ahead, at least for now, with big potential implications for state and local election officials and the voting systems they rely on.
In Montgomery County, Ohio, for example, residents can choose to mark their ballots either by hand, or using a ballot-marking device that prints out a paper ballot with a summary of their choices, alongside a machine-readable code reflecting those choices. Voters can verify their selections before submitting their ballots into a tabulator, which scans the code and records the votes.
At least 85% of voters in a typical election choose the option that relies on the machine-readable codes, Jeff Rezabek, the county elections director, estimated.
So Rezabek is closely watching what happens with a provision in the executive order thatcalls for mostly banning the use of such codes(except where required for disability access), and what it would mean for the millions of dollars’ worth of already-certified voting equipment he can’t easily or quickly replace.
Experts consider systems with a voter-verifiable paper record to be thegold standardfor election security. But somecritics have arguedthat when these systems use a code for faster counting, voters have no way of knowing whether the code accurately reflect their choices, even though the results can be checked later.
The executive order instructs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to work the barcode ban into a revision of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, the certification standardsthat most states rely on for their voting equipment.And the multistep process of altering the standards is already beginning.
An initial step was July 2, when the U.S. EACcalled a meetingof its Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a group of mainly election officials and technical experts.
EAC Chairman Donald Palmer, in an emailed response to questions from Votebeat, said there have “been security concerns expressed by the Executive Branch, state legislatures, and stakeholders on both sides of the aisle” about the use of barcodes and QR codes, and the July 2 meeting was a required step in the EAC’s regular update process.
“With this review, the EAC is being responsive to election officials’ needs and the evolving security demands of our elections,” he said. “Gathering feedback from our boards and the public is a chance for the community to provide its essential input on those changes.”
Building voting systems to new standards, testing them in federally accredited laboratories, and certifying them takes a long time. The last set of revised guidelines, VVSG 2.0, were adopted in 2021, but no systems certified under those guidelines have yet hit the market, though some are going through the process now.
It isn’t clear what the EAC will do if the technical committee declines to endorse revised guidelines on the barcodes. But election officials know the general public isn’t closely following the federal rule-making process, and may not understand that equipment certified under the previous guidelines can be used securely and produce accurate results. They are worried that the executive order has already sown public doubt about the integrity of voting equipment.
“It doesn’t entirely matter what happens through the standards process because voters are not going to hear that part,” said Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors. “Voters are hearing the president said this, and so that optics challenge is going to be very difficult for elections in 2025 and beyond.”
State lawmakers, too, could also try to act on their own to carry out the president’s priorities, regardless of what happens with the executive order. That could prove expensive for local jurisdictions. Rezabek said Ohio state lawmakers recently considered legislation that would require localities to use election equipment certified to VVSG 2.0, which would require buying new machines.
“Then we’re in trouble because one, I have no funding,” he said. And even if he did, he said, “the manufacturer doesn’t have it to give to us.”
Rezabek, a former Republican state lawmaker, worked with Ohio’s election officials association to address their concerns and lobby state legislators against that. They haven’t adopted such a requirement — yet.
Election officials in other states are also worried. In Texas, state Elections Director Christina Adkinstold county election officials on a call this monththat her office has been “in discussions,” with the EAC, which she said “understands the impact of any decisions they make in this area.”
“I want to make it very clear, though, that we are bound to the federal certifications,” Adkins said. “Our state law requires that, so any changes to the federal certifications would generally apply to Texas systems as well.”
Some counties are already moving to replace equipment because of the executive order. In Williamson County, Texas, commissioners voted to spend more than $1 million to replace their current voting system, which relies on barcodes, with equipment that does not, according tolocal news reports.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction, uses customized voting equipment, andpublicly posts a keyto deciphering its QR code, to reassure the public that the codes can be checked to verify that they accurately reflect voters’ choices.
Election officials have been “assessing the impact” of having to modify or replace more than 31,000 ballot marking devices that are valued at more than $141 million, county elections chief Dean Logan wrote incourt filingsconnected to one of the lawsuits challenging the executive order.
Money is just one consideration.
“Even if the EAC goes forward, changes these standards, and tries to apply them to existing voting systems, the time frame for making that kind of significant change to a voting system … that is usually a multiple year process to do that,” Logan said in an interview with Votebeat. “So part of what is not well-constructed in that order is understanding the timeline.”
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Sure, the Trump administration iszero for four in every case where a Big Law firm sued rather than knuckle under to one of President Donald Trump’s flagrantly illegal executive orders, but that’s no reason for them to stop trying.
After nearly running out the clock, the Trump administration got around to filing a notice of appeal to the 1st Circuit Court on Monday in the Perkins Coie case. Perkins was the first firm to sue the Trump administration over an executive order, with the lower court handing down its ruling nearly 2 months ago.
Since then, it’s been loss after loss—but that’s just because those pesky lower courts refuse to understand that one simply cannot rule against the Trump administration.
So now we’ll all wait for the Trump administration to run to the Supreme Court and declare that the world will slide off its axis if it can’t do whatever it wants, and the court’s conservatives will figure out a way to agree.
Can’t wait to see the explanation of how the First Amendment doesn’t apply here and that the Constitution demands a robust and nimble executive branch that’s allowed to threaten businesses for the content of their speech and choice of clients.
The Trump administration loses in court again, but will it matter?
On Tuesday, the Trump administration was handed another entirely deserved loss, this time from Federal Judge Melissa DuBose, who granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Health and Human Services from engaging in mass firings and reorganization, including closing divisions and creating the stupid new “Administration for a Healthy America.”
DuBose ruled that the executive branch does not have the authority to make wholesale changes to the structure and function of agencies created by Congress.
“Congress never meant to confer HHS the power to self-destruct,” she said.
But like the law firm cases, these lower court victories feel hollow at the moment. After a Supreme Court term thatended by kneecapping lower courts, the Trump administration has no reason not to just race to the Supreme Court for permission to dismantle HHS.
Relevant qualifications are for suckers
Trump just sent over to the Senate theofficial nominations for several U.S. attorneys, plenty of which are repulsive. Some got the nod because they’re free speech warriors, where “free speech” is limited to conservative Christians. But there are two who really stand out as comically unqualified, even by Trump administration standards.
Interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba
First, and completely expected, is interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba was tapped. By the key performance metric of the Trump administration—which is your willingness to abuse your position in the service of Trump’s agenda—Habba is eminently qualified. She’s been happy tomaliciously prosecute Democrats for performing their congressional oversight duties.
But when it comes to actual relevant legal experience, Habba is pretty much limited to representing Trump incivil cases. And, of course,repping parking garages and “Real Housewives” cast members.
Second is nepo baby Moore Capito, son of GOP Sen. Shelly Capito of West Virginia. His background seems to be entirely limited tocorporate law andrunning for office, but that didn’t stop his mom from issuing aproud social media post praising him and Trump’s other West Virginia pick, Matt Harvey, as “two stellar candidates.”
Besides the whole corporate law thing, Capito’s biggest accomplishment is being related to other people.
“Along with being Sen. Capito's son, he also is the grandson of the late three-term Republican governor Arch Moore, and a cousin to 2nd District Congressman Riley Moore.”
So glad we got rid of DEI so we can now hire people completely based on merit.
You thought the end of the Supreme Court term meant you’d get a break from Supreme Court news?
After aterrible end to the Supreme Court term, it would have been nice to have some respite. After taking the weekend off to rest and regroup, the court got up bright and early Monday to announce that it would hear a campaign finance case involving Vice President JD Vance from back when he was a senator.
Vice President JD Vance’s campaign finance case is being heard by the Supreme Court, despite its term ending last week.
One of the few campaign finance limitations left on the books is a provision on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. In the 15 years since the Citizens United decision, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have continued tostrike down contribution limits, ushering in a brave new world where the world’s richest man could buy the presidency and install himself in a secret, untouchable role at the helm of the government.
There’s no reason to think that the court won’t also strike down this limitation so we can have even more dark money sloshing around.
The court alsoremanded several cases related to trans rights in light of its decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, whichupheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans children. Now cases about laws allowing people to change their sex designation on their birth certificates and insurance coverage for transgender patients will get reexamined.
Finally, a gun control measure the Trump administration supports
Continuing its role as a sort of all-purpose underqualified villain, the so-called Department of Government Efficiencygot the nod to get rid of up to 47 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives regulations. Why 47? Because Trump is the 47th president. No, really.
The Trump administration has already made it so you can buy “forced-reset triggers”—which turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns—and eliminated a Biden-era policy of zero tolerance for gun dealers who violate the law by doing things like selling guns without a background check. They’re also planning toshorten the forms needed to buy guns because it’s too hard to fill out 7 whole pages.
But while all of these gun laws have to go, the Department of Justice has apparently found a restriction on gun ownership that it can enthusiastically back. A Pennsylvania federal judge just granted the DOJ’smotion to dismiss, agreeing that not allowing medical cannabis users to own guns was constitutional.
In a Supreme Court filing in a different case, the Trump administration said that such a ban was necessary because they “pose a clear danger of misusing firearms.” Not when they’re high, mind you. Just by their very existence as cannabis users.
People using machine guns without background checks = good. People who take a weed gummy to fall asleep = bad.
A North Texas man charged with capital murder after slipping mifepristone into his girlfriend’s food signals another attempt to rein in abortion pills.
A North Texas man charged with capital murder this month after he allegedly slipped his girlfriend abortion-inducing medication and caused a miscarriage marks the first time a murder charge has been brought in an abortion-related case in Texas.
The case tests a new method for reining in abortion pills — by threatening to prosecute individuals who provide them with the most severe criminal charge — while advancing the longstanding legal provision that defines an embryo as a person, legal experts say. The latter could raise serious implications about the legality of fertility treatments and in other legal realms such as criminal and immigration issues.
“It is shocking to people that the law can be used this way… that this is the extent and result of the more than 20 year old fetal personhood laws,” said Blake Rocap, a Texas attorney who works in abortion rights advocacy and studies pregnancy criminalization. Legal experts say the case will not change Texas laws that prevent women who receive abortions from being prosecuted.
According to an affidavit filed in Tarrant County by the Texas Rangers, 39-year-old Justin Anthony Banta put mifepristone, an abortion-inducing medication, into cookies and a beverage that he then gave to his pregnant girlfriend. Banta had previously asked her to get an abortion, but she said she had wanted to keep the child, according to the affidavit. A day after drinking the beverage, the woman miscarried.
The Texas Rangers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which must decide whether and how to prosecute the case, has not yet brought its own charges, according to a spokesperson.
Bottles of abortion pills mifepristone, left, and misoprostol, right, at a clinic in Des Moines, Iowa.
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, a fetus was not considered a person constitutionally. However, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the whole opinion was overruled, including the idea that a fetus does not have the same rights as a person. That did not immediately mean that fetus personhood is established. But, Joanna Grossman, a professor at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, and other experts see Banta’s case as an attempt to move further in that direction.
“The purpose of this has nothing to do with caring whether this woman was victimized, but it's about trying to establish fetal personhood in a more direct way than they've been able to,” said Grossman.
If Banta is convicted and fetal personhood is established in the case, it could complicate a variety of issues, including whether IVF is still legal because it involves destroying unused frozen embryos. Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children.
“It has implications for all kinds of fertility medicine and it has potential implications for criminal and immigration law,” Grossman said. “If you detain a pregnant woman, are you illegally detaining the fetus who did not commit a crime? If you deport a pregnant woman, are you deporting a U.S. citizen because if we have birthright citizenship, when does that begin?”
John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, says the concerns surrounding the Banta case are misdirected. Texas laws have already established fetal personhood, he said.
What’s important about Banta’s case to him is that it highlights the true danger of abortion pills.
“This case and similar cases really show the absolute danger of the Plan C pills website and the current strategy that Aid Access has to traffic abortion pills into pro-life states without any medical oversight and without any regulation,” Seago said, referring to the online websites that mail abortion pills to every state. He believes a case like Banta’s is just “scratching the surface of how evil this new practice is.”
Separating the fetus from the woman – in legal terms
Certain states already have laws where hurting a pregnant woman can carry more serious consequences. Those cases center around charges for harming the pregnant woman, and do not solely focus on the fetus.
In 2024, Mason Herring, a 39-year-old Houston man, pleaded guilty to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person for giving his then wife misoprostol, another commonly used abortion medication.
Unlike Herring, Banta hasn’t been charged with hurting his pregnant girlfriend. “The victim here is the woman who was assaulted by being given a drug without her knowledge,” Grossman said.
By charging Banta with attempted capital murder of the fetus, prosecutors are trying to “separate the pregnant person from the fetus,” Grossman said, which not only reinforces the idea that the fetus may matter more than the pregnant person, but also attempts to more clearly define a fetus as a person.
The case creates “more and more precedent for treating a fetus or an unborn baby like a person with the rights everybody else has,” said Mary Ziegler, a UC Davis Law professor.
Seago, however, believes that prosecutors are approaching the case this way because it’s easier to prove that Banta committed a capital murder than it is to prove that he harmed the pregnant woman. If the woman were to bring a civil suit against Banta for injuries, Texas Right to Life would support that action, he said.
Using capital murder to deter abortion pill use
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, pregnant women and their health care providers have faced new forms of criminalization across the country. Texas created a “illegal performance of an abortion” crime andcharged a Houston midwife with itin March.
An abortion-rights activist holds a box of mifepristone pills at a rally outside the Supreme Court in March 2024.
Over the last year, state leaders have focused on trying to block the flow of abortion-inducing medication into Texas. The demand for the medicationspiked 1000%after the state outlawed abortion.
The Texas Legislature tried and failedto pass a billthat would have imposed civil penalties on those who distribute abortion inducing medication. Additionally, Attorney General Ken Paxtonsued a New York doctorfor shipping abortion-inducing medication into Texas. That lawsuitwill likely testNew York state’s “shield law,” which protects providers from out-of-state prosecutions.
However, the Banta case represents a new strategy from a statewide law enforcement authority in chilling the use and provision of abortion-inducing medication in Texas.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a person in Texas who helps a woman obtain an abortion has been liable not only for specific abortion charges, but now more serious charges like capital murder for their role in ending a pregnancy.
“The door has been open, [prosecutors] just walked through it,” said Rocap.
The potential consequences of the Banta case
Even if this case is successfully prosecuted, it may not lead to the establishment of fetal personhood statewide or nationwide. It is likely for this case to end in a jury verdict which is not the equivalent of a Supreme Court decision setting a legally binding precedent.
If a jury finds Banta guilty, Grossman said he could also appeal the decision by claiming that he cannot be convicted of capital murder of a fetus. The appellate court decision, then, could potentially be binding in a way that a jury verdict is not.
However, Grossman believes the significance of Banta’s case does not necessarily lie in whether it’s successfully prosecuted. The way in which prosecutors have charged him for this crime is significant on its own.
She sees Banta’s case as a “trial balloon” for the anti-abortion movement. Banta is a naturally unsympathetic character, Grossman explained, so public sympathies will likely side with the anti-abortion side.
Since the charges were brought against Banta, local outlets across Texas and the nation have reported on the severity of the charges. Grossman believes that this has a “chilling effect” and is “sending a message” of fear to the general public regarding abortions. In that case, she is concerned that the damage has been done.
But if this case is successful for prosecutors, women don’t necessarily need to fear the possibility of being criminalized for ending their own pregnancies. There is still an explicit exemption for pregnant people when seeking abortions, and depending on how this case plays out, it’s not necessarily likely that this exemption would be eroded.
“Right now, there is no way any woman could be prosecuted by any Texas law, any pro life policy that is being considered,” Seago said. If any prosecutor were to try to prosecute a woman for an abortion, that “would clearly be in violation of the law.”
Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a completelist of them here.
Two Alaskan lawmakers—including one Republican and one independent—just published a hand-wringing op-ed in The New York Times warning that the GOP’s latest budget reconciliation bill will throw their state into chaos. The headline? “Alaska cannot survive this bill.”
The list of horrors is long: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans will lose their health coverage, tens of thousands will go hungry as SNAP benefits are slashed, rural clinics and grocery stores will disappear, schools will be defunded, and entire communities will be left to fend for themselves.
All of it is true. And all of it is the direct result of the agenda that Alaska voted for.
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is scrambling to shield her state from the very law her constituents voted for.
President Donald Trump campaigned on gutting the federal government—slashing Medicaid, killing food assistance, ending clean energy tax credits, and defunding agencies that keep rural America afloat. More than 54% of Alaskans voted for him in 2024 anyway.
This isn’t new. Red states have long depended on the very federal programs that their politicians vow to destroy. When Trump cuts the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it’s the governors of red states who panic. When Medicaid is attacked, it’s rural hospitals in deep-red counties that go under. With SNAP on the chopping block, red states suffer the most. West Virginia, for example, has 16% of its population on food stamps.
And through it all, blue states keep footing the bill—only to be smeared as “socialist” for insisting that the government should actually help people.
In fact, the small-government crowd is the most dependent on assistance from the government. The same politicians who rail against handouts suddenly demand carveouts when the axe swings their way—like Sen. Lisa Murkowski scrambling to shield Alaska from the very law her constituents voted for. It’s a pattern, and it’s getting old.
In their op-ed, the authors warn that “Alaska cannot afford to lose health care funding,” citing the state’s high rates of suicide, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted infections, along with a dire shortage of behavioral health services. The kicker? They claim that the GOP cuts “will only make these problems worse,” as if Alaska is uniquely burdened with public health crises and therefore deserves a permanent federal subsidy while voting to deny one to everyone else.
Apparently, when it’s a red state in trouble, the government needs to step in. Immediately. With cash from blue states, who get nothing but scorn in return.
The community welcome sign in Girdwood, Alaska
Alaska receives more federal money per capita than almost any other state. More than 40% of its state budget is federally funded, one-third of Alaskans is on Medicaid, and more than 70,000 rely on SNAP—about 10% of the population. That funding comes overwhelmingly from blue states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Washington—states that vote for a functioning government.
So, yes, Alaska is right to be scared. The bill will devastate them. But they aren’t innocent. They helped build the wrecking ball—and now they’re shocked to find it swinging in their direction. Actions have consequences.
“What is the end game here? How does it help anyone to terminate health care coverage for our most vulnerable through red tape or take away food for families who have limited to no options for gainful employment?” the op-ed says.
Great questions. You know who’s not trying to do any of that? Democrats.
If this bill passes and the lights start going out in Alaska, there will be no confusion about who flipped the switch.
The Caribbean region is a rich and fascinating melange of cultures, ethnicities, racial ancestries, and religions. We recently covered the arrival of a large migration of people from India/South Asia to the region and to here in the U.S., however the focus was on Hindus. There is a second part to that story, because along with those who were Hindu, came a much smaller group of Muslims. They brought with them religious practices and ceremonies which were changed when they came into close contact with Black Caribbean culture.
Karimah Rahman, writing for Brown Gyal Diary, gives us some demographic data history:
The approximately half a million South Asian/ Indian indentured labourers displaced to the Caribbean were predominantly Hindu at 85% with Muslim indentured labourers forming a large minority (some reports of 14% and 16%, (80,000)) and were composed of many intersectional identities.
She points out that this group of Muslims was diverse in their Islamic faith, practice, and caste:
A majority of Muslim indentured labourers were predominantly Sunni of the Hanafi madhab of fiqh(school of jurisprudence) with a small Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadiyyah minority. The largest caste represented among Hindu indentured labourers in the Caribbean are low castes/ dalits. The same can be said among Muslims (and Christans) but the caste breakdown on the Emigration Passes was only provided for Hindus, thus making low castes/ dalits the majority represented overall across religions if Muslim and Christian caste breakdowns are included. Muslims are not included in the caste breakdown since there is a perception that there is no caste system among Muslims (and Christians) in South Asia/ India.
So when they arrived they brought rituals with them and celebrated festivals from their homeland. One of those is now known and celebrated as “Hosay,” most currently in Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. It is being celebrated this week.
In Trinidad, the 100,000 Muslims who make up 5 percent of the island’s total population, celebrate the day of Ashura, as Hosay – the name derived from “Hussein.”
The first Hosay festival was held in 1854, just over a decade after the first Indian Muslims began to arrive from India to work on the island’s sugar plantations.
But Trinidad at the time was under British colonial rule and large public gatherings were not permitted. In 1884, the British authorities issued a prohibition against Hosay commemorations. Approximately 30,000 people took to the streets, in Mon Repos, in the south, to protest against the ordinance. Shots fired to disperse the crowd killed 22 and injured over 100. The ordinance was later overturned.
The “Hosay Massacre” or “Muharram Massacre,” however, lives in people’s memories.
YouTuber CalypsotoZess from Trinidad and Tobago produced a short video on the Hosay Massacre of 1884:
[The Hosay massacre] left an indelible mark on our nation's history, highlighting the resilience and unity of the Indian community.
In the mid-19th century, Indian indentured laborers brought their rich cultural traditions to Trinidad, including the Hosay festival. By the 1880s, the British colonial government grew wary of these gatherings and issued a prohibition. Defying the ban, participants proceeded with their processions, resulting in a tragic confrontation with colonial forces that left many dead and injured.
This massacre sparked outrage and solidarity among the Indian community, highlighting the oppressive nature of the colonial regime. Despite the tragedy, the Hosay festival evolved and continues to be celebrated as a symbol of cultural perseverance and unity.Join us on this journey through a pivotal moment in Trinidad's history, where the spirit of freedom and community triumphs over oppression.
Modern-day celebrations and commemorations have taken on a blending of old and new, including the construction of floats called “tadjahs.”
These days, Hosay celebrations in St. James and Cedros not only recall Hussein, but also those killed during the 1884 Hosay riots. Rather than recreate the events through self-flagellation or other forms of suffering, however, people in Trinidad create bright and beautiful floats, called “tadjahs,” that parade through the streets to the sea.
Each tadjah is constructed of wood, paper, bamboo and tinsel. Ranging from a height of 10 to 30 feet, the floats are accompanied by people parading along and others playing drums, just as is the practice in India’s northern city of Lucknow. Meant to reflect the resting place of Shiite martyrs, the tadjahs resemble mausoleums in India. To many, their domes might be a reminder of the Taj Mahal.
Walking ahead of the tadjahs are two men bearing crescent moon shapes, one in red and the other in green. These symbolize the deaths of Hussein and his brother Hassan – the red being Hussein’s blood and the green symbolizing the supposed poisoning of Hassan.
The elaborateness of the tadjahs continues to increase each year and has become somewhat of a status symbol among the families that sponsor them.
This video gives you a look at one of these processions from 2022, the Port of Spain-Big Tadjah and Moon Procession by Devashish Ramdath:
Anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker Frank J. Korom has spent years documenting Hosay and Islam in the Caribbean and Latin America. Here’s an extended trailer from his film on the observance of Shi'ite Muharram rites on the island of Trinidad:
Journalist Abigail Barrett covered the practice in Jamaica for Our Today:
Hussay or Hosay is an annual Muslim-predominant Indo-Caribbean festival still going strong in southern Clarendon. Behind the shadow of Christianity, however, folks in the other thirteen parishes seem oblivious to the tradition’s existence or significance.
The Clarendon communities of Gimme-Me-Bit, Race Course and Kemps Hill are the only places you can find Hussays being held.
[...]
Though the festival’s origins are spiritual, in Jamaica the focus is not entirely on those aspects since the proper Islamic celebration would not include rum, the beating of goatskin drums, and parading on the street with the tadjah. One would think of a mini-carnival when you think of the Jamaican Hussay.
The male who builds the Tadjah cannot eat meat, or dairy or engage in sexual intercourse for 10 days while the Hussay is being observed. Folks from the community and all over Jamaica gather wherever the Tadjah is being displayed (usually at the maker’s residence) for typically nine days, taking part in the drinking of rum, enjoying the rhythmic beating of the drums and tassas with the chiming of symbols. On the final day of the celebration, this is amplified as the Tadjah is paraded along the streets for hours, while the participants dance, cheer and shout “Bolo Bolo” which has no literal meaning, but in the context of Hussay we can say it means “The people are drunk”.
In 2022,Cecelia Campbell-Livingston, a reporter for The Jamaica Gleaner, wrote about the festival’s uncertain future:
Leroy Jagasar and his two nephews Suresh and Sanjay are doing everything they can to keep the Hosay Festival tradition going in Clarendon.
[...]
The Jagasars said the local tradition dates back to the 1800s when their foreparents came to Jamaica to work on sugar estates.
The festival, which used to be a staple in other parishes such as Westmoreland and St Mary, is now only celebrated in Clarendon.
[...]
The jury is still out on whether the event will return as Leroy’s nephews said that work demands would not allow them to dedicate the months of work and commitment to build the Hosay or engage in the three months of practice with players before the festival.
They have also been unsuccessful in numerous attempts to get funding to keep that part of the island’s culture alive.
According to Leroy, only the councillor for the division, Pauline Reynolds, a few friends in Kingston and a handful of local bar operators have been willing to give support.
In Guyana (formerly British Guiana) the commemoration was called “Tadjah” where it wound up being banned.
The festival will continue in Trinidad and Tobago and the memory of the Hosay Massacre is being kept alive.Dr. Satnarine Balkaransingh, recently published the book “Hosay Caribbean: Tadjahs on Wheels”:
Dr Balkaransingh reveals in the book how Ordinance 9 of 1882 restricted Hosay processions to rural areas, segregated participants by religion and ethnicity, and sought to erode unity within the Indian community. Despite these measures, the “processionists” marched on October 30, 1884, carrying tadjahs and chanting marsīyas, dirges mourning Imam Hussein’s martyrdom at Karbala.
The book vividly recounts this tragic day, “The spectacle—thundering tassa drumming, with clashing brass cymbals, frenzied fencing of sticks and goatskin shields—was reliving the passion of Hussein in that battle of long ago in that ancient, distant land of Arabia. A section within the procession would have been chanting the highly emotive, dirge-like poetic verses, marsīyas. This was the annual norm of Muharram processions brought from the motherland, India. To the unfamiliar, it was mayhem.”
At Cipero Street, Major Bowles and his detachment confronted the first procession. The Riot Act was read in English—unheard and unintelligible to many marchers. Bowles ordered his men to fire.
“Guns already cocked, now levelled, they shot into the on-coming mass from a distance of as close as 25 feet. Two volleys of buckshot-loaded ammunition tore through the advancing crowd. The tadjahs, symbols of grief and defiance, lay toppled on the bloodstained ground.”
Here’s another example from calypso storyteller George Rapersand performing “The Hosay Massacre”:
President Donald Trumpmade a big show on Tuesday by visiting Florida’s new immigrant detention center, where he and other GOP officials have made clear their intention to abuse human rights and vulnerable communities.
The so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” brings to life Trump’slurid fantasies of using wild, violent animals in detaining immigrants, but it’s also a reminder that Trump has spent decades publicly fantasizing about his twisted desires.
Here are 8 other times when Trump subjected us all to the gruesome visions bouncing around in his head.
1. Executing the Exonerated Five
Trump ran a full-page newspaper ad in 1989 calling for the execution of the Exonerated Five—known at the time as the Central Park Five. The 5 teenage boys, who were Black and Latino, were completely innocent.
Years later, after DNA evidence and a confession conclusively proved their innocence, they were released from prison after spending between 6 and 13 years inside. Still, Trump refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong.
2. Shooting immigrants in the legs
According to a 2019 book by two New York Times reporters, White House sources said that Trump went into a “frenzied week of presidential rages” over immigration. At one point, Trump asked his closest advisers to authorize shooting immigrants in the legs to slow their travels across the border.
He also reportedly wanted to put spikes along border walls and electrify immigrants. It was during this frenzy that he apparently began falling in love with surrounding immigrants with alligators and snakes.
3. Shooting protesters
Protesters walk in front of The Trump International Hotel following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, who served during Trump’s first term,revealed in 2022 that Trump wanted to curtail the exercise of First Amendment rights by shooting protesters. The authoritarian idea was reportedly in response to the protests for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Esper said that he and other military leaders were taken aback when Trump asked, “Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Trump was upset because he thought that the protests made the country look weak.
4. Immigrant blood sports
While campaigning last year,Trump told his supporters that he told Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White that he’d like to see immigrants forced into gladiatorial combat.
“I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league—these are the greatest fighters in the world—fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win; that’s how tough they are,” he said.
5. Murdering the families of terrorists
When he was first running for office in 2015, Trump was trying to prove that he had the best policy to combat international terrorism: murder.
“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families,” he told Fox News.
At the time, Israeli counterterrorism expert Boaz Ganormade clear in a CNN interview that this fantasy of Trump’s would be a “war crime.”
6. Reopening Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
Alcatraz is a public museum and has not operated as a prison since 1963. But in May, Trump said that he would use the power of the federal government to change that.
Alcatraz Island
“I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” he wrote on Truth Social.
There arenearly 2 million people incarcerated in the United States—the largest rate of incarceration in the world. There isn’t any need to reopen Alcatraz beyond feeding Trump’s sick desires.
7. Turning the Gaza Strip into a resort
People are suffering in Gaza as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on. But Trump thinks it would be a great location for a new resort.
In February,he posted an AI-generated video that showed Gaza morphing into a gold-covered luxury resort, which included statues of Trump and Elon Musk. That same month, Trump said that Palestinians should be forcefully relocated after a U.S. takeover.
8. A third Trump term
Trump’ssecond term has been constant mayhem, abuse, and scandal—even worse than his first term. The Constitution prohibits presidents from serving more than two terms, but Trump has made it clear that he has no respect for the law.
He hasrepeatedly floated the idea of running for office again and serving for another four years.
“I think I'm not allowed to run again. I'm not sure. Am I allowed to run again?” he said to House Republicans in January.
He isn’t.
Trump isn’t alone in his disturbing fantasies. In May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was considering a reality TV show where immigrants compete for citizenship.
And, of course, Noem infamously posed for photos in front of immigrants being detained in El Salvador’s notoriously violent CECOT prison.
Americans’ pride in their nationhas never been lower. Having a leader like Trump, who uses his presidential power to bring to life his gruesome and embarrassing fantasies, has no doubt contributed significantly to those negative feelings.
Things I need to remember: • Asking for help is not, as it turns out, fatal. • Laughing is easier than pulling your hair out, and doesn't have the unfortunate side effect of making you look like a plague victim. • Even the biggest tasks can be defeated if taken a bit at a time. • I can write a paper the night before it's due, but the results are not all they could be. • Be thorough, but focused. • Trust yourself. • Honesty, always.
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