Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im), page 21

Many professed concerns from the right about Israel or antisemitism are expressions of American identity politics and nativism
-- more than they are statements of genuine concern for the safety and well-being of minorities.

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/if-not-now-when/

Texas parents frantically posted photos of their young daughters on social media with pleas for information as more than 20 campers from an all-girls summer camp were unaccounted for Friday after floods tore through the state’s south-central region.

At least 13 people were dead Friday and dozens missing after months worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours on Texas Hill Country, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

The flood-prone region is dotted with century-old summer camps that draw thousands of kids annually from across the Lone Star State.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2025/07/04/texas-families-plead-for-information-on-more-than-20-girls-missing-from-summer-camp-after-floods

Twenty U.S. Catholic bishops have signed onto an interfaith effort opposing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would enact key provisions of President Donald Trump's legislative agenda on taxes and immigration, calling it a "moral failure."

A letter from more than 40 faith leaders of several faith traditions
-- made public by Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on June 26
-- urged senators to reject the bill.

"We, the undersigned faith leaders, write to ask for your opposition to HR 1, the budget reconciliation legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Senate," the letter said. "We believe that the changes made by the U.S. Senate to the legislation are insufficient and do not significantly mitigate its adverse effects."

Archbishop Wester, who was joined by 19 U.S. bishops in signing the letter, told OSV News they thought it would be "a good idea for faith leaders to come together to express our deep and profound concern about this bill, because ⭐️it's going to hurt and harm so many people, particularly immigrants and families and those who depend on the government to assist them for their medical needs."

"This (legislation) is really violating our Catholic social teaching in terms of a preferential option for the poor, welcoming the stranger in our midst, the common good, subsidiarity," he said. ⭐️"It's a very draconian kind of a bill that seems to have little or no regard for the people that will be affected by it."

👉The letter objected to allocating millions of dollars to the government's mass deportation campaign, expressing concern that campaign would also infringe upon their houses of worship.

"We have already witnessed a reduction in attendance at many of our religious services in our denominations, as the threat of enforcement has deterred many families from practicing their faith," the letter said.

👉It also objected to "severe cuts in healthcare coverage and food assistance to millions of both low-income citizens and legal residents, including asylum-seekers and refugees." It argued those cuts would drive them "deeper into poverty."

"From our various faith perspectives, ⭐️the moral test of a nation is how it treats those most in need of support.
In our view, this legislation will harm the poor and vulnerable in our nation, to the detriment of the common good," the letter said.

🔥 "Its passage would be a moral failure for American society as a whole."

https://news.diocesetucson.org/news/20-us-bishops-join-interfaith-effort-opposing-big-beautiful-bill-as-moral-failure

Russian state media reported that during the Trump-Putin call, Putin reiterated his determination to continue pursuing the Kremlin's goals in Ukraine -- despite mounting international calls for a ceasefire.

Zelensky called on Ukraine's allies, particularly the United States,
to apply massive and immediate pressure on Russia.

"We need to ensure that for every such attack on people and lives, they (Russia) feel the corresponding sanctions and other blows to their economy, their earnings, their infrastructure," he said.

"Only this can bring faster change."

https://kyivindependent.com/air-raids-in-ukraine-began-as-trump-and-putin-spoke-zelensky-calls-for-more-patriot-missiles-06-2025/

China's state TV broadcaster has revealed details of a new
"graphite bomb"
that can cause a "complete loss of electricity" across an area of 10,000 square meters,
or knock out entire power stations, the South China Morning Post reported.

An animated video released by China's CCTV showed a missile being launched from a ground-based launcher
and then flying to a target where it releases 90 small submunitions.

They then bounce on the ground before exploding amid a mock-up of an electrical substation.
The video then shows electrical equipment malfunction

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3316270/video-teases-new-chinese-blackout-bomb-can-knock-out-enemy-power-stations

Timothy Snyder:

The people described as "undocumented" or "denaturalized"
(and other categories sure to be invented soon)
are portrayed as criminals.

If the Trump regime tries to enslave such people on a large scale, there will be a court case.

But waiting for the Supreme Court to do the right thing is, to put it gently, no substitute for action.

It would be good if there were explicit legislation banning slave labor in all circumstances -- But such a law is unlikely without a movement behind it.

The government is putting before us the temptation to cooperate in fascist dehumanization on a grand scale -- But that does not mean we must do so.

This is an area where actions by individuals, by civil society, by the professions, and by companies can be decisive.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/concentration-camp-labor

American contractors guarding aid distribution sites in Gaza are using live ammunition and stun grenades
-- as hungry Palestinians scramble for food, according to accounts and videos obtained by The Associated Press.

Two U.S. contractors, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were revealing their employers’ internal operations,
said they were coming forward because they were disturbed by what they considered dangerous and irresponsible practices.

https://mastodon.online/@KarenStrickholm/114792338116561545

@KarenStrickholm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=63XTo2EyLZA

Trump said on Thursday that a phone call earlier in the day with Vladimir Putin
resulted in "no progress at all"
on efforts to end the war in Ukraine,

while a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict’s “root causes.”
– Russian shorthand for the issue of Nato enlargement and western support for Ukraine.


The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some US weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hour-long conversation, according to a readout provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.

US attempts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled,

and Trump has come under increased pressure – including from some Republicans – to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/04/ukraine-war-briefing-trump-says-he-didnt-make-any-progress-with-putin-after-call?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

ICE now has a bigger budget that the Russian military.

And Russia is in the middle of an invasion of another country.

https://bsky.app/profile/cjbush88.bsky.social/post/3lt3fybbfs224

US won't send some weapons pledged to Ukraine following a Pentagon review of military aid

A Pentagon review determined that stocks were too low on some weapons previously pledged to Ukraine,
so pending shipments of some items won’t be sent,
according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide information that has not yet been made public.

The Defense Department did not provide details on what specific weapons were being held back.

The halt of some weapons from the U.S. is a blow to Ukraine as Russia has recently launched some of its biggest aerial attacks of the war,
in an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in peace efforts championed by Trump.

Talks between the sides have ground to a halt.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped a meeting last month of an international group to coordinate military aid to Ukraine that the U.S. created three years ago.

Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, formed the group after Russia attacked Ukraine,
and Hegseth’s absence was the first time the U.S. defense secretary wasn’t in attendance.

Under Austin’s leadership, the U.S. served as chair of the group,
and he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff attended monthly meetings,
which were both in person and by video.

Hegseth had previously stepped away from a leadership role of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group
— turning that over to Germany and the United Kingdom
— before abandoning the gathering altogether .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/01/ukraine-us-weapons-shipments-halt-review/b10e0fba-56ce-11f0-b45b-dc9aeb848c03_story.html

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to...acclaim the bully as hero”

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1958
#poetry

https://bsky.app/profile/samrasnake.bsky.social/post/3lstfoqwl5s2t

A long outage of Columbia University servers last week was due to a hacker,
seemingly with a pro-Trump agenda of stealing data to show the guilty nature of
“woke” university policies.

In particular this hacker gave the data for 2.5 million applications to Columbia over many years to Bloomberg News.

Not sure what this would show of significance other than the already heavily litigated fact that Columbia and most other universities have been practicing affirmative action and giving preference to applications from specific disadvantaged groups since the 1960s-70s.

One thing that this could resolve might be the big debate over whether Barron Trump was rejected from Columbia, perhaps explaining Trump’s campaign to destroy the university

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/nyregion/columbia-university-hacker.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

-- Peter Woit,
in his blog "Not Even Wrong"
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

Powell confirmed Fed would have cut interest rates by now were it not for Trump's tariffs

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said earlier this morning that the central bank would likely have already cut interest rates this year had it not been for the economic shock caused by Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

When asked if Trump’s tariffs on imported goods held up the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates, Powell replied:
"I think that’s right."

Speaking at a central banking conference in Portugal, he went on:
"In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs."

In response, Trump attacked Powell once again during his tour of the controversial new concentration camp in Florida this morning.
Asked if he intended to announce his pick for the next Fed chair, Trump said:
“Anybody would be better than Jay Powell.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jul/01/donald-trump-vote-a-rama-big-beautiful-bill-republicans-democrats-live-us-politics-news-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Hundreds of protesters greeted Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, as they arrived at the hastily assembled concentration camp in the Florida Everglades .

The space was previously a largely disused airstrip surrounded by swampland abundant in alligators and Burmese pythons.

“You’ll have a lot of people that will deport on their own because they don’t want to end up in an Alligator Alcatraz, or some of these other places,” Governor Ron DeSantis said.

“This is a model, but we need other states to step up.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/01/trump-alligator-alcatraz-immigration-florida?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Supreme Court issued its birthright citizenship ruling this morning
and it’s worse than just about everyone feared it could be.

The Court’s ruling is composed of two main parts.

The first is its declaration that it is possible that the president can contradict the plain-text reading of the Constitution by issuing an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.

The second is that lower courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against blatantly unconstitutional policies imposed by the executive.

Injunctions must now be created on a patchwork basis.

I want to impress upon you how dangerous this is.

SCOTUS has empowered the president to impose whatever he likes
—irrespective of its constitutionality
—and then prevented judicial overview except at the localized level.

Meaning that we will now have two sets of laws

One that operates in Red America and one that Operates in Blue America.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-supreme-court-just-made-america

When Ashley Robinson and her mother took DNA tests 10 years ago and began meeting long lost cousins,
they stumbled across a surprising family history that changed their lives.

Robinson’s lineage traced back to the 272 West Africans who were enslaved by Jesuits
and sold to plantation owners in the southern US in 1838.

The sale of the enslaved Africans helped fund Georgetown University,
the oldest Jesuit higher education institution in the US,
and served as collateral to the now defunct Citizens Bank of New Orleans,
whose assets were later folded into JPMorgan Chase.

Robinson dived into researching her lineage after having her first child at 21 years old,
and soon enrolled in an organization called the
GU272 Descendants Association,
which hosts genealogical workshops and connects people whose ancestors were sold by Georgetown University.

While national discussions around reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans have largely stalled,
Robinson’s uncovering of her family’s history met an unlikely resolution.
During her senior year in undergraduate school, she received a scholarship funded by the successors of her family’s enslavers.

“I remember praying after I finished the [scholarship] application,” Robinson said.
As a 29-year-old mother of three, Robinson considered taking a break from school due to financial constraints.
“It was perfect timing, because the scholarship came about, and that’s sailing me through the end of my degree.”
The $10,000 from the nonprofit "Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation"
has helped minimize the federal student loans that Robinson needs to complete her computer science degree at University of Maryland Global Campus by the end of the year.

For Robinson, the scholarship has meant that she “will be able to finish school without taking food from the table or having to figure out what we’re going to do next"

Based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
"The Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation"
is a partnership between the descendants of West Africans enslaved by Jesuits
and the church’s successors,
aimed to address the wrongs of the past by focusing on three pillars:

education,
honoring elders
and addressing systemic racism.

The descendants partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to issue post-secondary educational scholarships for descendants of Jesuit enslavement
at institutions of their choice.

Since the fall of 2024, the foundation has awarded more than $170,000 in scholarships to 25 students across 20 schools,
with students being eligible to renew scholarships every year.

As Donald Trump’s administration has targeted diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the federal level by cancelling grant programs that benefit people of color,
the foundation has successfully championed reparations in the private sector.

“We’re looking to fill the gap where these institutions are somewhat hesitant or unsure how they’re going to be able to support those communities,”
the foundation’s president and CEO, Monique Trusclair Maddox said.

Bishops reckoning with their church’s history of slavery in the UK are also looking to the foundation’s truth and reconciliation efforts.

“Teaching this history through Jesuit institutions,
allowing dialogue to come in places that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded is something that hasn’t been done in the past,”
Trusclair Maddox said.

“We believe that that whole approach to changing how people look at racism and how people look at marginalized communities is something that will last for a long time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/28/dei-nonprofit-reparations-education-louisiana

What follows is a surprisingly elegant introduction to a lesser-known evolutionary theory,
wrapped in the curious biography of Sewall Wright
-- a geneticist with a lifelong fixation on guinea pigs.

I’ve occasionally wondered:
Why don’t we see fish wandering around on little legs, on their way to becoming something grander?

Wright put it more scientifically:

How do organisms evolve beneficial traits when the steps in between might be maladaptive?

In the early 1900s, guinea pigs were the lab animal of choice, and Wright
—then a graduate student at Harvard’s Bussey Institute
—found himself managing a colony housed in a gothic mansion in Boston.

It was there that he encountered guinea pigs with an extra toe -- and began to formulate his answer.

Zachary B. Hancock walks us through Wright’s “shifting balance theory,”
which suggests that in small populations, genetic drift can help species leap across valleys of lower fitness toward new adaptive peaks.

It’s a complex idea, but Hancock is a skilled guide,
helping us through with a clever Lego-brick metaphor
and a timely parallel to the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.

This thoughtful and fast-paced read is both accessible and delightful
—an invitation to think differently about how change happens
(and feel a touch smarter while doing it).
https://nautil.us/evolution-and-guinea-pig-toes-1217063/

A government ban on Hungary’s Pride parade backfired Saturday as over 100,000 people marched through Budapest,
far more than usual

PM Viktor Orban warned people to stay away, threatening “clear legal consequences.”

But the warnings only turned a modest event into a mass rally against his government

https://bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3lspacxfrsc2c

Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.

The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were “multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name”, NBC reports.

Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail.

The Huntington Park police chief and mayor accused Diaz of impersonating an immigration agent at a news conference, a move Diaz later told the NBC News affiliate he was surprised by.

Diaz also denied to the outlet that he had posed as an officer with border patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
At the news conference, police showed reporters paper they found inside his car with an official-looking US Customs and Border Protection header.

The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.
Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.
Around the country, the sight of Ice officers emerging from unmarked cars in plainclothes to make arrests has become increasingly common.
In March, for instance, a Tufts University student was seen on video being arrested by masked Ice officials outside her apartment,
after her visa had been revoked for writing an opinion article in her university newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights.
And many federal agents operating in the Los Angeles region in recent weeks have been masked.

In late January, a week after Trump took office, a man in South Carolina was arrested and charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer, after allegedly presenting himself as an Ice officer and detaining a group of Latino men.

In February, two people impersonating Ice officers attempted to enter a Temple University residence hall.
CNN reported that Philadelphia police later arrested one of them, a 22-year-old student, who was charged with impersonating an officer.

In North Carolina the same week, another man, Carl Thomas Bennett, was arrested after allegedly impersonating an Ice officer and sexually assaulting a woman. Bennett reportedly threatened to deport the womanif she did not comply.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/civilians-impersonating-ice-officers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other