1. “A surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke. … Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July.” They’re coming for all of us now, and are getting close to Stephen Miller’s goal of 2,000 arrests every day. And ICE is becoming every more violent. “New legal filings allege federal immigration agents operating in Colorado have acted illegally and violently at times amid a summer surge in arrests — including one recent incident where an 18-year-old’s face was repeatedly slammed into the pavement in a 7-Eleven parking lot.” If we’re being honest, we can’t really pretend we don’t live in a police state. Sure, not the worst one ever, and we’ve never been perfect, but nonetheless. And it’s hard to understand how this makes sense, even in their strange little minds: “The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.” We could ask why, but of course there is no answer beyond cruelty, grift, and destroying their own country. We know what we have to do, people!

2. As the Grifter grifts and pockets more money, people are hurting. “Illinois food stamp enrollment fell in July to its lowest level in at least 13 years, a drop driven by new federal work requirements. About 1.5 million Illinois residents received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in July, down more than 23% from July 2025 and the lowest monthly total in state data going back to 2013.” So people are going hungry and are less healthy, because the EPA has effectively stopped going after polluters. Going after polluters being, you know, kind of it’s main job. They are also giving data centers a pass on disclosing air pollution they are causing, because, you know. But the bubble of ignorance is starting to burst. In Iowa, whichever candidate is elected governor, the Republican or the Democrat, will be one “who faults industrial agriculture for the state’s high cancer rates.” And those rates are scary. This piece from The New Lede from a few months ago has more details than you want to know.

3. As the New Lede story shows, there is still good science being done, if not so much here in the U.S. anymore. “In London, an effort to combat traffic emissions led to measured improvements in kids whose lung growth was previously stunted compared to their peers outside the city. In New York City, policies that lowered prenatal exposure to air pollution helped kids perform better on cognitive tests than previous cohorts. These findings from two new studies add to a robust body of research emphasizing the health benefits of clean air, particularly for children, who are more vulnerable than adults to its hazards. They also provide a source of hope: Cities suffering from toxic air can become safer, healthier places for kids.” The news is always a mix of good and bad. During this era of the Grifter it’s out of balance and too much towards bad news, and there is still good news and we have to keep making more. And even more and more Republicans are repenting. They wouldn’t use that word, but I heard a sermon once where I learned that to repent simply means to turn around and change direction. It’s happening even in unlikely places like Wyoming, where “Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.” Well, sure, that sounds a bit too much like Susan Collins, but we have to start somewhere.

I started with a quote from Wendell Berry, perhaps the last of the great farmer poets, who died this week at 92. He wrote his dozens of books with a pencil on paper, in natural daylight, living with they rhythms of nature (and because his electricity was produced by strip mined coal, so he wouldn’t use it to write). I end today with another quote from Wendell that I think speaks to us today and that we would do well to take as a clarion call as we move closer to the midterm elections where we will choose what will be next for us as a people. “A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”

2. “Researchers with the University of Michigan (U-M) cross-referenced a dataset of 151,366 public parks—including everything from national and state parks to local hiking trails and dual-use school playgrounds—with two categories of pollution sites catalogued by the EPA. The results were stark: Nearly 18% of America’s public parks—26,886 of these recreational areas to be precise—are located within two miles of an EPA-designated Superfund Site. And over 2,000 of these parks physically overlap with a Superfund Site, according to the team’s new study, released…by the Nature journal Scientific Reports.” Superfund Sites are sites designated by the EPA, starting in 1980, that are polluted by toxic waste and hazardous material, and so require special care in clean-up and restoration. As of 2024 there are 1,340 Superfund sites in the U.S., with 39 additional sites that might be added, 457 sites that have been cleaned and removed from the list. I include this here as a reminder that our environmental problems aren’t solely the fault of the Orange Grift—they predate him and they will be around long after he is gone, and there should be an uproar that many of these sites may be poisoning all of us given their proximity to parks—but as with everything, he makes it worse. He also wants to poison our animals, “The Trump administration on Friday (early July) moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century.” And of course, we still aren’t cleaning up the forever chemicals, despite legal requirements.

3. Smile, you’re on camera. At least your license plate most certainly is. “Flock Safety, the largest provider of fixed license plate readers, says its cameras help police solve crimes, recover stolen vehicles and find missing or endangered people. Civil rights groups warn the same technology can track motorists who are not suspected of crimes and reveal trips to workplaces, medical clinics, religious centers or political events. Flock says it has deployed about 120,000 cameras across 49 states. Its customers include more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, along with local governments, businesses, schools, homeowner associations and property managers.” Flocked sounds so innocent, so insignificant. That’s how euphemisms work.

2. Ever trying to protect the dying fossil fuel industry that has given him so much money, the Orange Grift is trying to put new tariffs (you know, the kind even his SCOTUS declared illegal) on imports of solar panels. And sure, it will have a negative effect on renewable energy in the country, for a bit. During his first term, competition from China all but eliminated solar manufacturing in the U.S. But Joe Biden, remember Joe Biden (and it was very sad to see his son Hunter’s announcement that Joe’s cancer had spread), well, Canary Media explains it well: “Then, in 2022, the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created domestic manufacturing incentives for clean energy. It also embraced certain tariffs on foreign solar. The combination of proactive incentives and protective tariffs has since succeeded where tariffs alone had not: The U.S. became self-sufficient in module production in just a few years, with far more modest progress on cells and other components. These days, developers of large solar projects routinely tout their ​“Made in the USA” credentials. A recent groundbreaking for an enormous solar-battery plant in Arkansas, for instance, highlighted the project’s use of domestic panels from First Solar, domestic trackers from Nextpower, and steel piles from a steel mill down the road. The new tariffs stand to benefit a solar manufacturing industry that has grown immensely since the tariff battles of Trump’s first term. But this solar trade protectionism is also certain to raise the cost of building new solar farms — the main new source of electricity in the U.S. — at a time when power bills are already soaring.” Shh…don’t tell the Orange Grift. Or go ahead, I’m not sure he’s cognizant of much anymore.

3. A counterpoint to this solar news: “As US Offshore Wind Disappears, a Generation of Workers Is Left Behind. Building trades spent the past five years preparing for an offshore wind boom that went bust. Now, U.S. workers mourn the well-paying careers they don’t see coming back.” And this is squarely the Orange Grift’s fault. He keeps paying companies (with our tax dollars) hundreds of millions of dollars to stop wind energy projects, which is, as the article shows, putting people out of work and hurting local economies, and making energy costs go up. Thanks, felon. He must have gotten hit by a windmill blade when he was a kid. How else to explain his utter hatred of windmills. Well, yes, he’s well paid by the oil companies to hate windmills. And he’s an idiot who doesn’t care about America. It’s impossible to quantify the damage he has done to America and the world. Well, the damage half of America has done by voting for him when they knew what he was. We have to vote in unprecedented numbers….the election is getting close—64 days.

2. The Grifter has of course a well-known hatred of windmills. He has even paid companies hundreds of millions of dollars to stop building wind power projects. But, “The Maine Public Utilities Commission will finally move forward with plans for a new transmission line to northern Maine and an 800 megawatt wind project. At a regular meeting Tuesday, commissioners selected Avangrid, the parent company of Central Maine Power, to build the transmission line and Clearway Energy Group to build the onshore wind project.” Momentum builds with every new sustainable energy project that comes online. And that is a very good thing for the country and the planet.

3. The Grifter, of course, prefers, and loves, coal. Big coal. Dirty coal (call it what you will, there is no such thing as clean coal). And the MAHA—Make America Healthy Again—movement is an off shoot of MAGA. But there have been more and more civil wars in the movement and people start to realize that nothing MAGA does is actually good for the health of Americans. “The Make America Healthy Again movement has taken on many issues over the past few years: pesticides, processed foods, vaccines. Now it has another target, and it’s one that President Trump likes to promote: coal. In a letter sent to Trump and several other members of the administration last week, a group of nearly 200 MAHA activists said they were concerned that the data center boom was leading to an increase in the burning of coal.” You could say that at least some of the MAHA people are waking up to reality.

Good news bonus: “Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her sex trafficking conviction and be freed from prison was rejected by a federal judge Tuesday who said the claims by Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate that new evidence had emerged were “demonstrably meritless.”” It’s good for everyone to keep her behind bars.

Finally, a 1000 word bonus read from labor history. “On August 25, 1921, 10,000 miners and their supporters went to war with 3000 coal mine executives and their hired thugs — the largest labor insurgency in American history and the largest civil uprising since the Civil War began — in Logan County, West Virginia.” It has always been a battle for we the people to get a fair shake from corporations. It is always useful to read stories of times when workers organized and fought and won rights and pay and better working conditions. The struggle goes on.

2. “President Donald Trump has spent more than 18 months demolishing Joe Biden’s expansive green agenda. Yet pieces of the former president’s would-be legacy stubbornly cling to life — along with roughly $600 billion in congressionally approved spending that has so far escaped Trump’s wrecking ball, a new POLITICO analysis has found. … Out of nearly $1 trillion in grants, contracts and other direct federal outlays provided by Biden’s climate and infrastructure laws, POLITICO found approximately $600 billion dollars remains available for recipients to spend or for federal agencies to award. … It’s unclear how either party will treat the surviving money if they control Congress next year.” The Grifter hasn’t been able to destroy everything. And now he’s distracted by horrible poll numbers that he blames on everyone but himself. He has a way to fix everything: Executive Order! Rename Lake Ontario as Lake America. That’ll show that Ford guy. Rename the Great Lakes as the Great Trump Lakes!

3. You may have heard that at least a half dozen White House staffers have jumped ship. It’s not just Karoline Leavitt (openings for Emotional Support Blonde! Apply at grifter.gov). The Treasury Department is having troubles too—not surprising. I really can’t imagine a human who would want to work for Scott Bessent. “Seven of Trump’s 16 Senate-confirmed Treasury appointees have either been fired or walked out. Four of them left after the administration asked them to bend or break tax law. Those who left said the administration pushed them to use confidential IRS taxpayer data to identify and deport immigrants. It also sought to create a $1.776 billion fund, branded as “anti-weaponization,” that would have operated with little oversight. “They’re asking them to do stuff that is well beyond the norm, and for some things that may or may not be legal,” said Mark Mazur, a former high-ranking IRS official. He noted these people expect careers after this administration, and “being disbarred would be a bad thing for them.” Treasury Secretary Bessent is supposed to be managing all of this, and he’s on his third chief of staff. His first chief of staff, Dan Katz, left in October for the number two job at the IMF. His replacement, Michael Friedman, lasted three months before decamping to the SEC.”

2. “The federal government is preparing a potentially multi-billion-dollar bailout for landlords who claim diminished income due to the national eviction moratorium declared by Congress and extended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the COVID pandemic. The “highly likely” windfall would end a five-year-long legal battle waged between the Department of Justice and a coalition of rental property owners that grew from a few dozen to several thousand. The potential beneficiaries of the settlement, according to their lead counsel, run the gamut from “single-dwelling owners to mom-and-pop operations.” However, an enormous swath is owned by multi-billion-dollar asset managers and private equity firms, who stand to gain the most from an impending payday.” Like with the tariff repayments to corporations, the people who really paid the bill—we the people, the consumer—will get bupkis. The wealthy always get more than their share, but if we get the regime out of power there is a chance the people will get a slightly fairer shake.

3. Another winner from the family values party. From a couple weeks ago: “U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s son was arrested over the weekend on three felony charges related to sexual exploitation of a child in connection with a 43-second video he created in which he had sex with a 17-year-old girl when he was 18, sheriff’s investigators allege.” For some reason, I’m not surprised. It is sad, and I feel for her family, but why on earth does anyone keep giving these people cred for having family values? Not my family, thank you very much.

The egret was kind enough to pose when I was out for a hike at Pratt Wayne Woods.

1. In starting his trade war with Canada, the Grifter doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. “Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pushed the fight further by urging Ottawa to target retaliatory tariffs specifically at states that backed Trump, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Texas, and Wisconsin, arguing in a letter to Carney that Canada should hit “politically significant states to the current administration’s base of support.” Alabama is a notable target given Canada is its largest export market, having received $4.3 billion in Alabama goods in 2025, representing 18% of the state’s total exports, while also ranking among Alabama’s top import sources.” Ford used to be a supporter of the Grifter. He is a large man, and he added that he has a lot of real estate on his body, so there there was plenty of space for the Grifter to kiss his….you know, but some days this is a family publication. Nothing is working out like the Grifter plans anymore. When reality starts its payback….it’s, well, you know….

2. While we’re on Canada, even Canadians don’t want to visit anymore. No one thinks we’re a good host now. Border crossing have been decreasing since the mid-90s, and the Covid year was a record low, then—under Biden!!—we had three years of increase, and now in felon 2.0 the numbers are plummeting again. “Crossings peaked in 1996 (at 105.7 million people) and hit a low in 2021 (6.5 million people, around a sixteenth of 1996’s crossings). Three consecutive years of increases followed, and in 2024 border crossings rose to 46.4 million — before declining again in 2025. Crossings in 2025 were the fourth lowest in thirty years, outside of three COVID-19 pandemic years (2020, 2021, and 2022).” You know what people from Canada (or anywhere) do when they visit the U.S.? They spend money. They stimulate the economy. Seems to me we could use some of that right now. But I doubt it will happen while the Orange Grift is in power.

3. In health news, two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania have died from the measles, the first in the state in 35 years. 393 cases have been confirmed in Pennsylvania. Also, have you ever needed some health care procedure or medicine and needed what the insurance companies call “prior authorization”? That’s when the insurance company gets to decide if your life is really worth saving before you get the medicine or surgery or whatever. So this was an interesting headline: “Prior Auth Is Costing Billions and Delaying Care. A New Report Says Ban It. New research from the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) is making the case for banning the practice of prior authorization as we know it.” The take away is to always appeal if care is denied. “Prior authorization paperwork consumes the equivalent workload of 99,290 full-time physicians and advanced practice clinicians. The report estimates that physicians and their staffs collectively spend more than 650 million hours a year dealing with prior authorization, at a cost of as much as $32.7 billion annually. The equivalent physician workload alone is greater than the nation’s current physician shortage.” That’s just one of the startling things in the article. How in the world did we end up with this health care system? How in the world are we the only country that is this bleeped up.

Addendum to the news on the $40 trillion debt. Paul Krugman has a great chart showing how we got here. Yes, it’s pretty much the Bush and Grifter tax breaks for the rich. It’s a good gig they’ve got. 1. They donate ten million or so to Bush or the felon’s campaign. 2. They get a tax cut worth several times their donation. 3. They use that money to buy U.S. Bonds. 4. The tax cuts they got increase the debt. 5. The interest on the debt is paid to the people who own U.S. Bonds, those very same rich people who got the tax cut that caused the debt in the first place. That’s the best return on investment I’ve ever heard of.

2. Thank God there are still some state governments that care about human lives and health. “Pesticide manufacturers have voluntarily cancelled registrations for products containing paraquat in California — kickstarting a statewide phase-out of the controversial herbicide linked to Parkinson’s disease, according to a California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) announcement on Monday. Paraquat has been under scrutiny for the last few years due to mounting scientific evidence connecting chronic exposure to the herbicide to Parkinson’s disease and other health problems. It is one of the most widely used herbicides in the US — largely as a tool to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses — and is used in growing soybeans, cotton, and corn as well as in growing grapes, pistachios, peanuts and other crops.”

3. Speaking of the corrupt SCOTUS, “The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows. The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.” Thank God his own financial interests did not affect any of his votes on cases before the court, because he is a man of integrity! And the grift goes on…. Let us hope that the corruption is finally so bad and so obvious that even the timid Democrats, should they get back in power, will for once take court reform seriously and do something. Biden just set up a commission to “study” it, and then never did a damn thing. How’d that work out?

2. This is why we have to vote and not worry about what some poll shows. Polling firm closes down after it faked Hong, Bass polls. “Median Strategies, the company that released polls showing Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong ahead with wide margins in their respective races, announced Monday it has closed. A message on the company’s website reads that it has “concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls.” Turns out anyone can, and does, just say they took a poll and got results. The only poll that matters is the one we all take part in when we vote.

3. Hey Hakeem, WTF? “Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration. The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.” Jared isn’t elected to anything, and isn’t even officially part of the current administration. I ask again WTF? And Jeffries wonders why the voters are tired of corporate Democrats and collusion as usual. In sort of related news, while the Grifter lives in his bubble and doesn’t let anyone in his presence who will tell him bad news, some still slips through. He clearly understands that candidates he has anointed keep losing primaries and so he knows his power is waning. With that, signs are growing that he is going to declare some kind of national emergency to take control of or stop the midterm elections. The only emergency of course is that he might lose power, and that is an emergency only for the Grifter, and possibly for President Harp, or Putin spy Harp, depending on what you’ve heard people say. Shame on us if we let him get away with it.

2. “My name is Maryam Tahmasebi, and I am a professor of psychology and statistics at Los Angeles Pierce College—or, I was, until April 9, when my life, and my family’s lives, changed forever. On that day, I was teaching a class when my son texted me, saying that my husband hadn’t picked him up from school and wasn’t answering his phone, which is very unlike him. I picked my son up from school, came frantically back home, and called the police, thinking that something horrible must have happened to him. Even so, it never occurred to me that he could have been detained by ICE. We are legal permanent residents with valid green cards. My husband, Eissa Hashemi, is also a professor, and has dedicated his life to mentoring PhD students in the Business Psychology department of The Chicago School. We have both mentored many PhD candidates, among whom are veterans who have served this country for decades. We don’t have any criminal record—not even a traffic ticket. I believed in the “rule of law,” and trusted that if there was anything wrong with our immigration status, the government would notify us through legal channels.” So begins a heartbreaking account published in The Nation. It leaves me speechless that tens of millions of my fellow citizens voted for this. (Sure sure, they’ll say they voted for the felon because they made more money during his first term. And I say, if you get another chance, please pay attention. This is not who you want us to be.) You may say I’m being too harsh. What would Maryam Tahmasebi say?

3. “The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo is on track to surpass the deadliest one in history, which erupted over a decade ago and killed over 11,000 people, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday. “At its current pace, it’s on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. That outbreak horrified the world and jolted efforts to develop a vaccine. The outbreak in eastern Congo, considered the fastest-growing one yet, has killed over 2,000 people out of more than 4,300 cases. The outbreak was declared on May 15, but health authorities now say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.” What a shame that Elon eliminated US AID. We used to be a country that helped in these situations. ““THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in February 2025. He was not referring to his own administration, but to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “CLOSE IT DOWN!” the president added.” Close it down he did. As always, the accusation was a confession, and people died.

2. In the Sarasota, Florida, school board election last week, voters Woke up and chose to reject Ron DeSantis and his policies that promote ignorance, bigotry, and hatred. “Four years after Gov. Ron DeSantis put his political operation behind a conservative takeover of the Sarasota County School Board, voters have broken that majority apart. Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry each won School Board seats outright Tuesday, defeating candidates endorsed by the Republican Party of Sarasota County. And in the race to replace Board Chair Bridget Ziegler, Jimmy Glover finished first and advanced to November against Republican-backed Heidi Brandt. The results guarantee a different balance of power on a Board that has spent much of the past four years at the center of Florida’s fights over education, parental rights and culture-war politics.” It’s a good reminder that voting can change things, that things do turn around, that things can get better even in a deep red state that had been sent to the dark ages in the culture wars. (I almost didn’t phrase it that way, because it sounds a bit much, but then I looked back at all the stuff they’ve done and realized that if anything, the statement is a bit timid.)

3. The Wonkette has a great story out of Montana that shows things are changing. Yes, I’ll believe they’ll elect a Democrat to Congress when it happens, but no matter what, it’ll be closer than it has been in a generation. Things are changing. Very few actually want the country the Grifter has created. “Montana might very well send a Democrat to Washington again. Not just your conventional centrist red-state Dem who promises to be less awful than Republicans, but a populist progressive Democrat named Sam Forstag. He’s a “smoke jumper” — a wildland firefighter who jumps out of airplanes to fight fires far away from roads — and state leader of the labor union that represents federal employees. … Oh, did we mention the polls are tied?” Things across the country will likely break one way or the other on election day, which is why it is necessary that we all vote. A smoke jumper in the House. I think that would be good. Please, click the link and watch the 90 second ad that Forstag is running. It’s one of the best political ads I’ve ever seen, and it gave me hope that we can make good change.

Follow-up: The deal with Canada that the Grifter hailed when he delayed his 50% tariffs on our neighbor turned out to be…. like every deal the Grifter makes; non-existent. Therefore, he is imposing his tariffs (yes, yes, I know, even SCOTUS declared them illegal, so he is trying a different, even stranger way to justify them, knowing it will take another two years for this justification to wend its way to SCOTUS and be declared illegal, and in the meantime, he thinks, he wins the day! Yea!) And therefore, Canada is imposing retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. This will all greatly reduce prices and help the Grifter in the midterm elections, some will say. Also, a quick addendum on the $40 trillion debt. Paul Krugman has a good, if slightly wonky, explanation on why we should not give in to debt panic. For a book length treatise making basically the same case as Krugman does, see The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy, by Stephanie Kelton.

The great Rod MacDonald has a new album of protest songs that has given me great hope in this moment. It leads off with “Undo the Damage.” Give it a listen and get ready to get to work. (Which voting is a huge part of!)

2. Speaking of the upcoming midterms, I quote at length from Robert Reich, “Most discussions about the Democratic Party in this election cycle focus on the remarkable rise of progressive Democrats, such as Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist who yesterday scored an upset win in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary on Tuesday. An equally big story is the remarkable decline of corporate Democrats. Some Democrats worry about this. My old friend Democratic strategist James Carville compares the current wave of progressive primary wins to progressive campaigns in 2016 — especially that of Bernie Sanders — that he believes fractured the Democratic coalition. … Even if James is right about 2016 (and I don’t believe he is) his assessment is irrelevant now because we’re at a radically different point in American politics than we were 10 years ago. The silver lining on the dark storm cloud of Trump and his detestable regime is that it has exposed the greed, venality, cupidity, and corruption of America’s corporate elite.” And as John Fugelsang pointed out on his podcast—when discussing Angie Nixon’s win, despite being outspent 16-1 by Alexander Vindman, who yes, is a hero and a good guy—the traditional Democratic playbook was pointing out all the flaws with the Grifter and saying vote for me. And that doesn’t cut it anymore. The reason the new, younger, often Democratic Socialist candidates are winning primaries is that they add the necessary next step—they point out the old money Grift, they say vote for me, and vote for me because I will push for legislation—and then they give concrete examples of what they will push for: holding accountable those who broke laws, and ensuring it doesn’t happen again, rebuilding the middle class, expanding health care, a return to evidence-based science and policy, taking seriously the heating planet that has caused an endless fire season and draught, and on and on. Strongly worded statements by Chuck Schumer, read with all the passion of reading names in a phone book—that won’t work anymore. It does not inspire voters or change anything. Let’s try something new, and good.

3. Staying with the great Bob Reich for today, you likely heard that the national debt just passed $40 trillion. And yes, that is a big number, and yes, the Grifter and his war to distract from Epstein has played an outsized role in that. But Reich points out something that I’ve never seen addressed by the corporate media, the legacy media, the media that longs for a return to the way things were, the way Chuck Schumer and James Carville remember and long for—you won’t hear them talk about this, and the reason why should be obvious. The problem with that huge debt is the interest we pay on it. Interest paid by our tax dollars. Tax dollars that we would rather spend on health care, education, clean air and water, you know, things we need. Reich asks, and answers, the question, wait, who is getting all those interest payments? He shows that while some go to foreign investors and governments, the great majority go to, wait for it, the rich dudes in America, that one percent, or really one percent of one percent—” The richest 1 percent of U.S. households hold about 35.6 percent of all financial assets — shares of stock, corporate bonds, and Treasury bills — so it’s safe to assume they hold at least a third of all Treasury bills.” It’s almost like the rich are fine with the national debt because they are making truckloads of money off of it by doing, well, nothing. Okay, it’s not almost like that. It is that exactly. No wonder they don’t make a big deal about who is getting the interest payments on the media outlets they own. What a wonderful system we have somehow allowed the richest among us to create. If we get real woke, maybe we can start to change it and make something that works for everyone.

2. Donny dimwit wants to play war with our money…. still. “WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday. The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.” If we vote in big numbers, we may be able to make the madness slow down. It’ll take a while for it to stop, but we gotta make a start. Why does anyone do what the Grifter says. He’s lost even his own narrative.

3. Remember Tina Peters—a trump ally who was sentenced to prison for election interference for the felon? And then in May, Colorado governor Jarid Polis, a Democrat, mysteriously pardoned her and released her from prison. Well, now we know why. He was threatened by the regime, and if he wanted any federal money to continue to come to the state, he best do the Grift’s bidding and keep his mouth shut. “The Justice Department’s pardon attorney told Trump ally Steve Bannon that federal officials were putting “the right kind of pressure” on the state to secure Peters’ transfer; Trump had also promised “harsh measures” if the former clerk remained incarcerated.” There is no longer any pretense. The people running our federal government are running a criminal enterprise. Oh, and don’t worry about Tina. She’ll land on her feet. “The top elections official in Shasta County offered a job to Ms. Peters, a Trump supporter who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in Colorado.” Yes, Shasta is a very maga county, not that I needed to tell you that.

2. “The Trump administration is proposing a sprawling shelter facility that can detain up to 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or guardian. Officials have started to outline plans for the project as federal agencies escalate efforts to detain and remove tens of thousands of people from the country, including children, while effectively closing off the U.S.-Mexico border to people seeking asylum. Unaccompanied immigrant children — currently housed in more than 150 shelter facilities across the country — could be held inside “emergency influx facility” campuses staffed with physicians, teachers and other “humanitarian care” providers as the administration responds to “surges” at the southern border, according to a market research call with prospective service providers on Tuesday.” Now you know. If you vote for the Republicans, for the candidates endorsed by the Grifter, this is what you are voting for and this is who you want us to be.

3. “A US federal ⁠judge ⁠has dismissed ​the Trump administration’s lawsuit that ⁠claimed ​Harvard ‌University failed ‌to protect Jewish ‌and Israeli students from harassment in the aftermath of the war in Gaza. In a ruling on Thursday morning, US district ‌judge Richard Stearns in ​Boston said the administration’s lawsuit – ⁠filed in March – failed to plausibly ​show ​an ongoing ​violation ‌of ​federal ​civil rights law on Harvard’s campus. The administration’s complaint focused largely on a handful of incidents alleged ‌in March 2025, Stearns said, saying these were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ​ongoing civil rights violations by Harvard.” I always get a good laugh out of the most racist, sexist, bigoted administration in American history getting taken to task by a judge when they file a lawsuit where they pretend to care about some marginalized group. I guess you could say it takes a lot of hutzpah. It’s sort of like the Yankees or Dodgers complaining that other teams spent money on free agents.

A feel-good bonus read: “A Band of Plucky Protesters Nets One Against ICE. Showing how it can be done.” ICE is still out there doing dirty work. This story gave me hope.

And as I write, it is Tuesday, so of course, TACO…the Grifter paused the 50% tariffs he wants to impose on Canada, that were due to take effect Wednesday. He claims he has reached a deal with Canada. No word yet if Canada will admit to ever communicating with the Grifter.

2. I know someone who excuses, in part, his vote for the Grifter, by constantly saying that all politicians are corrupt, and are only in it for themselves and to make money. As they say, we’re all on the spectrum somewhere, but that doesn’t mean all places on that spectrum are equal. But I understand why you would tell yourself such a story if you had voted for the Grifter. Now we have the data and can say that either 1) he’s just better at grifting our money for himself than anyone else has been, or 2) that he actually is uniquely corrupt and cares only about himself. The AP reports, “Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency. The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total under the three previous presidents, according to a report from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. It’s the numbers for the Trump administration, in the context of previous administrations, that stand out in Public Citizen’s report, published on Monday. In all, 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and the remaining 40 in senior posts across the executive branch.” Eight of the 23 cabinet members are in that category. So much money. How’s your financial situation? Has it gotten better under the Grifter’s regime? There is an election coming up. Vote accordingly.

3. “The Walt Disney Co. and ABC on Tuesday sued the Federal Communications Commission, seeking to stop an unusual early TV station license renewal process that they say is an attack on free speech by the Trump administration. The lawsuit is one of the most muscular legal challenges a media corporation has mounted against the second Trump administration. In late April, the FCC ordered Disney’s eight owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule. The directive came amid a probe into ABC’s “The View” program, as well as a long-running investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Disney.” At long last are media companies starting to realize that bowing before the Grifter isn’t helping their bottom line? Let’s hope. This is a good sign, though ABC gets no points for courage, but it gets a few for finally realizing what is good for their profits. For too long corporations thought they’d get some of that grift. Maybe they’re finally getting that all the grift goes to the Grifter.

1. Because if we don’t know what is killing us, we’re not dead? Or, at least corporations can continue to get rich off our deaths, and face no accountability, “The Trump administration has made it significantly more difficult to access environmental data. So far, the administration has modified or removed nearly 2,000 webpages and datasets on science, climate, and environmental topics. Last year, the EPA discontinued a tool that allowed the public to search its inventory of facilities that handle large volumes of hazardous substances by ZIP code. It also shut down an environmental justice screening tool known as EJScreen, which was the EPA’s flagship tool for tracking environmental hazards across the United States and mapped industrial pollution hot spots alongside demographic data, revealing which communities face the greatest health risks. And some of the agency’s webpages about pollutants, like ethylene oxide, have been modified to remove information about cancer risks and emphasize their industrial usefulness.” So much damage to undo. Let’s get started. It begins with voting the grifters out.

2. Here comes the sun. In fact, it’s here. Looking at new energy that came online in the first half of the year, “Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much.” And all the felon’s cronies, and all the felon’s grifters can at best slow it down a little bit. The future is here and it has passed them by. “Indeed, the story of power plant completions in the first half of 2026 was mainly about utility-scale solar and batteries. Utility-scale solar led in the number of projects coming online, with 207, followed by batteries, with 95. Next were natural gas combustion turbines, with 22, and natural gas internal combustion engines, with 21. Onshore wind had 9 projects.”

3. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals. ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.” Turning ICE agents—the guys who shoot innocent people in their cars—into living tasers. What MORE could go wrong? ICE is not popular now. How will this help? What happened to the country I used to recognize, faults and all? If only this had just been a trailer for a new dystopian Netflix show, and not the reality we are living in.

1. I really wonder if the Grifter has any clue what is happening, but since no one is stopping him it hardly matters—some madman is pulling the strings. Meidas+ reports, “… For the first time in US history, America betrays South Korea, one of our closest allies for over 75 years. Trump posted: “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of N. Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the US has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with S. Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the USA (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises! While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of S. Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!”” I feel like I’m living in Brave New World. Don’t know whose side we’re on, because it changes every day. Along with everything else, the felon will be remembered as the guy who destroyed and upended the world order.

2. And it that all feels too far afield to be of concern, you or someone you know gets their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. Now, as it is being weakened, we can call it trump no care! “ACA Premiums Are Going Up Again and Patients are Paying the Price. After 2026 premium hikes pushed millions out of ACA coverage or into higher-deductible plans, insurers are seeking another round of double-digit increases while spending billions on stock buybacks.” “Across 276 insurers participating in the Marketplaces, the median proposed increase is 15% for 2027, making this the second consecutive year of double-digit increases.” But America is hot and the economy is great the Grifter tells us, so I guess even with the increases, it’ll be easy to afford. Right? And of course it isn’t just the ACA. Huge cuts to Medicaid were included in the euphemistically named One Big Beautiful Bill the regime passed in 2025. Of course, those cuts aren’t scheduled to take effect until after the midterms. Because the regime knows they aren’t popular, and they know if the cuts happen after the midterms, they can just blame it on the Democrats victory. That’s how grift works. We can make things better, but we have a whole lot of work to do.

3. “Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year. These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers. But companies aren’t using those profits to drill lots of new wells or explore untapped oil fields. Instead, they’re pocketing the cash and paying their shareholders, experts say.” Hey, as long as they’re raking in huge profits and sticking us with the bill, it’s all good, right?

The lilacs and tulips are long gone, but summer flowers abound at Lombard’s Lilacia Park.

2. “Flock Safety, the police tech company that tracks Americans’ vehicle movements through a line of cameras, announced Thursday that it would implement several new safeguards to its products. The changes that Flock outlined include shrinking the period for how long it holds people’s movement data by default, going from one month to one week, the company said in a news release. In cases in which officers want to hold data longer, they will be prompted to enter case numbers. To address potential police abuse of Flock’s data on people, the company also plans to fully deploy a system it began testing earlier this year, called Audit Assistance, that will lock out a user whose searches display “abnormal activity,” the release said.” It’s certainly fair to question how much we can believe what Flock says—I’m plenty skeptical—but it’s telling that the public pushback on the company when it was suddenly in the news this past week has been swift and harsh and forced them to at least do PR damage control. We the people have the power. We have to keep using it.

3. “It’s been a summer of profound discontent for Donald Trump. As his poll numbers keep dwindling and he flounders in his war of choice in Iran, he continues to suffer a series of bodyblows in the courts, hampering his attempts to break the law, weaponize his power to punish the innocent, and use the government as a personal piggybank.” The reflecting pool idiocy embarrasses the regime every day. He continues to fight fights he has already lost, like on birthright citizenship and firing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The linked article from the Contrarian details a bunch of others. And just a couple days ago the felon asked his Supreme Court to step in and allow him to continue work on construction of his ballroom where the East Wing of the White House that he demolished illegally once stood. It’s telling that he still thinks he needs SCOTUS backing and can’t just do what he wants. Which is a bit puzzling, because if he just went ahead with it—SCOTUS backing or not—who would stop him? But somewhere in his tiny mind, and in the tiny mind of whoever is really running the regime, is the understanding that their power is not yet complete. And in his attempt to get the voter rolls of states, he is now 0 for 21. That will matter if we all go vote and the states hold strong in fairly reporting the election results.

And the feel good bonus for the week: “The best thing I saw on the internet this week came out of Chicago, where a sellout crowd of White Sox fans in papal miters turned to the people beside them, extended their hands, and exchanged the Sign of Peace.”

2. I really don’t believe the felon is aware of what he is signing anymore. Someone puts a piece of paper in front of him and whispers, “for another monument in your honor, sir,” and he smiles and signs it and then falls asleep. And that leads to stories like this: “Trump Signs Order Mandating Kids Receive Vaccine That Doesn’t Exist. The president would like pharmacies to carry three vaccines that don’t exist, to cure a problem that also doesn’t exist. Trump signed an executive order on Monday that would require the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to be split into three separate shots. The problem: no individually licensed measles, mumps, or rubella vaccine exists in the United States, and the licensing process takes years.” And this is supposed to make America healthy again.

3. “At the start of what is becoming an intense wildfire season this year, federal officials warned of a 15 percent decrease in available “hotshot” teams, the elite squads that fight complex blazes in the most rugged areas. In Washington State, officials had to call in the National Guard and 250 active-duty U.S. Army soldiers to help extinguish embers because they didn’t have enough firefighters.” Every year it the planet gets hotter, the air worse, the fires more widespread and frequent. And the Orange Grift has made it worse by Grifting and cutting jobs for firefighters (among all the federal jobs he has gutted, these, sadly, are some of the easiest to see the negative impact from this year). The Grifters don’t seem to get that if they destroy the planet to get all the money, there won’t be anything for them to spend all that money on. This can’t go on indefinitely. Either we will turn it around and start to do the right thing, or things will get a whole lot worse. For all of us, including the Grifter.

2. If you hear mention of something called the “Third Way” and see it described as a leading Democratic Centrist group, and something seems fishy, read this piece by Robert Reich to see how the Third Way is really a trojan horse funded by billionaires (who want to keep their billions). “In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.” And its honorary chairs have included Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two names I’m sorry to have ever had to think of again.

3. If you think it’s been hotter than usual this summer, you aren’t imagining things. “KENSINGTON, Maryland (AP) — The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl’s July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895. “It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections. “And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the U.S. — just a cataclysmic event in U. S. history. If we’re exceeding records from The Dust Bowl, that says that we’re in deep trouble.”” Welcome to today’s dust bowl…on fire. The flames in Colorado and elsewhere rage on, with too many towns on the edge waiting for evacuation orders.

Lots of storms this week, and a few stormy months ahead.