Chuck Darwin
The moment Putin walks into the negotiating room, he has gotten everything he wants
— plus an opportunity to make a quip about Alaska as historically Russian land
(consider this a prediction).
If the meeting does not produce an agreement, Putin loses nothing.
Trump, on the other hand, would lose face if he walked out empty-handed.
He may be motivated to accept something, anything.
Chuck Darwin
In Washington D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday
-- For many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency.
It echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used racism to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with bigoted narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-washington-dc-takeover-race-39388597bad7e70085079888fe7fb57b
Chuck Darwin
Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation’s capital.
The FBI has begun dispatching about 120 of its agents in overnight shifts to help prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter,
Trump, who plans a news conference at the White House on Monday on this topic,
compared the forthcoming action against D.C. crime to his administration’s aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border,
saying on Sunday that he plans to
“immediately clear out the city’s homeless population and take swift action against crime.”
“Be prepared! There will be no “MR. NICE GUY.” We want our Capital BACK,”
Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.
The deployment of FBI agents to deal with local crime puts agents from the bureau’s counterintelligence, public corruption and other divisions
with minimal training in traffic stops
out on the streets in potentially dangerous encounters,
diverting them from their typical jobs at the bureau.
And it comes as Trump is publicly portraying the city as rampant with violent crime
— even as the mayor refutes that characterization, pointing to police data showing a drop in violent crime.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/10/dc-crime-trump-crackdown/
Chuck Darwin
Trump is recklessly shredding our economic advantages in the global economy.
Companies that are looking to make investments shouldn’t have to worry if Trump has cooked the books on economic data--but that’s exactly what’s happening following his decision.
-- Katie Porter
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/firing-of-labor-statistics-head-undermines-trust-in-key-data-ex-trump-official-warns
https://bsky.app/profile/katieporteroc.bsky.social/post/3lvqsuw7sns2h
Chuck Darwin
Trump and his officials are waging a war on electricity infrastructure.
This campaign is primarily driven by their opposition to the solar and wind farms that they associate with their foils, the Democrats.
Even as electricity has clearly become more important to the economy
— and even as the country’s biggest technology firms strive to secure any spare electron for their new metropolis-size data centers
— Trump and his team have begun a regulatory coup to smother new power development.
That war began, of course, with Trump’s signature domestic policy law,
which pinched off long-running tax credits for wind and solar energy.
But it does not stop there.
In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has started an all-out war on renewable energy. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has weaponized his department’s permitting process to slow down wind, solar and battery projects nationwide
— every step of every federal permit for renewable energy must now pass under the eye of some political appointee.
Another recent order has suggested that the federal government may essentially ban wind and solar farms from public land.
A separate Transportation Department policy could even restrict companies’ ability to build private wind farms on private land.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/opinion/electric-vehicles-china-clean-energy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Chuck Darwin
New chatbot on Trump’s Truth Social platform keeps contradicting him
An “answer engine” on Trump’s social media site says
the 2020 election wasn’t stolen,
tariffs aren’t boosting the stock market
and Barack Obama is seen favorably
Chuck Darwin
It’s exactly four weeks ago today that the Jeffrey Epstein story broke,
or re-broke in its current form.
On Friday, July 11, the world learned of the tense meeting that took place at the White House that previous Wednesday,
in which FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino clashed with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Epstein files.
Bongino was so incensed that he didn’t go to work that Friday
and threatened to resign.
He has, at least for now, backed off that threat,
but the episode revealed the deep intra-MAGA divide on the matter,
and it’s been in the news every day since
I hear a lot of people on cable news talk about how poorly the Trump people have handled this situation.
Of course that’s true,
but it seems to me reasonable for us to conclude that they’re handling it the way they’re handling it because it’s probably the only choice they have:
to stonewall and lie and try to put things off.
Even a lot of MAGA people smell it.
Candace Owens said recently:
“I feel like Trump thinks his base is stupid, or, again …
the people around him certainly think that Trump is stupid.…
Trump is surrounded by people who hate him and have infiltrated his base, and they think …
that Trump was too stupid to be president,
that his base is too stupid to see through the lies that they’re telling now.”
She added that the Epstein scandal
“is definitely terminal cancer to Trump’s MAGA movement.”
Owens reminded her listeners of the core fact we all need to keep in mind:
This is about the rape of children.
Hundreds or maybe thousands of them.
Apparently, enough of MAGA world is repulsed enough by that fact that
this is one time in the last decade when Trump’s attempts to wave it all away as a Democrat hoax aren’t cutting it.
It looks like we’ve finally found the matter on which plain, old-fashioned morality is more important than trolling the libs.
That’s one thing Trump wasn’t counting on.
https://newrepublic.com/article/198931/epstein-maga-world-trump-hiding-something?utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Threads&utm_medium=social
Chuck Darwin
VOTER: “West Virginia has 4 members of Congress…
none of them are willing to come here and do what you’re doing.
What can we do?”
BERNIE: “We need a political revolution.
We need to elect people accountable to the working class
rather than raising money from billionaires.”
https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lvzcbafovc2u
Chuck Darwin
Extreme GOP gerrymanders have remade American politics over the last 15 years.
They have locked Republicans into office in state legislatures nationwide,
even in purple states when Democratic candidates win more votes.
They have delivered a reliable and enduring edge to the GOP in the race for Congress.
Perhaps most importantly, they have entrenched hard-right lawmakers and insulated them from the ballot box,
allowing them to enact conservative policies on reproductive rights and public education that are rejected by majorities of voters.
Now Texas Republicans,
spurred by Donald Trump,
have readied a brazen mid-decade power grab
that would award them as many as five additional seats in Congress.
This would be a dramatic boost heading into the midterms,
since the GOP only holds a three-seat majority.
California has threatened to retaliate with a mid-decade redraw of its own.
Other blue state governors are talking tough as well.
But Republicans have more targets.
They won’t stop in Texas.
They will probably redraw Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Florida as well.
How did we get here?
How did gerrymandered lines, rather than voters, gain the power to determine winners and losers?
The modern story really begins in 2008
with the election of Barack Obama
and a blue wave that delivered Democrats trifecta power and even a US Senate supermajority.
On television that election night,
even the sharpest Republican analysts spoke of unbreakable emerging coalitions and demographic changes
that could provide Democrats with majorities for a generation.
It didn’t exactly work that way.
💥A handful of savvy Republican strategists recognized that while 2008 may have been historic, 2010 could be much more consequential.
It would be a census year.
And after every census, the nation redistricts every state legislature and US House seat.
A lightbulb went off at the Republican state leadership committee (RSLC).
Executive director Chris Jankowski recognized the opportunity first:
target states where the legislature controls redistricting.
Pour millions into underfunded state legislative races.
Drown Democratic incumbents.
Flip as many chambers as possible.
Redraw the lines.
If Republicans could pull it off,
they would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade.
“We should do this,” Jankowski remembered, in an interview for my book Ratf**ked.
“I think we can get millions – and you don’t have to do anything other than what you were going to do anyway.”
They called this #Redmap,
short for the Redistricting Majority Project.
It transformed the nation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/gerrymandering-republican-redistricting?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Chuck Darwin
'Ukrainians will not gift their land'
— Zelensky rejects idea of territorial concessions to end Russia's war
https://kyivindependent.com/ukrainians-will-not-gift-their-land-zelensky-rejects-idea-of-territorial-concessions-to-end-russias-war/
Chuck Darwin
On GEO Group’s second quarterly earnings call, the private prison company’s executive chairman, George Zoley,
told participants that the company was pursuing
“unprecedented growth opportunities”
as Donald Trump rapidly expands the U.S.’s detention and deportation apparatus.
As with their previous earnings call, GEO Group had much to celebrate.
Notably, Zoley has donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidate and PACs,
and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has defended Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda at every turn,
is a former GEO Group lobbyist.
“Congrats on the quarter and all the positive news” and the “fantastic growth opportunities ahead of us,”
one participant told executives during the question and answer session
https://truthout.org/articles/anti-immigrant-agenda-means-unprecedented-growth-opportunities-for-geo-group/
Chuck Darwin
Trump’s tariff threats have turned into a play for cold, hard cash
as he tries to leverage U.S. economic power to cajole other nations to make multibillion-dollar investments in order to maintain access to America’s market.
The president’s second-term trade agenda has clear echoes of his “Mob Boss” approach,
essentially demanding that trading partners show him the money in the form of investment pledges or else face astronomically high tariffs
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/us/politics/trump-tariffs-foreign-investment.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Chuck Darwin
This year’s spike in fire activity appears to be driven by several large fires across
Central and Southern California, including three major fires that devastated parts of Los Angeles County in January.
But even without those unprecedented January fires
— the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes
— this year would still outpace the five-year average for this point in the season
https://bsky.app/profile/cira-csu.bsky.social/post/3lvlzqwfwqs24
Chuck Darwin
Good news for the Women’s Marchers of 2017.
The future did turn out to be female.
Less good news: The females now in power are far-right and bloodthirsty.
Having appointed more women to Cabinet-level positions than any other Republican president,
Donald Trump now has a quartet of harpies fronting the administration’s most vicious bloodsports.
Like middle-aged Manson girls,
Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, Linda McMahon, and Kristi Noem
take orders from a supremely nasty felon.
But they have vile streaks all their own.
The vileness blends their private and public actions in a filthy smoothie
https://newrepublic.com/article/198707/pam-bondi-tulsi-gabbard-linda-mcmahon-kristi-noem-vile-four
Chuck Darwin
Newsletter platform Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social web platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads
https://www.theverge.com/news/718286/ghost-6-update-social-web-mastodon-bluesky?utm_content=buffera7c3b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bsky.app&utm_campaign=verge_social
Chuck Darwin
Hamas no longer a threat to Israel, say 600 former spies
Retired security officials call on Trump to pressure Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire that would return the remaining Israeli hostages
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/08/04/hamas-israel-security-trump-netanyahu-mossad/
Chuck Darwin
The day marking the destruction of the first and second temples in ancient Jerusalem is traditionally observed by fasting, mourning and lamentation.
But this year on Tisha B’Av, which began the evening of Saturday (Aug. 2), some Jews will mourn another destruction
— not of the historic temples,
but of Gaza
https://religionnews.com/2025/08/01/this-tisha-bav-some-jews-are-mourning-another-destruction/
Chuck Darwin
When Donald Trump didn’t like the weak jobs numbers that were released on Friday, he fired the person responsible for producing them.
It was a move with few precedents in the century-long history of economic statistics in the United States.
And for good reason: When political leaders meddle in government data, it rarely ends well.
Perhaps most famously, there is the case of Argentina, which in the 2000s and 2010s systematically understated inflation figures to such a degree that
the international community eventually stopped relying on the government’s data.
That loss of faith drove up the country’s borrowing costs, worsening a debt crisis that ultimately led to it defaulting on its international obligations.
It is too soon to know whether the United States is on a similar path.
But economists and other experts said that Trump’s decision on Friday to fire Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was a troubling step in that direction
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/business/trump-bls-firing-economic-reports.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Chuck Darwin
Starving child in Gaza was reportedly killed minutes after receiving aid, former US military contractor says
Anthony Aguilar,
who worked at the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF),
says the child kissed his hand and thanked him
before the child was shot dead by Israeli forces
Chuck Darwin
Wildfire raging near Grand Canyon grows into a 'megafire'
The Dragon Bravo Fire, ignited by lightning around July 4, has become the largest wildfire in the continental United States in 2025
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/01/dragon-bravo-megafire-size-containment/85472999007/
Social and economic justice, technology and tennis. I'll have what @jbf1755 is having. searchable
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