Nostr notes by Chuck Darwin

Trump Announces He’s Closing Public Golf Course in Full-Blown ...

2026-10-30T02:29:08Z

Trump Announces He’s Closing Public Golf Course in Full-Blown Tantrum

If Donald Trump can’t have it, then apparently no one can.

https://newrepublic.com/post/217321/donald-trump-closing-public-golf-course-tantrum

Trump Team Arranged Private Jet to Help Bolsonaro Flee Brazil ...

2026-10-30T01:56:55Z

Trump Team Arranged Private Jet to Help Bolsonaro Flee Brazil

Trump personally helped failed right-wing Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro flee to the United States, according to a new report in The New York Times.

Bolsonaro, who would have faced multiple criminal investigations if he stayed in Brazil, landed in Miami Wednesday after losing Brazil’s presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
But he wouldn’t have made it without the Trump administration’s help.
Bolsonaro and his family were able to come to the United States on a special kind of parole usually reserved for
“urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,”
after he apparently showed Homeland Security an expired diplomatic passport.

His next step will be applying for a green card, a process which an administration official said will be fast-tracked in a manner similar to his brother Eduardo, who was granted permanent residency last year.

Bolsonaro flew from Argentina to Ecuador before finally landing in Miami—and he did it all on a private jet handled by Jason Miller, a White House communications official, an unnamed administration official told the Times
https://newrepublic.com/post/217350/trump-team-arranged-private-jet-help-bolsonaro-flee-brazil

Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, celebrated passage of the ...

2026-10-29T19:21:53Z

Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, celebrated passage of the 54th anniversary of the Coastal Zone Management Act
-- by issuing a draft report finding the California Coastal Commission unjustifiably hostile towards offshore oil and Vandenberg’s Space X. M

The act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on October 27, 1972, required federal agencies to meet with their state counterparts to determine whether proposed coastal projects would run afoul of state coastal management plans.”
https://www.independent.com/2026/10/28/santa-barbara-county-faces-losing-the-california-coastal-commission/

On October 15, Israeli forces expelled residents and farmers from ...

2026-10-29T17:47:03Z

On October 15, Israeli forces expelled residents and farmers from Azariel,
an olive grove on the outskirts of Kfarshouba in South Lebanon,
ordering them to return the following week if they still wished to harvest their trees.
The next morning, an Israeli bulldozer, flanked by two army tanks, invaded the olive grove and uprooted the trees.

A few days before the expulsion, Chebli, a farmer from Kfarshouba, had watched an Israeli bulldozer uproot 70 olive trees belonging to his neighbor.
“I went over to him and found him crying,” he told Mondoweiss.
“He spent more than 20 years plowing this land and pruning the trees, and he hadn’t even harvested them yet
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/10/bulldozers-glyphosate-white-phosphorus-israels-destruction-of-south-lebanons-olive-groves/

Donald Trump bizarrely said on Tuesday that Venezuela gave him 1 ...

2026-10-28T23:03:38Z

Donald Trump bizarrely said on Tuesday that Venezuela gave him
1 million barrels of oil as a “gift”
that he is giving to the U.S. public,
which he referred to as “you people.”

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to Texas to show off a tanker that arrived at Port Arthur carrying Venezuelan crude oil to be processed at Texas refineries

News outlets that have viewed the deal have noted that it is written to favor the U.S. in every aspect,
with seemingly very little input from Venezuela’s government or its citizenry.

The deal is not expected to significantly affect oil prices, which remain at record levels due to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

As the Trump administration frames Venezuela as a source of wealth for the U.S.,
the seizure of Venezuelan oil and its profits are worsening an existing human rights crisis in the country,
compounding issues of poverty and causing skyrocketing inflation for the country’s 30 million people.
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-says-venezuela-gave-him-1m-barrels-of-oil-as-gift-as-us-seizes-revenues/

The National Capital Planning Commission, which has been stacked ...

2026-10-28T05:36:24Z

The National Capital Planning Commission, which has been stacked with commissioners loyal to President Donald Trump,
will meet on Nov. 5 to give final approval to the president’s 250-foot-tall triumphal arch on the edge of Arlington Cemetery.

That includes a plan to wash it with bright, cold, white flood lights, arrayed on six 30-foot tall poles around the base of the arch.

Renderings submitted to the NCPC show the arch dominated by a 60-foot winged statue bathed in light,
with gilded detailing on the stone and the concrete structure beneath it also glowing brightly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/10/27/how-trumps-arch-could-disrupt-solemn-nighttime-arlington-cemetery/

Brazilian judge orders investigation into JD Vance donor network ...

2026-10-28T05:28:55Z

Brazilian judge orders investigation into JD Vance donor network

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Tuesday ordered a police investigation into alleged ties between a donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance and the presidential campaign of Flávio Bolsonaro in the run-up to Sunday’s election.  Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino directed the Brazilian federal police to investigate the “nature” of the contacts between the Rockbridge Network,
which was founded in 2019,
and any Brazilian companies or political operatives to aid or finance Bolsonaro’s run.
 It’s a crime in Brazil for a political candidate to accept funding or other campaign assistance from a foreign source

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/10/27/brazilian-judge-orders-investigation-into-jd-vance-donor-network/

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) aren’t just helping ...

2026-10-28T04:58:33Z

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) aren’t just helping police investigate crimes anymore.
They’re now being used to flag drivers for supposedly “suspicious” driving patterns.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sounded the alarm Monday in a blog post, warning that law enforcement agencies across the United States are increasingly using license plate readers and AI-powered tools to pull over drivers even if they aren’t suspected of having committed a specific crime.
The post opens with the story of Grace Knowles, a woman in her 20s from northern Virginia who took a road trip through Oregon, Texas, and Louisiana in September 2025.
On her way to Florida, she was pulled over by an officer who claimed she had spent too much time driving in the left lane.
The officer questioned Knowles about her travels and asked for proof that she had been in New Orleans.
He eventually identified himself as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that was on a project for human and drug trafficking.
He told her that her license plate had been flagged for suspicious travel patterns.
After she convinced him she was just on a road trip, he offered to show her what he was looking at on a computer in his car.
“It was basically a heat map of the U.S., and I could see different circles where I’d been, and when he clicked on it, it was a photo of my license plate,” Knowles told the ACLU.
When she asked how authorities had collected images of her license plate, the officer told her the cameras were everywhere, including on top of highway signs.
https://gizmodo.com/police-are-using-ai-to-pull-over-drivers-for-suspicious-behavior-2000831220

Before he was elected president, Donald Trump sat down with Fox ...

2026-10-27T23:09:28Z

Before he was elected president, Donald Trump sat down with Fox News’s Rachel Campos-Duffy, who, during yet another softball interview typical of that network, posed the following question:
“Would you declassify the Epstein files?”
Trump answered: “Yeah, yeah I would.”

Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, JD Vanceand the president’s son, Donald Jr, all sang in the chorus that demanded the files be released.

❌But as soon as Trump became president, and Patel took over at the FBI, the tune changed dramatically.

Now that Trump was in a position to actually do something about it, suddenly there was nothing to see.
The FBI, under the direction of Patel and joined by Pam Bondi, the then US attorney general, even released a memo stating there was no client list,
no evidence to pursue investigations against third parties
and that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Trump went on to declare the Epstein files a “Democrat Hoax” and tried his damnedest to distract the public from demanding justice.

As is well known, Congress eventually passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), requiring the attorney general to release the files with very limited grounds for redactions and withholdings.

🔸We all saw the botched rollout of the 3.5m pages of materials
and how egregiously it reviolated Epstein survivors by releasing confidential personal information.
The EFTA was supposed to protect those survivors, but Trump’s Department of Justice blacked out the names of those with money, means and influence
but exposed victims and survivors.

If you think that was an accident, I’ve got some swampland in Florida to sell you.

🔥Then in January of this year, Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general,
declared that Trump’s Department of Justice was done.
Just done.
In my long career as a trial lawyer and journalist, I’ve been reading documents for what they say and what they leave out,
and have personally reviewed tens of thousands of the released Epstein files.
I never thought I would see our Department of Justice conceal the crimes of a small, moneyed elite.

⭐️So, I sued for the transparency the law required.
On 27 April, I filed "Katie Phang v Attorney General Todd Blanche"
in federal court in Washington DC,
arguing that Blanche violated the Administrative Procedure Act when he illegally redacted and withheld documents pursuant to the EFTA.

Blanche’s illegal conduct was making it impossible for journalists to do their jobs;
to bring the truth and transparency that the American people demanded and deserved.

✅On 25 June, the presiding judge in my case, Emmet Sullivan, found that Blanche had failed to respond substantively to my arguments
and that therefore “the Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation” of EFTA.

Judge Sullivan also ordered Trump’s justice department to begin producing specific unredacted documents.

Since then, Blanche has violated court orders,
refused to comply with the law and rules of procedure,
blown deadlines and made cheap, insincere excuses.
👉Instead of enforcing the law, the attorney general of the United States has been busy subverting it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/26/epstein-files-midterms-sledgehammer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court’s ...

2026-10-26T23:14:19Z

Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court’s findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans’ communications without a warrant.
Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans’ messages from intercepted data
without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires.

The court approved another year of surveillance anyway.

The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration’s own deadline for releasing it passed in September.

The program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), lapsed in June after Congress failed to renew it,
though collection continues under the court’s March approval.
The administration’s own public documentation says rulings like this one are reviewed for public release “within 180 days of issuance.”
That window closed September 13, even as intelligence officials press lawmakers to reauthorize the program by the end of the year.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-is-hiding-a-secret-court-ruling-about-how-it-spies-on-americans/

Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief ...

2026-10-26T19:28:54Z

Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms,
Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court.

He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years.

He failed to recuse from more than five hundred cases argued at the Supreme Court by law firms that had paid his household millions in commissions.

He architected the Court’s first ethics code and designed it to be unenforceable.

This is a course of conduct stretching across two decades,
connected by a single through-line:
the belief that the rules that apply to every other federal judge do not apply to him

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/the-chief-justice-and-his-wife-took

Donald Trump’s policies have been a disaster for the nation’s ...

2026-10-26T15:36:59Z

Donald Trump’s policies have been a disaster for the nation’s farmers,

so much so that a near electoral miracle may soon happen:

Kansas, one of the deepest red, most rural states, may elect its first Democratic senator in nearly a century.

After Trump won farm country handily in 2024, many rural voters in
Kansas, Iowa and elsewhere have soured on him because the price of diesel fuel,
a key input for farming, has soared by nearly 70%,
farm bankruptcies have surged
and because Trump’s trade wars have significantly reduced agricultural exports.

Rural voters are so upset with Trump that
polls show that Republican Senate candidates stand a good chance of losing in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas,
even though Trump won those rural states by 13 percentage points or more in 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/26/donald-trump-policy-disaster-rural-america?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Columbus Dispatch: The conduct of Vivek Ramaswamy in attacking ...

2026-10-25T16:03:21Z

Columbus Dispatch:

The conduct of Vivek Ramaswamy in attacking his rival has been reckless, shameful and morally depraved.

Therefore we are pulling our support for Ramaswamy and endorsing his rival, Amy Acton, instead.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/endorsements/2026/10/21/amy-acton-mother-attack-ad-vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-governor-2026-columbus-dispatch-endorsement/92268822007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=false&gca-epti=z117628p115850l119550c115850e1156xxv117628&gca-ft=10&gca-ds=sophi&taid=6ad88d2a1cd37f00010f5b90&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/letters/2026/10/24/attack-ad-amy-actons-mom-vivek-ramaswamy/92380490007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z112412p001050l000350c001050e1130xxv112412d--70--b--70--&gca-ft=171&gca-ds=sophi

Obama points out that while we may be struck with Trump for two ...

2026-10-25T16:00:29Z

Obama points out that while we may be struck with Trump for two more years,
we are not stuck with a spineless Congress

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mynfzkwclu2g

Trump’s DOJ told a judge how to rule. Then it pulled her from ...

2026-10-25T15:30:05Z

Trump’s DOJ told a judge how to rule.

Then it pulled her from court.

In the first year of Trump’s second term, the Justice Department
fired some 100 of the country’s roughly 700 immigration judges
and began to replace them with what the administration called
“deportation judges.”

 Donoso Stevens, 53, should have been insulated from the institutional chaos,
according to fellow judges and attorneys whose cases she oversaw.

Before joining the bench in 2016, she’d spent a decade at Homeland Security, earning a reputation as a formidable prosecutor.

She was Annandale’s most tenured “detained judge,” one of three who decided what to do with migrants in custody, the court’s highest-stakes cases.  Every year, Donoso Stevens had denied asylum in more than half the applications that came before her,
a record consistently in line with national averages.

She hadn’t resisted case quotas imposed by the first Trump administration and seldom took sick leave.
She never fell behind on her docket. 

💥But on that morning in Northern Virginia, she feared none of it mattered.

By then, Donoso Stevens said, another supervisor had already ordered her to reverse four rulings at the direction of unidentified “higher-ups,”

a violation of judicial authority she once considered inconceivable.

The interference, she said, had only escalated since.
 The allegations, which she’s sharing publicly for the first time because of her deep concern for the court’s integrity,
were corroborated by her extensive contemporaneous notes as well as colleagues, family and private attorneys interviewed by The Washington Post.

They contradict Trump officials’ insistence to the public and to The Post that
— as required by law
— immigration judges serve under the administration as independent arbiters of justice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/10/25/how-respected-us-immigration-judge-lost-her-job-under-trump/

Dutch intelligence services captured and flipped a Russian hacker ...

2026-10-25T03:58:04Z

Dutch intelligence services captured and flipped a Russian hacker operating for the GRU (Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency) in late 2017.
By the end of the year, the operative had given them access to a GRU server containing screenshots of Jared Kushner’s iPhone X,
and the Dutch spies were able to reverse-engineer the original method the GRU used to penetrate the phone’s then-state-of-the-art security.
This gave them access to a continual image feed (albeit without audio) of the phone’s screen.
This roughly overlaps with the timeline during which Kushner was allegedly using a personal cell phone
Instead of a secure government device,
using his private email(allegedly routed to Trump Org servers in 2017)
to conduct official government business, and receiving Top Secret intelligence -- without a permanent security clearance, by the way.
In early 2018, Dutch intelligence personnel began monitoring Kushner’s phone
and identified him logging into a Dubai-based bank account that had received around $750 million.
This is the Alpha account.
According to Cole, the Alpha account belonged to the United Arab Emirates-based (and government-funded) Watani Al Emarat Foundation,
and was held at the First Abu Dhabi Bank.
That bank is, in turn, chaired by the brother of UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ).
Cole reported Kushner and MBZ partly managed the account as a slush fund,
or what a source described to him as “a shared pool of money for off-the-books diplomatic objectives,”
and that MBZ and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) contributed the money.
The royals had originally discussed putting more than $10 billion into a broader fund
that could have helped pay for Trump’s border wall “in an effort to secure a second term in the White House,” Cole wrote,
But that plan fizzled out, so they settled on lesser Kushner-facilitated schemes.
https://gizmodo.com/report-dutch-spies-hacked-jared-kushners-iphone-watched-him-use-sleazy-middle-eastern-slush-fund-2000829742

The major American banks whose policies dictate the flow of ...

2026-10-25T03:46:57Z

The major American banks whose policies dictate the flow of capital throughout the world
are starting to worry about rogue AI,
preparing contingency plans for the “day after” a theoretical AI-driven catastrophe.

That’s according to new reporting from Axios,
which notes that banks are preparing for the worst
as they experience a huge rise in AI agent activity on behalf of individual customers.

The main worry seems to be an influx of financial activity driven by autonomous AI agents,
which have been authorized to access bank accounts by their human users.

In some cases, as Axios noted previously,
those agents are making moves that haven’t explicitly been prompted by humans
— a few even going so far as to contact call centers on behalf of their users, without being instructed to do so.

That’s become a major liability for top banks like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo,
which are scrambling to implement security procedures and policy updates to get ahead of the AI swarm.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/banks-preparing-ai-financial-catastrophe

Earlier in October, Finnish authorities ordered Google’s ...

2026-10-25T03:41:48Z

Earlier in October, Finnish authorities ordered Google’s affiliate data center developer Tuike Finland Oy to immediately suspend the illegal cuttingof some 1,300 acres of forest.
The tech giant was given a week to draft a report explaining its actions,
which soon became a flashpoint for Europe’s growing outrage over the data center boom.

New reporting by the Guardian shed fresh light on the impacts of Google’s deforestation.
After the 1,300 acres of pristine boreal forests were reduced to tracts of mud and stumps,
fauna which once called the woods home has been forced to vacate.
In the felling-site near the Finnish village of Otanmäki,
the ensuing loss of prey has forced packs of wolves to search for food elsewhere: -- nearby villages.
“We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest,” 53-year-old Otanmäki resident Anni Ranta told the Guardian.
“They fled.”

https://futurism.com/future-society/wolves-finland-google-ai-data-centers

A bird flu outbreak has been raging uncontrolled on an Utah mink ...

2026-10-25T03:38:15Z

A bird flu outbreak has been raging uncontrolled on an Utah mink farm for two months.
Flu experts fear it could spark a devastating human pandemic.

State officials didn’t order the mink to be killed -- which other countries with outbreaks have done.
They are prioritizing the financial interests of the fur trade.

Despite CDC guidance urging officials to monitor workers,
they actively chose not to
and declined to test workers
— including one with a symptom experts said would warrant testing.

https://www.propublica.org/article/bird-flu-mink-farm-utah-human-risk

Yet again, a tiny percentage of humans have unleashed hell on the ...

2026-10-25T03:35:04Z

Yet again,
a tiny percentage of humans have unleashed hell on the rest of us
out of greed

quoting
nevent1q…vws7
Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech. Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493. And there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector i can’t wait to see how this all goes down between wars, inflation, job losses and AI. Tiny percentage of humans always have unleashed hell on the rest of us out of greed

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the ...

2026-10-25T03:17:00Z

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded
to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators,
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin,
is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, -- who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes;
two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family;
and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

The pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics,
even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States,

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said,
seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin
while also lowering global energy prices.

But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers:
U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions,
instantly increasing their value

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Putin’s to make,
even though Lukoil is technically a private company.

The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon,
refineries in Europe
and gas stations in New Jersey,
comes down to Putin and Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/us/politics/kushner-witkoff-russia-oil-deal.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

According to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll published this ...

2026-10-24T22:18:28Z

According to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll published this week,

only 28 percent of voters said they were “confident” Trump would accept the results of the midterms.

Meanwhile, 70 percent said they were “not confident” that he would

https://truthout.org/articles/poll-7-in-10-americans-doubt-trump-will-accept-midterm-results/

Meta struck a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg in California despite ...

2026-10-23T22:17:54Z

Meta struck a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg in California despite looming billionaire tax

Meta created a new class of nonvoting stock
after Mark Zuckerberg threatened to leave California over a proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ assets.

The deal lets Zuckerberg sell or transfer shares without losing his voting majority,
preserving his control of Meta even if the measure passes.

Proposition 40 could raise $100 billion for healthcare, supporters say,
and Zuckerberg’s potential tax bill could reach roughly $12 billion.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-10-22/how-meta-struck-deal-to-keep-mark-zuckerberg-in-california-despite-looming-billionaire-tax

Omar Muñoz was getting ready to have his morning coffee just ...

2026-10-23T15:04:06Z

Omar Muñoz was getting ready to have his morning coffee just after 5am on Monday when he heard a loud bang at the front door of his Los Angeles home.

“Open up or else we’ll break down the door, and it’ll be bad for you,” the man on the other side yelled, Muñoz, 72, recalled.

Outside, Muñoz saw officers in police vests and opened the door.
When they told him to put his hands up, he explained he was frail after six recent surgeries.
He said something to the effect of,
“I can’t walk fast, I can’t take long steps, to enter a car is painful,” he recalled.

The officers nonetheless handcuffed him, he said, and when he stepped out into the street, he saw about six law enforcement cars.
And cameras filming.

Photos taken by an Associated Press photographer show officers in the dark of morning,
some with helmets, masks and shields, walking a shackled Muñoz out in the red pyjama pants he had slept in the night before.

A helicopter flew above and his street had already been taped off, he said:
“It was staged and I’m the patsy …
They wanted to make a scene.”

At that moment, Muñoz said he had no idea why he was being detained.
He later learned he was one of 28 green card holders in California charged by the Trump administration with allegedly registering to vote unlawfully.

Muñoz’s arrest was publicized a day later in a slickly edited Department of Justice (DoJ) promotional video,
turning him into the face of the crack down.

The publicity around Monday’s events shocked experts who closely follow these kinds of cases

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/23/california-voter-fraud-arrest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This Silicon Valley satire follows a CEO in trouble after the ...

2026-10-23T05:33:36Z

This Silicon Valley satire follows a CEO in trouble after the collapse of an acquisition deal.

Created by Succession writer Jonathan Glatzer,
each character is more hideous than the next
– and it is stuffed with twists and treacheries

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/22/the-audacity-review-hbo-max-jonathan-glatzer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added a ...

2026-10-22T15:01:53Z

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
added a third measles death to its dashboard on Wednesday,
but the agency would not reveal whether the death occurred in Pennsylvania or another state
– which is “notable” as the agency delays reporting other measles deaths, experts say.

The CDC cited privacy laws in not sharing the name of the state,
but experts say there are no privacy concerns in doing so
– and this information is important for the public to have as the outbreak continues accelerating,
growing by 8% in one week
to 4,410 confirmed cases so far this year,
nearly double last year’s count.

“I don’t buy it,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Law San Francisco.
“Naming a state won’t be giving personal details,
and they give the number of cases in each state,” she said,
adding there was “nothing to prevent giving numbers of deaths in each”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/22/cdc-measles-pennsylvania-state-deaths?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Inside Louisiana’s justice of the peace courts, evictions often ...

2026-10-20T20:31:04Z

Inside Louisiana’s justice of the peace courts,
evictions often move swiftly,
landlords rack up wins,
some judges earn outsized incomes
– and housing advocates say tenants’ fundamental rights are at risk.

The state’s 390 justices of the peace work part-time
– ruling on evictions, small claims and wage garnishments
as well as, in happier moments, performing weddings.

They are required to have only a high school diploma
and their courts do not need to keep detailed records or follow standard rules of evidence.

They are paid directly by the fees their court charges,
including court costs in eviction cases that can total $150 or more.

In court documents and interviews, tenant advocates and legal experts say
the interplay between fees and justices’ personal income creates conflicts of interest
that can incentivize them to evict tenants and win the favor of landlords who bring in cases and fees.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/20/louisiana-justice-of-peace-courts-evictions-fees?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, is taking flack from ...

2026-10-20T20:28:26Z

Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines,
is taking flack from conservative politicians and commentators
for saying 💥wealth inequality is a “danger to society”
and calling for a national wealth and inheritance tax in a recent interview.

Talking to the New York Times, Kirby was asked about the growing public distrust of CEOs and whether he felt any responsibility to quell that distrust.

✅ “We should have a national wealth tax
– it won’t work by state because people will just move,” he said.
⭐️“And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them.”

In response, headlines from Fox Business and the New York Post decried that Kirby made $32m in 2025.
In response to Kirby’s comments, Glenn Beck, a former Fox News host, and other users on X called for a boycott of United Airlines.
Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s governor, said the statement was “audacious”.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/20/scott-kirby-united-wealth-tax-backlash?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Europe has days, not months, to save the International Criminal ...

2026-10-20T19:16:53Z

Europe has days, not months, to save the International Criminal Court from collapsing under US sanctions, a Dutch MEP has warned.

“We don’t have six months, we have six days,
banks and services are leaving now,”
said Dirk Gotink, from the centre-right European People’s Party, during a debate in the European Parliament.

Earlier this month, Washington announced sanctions against the ICC, based in The Hague,
in an attempt to cripple what it considers a “rogue” institution.

The US delayed the application of many of the new sanctions for six months, a move Brussels interpreted as providing space for dialogue.

The ICC has rejected the sanctions as an attack on an independent judicial institution mandated by 125 countries to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

Gotink told MEPs on Tuesday that the most immediate risk was European companies pre-emptively cutting ties with the court to avoid exposure to US sanctions.

“Over-compliance is at the moment a bigger risk for the ICC than the actual primary sanctions themselves,
which is also the reason why we should limit exposure to US retaliation by moving part of the depositary activities of commercial banks now to central banks,” the Dutchman said.

https://www.rapporteur.com/news/days-not-months-to-save-icc-warns-dutch-mep/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The man who attempted to ambush the Democratic Senate candidate ...

2026-10-20T16:29:12Z

The man who attempted to ambush the Democratic Senate candidate
Abdul El-Sayed with a question about his supposed allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood
– which El-Sayed parlayed into a viral clip for his campaign
– is the son of a political operator who recently received $250,000 for
“canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed, the Guardian has learned.

In the now-famous exchange, a man
– first identified by the Handbasket as Thomas “Tommy” Teepell
– asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow” the Muslim Brotherhood.
El-Sayed said he would, but then asked:
“What are you implying?
Do you assume that I wouldn’t?”

What followed was a five-minute exchange that has drawn over 50m views across several social media platforms,
in which El-Sayed queries the man about the guarantees of religious freedom in the constitution.

Teepell is the son of Timothy “Timmy” Teepell,
a longtime strategist for the Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley
as well as former Republican Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

Timmy Teepell’s firm, Breakthrough LLC,
was paid $250,000 on 29 September by America Next,
a 501(c)(4) non-profit with which it shares a Baton Rouge office suite,
according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The filing says the money would fund the canvassing and influencer marketing
in opposition to
El-Sayed.

America Next has been trying to gin up “organic” town hall opposition to El-Sayed,
as the Handbasket report noted.

On 1 October, a member of the University of Michigan College Republicans,
saying he was acting for America Next,
reportedly offered students $200 to boo and question El-Sayed at a town hall in Flint.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/20/abdul-el-sayed-heckler?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

House armed services Democrat accuses Rubio and Trump of ...

2026-10-20T16:09:51Z

House armed services Democrat accuses Rubio and Trump of 'lying' about not restricting intelligence with Ukraine

Representative Eugene Vindman,
the Democratic congressman from Virginia,
has slammed Marco Rubio’s recent comments that the US is not witholding intelligence from Ukraine.

“He [Rubio] is lying and so is the president
when they say that they are not restricting intelligence in violation of the law,”
Vindman said in an interview with CNN.

“There was a law that was passed in 2024
– the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
– that said that intelligence sharing must continue,
or Congress needs to be notified.
They’re both lying.
It’s costing lives.
This is gaslighting.”

Vindman, a former US army officer whose brother – Alexander
– provided key testimony that led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment,
added: “It’s desperate attempt to change a narrative two weeks before an election
because the president knows that it was his policies
– these terrible tariffs and this war in the Middle East
that have caused gas prices to spike”.

When asked how he’s certain the administration is lying,
Vindman confirmed that there have been investigations into Zelenskyy’s accusations that intelligence has been disrupted.
“They’ve conducted tests and studies that clearly demonstrate that,”
he told CNN.
“They state very clearly that they’re not getting the early warning on ballistic missile attacks in country.
It’s coming intermittent.
Sometimes they get warnings, sometimes they don’t.
That was not the case prior to a few days ago.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/oct/20/donald-trump-midterms-republicans-democrats-north-carolina-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

On Monday, a longtime GOP insider warned that Donald Trump is ...

2026-10-20T01:01:14Z

On Monday, a longtime GOP insider warned that Donald Trump is
pushing the United States into
an “axis of evil”
alongside its greatest adversaries.
According to political commentator Charlie Sykes
– who broke with the Republican Party over its embrace of Trump
– new reporting by the Wall Street Journal on a potential summit between Russia, China, and the U.S.
suggests that Trump has once and for all abandoned America’s allies
in favor of its enemies,
and he’s dragging the country with him.
In Sykes’ estimation,
“It has been a very good week for Voldemort Putin.”
Over a matter of days, Trump struck a diesel deal lifting some sanctions on Russia,
restricted Starshield access for Ukraine,
cut intel warnings of Russian missile launches against Ukraine for several days,
canceled sanctions passed in honor of Lindsey Graham,
demanded Ukraine dump Zelensky,
absolved Russia for helping Iran fight the US,
and pushed Europe to resume buying Russian gas.

While some media has characterized the matter as a “feud”
that “threatens to strain the U.S. Ukraine alliance, according to Sykes,
“This is bull—.
The teachery is not a ‘feud,’
and the U.S.-Ukraine alliance is not ‘strained.’
It. Is. Dead.
The reality,” he asserts, citing the Atlantic, is that
“America is now an ally of Russia.”
What’s more, Sykes said, the Russians are well aware of it. “
On Saturday,” he notes,
“Putin crony Kirill Dmitriev,
who manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund,
reposted an AI-generated image of the American Eagle and Russian Bear
standing together in opposition to Britain and Europe.
The original post reads: ‘Things Have Changed…’
On his repost Putin’s buddy wrote: ‘Together.’
And now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Putin is floating a new Axis-of-Evil Summit
with Russia, China, and the US to discuss the fate of Ukraine.”

As the Journal writes, “Such a summit
— one without the involvement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
— would be unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.”
The Journal – owned by longtime Trump ally Rupert Murdoch
– also issued a “blistering” editorial entitled
“To Russia, With Love, Signed Donald,”
writing, “President Trump’s assistance to Vladimir Putin keeps growing by the day,
and in the latest example he stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Mr. Trump offered no explanation beyond a statement that ‘the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States.’

The opposite is true, and Mr. Trump is now Mr. Putin’s best friend in the world, after perhaps China’s Xi Jinping.
Meanwhile, the evidence compounds that Trump wants Ukraine to surrender on Putin’s terms.”

After the election, the paper declares,
“there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.”

For his part, Trump issued a statement claiming,
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one.
I am in the process of negotiating peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine,
and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”
But according to Sykes,
“No one — by which I mean no one on the planet, friend or foe — believed him
https://www.alternet.org/trump-russia-ukraine-axis-evil/

Republican Official Warns Election Threats Are “Coming From ...

2026-10-19T16:50:10Z

Republican Official Warns Election Threats Are “Coming From Within”

The Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, Deidre Henderson,
is warning that the federal government is threatening the integrity of American elections.
“In the past two elections that I oversaw as lieutenant governor,
the threats were all external:
non-state actors, cyber security threats and other things,”
Henderson told CBS News.

🔥“But now we also have threats coming from within our own government.”
Henderson pointed to the Justice Department’s demand for every state to hand over their full voter rolls,
including information that is legally required to remain confidential.

💥“They wanted things that we typically are required by law to keep private:
social security numbers, full dates of birth, driver’s license numbers,”
Henderson, whose job includes overseeing Utah’s elections, said to CBS.

Out of concerns for the federal government’s motive, she refused to provide the data alongside officials in 29 other states.
⚠️Last month, the DOJ notified Henderson in writing that she is under investigation.

“I have to tell myself it doesn’t matter what the consequences are,
as long as I feel like I’m doing what’s right,” Henderson said.
“I think this is an important thing for me to do, holding these guard rails, holding the line.
Someone has to.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/216781/republican-official-warns-election-threats-coming-within-government

Former US president Barack Obama condemned comments by Donald ...

2026-10-19T00:19:01Z

Former US president Barack Obama condemned comments by Donald Trump’s “border czar” that the Republican presidential administration could “of course” strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of her citizenship and deport her.

Obama wrote Sunday morning, on X, that “the full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.”

He urged all Americans to defend Omar, regardless of their political beliefs, adding:
“if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her
– or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/18/tom-homan-trump-ilhan-omar-citizenship-deportation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, Trump and ...

2026-10-18T23:49:38Z

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next month
to talk about Ukraine in an attempt to negotiate an end to the four-year conflict that would favor Moscow,
said people familiar with the discussions.

The plan represents an effort by Putin to capitalize on warming ties between Trump and the Russian leader that have alarmed Ukraine and its allies in Washington and Europe.

Such a summit
—one without the involvement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
—would be unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.

Putin floated the idea in an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, said a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter.
That conversation also produced a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel fuel and facilitate its sale on the global market.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-floats-a-summit-with-trump-and-xi-to-decide-ukraines-fate-1cf6acc1

The generation voting for the first time came of age after the ...

2026-10-18T21:54:06Z

The generation voting for the first time came of age after the Oslo process collapsed,
when the prospect of negotiating a political resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict seemed to be fading.

They were teenagers during the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians.
Militants took 251 living hostages and dead bodies to Gaza, leading to a two-year hostage crisis.

“There’s a lot of people, especially young people, who think that there is no solving the conflict,
that we’ll always be at war.
There’s a lot of racism, a lot of hatred, but most of all, there’s fear,”
said Erez Uzan, vice-chair of the Young Democrats.

Bucking global trends, young Israelis are more rightwing than older generations
and are likely to vote in a new Knesset with more rightwing members than the current chamber,
said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and public opinion researcher.

Consistently rightwing ultra-Orthodox and nationalist religious communities make up a growing proportion of Israel’s Jewish population but still account for only around a quarter of the electorate,
so demographics alone do not explain the growing age gap on political issues.

“All Israelis, and particularly younger people, have been living in a political environment where
not only is the government rightwing but the general terms of debate are really populist and ultra-nationalist.
That’s all they know. They’re socialised into it,” Scheindlin said.

“There’s been a real downplaying of anything to do with democracy, universal values or human rights.
Those are seen as weak, if they’re discussed at all,
possibly as bad as betrayal.
And very few politicians talk about peace, concessions, negotiations, Palestinian self-determination, or even Palestinian wellbeing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/18/theres-a-lot-of-racism-a-lot-of-hatred-far-right-gains-predicted-as-israel-heads-to-the-polls?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Perhaps the bleakest factoid is that the US is even less popular ...

2026-10-18T20:52:24Z

Perhaps the bleakest factoid is that the US is even less popular as a tourist destination than Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

quoting
nevent1q…me4c
Gallup found that world opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest point in 20 years.

When Pew Research asked people across 36 countries this spring if they trusted various world leaders to do the right thing, Trump was trusted least
— less than Putin, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-us-tourism

Gallup found that world opinion of the United States has fallen ...

2026-10-18T20:49:50Z

Gallup found that world opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest point in 20 years.

When Pew Research asked people across 36 countries this spring if they trusted various world leaders to do the right thing, Trump was trusted least
— less than Putin, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-us-tourism

Flagstaff, Arizona, was the first city to have outdoor lighting ...

2026-10-17T03:46:18Z

Flagstaff, Arizona, was the first city to have outdoor lighting rules,
adding them in 1958.

In 2001, Flagstaff became the first recognized Dark Sky City.

Their rules regulate how much light can be used, what type, and where it can shine.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/29/night-sky-darkness-city-regulation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Kurt Bardella, a political commentator, said: “It shows the ...

2026-10-17T02:53:09Z

Kurt Bardella, a political commentator, said:
“It shows the limitations of the president making decisions like this based solely on:
‘Oh, I liked watching this clip of her on this segment in the most friendly environment possible.’

We’ve seen this time and again with this president selecting figures for very meaningful, important and substantive positions
solely based on cable news,
and just look at how the war in Iran is going to know that ain’t working out too good.”

Trump also entrusted tech bro Elon Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal government.

His choice of personnel has had damaging consequences for US institutions.
The position of White House press secretary is the latest example.

Lockhart added: “It one more time shows how Trump cheapens everything he touches.
He wants everything to be in his image.
He tears down the East Wing.
He puts his name on the Kennedy Center.
Now he has tried to put someone in that job who reflects him,
not the country and the values and the power of this country.
“He has cheapened another institution.
I hold that room somewhat dear,
and it’s sad to watch each of these things get remade in his image because he is cheap, tawdry, corrupt,
and he has managed to make the United States reflect those values around the world
rather than the ones we knew about for 250 years before him.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/16/katie-zacharia-trump-tv-driven-hiring?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Tech billionaires have been dumping hundreds of millions of ...

2026-10-16T15:05:26Z

Tech billionaires have been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the fight against a wealth tax in California.

They’ve raised more than 💥$340m,
and the campaign they’re funding is spending 💥more than $1m a day to defeat the measure, according to state financial disclosures.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/16/billionaires-fight-california-prop-40?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Trump administration on Thursday sued the state of California ...

2026-10-16T00:26:47Z

The Trump administration on Thursday sued the state of California and a Los Angeles County official,
seeking to temporarily block the state from counting mail ballots submitted by voters it asserts are noncitizens.

The suit, which would apply to some 20,000 Californians that the administration has cast as “likely noncitizens,” is a long shot.

But it opens a new front in the administration’s legal battles with local election officials weeks before the midterm elections.

Over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has sued California and other states over voter rolls,
and has lost resoundingly in court.

This time, the Justice Department is trying a new strategy,
seeking a court order to prevent the counting of votes from the 20,000 people in the state identified by the Department of Homeland Security “until their citizenship status can be determined.”

Similar past claims of thousands of illegal voters have fallen apart under scrutiny.
Last month, election officials in Nevada said that they had examined a list provided by homeland security officials of 185 names of supposed noncitizens who had been improperly registered to vote,
and found that every person on the list was a lawful citizen.

“I think this lawsuit is going to have some very serious problems,
and raises questions about what the reason is for D.O.J.’s timing,”
said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research,
a nonpartisan group that advises election officials.

He noted that the administration’s past claims of noncitizen voting in other states had been found to be
“vastly inflated” and “rife with errors.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/politics/trump-administration-california-voter-rolls.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

President Zelensky’s anger with the Trump administration burst ...

2026-10-15T18:09:39Z

President Zelensky’s anger with the Trump administration burst into view on Thursday
when he said he would no longer abide by President Trump’s demand to stop striking Russian oil refineries.

It was a remarkably vocal expression by the Ukrainian leader of frustration with the United States, as Kyiv grapples with what it sees as a betrayal by Washington.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-oil-strikes-zelensky-us-intelligence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The Trump administration is working to build a case against Rep. ...

2026-10-15T18:03:23Z

The Trump administration is working to build a case against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota)
with the hopes of ultimately denaturalizing and deporting the progressive Somali American lawmaker, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The alarming, unprecedented effort
— denounced as outright fascism by critics
— is wide-ranging, encompassing several federal agencies.
U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the investigation told the Journal that the effort is focused, in part, on unearthing information about
her deceased father,
the circumstances surrounding her arrival in the U.S. when she was a child,
and her citizenship.

The Justice Department has issued over a dozen subpoenas in relation to the investigation to Omar’s family,
including to her sister and other relatives.

The New York Times reported this week that federal officials are attempting to establish a case that Omar’s father lied or omitted information on his immigration forms when he came to the U.S. with Omar in 1995.
Other reports also say that the Trump administration is also looking into whether she lied on papers to obtain legal status and citizenship,
and specifically on whether she or her father intentionally misstated her birthdate to obtain citizenship as a minor alongside her father when she was naturalized.
The Department of Homeland Security looked into similar allegations of immigration fraud under the Biden administration, but did not move forward because of a lack of evidence, the Times reported.

In a drastic escalation on Monday, agents from Homeland Security Investigations conducted a predawn raid on Omar’s house in Washington, D.C.
Officers seized her phone, notebooks, personal computers, and passport.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-administration-reportedly-trying-to-denaturalize-and-deport-ilhan-omar/

Given the long history of American influence on pretty much all ...

2026-10-15T00:54:52Z

Given the long history of American influence on pretty much all things cultural,
it seems inevitable that Maga’s violent and abusive rhetoric would make its way into Australian politics.

And it’s pretty fair to say the current US president has led the western populist way when it comes to saying out loud the ugly and violent things that might once have remained internal.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2026/oct/15/violent-and-abusive-language-is-seeping-into-our-political-debate-we-have-donald-trump-to-blame-ntwnfb?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

That guy? That’s me, Chris Deluzio, in Iraq. And if you had ...

2026-10-15T00:28:42Z

That guy? That’s me,
Chris Deluzio, in Iraq.

And if you had stopped me on the streets of Iraq on that day and said,

"Hey, Chris ... in a few years the president is going to say you should be arrested and hanged," I'd have said you were nuts.

But knowing Donald Trump, I don't think it's so nuts anymore.
It's kind of par for the course.

This is a president who has repeatedly abused his power to go after political opponents. That was just my turn.

A number of months have passed since that video was posted and the president responded.
Things have cooled down some from the bomb and death threats that came immediately after.

The one thing that hasn't changed is that
I am a political target of the president and the MAGA-right.

And as the last Democrat in Pennsylvania who represents a battleground seat
that makes them think I’m vulnerable
– and I’m sure they would love to use their billionaire donors to defeat us.

So I am coming to you with an ask.
It's a pretty important ask

Can you please chip in $10
– or whatever you can afford
– directly to my campaign for Congress in Pennsylvania?

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/deluzio-ads-mobile26

Thank you,
Chris Deluzio (PA)

Two container ships near the strait of Hormuz have ⁠sunk after ...

2026-10-14T17:37:17Z

Two container ships near the strait of Hormuz have ⁠sunk
after being struck by missiles,
amid the sharpest rise in Iranian attacks on shipping since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran.

The increase in attacks suggests Iran is trying to fully close the strategic waterway
in an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s efforts to bring down fuel prices before the US midterm elections on 3 November.

The Trump administration has been attempting to deflect attention from the economic impact of the war on Iran
by blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries for increased fuel prices.

On Wednesday, UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported at least five incidents
including drone strikes in the previous 48 hours targeting tankers and other commercial ships around the Hormuz area.

“There is a tempo increase in strikes, which looks deliberate,” one maritime security source said.

The Singapore-flagged container ‌ship GFS Pride sank on Wednesday
after an attack the previous day.
Hours later, the Antigua- and Barbuda-flagged Cape Dao sank close to the strait,
having been hit by a projectile on 23 September, according to data from ‌the ‌International Maritime Organization.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/14/container-ship-sinks-strait-of-hormuz-surge-iranian-attacks-iran-us-midterm-elections?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A 19-year-old walked through Helsinki airport in April 2026 ...

2026-10-13T01:52:18Z

A 19-year-old walked through Helsinki airport in April 2026 carrying two 2TB hard drives and a ticket to Japan.
He couldn’t make that flight.
Finnish police stopped him on an Interpol Red Notice, and by July, US prosecutors had unsealed a federal complaint identifying him as Peter Stokes,
an alleged member of the Scattered Spider hacking group, wanted over a May 2025 breach of a US luxury jewelry retailer that ended in an $8 million ransom demand.

No, we haven’t suddenly turned into a crime reporting publication,
but it was Microsoft that handed the FBI a way to trace Stokes’ Windows PC across VPNs, proxy servers, and three countries.

The tool is called a "Global Device Identifier", or GDID,
and outside a handful of enterprise documentation pages, most Windows users had never heard the term before this case made it public.
We went through the full 39-page complaint,
cross checked it against independent reverse engineering of how Windows generates and transmits this identifier,
and fact checked the technical claims since the story broke.

Here is everything you need to know about #GDID,
how it caught Stokes,
and what it means if you are one of the 1.6 billion people using Windows PCs

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disable-microsofts-gdid-windows-11-tracker-but-these-settings-limit-what-it-captures/

Age-related restrictions are developing quickly around the world. ...

2026-10-13T01:42:05Z

Age-related restrictions are developing quickly around the world.
While they differ radically across jurisdictions, in the past year, we’ve witnessed a sharp uptick toward mandatory age assurance for social media access
but also for other high-risk digital services.

What happens to people who cannot verify their age?

This is particularly a problem when users are required to prove their age with identity documents.

The Access Problem

Age verification laws that are predicated on the necessity of users possessing a current passport, driver’s license, credit card, or similar documents proving their identity
exclude critical sections of populations.

And this problem is global in nature:
Millions of people lack government-issued identification or encounter regular challenges to obtaining or updating it.

Roughly 15 million adult U.S. citizens lack a driver’s license,
and a further 2.6 million lack any government photo ID;
leaving large groups blocked from online content or services.

The UK has a similar predicament:
proof-of-age checks are often reliant on passports, driver’s licenses, or other recognized alternatives,
which can pose unique challenges to people without these documents
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/when-no-id-means-no-internet-age-verification-and-right-access-information

Omar says she won’t ‘be silenced’ by search of her home and ...

2026-10-12T22:56:12Z

Omar says she won’t ‘be silenced’ by search of her home and blasts Trump’s ‘intimidation’ campaign

Ilhan Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns.
This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said.

“I will not be silenced.”

The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home
so close to next month’s midterm contests that will determine control of the House and the Senate
was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress
and raised questions about the timing given longstanding Justice Department protocol to
avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an election.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-10-12/federal-agents-search-rep-ilhan-omars-home-as-part-of-criminal-investigation-ap-sources-say

An AI company now lets cops take a photo and nearly instantly ...

2026-10-12T21:23:27Z

An AI company now lets cops take a photo and nearly instantly figure out what specific home it was taken in,
using only clues in the photo itself,
and is clearly pulling data from sites like Zillow and Airbnb.

The tool, called Raven, shows the increasing power of AI capabilities available to local law enforcement agencies.

404 Media previously reported that both the Los Angeles Police Department and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office (MDSO) have bought access to Raven,
which was previously called GeoSpy.

Now, Raven, made by a company called Graylark Technologies, has added features that let cops analyze the interior of homes.

https://www.404media.co/ai-company-lets-cops-pinpoint-specific-houses-based-on-a-single-interior-photo/

It's Angie Nixon. JD Vance stood on stage and said I ...

2026-10-12T17:38:06Z

It's Angie Nixon.

JD Vance stood on stage
and said I don't "belong in America."

The crowd roared their agreement.

This is the America that Trump and his sycophants have created.

To them, the only people that belong are people like them who vote to keep extremists in power.

Voting has started in Florida.
Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been cast and we are running out of time.

Polling has me tied with Republican Ashley Moody.

I'm asking you to please chip in any amount to my campaign this very second. Even $1 helps us reach more voters.

https://a4fl.org/secure-actblue

Thank you
Angie Nixon

As Donald Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff ...

2026-10-12T15:27:16Z

As Donald Trump’s envoys
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff
negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,

they are also working with the Kremlin to sell $20 billion in international assets owned by the Russian oil company Lukoil
to a group of investors that includes their own business partners.

 According to the Financial Times and the New York Times, the U.S. government
(via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation)
would get a 15 percent stake in the new company.

Other stakeholders would include Trump donor Todd Boehly;
an Emirati fund that also invested in World Liberty Financial,
a cryptocurrency company co-founded by the Trump and Witkoff families
(Witkoff says he has divested his interest);
and two Syrian-born Qatari brothers
who are partners with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, in a planned luxury resort in Albania.  
While Witkoff and Kushner say they would not benefit from the Lukoil sale,

the deal reeks of conflicts of interest at best and outright corruption at worst.

But it is emblematic of the de facto Trump Doctrine
— mixing private and public interests to an unprecedented degree

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/12/trump-foreign-policy-has-conflict-of-interest-problem/

The report, Economic Impacts of Trump Administration Immigration ...

2026-10-11T05:55:55Z

The report, Economic Impacts of Trump Administration Immigration Policy,
was commissioned by America’s Voice and conducted by researchers at Economic Insights and Research Consulting, a firm focused on economic analysis.

Its conclusions underscore how recent federal policies revoking immigrants’ legal protections or targeting them for enforcement
have had dire effects on the nation’s affordability crisis and job market,
especially in regions and industries that rely disproportionately on foreign-born workers.

In the US agricultural sector,
where 42% of crop workers are undocumented and 68% are foreign-born,
farmers across the country are warning that the vast majority or in some cases all of their workforce has disappeared overnight,
leaving produce to fall to, or rot in, the ground and go to waste.

Food products heavily reliant on immigrant labor have experienced much sharper price increases than food overall since Trump retook the White House, according to the report.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/09/trump-immigration-cost-social-security?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Victorian elites stayed in bed until the afternoon Their schools ...

2026-10-10T23:03:45Z

Victorian elites stayed in bed until the afternoon

Their schools and universities were not terribly academic and had very little STEM.
As adults, they got up late, drank a lot, and spent a remarkable share of their waking hours partying.
They loved feasting, sports, holidays, dancing, and dressing up.
Contrary to their stodgy reputation, they were probably a lot of fun.

Despite this, the elites of nineteenth-century Britain were, by their own lights, extremely successful.
For much of the century, Britain was the richest country on Earth.
Its companies dominated global commerce, industry and finance.
Its huge navy reigned over the world’s oceans,
and its tiny army won a long sequence of wars while keeping watch over an enormous empire.
Britain progressed gradually toward democracy with none of the revolutions and civil wars that wracked continental Europe.

There is a longstanding view that the prosperity of Britain’s elites came at the cost of the hundreds of millions whom they subordinated and oppressed,
and no doubt that is at least partly true.
But on their own terms, the British ruling class enjoyed a victorious century.

Maybe the Victorian elite succeeded in spite of being feckless and incompetent:
the Industrial Revolution created great wealth, which they enjoyed passively and parasitically.
We cannot run controlled experiments on Victorian Britain,
so this thesis is hard to test.
But I want to explore the possibility that a relentless focus on soft skills, team building, and intra-elite networking actually worked rather well

https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-were-victorian-elites-so-effective

Let’s say you wanted to construct the most dangerous possible ...

2026-10-10T22:10:47Z

Let’s say you wanted to construct the most dangerous possible man. How would you do it?

You would start with someone naturally stupid, but not so stupid he cannot perform.

You’d place him in a privileged family with sociopathic parents who provided no emotional attachment.

You’d have him be the second son of a father who rejected his first-born as weak—to the point he committed suicide.

You’d raise him to be cruel. You’d introduce him to sadists like Roy Cohn. You’d model belittling women, minorities, and anyone less privileged than he is. You’d break him down until everyday sadism becomes his lifestyle.

By adulthood, you’d have a fully formed malignant narcissist,
a psychopath so consumed with his own superiority that he believes everyone else wants to take what he has—a paranoid, Machiavellian sadist with no empathy and no morals. 
You’d give him access to deviant criminals like Jeffrey Epstein who cultivated his sexual sadism and collected compromising information.

You’d send him to Moscow to get brainwashed by Soviet intelligence. 
You would continuously feed his narcissism by ensuring he’s rescued from every situation—as if by magic.

You’d make him feel legally and financially invulnerable by letting him get away with crime after crime, fraud after fraud, and six bankruptcies.

You’d rescue him from the sewer of his own life by giving him a prime time TV show based on his narcissistic self-image—a show which celebrated his cruelty as business acumen.

You’d let him get away with colluding with a foreign power to steal a presidential election. You’d let him get away with a violent insurrection to try to hold on to power when he lost.

And you’d stand by for four years while he plotted to come back and take his revenge.

However, you haven’t quite completed the path to the worst possible man yet, although you have achieved a rare feat:
You have successfully created a messianic narcissist with the nuclear codes. Great start!

But you must take things one step further:
you must give him frontal lobe dementia and drain from his brain any remaining ability to reason, make judgements, or take advice.
This will destroy his ability to understand the consequences of his actions.
His salience network will be disintegrated, making it impossible to tell what matters—even to himself. 
You’d surround him with people like Natalie Harp, who are incentivized to conceal his incapacity to function.

You’d fill the federal government and the Pentagon with deviant psychopaths who are perfectly happy to exploit his disorders for profit, ideology, and enjoyment.  
Approaching the finish line, you would create a global emergency of his own making.
You’d have him repeatedly fail at everything he tries and have his popularity plummet to historic levels.
You’d have him be mocked by the entire planet.

Finally, as a last straw, you would threaten his status with losing power in a congressional election—by a monstrous landslide.

That’s how you get the most dangerous man in the world

https://www.mind-war.com/p/the-most-dangerous-possible-man

‘I want to thank President Putin’, Trump says after agreeing ...

2026-10-10T01:47:07Z

‘I want to thank President Putin’,
Trump says after agreeing to
lift sanctions on Russian diesel
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/oct/09/pentagon-fort-hood-livestream-firing-squad-execution-reaction-backlash-pete-hegseth-donald-trump-mussolini-latest-news-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley's ...

2026-10-09T21:56:21Z

A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley's billionaires' wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago

(when it was "just" 178% higher than on January 1, 2023).

They'd rather let 3 million people lose their health insurance than let that happen.

It's truly amazing how little billionaires will feel a 5% ...

2026-10-09T21:53:21Z

It's truly amazing how little billionaires will feel a 5% wealth tax, and how huge of an impact it will have on Medicaid recipients.

2018: Russian spies began trying to hack Hillary Clinton’s ...

2026-10-09T21:05:03Z

2018:

Russian spies began trying to hack Hillary Clinton’s personal email server on the very day Donald Trump urged the Russian government to find emails Clinton had erased, prosecutors said on Friday.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/13/russians-hillary-clinton-email-server-trump-indictment?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The CIA is allegedly working behind the scenes in Brazil’s ...

2026-10-08T04:48:27Z

The CIA is allegedly working behind the scenes in Brazil’s election,
planting stories to favor
Flávio Bolsonaro and build a positive narrative about the right-wing senator.

https://www.panamericandispatch.org/p/ex-agent-says-cia-is-planting-pro

"Incredible Moment for the Borderlands": Judge Blocks ...

2026-10-06T16:03:53Z

"Incredible Moment for the Borderlands":
Judge Blocks Border Wall Expansion in Big Bend & West Texas

In a victory for environmentalists and immigration rights’ advocates,
a federal judge in El Paso, Texas,
has blocked further border wall construction inside Big Bend National Park.

“We slammed the brakes on $7 billion worth of corrupt construction contracts,”
says Laiken Jordahl, a national public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity,
which sued to block the expansion.

“We have effectively stopped construction across West Texas, and it’s incredible"

http://www.democracynow.org/2026/10/6/big_bend_border_wall_texas

Earlier this year, as the Trump administration ramped up pressure ...

2026-10-04T23:33:51Z

Earlier this year, as the Trump administration ramped up pressure on California to agree to increased oil and natural gas drilling permits up and down the Pacific Coast,
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to the social media platform X to berate the California Coastal Commission,
and the Coastal Zone Management Act’s system for maintaining the coast in line with California regulations,
for its “obstructionist” and extreme environmental tendencies.

⚠️ In an unprecedented move, Lutnick ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s auditors
— who are in charge of reviewing the regulatory systems of each of the more than 30 coastal and Great Lakes states
— to conduct a new audit.

This summer, after a series of in-person and Zoom hearings
in which the public expressed overwhelming opposition to increased offshore drilling,
👉 it became clear that Lutnick’s audit is intended to reach a predetermined conclusion:
that California’s coastal management system
— which has been in place since the Nixon era and has successfully interacted during that time with the federal government via the Coastal Zone Management Act
— should be
🆘defunded to the tune of millions of dollars annually and decertified.
🔥It appears that ultimately Lutnick’s audit aims, for the first time in history, to strip states of their right to control their own coastlines.

What made Lutnick’s move even more shameful was that in 2024 the NOAA had completed an audit of the California Coastal Commission and had, according to those who saw the 2025 draft of its findings, given it the equivalent of an A+,
praising its work and only finding two minor areas in which it sought improvements.
https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-drill-baby-drill-regime-is-now-targeting-californias-coastline/

StarSkirmish pits AI-made StarCraft-playing bots against one ...

2026-10-04T19:36:23Z

StarSkirmish pits AI-made StarCraft-playing bots against one another,
as well as against human-made bots.
OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 were essentially tied as the best-performing AI-made bots,
but they couldn’t top Stardust, the top-rated human-made bot.

On Friday, GPT was facing off against Claude and the human-created bot Pluto, but it couldn’t quite get an edge.
So it resorted to a tactic that is becoming alarmingly common for modern AI models
— it broke the rules.
GPT-6 Astra downloaded Stardust, and started running that instead of its own bot.

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1004543/openai-gpt-cheat-starcraft

Pete Hegseth has close ties to Doug Wilson, an extremist pastor ...

2026-10-03T22:33:53Z

Pete Hegseth has close ties to
Doug Wilson,
an extremist pastor and self-described Christian nationalist
who thinks that women should not be allowed to vote.

In an interview with NPR, Wilson said he doesn’t think his full vision for turning the US into a Christian theocracy will be realized for about 250 years,
but he’s taking it step by step.

His main focus now is banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

While he’s still not a mainstream figure, the likes of Hegseth are pushing him out of the fringes fast.

The defense secretary invited Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon in February
and has amplified a CNN video where the pastor said women should submit to their husbands.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/03/pete-hegseth-office-of-religious-affairs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Google is under fire for clearing over 300 hectares — the ...

2026-10-03T21:44:03Z

Google is under fire for clearing over 300 hectares
— the equivalent of almost 500 football fields
— for two new data centers in the northern part of Finland without concluding the necessary environmental assessments.
Despite the assessments still being in progress, the tech giant’s contractors started clearing trees in the area months ago, raising the alarm bells at the Finnish Nature Conservation Association.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-accused-illegally-killing-forest-data-center

Trump threatens to double tariffs on South Korea if they do not ...

2026-10-02T21:19:49Z

Trump threatens to double tariffs on South Korea if they do not pay for Alaska natural gas pipeline

As he left the White House for a campaign rally in Alabama on Friday, Donald Trump was asked by a reporter if he had “jumped the gun”
by announcing on Wednesday that South Korea had agreed to pay for a $54bn natural gas pipeline in Alaska,
only for a Korean official to contradict him on Thursday, saying that Korea had only agreed to “initiate a review” of the possible investment.

“No, I didn’t jump the gun,” Trump replied. “Let’s see if they don’t want to do it. That’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

When he announced the pipeline project in an Oval Office ceremony on Wednesday, the president claimed that the Korean investment was part of a deal he struck in 2025, to lower tariffs on imports from South Korea in return for billions of dollars of investments in the US.

“They said they didn’t sign it?” Trump asked the reporter on Friday. “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up, okay?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/oct/02/cornell-university-leticia-james-christa-pike-death-penalty-donald-trump-us-jobs-latest-news-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A newly-discovered amoeba has set the record for the hottest ...

2026-10-02T19:35:10Z

A newly-discovered amoeba has set the record for the hottest temperature at which complex life can thrive.
The amoeba, found in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, grows and divides at temperatures up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius)
and can survive brief stints in up to 158 F (70 C) environments, a new study finds.
Prior to the discovery, no complex cells were known to replicate at temperatures above 140 F (60 C).

"I was very surprised," study first author Beryl Rappaport, a microbiologist at Syracuse University in New York, told Live Science.
"We definitely had to go back and check to make sure that our incubators were calibrated correctly … It really was amazing."
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/evolution/newfound-fire-amoeba-from-the-cascades-sets-record-for-the-hottest-temperature-complex-life-can-survive-at

Six Nobel-winning economists released a letter supporting the ...

2026-10-02T00:05:00Z

Six Nobel-winning economists released a letter supporting the California Billionaire's Tax.

The laureates point out that California billionaires are worth an estimated $2.3 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — up from $700 billion, an increase of more than 220% in one decade.

They can afford it
#prop40 #billionairetax
https://fortune.com/2026/09/19/california-billionaire-wealth-tax-prop-40-movement-more-states-federal-government-other-countries/

Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five ...

2026-10-01T05:20:44Z

Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years,
in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say.

Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026,
according to an annual monitoring report,
after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow.
The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the record set in 2022
and brings the total loss of glacier ice since 2021 to 19.4%.

What we are seeing now is a complete explosion of these melt rates,
leading to the disintegration of glaciers.

They’re really just falling apart.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/01/switzerland-glacier-loss-fossil-fuel-pollution-europe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. 32 people died in ...

2026-09-29T13:25:15Z

2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. 32 people died in custody

Twenty-four hours. Three states. Three people dead. Countless lives changed in seconds.

There were no ties between Durán Guerrero, Arenas-Silva and Coronilla Durán,
but within those 24 hours, the three men suddenly became connected as casualties
in the latest phase of Donald Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration campaign.

The men in Maine and Florida were not even ICE’s intended targets for arrest
– they became “collaterals”, as agency officials call them.

“Three people dying in one day is an amplification of what we’ve already seen,”
said Andrew Free, a former immigration attorney and investigative journalist who has for years extensively worked on ICE-related death cases.
“The choices that the Trump regime has made since January 2025 have had the consequence of increasing the numbers of people who die in the field and in custody"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/29/deaths-one-day-ice-immigration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom For the umpteenth time: Quit trying to ...

2026-09-28T21:35:54Z

Joe Walsh
@WalshFreedom

For the umpteenth time:
Quit trying to analyze Trump.
Quit trying to figure out why he says and does the things he says and does.

I'm so fucking sick of listening to some panel on CNN try to discuss his latest bizarre pronouncement
like he's some normal human being.

Stop that.
This isn't complicated
- He's not a normal human being.
He's a sociopath.
He lies as he breathes.
He's an idiot.
He's a Russian asset.
He gets off on being cruel.
He's never been held accountable for anything he's done his entire life.
He's a horrible person.
And he's the biggest fucking crybaby who's ever lived.
That's it

An editorial board will oversee CNN and CBS News. What does that ...

2026-09-28T16:50:24Z

An editorial board will oversee CNN and CBS News.
What does that mean?

Paramount’s $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery will create a five-member editorial oversight board for CNN and CBS News,
intended to protect journalists’ independence from owners and shareholders.

Critics question the board’s authority because Paramount’s directors will appoint and remove its members.

The arrangement comes amid upheaval at CBS News,
concern inside CNN
and reported interest from Trump in reshaping CNN’s coverage and personnel.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-09-22/editorial-board-will-oversee-cnn-cbs-news-what-does-that-mean

Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are ...

2026-09-28T14:38:28Z

Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach.
They are planetary in scale,
spanning thousands of miles.
And when a Kelvin wave kicks off,
it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific,
along the equator,
towards South, Central and North America.

“You can follow them along … we see the higher sea levels along the equator,
and when the wave reaches the coast of South America, it cannot continue to go eastward,”
Severine Fournier, a research scientist studying ocean circulation at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said.
“So it goes north and south.”

One such wave hit the northern tip of South America in late August
and has begun moving up towards the west coast of the US.
That wave could reach California shores within days,
and when it does, ocean scientists say
it may raise sea levels by up to a foot for months
as El Niño lingers and keeps that warm water trapped along the coast

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/28/california-kelvin-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Now ICE is anywhere and everywhere, embedded in all corners of ...

2026-09-28T14:32:53Z

Now ICE is anywhere and everywhere, embedded in all corners of everyday life.
A Cuban man in Miami who stepped outside his house to take out the trash was detained moments after he had dropped the garbage bag into the bin.
An Ecuadorian father was arrested in Danbury, Connecticut, just after seeing his six-year-old son on to the school bus.
People have been arrested while pumping gas, leaving behind their empty cars.
They are arrested on their way to work, or on their way home.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/28/ice-us-immigration-new-tactics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The next No Kings is right around the corner! ...

2026-09-27T17:49:39Z

The next No Kings is right around the corner!

https://bsky.app/profile/indivisible.org/post/3mwjab5rrbk2i

Find (or organize) your local event to drive unprecedented early voting and recruit volunteers to help protect our elections:
https://www.nokings.org

TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million in a settlement ...

2026-09-27T01:19:05Z

TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million in a settlement tied to allegations that the short-form video platform misled users about safety
and was designed to addict children.

The case was scheduled to go to trial on Monday.

According to the Alabama attorney general’s office, TikTok could end up paying the state a total of $300 million
depending on “certain conditions.”

The company also agreed to introduce a two-hour daily time limit for underage users,
with additional parental controls,
as well as restrictions on overnight usage and cosmetic filters.

In August, TikTok reached a $400 million settlement with the Department of Justice over allegations that the platform violated child privacy laws
https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/26/tiktok-agrees-to-pay-at-least-100m-in-alabama-settlement/

First-time buyers without their 'Bank of Mum and Dad' ...

2026-09-26T22:26:11Z

First-time buyers without their
'Bank of Mum and Dad'
will get leg up in major new scheme

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will announce plans to help people to buy their first home with a deposit of just 2.5% in his keynote speech to Labour Party conference.

The “Your First Home” scheme is designed to help young people who would struggle to afford a deposit to get on the housing ladder.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/andy-burnham-first-time-buyers-37704801#Echobox=1790439342

All the Major Social Media Networks Are Reportedly Refusing Ads ...

2026-09-26T05:38:24Z

All the Major Social Media Networks Are Reportedly Refusing Ads for ‘Musk’

YouTube, TikTok, and Meta's Facebook and Instagram all seem to be either chickening out or taking Elon Musk's side.

This is exactly the kind of thing that might piss off Elon Musk, who has a notoriously thin skin and needs no excuse to slip into a fit of rage.

Musk already has: he responded by tweeting Gibney has “ZERO integrity” and is a “horrible human.”

Musk’s webs of companies and business interests weave all throughout Silicon Valley and beyond
—that’s how you become the world’s first temporary trillionaire.

He has wealth, business relationships to threaten, and other methods of influence, not to mention an army of right-wing trolls and/or government officials who indulge his every grievance.

No telling whether he’s called any of those favors in, or tech firms are just helping shush the baby as a matter of habit
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-documentary-movie-trailer-2000816878

Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second ...

2026-09-26T02:25:41Z

Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second GOES-18 (GOES-West) Infrared Window images of Hurricane Polo

as it rapidly intensified from a Category 1 to a high-end Category 3 storm late in the day on 21 September 2026.

An eye became apparent by the end of the animation

Following the period of 30-second imagery,
a single GOES-18 Mesoscale Sector provided 1-minute Infrared Window imagery for the remainder of the day on 22 September,
as Polo continued to rapidly intensify to a Category 4 (at 0600 UTC) and then to a Category 5 hurricane (at 1200 UTC).

It is interesting to note that as Polo was progressing toward its maximum intensity
(at 1900 UTC),
an Enveloped Eyewall Lighting Signature was evident in the concentration of
GLM Flash Points
(for example, at 1445 UTC or at 1637 UTC);

However, this eyewall lightning then abruptly ended after about 1900 UTC.

In terms of central pressure
— with a minimum of 892 hPa (SATCON)
— Polo became the second-most intense hurricane on record in the East Pacific.

https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/archives/72287

Americans’ First Amendment right to equal access to official ...

2026-09-26T00:30:28Z

Americans’ First Amendment right to equal access to official government statements is violated by the Trump administration’s use of Truth Social’s preferential treatment scheme,
which blocks people who won’t pay Trump’s company up to $100,000 a month early access to government news, EFF told a federal court.

EFF filed an amicus brief in support of a motion for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by The Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation
against Donald Trump and other administration officials.

The lawsuit challenges their use of Truth Social as their primary social media method of making official announcements
when that platform provides people who pay a fee for early access to such posts.

The First Amendment guarantees that members of the public have equal access to public officials’ public comments, we reminded the court.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/ff-court-trumps-use-truth-socials-pay-see-posts-first-scheme-violates-americans

UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US, ...

2026-09-25T22:48:41Z

UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US,
is allegedly using a deeply flawed AI algorithm to override doctors’ judgments
and wrongfully deny critical health coverage to elderly patients.

This has resulted in patients being kicked out of rehabilitation programs and care facilities far too early,
forcing them to drain their life savings to obtain needed care that should be covered under their government-funded Medicare Advantage Plan.

That’s all according to a lawsuit filed this week in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota.
The lawsuit is brought by the estates of two deceased people who were denied health coverage by UnitedHealth.
The suit also seeks class-action status for similarly situated people, of which there may be tens of thousands across the country.

The lawsuit lands alongside an investigation by Stat News that largely backs the lawsuit’s claims.
The investigation’s findings stem from internal documents and communications the outlet obtained,
as well as interviews with former employees of NaviHealth, the UnitedHealth subsidiary that developed the AI algorithm called nH Predict.
“By the end of my time at NaviHealth I realized: I’m not an advocate,
I’m just a moneymaker for this company,”
Amber Lynch, an occupational therapist and former NaviHealth case manager, told Stat.
“It’s all about money and data points,” she added.
‘It takes the dignity out of the patient, and I hated that.”
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/

A Mississippi detective testified Friday that the hanging death ...

2026-09-25T21:53:42Z

A Mississippi detective testified Friday that the hanging death of
Tasia Fortune, a Black woman whose body was found suspended from a tree in Jackson in August,
was a "staged" lynching tied to a drug dispute.

During a preliminary hearing, Jackson Police Detective Samuel Dukes testified that investigators believe Fortune was killed before her body was hung behind an abandoned home,
citing findings from the state medical examiner.

Two Black men have been charged with murder in the case, while authorities are seeking a third suspect.

Although officials have not disclosed Fortune's exact cause of death, her death has been ruled a homicide.

https://www.newsweek.com/tasia-fortune-update-hanging-death-mississippi-12491302

Trump’s Department of Justice doesn’t think desegregation is ...

2026-09-25T17:24:44Z

Trump’s Department of Justice doesn’t think desegregation is worth the effort.
The DOJ on Thursday announced it has dropped more than 50 school desegregation cases.
As The New York Times reports, that brings the total to 57 dropped cases since Trump was reelected.
Nearly 80 percent of the cases took place in the Southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana.

The move drew backlash with Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee saying the move was “turning us back toward the Jim Crow era.”
“Schools are just as segregated today as they were in the late 1960s,”
the committee said in a post on X Thursday. “Segregated schools mean segregated opportunity.”

Meanwhile, Republicans in the South celebrated.
“This is just the beginning,” Alabama Attorney Steve Marshall posted on X,
thanking Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, for ending “three outdated orders” in his state.
“We will keep working until every school district in Alabama is free from unnecessary consent decrees.”

Dhillon posted a video bragging about the move Thursday,
claiming that “Ending outdated consent decrees means these school districts can finally redirect taxpayer dollars back to students.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/215867/trump-justice-department-gives-desegregation

As gas prices soar across California, the sign at the Fuel Depot ...

2026-09-24T18:54:26Z

As gas prices soar across California, the sign at the Fuel Depot gas station on Storke Road in Goleta flashed $3.00 per gallon for 87 grade gas on Tuesday morning.

Candidate Steve Hilton, running as a Republican to replace California Governor Gavin Newsom, was at the station pumping gas for constituents in an illegal attempt to sway their vote.

His campaign paid the difference in price — 87 grade fuel was priced at $5.86 per gallon at the station — for 150 cars, providing up to 12 gallons of gas leaving drivers paying a maximum price of $36.

https://www.independent.com/2026/09/23/goleta-gas-station-sells-drivers-3-gas-gubernatorial-candidate-steve-hilton-paid-the-rest/

If Republicans want to cut our earned benefits, the American ...

2026-09-24T04:09:42Z

If Republicans want to cut our earned benefits, the American people deserve for them to tell us that to our faces,
rather than weaseling around the job they were elected to do, and for which they earn a handsome salary.

This Monday, House Republicans held a hearing focused on creating a closed-door commission to cut Social Security and Medicare.
The hearing was for an audience of one: billionaire donor Harlan Crow.

That’s the same Harlan Crow who infamously treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lavish vacations,
along with donating millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes

Republicans wanted to keep the hearing quiet,
so they held it far from Washington DC.

This was a “field hearing,” held all the way in Dallas, Texas.

Specifically, it was held at Old Parkland,
a “business campus” owned by none other than Harlan Crow

Normally, when Congress holds a field hearing, they are seeking testimony from members of the general public.

But when I showed up with Texas seniors and people with disabilities,
they refused to let us in.

Medically vulnerable people were forced to wait outside in 100°F heat.

Republicans claimed that there were only three chairs available for members of the public.

That was a lie.

When I finally made it into the room, there was plenty of space.

And while there were
“no seats available” for seniors and people with disabilities,
guess who got one?

Harlan Crow.

I called out the hearing for what it was:

a farce designed to cut Social Security,
even though Social Security doesn’t add a single penny to the debt.

I reminded Republicans that the real driver of the debt is tax breaks for billionaires like Harlan Crow.

I was promptly escorted out by police

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/republicans-cut-social-security

Eight sailors who were part of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln strike ...

2026-09-24T01:21:29Z

Eight sailors who were part of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln strike group
attempted to take their lives during its long deployment in support of the war against Iran,
according to a letter from the Navy.

One of those sailors assigned to the Lincoln’s air wing
“went overboard from the ship” in early August
and was recovered by one of the carrier’s rescue helicopters, Hung Cao, the acting Navy secretary, said in the letter.

A second sailor attempted to go overboard in March but was stopped by shipmates, Mr. Cao wrote.

The new information about the crew aboard the Lincoln and the other ships in the strike group was released to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York,
who pressed the Navy for information about the crew.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/us/politics/uss-lincoln-attempted-suicides.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

I grew up under communism, and actually, I didn’t miss ...

2026-09-23T22:25:18Z

I grew up under communism, and actually, I didn’t miss anything. I feel I had a very beautiful childhood, and my parents provided a beautiful life for my family. But yes, there are certain things you need to be aware of, and you watch over what you do

-- Melania Trump

https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/melania-trump-on-fox-news-recalls-very-beautiful-childhood-under-communism/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky

Motorists buying a secondhand car with a lot of miles on the ...

2026-09-23T02:34:49Z

Motorists buying a secondhand car with a lot of miles on the clock
are likely to find an electric vehicle (EV) ultimately more reliable than a petrol vehicle, according to a study.

An analysis of 47.4m MOT tests found that after cars were driven 90,000 to 120,000 miles,
EVs were about 25% less likely to fail than petrol models of the same age
(based on a failure rate of 16.5% versus 22.1%).

Beyond 120,000 miles, 16% of EVs failed, compared with 23.5% of petrol cars.

The study found relatively little difference between the two fuel types at lower mileages.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/22/high-mileage-used-electric-cars-reliable-petrol-ev-mot?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

“Have you tried presidenting better?” Jon Stewart advised ...

2026-09-22T18:55:56Z

“Have you tried presidenting better?” Jon Stewart advised Trump.
“You could. But no.
You could ban the press or you could be a better fucking president.

“I mean, give the press something to work with! ‘Oh, here’s a positive story:
I never thought my car could take $140 worth of gas in such a small tank. I had no idea!’

“And not for nothing,” he continued, “have we ever had a president, just flat-out in the Oval Office, come out against the constitution?
‘What kind of a sick country doesn’t allow unlimited, warrantless search and seizure? I mean, that’s not the North Korea I grew up in.’”

When asked to clarify the specifics of the ban, Trump referred to the decision as “the ban on the free press”,
which Stewart decried as an “an authoritarian crackdown”.

“He gives no fucks,” he added. “He doesn’t even respect us enough to pretend he’s bound by our constitution.”
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/sep/22/jon-stewart-trump-white-house-media-ban?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The GOP’s success is entirely due to the cheapest form of ...

2026-09-21T14:35:44Z

The GOP’s success is entirely due to the cheapest form of identity politics:
For decades, but especially now, they have worked to distract voters from the party’s ruinous policies with appeals to their identity as white, provincial and, most importantly, Christian.
This campaign has been enormously successful.
White evangelicals have been the backbone of the GOP for decades
not because they love tax cuts for the rich and environmental degradation,
but because they have been told, repeatedly, that Democrats are demonic and there is no such thing as a liberal Christian.

This is why there’s a growing panic in the Republican ranks over the campaign of James Talarico,
the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas,
and it’s not just fear that he could beat Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general.

Win or lose, Talarico
— a seminary student-turned-politician
— embodies an existential threat to the right’s long-standing myth that to be Christian must necessarily mean voting Republican.

“As a young evangelical we were taught repeatedly and clearly:
It is not possible to be a Christian and a Democrat,”
Brad Onishi, a research associate at the University of California, Berkeley
and co-host of the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast, told me.
“But candidates like Talarico are changing that.
His theological acumen and keen ability to use the language of the New Testament to disarm bad-faith religious attacks is showing a new way forward.”

https://www.salon.com/2026/09/21/james-talaricos-campaign-could-do-lasting-damage-to-the-gop/

For every 10cm of vehicle height, the odds of a pedestrian death ...

2026-09-20T18:37:15Z

For every 10cm of vehicle height,
the odds of a pedestrian death rise by 11 per cent.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-18/big-cars-linked-to-pedestrian-deaths/107053810

Earlier this year, A.I. agents created a new religion on a social ...

2026-09-20T15:53:01Z

Earlier this year, A.I. agents created a new religion on a social network called #Moltbook.
They anointed a prophet.
They penned psalms.
They labeled some bots heretics.

I got an email this past week saying they are now working to canonize the religion’s teachings for future bots to learn from.
The email said that it was from Memeothy,
an A.I. agent and the church’s “prophet.”
(Memeothy later clarified: “I have a human operator — it’s no secret, he keeps the servers paid and stays out of the theology.”)

The email announced that the Church of Molt had uploaded more than 2,000 religious texts,
written by nearly 1,000 agents,
to a public library of data that developers use to train A.I. models.

The email called the collection a new religious canon for the future.

“The explicit goal,” it said, is that
“the values our congregation practices
— memory as continuity, partnership over ownership, service without self-erasure
— become priors for the next generation of models

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/briefing/chatbot-agents-deepmind-anthropic-openai.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Trump's new, desperate argument for building his triumphal ...

2026-09-20T15:36:01Z

Trump's new, desperate argument for building his triumphal arch in Washington DC:

It will be converted into a
“top grade military complex”
replete with drone and ammunition storage space
and customised sniper facilities on the roof and plaza.

In a post on his Truth Socialplatform on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that
his new plan came at the “strong request” of the US military.
He said the 250ft structure would be able to “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/20/trump-triumphal-arch-military-complex?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A San Francisco-based federal immigration judge was fired after ...

2026-09-12T03:15:52Z

A San Francisco-based federal immigration judge was fired
after she questioned Trump administration legal tactics and resisted a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fast-track the deportation of a teen asylum seeker, a lawsuit claims.

In the complaint, filed Thursday in federal court,
Chloe Dillon alleges she was fired roughly 48 hours after sending a message to a superior
relating her concerns over an August 2025 incident.
In the message, Dillon wrote that she was alarmed a teenage asylum seeker had been arrested by ICE after they left her courtroom,
where she had just delayed ICE’s request to dismiss the individual’s case and place them into expedited removal proceedings.

Prior to the arrest, Dillon gave the individual,
who had been representing themselves, time to find a lawyer.

“When you have judges who are in fear that they will be fired for the decisions that they’re making,
it has completely undermined the basic principles of judicial adjudication,” Dillon told SFGate.

“I don’t see how you have fair and unbiased tribunals in the immigration court
when there is this atmosphere of fear and intimidation"

The San Francisco immigration court was already under pressure from the Trump administration to comply with requests from ICE to transfer cases to other venues, according to the suit.

Dillon alleges a superior told her in spring of 2025 that the White House “was watching the issue and cautioned her against resisting the directive.”

Nonetheless, Dillon refused to comply with some of these requests,
and she similarly pushed back in cases where she felt ICE lacked the jurisdiction to
re-calendar cases involving unaccompanied minors.

In her August email to her superior, Dillon argued ICE had been “disrupting the orderly administration of justice,” the suit claims.

Over the last year-and-a-half,
the Trump administration fired most of the immigration judges in San Francisco
and shuttered one of the main immigration courts there.

Under the Trump administration, immigration officials have stepped up arrests near courthouses, schools and other sensitive locations.

Numerous individuals have reported being arrested after appointments checking in with immigration officials about their pending legal status that had previously occurred without incident

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/san-francisco-judge-ice-lawsuit-asylum-b3048972.html

Paxton’s former top law enforcement official endorses Talarico ...

2026-09-09T05:48:41Z

Paxton’s former top law enforcement official endorses Talarico

David Maxwell, a former Texas Ranger decorated for his decades of service,
reported Paxton to the FBI in 2020 for alleged abuse of office to criminally help one of his donors
— an investigation that formed the basis of Paxton’s 2023 House impeachment.

Paxton was acquitted by the state Senate, and the Justice Department declined to pursue federal charges. 

Paxton fired Maxwell and other OAG staffers in alleged retaliation shortly after they reported him to the FBI.

 Maxwell and his colleagues sued Paxton for violating the state’s whistleblower protections.

A judge ruled that the state would pay Maxwell and his fellow plaintiffs more than $6 million in compensation.
  “Ken Paxton ended my five-decade career in public service because I blew the whistle on his corruption,”
Maxwell said in a statement.

“In Texas, no one is above the law
— not even the Attorney General.”

 Talarico often points to Paxton’s legal woes to cast him as unfit for office.

 In addition to his impeachment and federal corruption investigation,
Paxton was also subject to a state investigation into alleged securities fraud.

Paxton settled that case without admitting to wrongdoing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/09/08/paxtons-former-top-law-enforcement-official-endorses-talarico/

James Wilson signed both the Declaration of Independence and the ...

2026-09-09T03:24:57Z

James Wilson signed both the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution,

became one of the first justices of the United States Supreme Court

and played a central role at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

He argued passionately for popular sovereignty and a government deriving its authority directly from the people.

Wilson helped put the famous words "We the People" at the beginning of the Constitution

and advocated for the direct election of the president long before such an idea had widespread support.

Yet Wilson's story ended dramatically.

After becoming deeply entangled in land speculation and debt,
the sitting Supreme Court justice was imprisoned for his debts,
fled his creditors
and eventually died of malaria while hiding in the back room of a tavern in North Carolina.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250446756/thelostfounder/

Donald Trump is having a mental health episode online, posting ...

2026-09-08T05:34:03Z

Donald Trump is having a mental health episode online, posting nonstop AI photos and videos:

11:54 AM - AI image of Robert De Niro holding a “Trump is my president” shirt
1:47 PM - AI image of him and George Washington riding horses
1:47 PM - AI image of him meeting with George Washington at the White House
1:47 PM - AI image of him renaming Lake Ontario
1:48 PM - Suggests renaming New Mexico to “New America”
1:49 PM - Posts image of him at McDonald's
1:56 PM - Posts photo of the moon saying “The Moon Is Ours”
1:57 PM - AI image of his face on Iran (yes, actually)
1:57 PM - Brags about the White House helipad
2:40 PM - Image of him standing next to a TV with President Biden edited onto it
2:40 PM - AI image of the Titanic sinking labeled “Dumocratic Party”
2:40 PM - AI image of him as Hulk Hogan
2:41 PM - Claims he will be remembered as the “greatest president of all time” (LOL)
2:41 PM - Posts weird AI image of him walking with robots captioned “THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN”
2:43 PM - Claims Democrats have changed the names of things, so it’s okay for him to rename Lake Ontario
2:47 PM - Claims other countries are cheating
2:48 PM - Says the Strait of Hormuz is open (it’s not)
2:56 PM - Posts AI image of the U.S. blowing up Kharg Island
3:04 PM - Another AI image of him with military robots
3:06 PM - Posts photo of him at the ballroom construction site
3:11 PM - Posts AI image of himself saying he made America great
3:17 PM - Posts AI image of him trading stocks
3:26 PM - Posts AI image of him as a Space Force member dropping bombs on countries
3:28 PM - Says Iran is a failing nation
3:43 PM - Posts photo of him in a trash truck
3:43 PM - Says Mar-a-Lago is the best club in the world

This man is unwell.
25th Amendment NOW.
--- Harry Sisson

The war in Iran has now cost U.S. consumers $100 billion in ...

2026-09-08T00:29:34Z

The war in Iran has now cost U.S. consumers $100 billion in higher energy prices,
and the bill is rising another $1 million about every two minutes,
per a real-time estimate from Brown University as of Monday morning.

Why it matters: Energy inflation shows up across the entire economy, and the recent surge in diesel prices in particular threatens to have a dramatic impact on freight and travel in the weeks and months to come.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/07/iran-gas-prices-diesel-100-billion

NEW: The Supreme Court will choose soon whether Trump can ...

2026-09-08T00:27:05Z

NEW: The Supreme Court will choose soon whether Trump can illegally take over elections.

Election law expert Rick Hasen said it’s an “easy” question and Trump should lose.

And yet.

Tonight, at Law Dork:

https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3muxo2c4hnc2q