Yesterday was the Massachusetts primary and, as expected, 80-year-old Ed Markey defeated 47-year-old Seth Moulton in the contest for U.S. Senator nomination. I voted for Moulton, even though I agree more with Markey’s politics; because I really believe we need to get younger people into Congress. I knew Markey would win anyway. Our other Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is 77. Her term will not be up until 2031. Stephen Lynch, 71, also defeated a younger opponent for his House seat. I don’t have as much of a problem with that. His term is only 2 years. But we really need new blood in Congress–not to mention the White House!
Massachusetts, as it turns out, is a good state in which to be a very old Democratic incumbent.
Three Democrats who have been in office since long before the iPhone was in stores all won renomination Tuesday. Senator Ed Markey, 80, and Representatives Richard Neal, 77, and Stephen F. Lynch, 71, are all likely to return for additional terms.
Ed Markey
Each faced challengers who had called for a new generation of leadership. Mr. Markey coasted past Representative Seth Moulton, 47, who ran to the middle, while Mr. Neal and Mr. Lynch both fought off progressive challengers.
Mr. Markey has been in office for 50 years. Mr. Neal has represented western Massachusetts since 1989. Mr. Lynch first won election from South Boston in 2001. The state’s Democrats do not seem inclined to reject their incumbents….
The party still scarred by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s public meltdown during the 2024 campaign was not convinced that an octogenarian senator should not serve another six years.
Seth Moulton
Perhaps if Mr. Markey, 80, had faced a younger challenger with better political relationships than Mr. Moulton, he would have been in trouble in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. But Mr. Moulton has spent his career challenging his party’s orthodoxy and its leaders.
That record left Mr. Markey the political space he needed to paint himself as the progressive in the race, campaigning on the ideas of the future — even though he has been in Congress for 50 years.
In the waning days of the Massachusetts primary, several Democrats described Mr. Moulton as having the generational change message the party needed but being the wrong messenger to deliver it.
Mr. Markey said throughout the campaign that he would resign his seat if his advanced age left him unable to properly fulfill his Senate duties. He is now favored to win in November, which would have him serve in the Senate until he is 86 years old.
Moulton also hurt himself with his remarks about trans athletes.
…from the moment Mr. Moulton entered the race last October, Mr. Markey used his remarks questioning transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports as a battering ram against him. Not only did it galvanize the L.G.B.T.Q. vote for Mr. Markey, it also helped frame him as the progressive candidate.
It was the same formula that powered Mr. Markey’s last primary triumph in 2020 against another younger, more moderate Democrat, Joe Kennedy III.
Mr. Moulton eventually offered a qualified apology for his remarks, which came the day after President Trump won a second term in the 2024 election. But by then the state’s progressive voters had heard for months from Mr. Markey and his supporters that Mr. Moulton, during tough times, was willing to toss trans people aside.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
Rep. Stephen Lynch and Rep. Richard Neal also defeated younger opponents.
Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch has defeated a younger, more progressive primary challenger, NBC News projects, in the highest-profile test remaining for House incumbents after a turbulent primary season.
Stephen Lynch in 2025
Lynch, 71, won renomination over Patrick Roath, a 39-year-old former aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. With his win, Lynch staved off an attempt to add him to the list of Democratic officeholders dethroned by rivals pushing for generational change.
Elsewhere in the state, fellow veteran Democratic Rep. Richard Neal also secured renomination, defeating teacher Jeromie Whalen in another Democratic primary.
On the other side of Massachusetts, Roath outraised Lynch, outspent him significantly on the airwaves and scored The Boston Globe editorial board’s endorsement to go with backing from Patrick, progressive activist David Hogg’s group, Leaders We Deserve, and key teachers unions.
That support helped Roath press Lynch for months in one of the toughest fights of his political career. He highlighted Lynch’s various breaks with his party in the past, including votes against the Affordable Care Act and, more recently, for the Laken Riley Act. Roath also called for progressive measures like “Medicare for All,” abolishing ICE and restricting military aid to Israel.
But Lynch persevered, trumpeting work that he says held the Trump administration accountable and leaning on his decades of experience, including deep relationships with unions and other fixtures in the district….
Richard Neal
Neal also avoided defeat in another primary marked by arguments over generational change and progressive policy proposals. Whalen, 39, a high school teacher, ran a campaign decrying the “old-school political entanglements that got us into this mess” and called to abolish ICE and cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.
Neal spent more than $1 million on campaign ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, about 10 times what Whalen spent.
The United States and Iran exchanged a barrage of strikes overnight, an outburst of violence that killed both military personnel and civilians in Iran, including four people at a wedding, according to Iranian news media and officials.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the military’s operations in the Middle East, said that it had struck Iranian military targets in retaliation for attacks on ships and American forces in the region.
Four members of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed in a U.S. strike in the western city of Kermanshah, according to a Guards statement published on Wednesday by Tasnim, an Iranian news agency. At least 12 people were killed in strikes across Iran’s southern region, the Iranian state outlet Press TV reported on Wednesday.
A still from a video provided by the Iranian Red Crescent rescue service showed damage in Kuhestak, southern Iran, on Wednesday.Credit…Iranian Red Crescent Society, via Reuters
In response to the latest attacks, the Revolutionary Guards said in statements Wednesday morning that they had launched missiles overnight at an American military base in Jordan, at U.S. military equipment warehouses in Iraq and at an air base in Kuwait hosting American forces.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operations, said Wednesday all American service members were accounted for but declined to share any damage assessments.
The deadly back-and-forth overnight was a demonstration of the stalemate between Washington and Tehran, more than six months after President Trump launched strikes on Iran, saying that he expected a quick resolution.
Among the locations hit by the U.S. military was a wedding in a residential area in the small port town of Kuhestak in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran, according to Iranian officials. Four people, including a child, were killed in the attack, with around 50 others wounded and hospitalized, Iranian state media reported.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested. The NYT now allows subscribers unlimited gift links.
Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian officials say included a deadly strike on a wedding party.
The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections.
Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan that were intercepted.
American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran’s economy falters. Iran’s currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, a 10% hike from last week’s record.
Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.
“At some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle,” he cautioned. “So that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war.”
Trump made a bunch of insane threats on Truth Social, including that he would completely destroy Iran’s civilization. Then he suddenly switched gears and announced another cease fire.
President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday night — hours after he’d threatened “a whole civilization will die tonight” and about 90 minutes before a deadline he set for Tehran to reach an agreement with the United States.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Earlier in the day, Trump had warned on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if there was no deal between the two warring countries.
That threat, Trump’s most extreme public rhetoric in the conflict to date, had included a vow to launch attacks on Iran’s infrastructure over its continued disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The two-week ceasefire, Trump said, is contingent upon Iran reopening the strait. For its part, Iran proposed a 10-point plan to end the war, which includes “controlled passage” through the strait, coordinated by Iran’s armed forces.
Iran’s plan also calls for compensation for damages and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from “all bases and positions in the region.” On social media, Trump called the plan “workable.” [….]
After he extended the deadline multiple times for Iran to reopen the vital shipping route, which about a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas usually passes through, Trump announced 8 p.m. ET Tuesday as the final deadline for Iran to come to a deal.
In a post Sunday, Trump threatened Iran’s power plants and bridges if it did not reopen the strait by the Tuesday deadline, using expletives and invoking Islam.
It was the latest in a series of escalating threats by Trump against Tehran, including threatening to bomb the country into “the Stone Ages” and calling the Iranian government “crazy bastards” while demanding that it open up the key shipping route.
Trump’s threat Tuesday morning sparked a wave of fierce and immediate condemnations from Democrats, who said such strikes on infrastructure would constitute war crimes.
Trump is psychotic and should be removed from office. He’s a danger to the U.S. and the world. He has completely out of touch with reality.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz — the central point of contention in the ongoing war against Iran that the U.S. and Israel started — after himself.
The proposal via a Truth Social post came less than a week after Trump, who is locked in an intensifying feud with Canada, signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” Trump wrote in the post Wednesday morning.
“Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote.
It was not immediately clear how the president would attempt to implement a name change in the strait, which is not near the U.S. The order renaming Lake Ontario directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his department to update the Geographic Names Information System with the new name. Canada rejected the change, though Google and Apple have recently updated their maps. Early in his second presidential term, Trump also declared he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, a change also rejected by Mexico and other international counterparts. The U.S. borders Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, both of which have had their names for centuries….
The Strait of Hormuz yestereday
Trump and his administration have repeatedly insisted that Iran has lost control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil trade before the war began in late February.
But transits through the waterway remain far below prewar levels, and ship-trackers say they have dropped further in recent days, as military strikes in the region have resumed following a weekslong hiatus.
Again, Trump lives in an alternate reality. He is insane and should be removed from office immediately.
Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth is destroying the Department of Defense.
In the aftermath of the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, multiple sources told CNN they believe Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is damaging the Army’s efforts to adapt to the modern battlefield as he focuses on culture wars and prioritizing his own image of the “American warfighter,” and pushes out leaders who don’t align with his vision.
In submitting his resignation, a source familiar said Driscoll brought up “concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the generals who were responsible.”
Driscoll announced Tuesday evening that Wednesday would be his “last full day in the role.”
Multiple sources agreed with the concerns Driscoll raised: that Hegseth is damaging the Army’s efforts to modernize and adapt to the 21st century battlefield environment – where drone warfare is becoming increasingly important – by firing or pushing out leaders who were spearheading those efforts.
“It’s critical that you have key leaders that understand technology and have the temperament to deal with industry and turn that into the formation,” a former senior Army official said. “When you fire these guys for arbitrary reasons, it creates confusion and a void … the Army is enduring turbulence right now.”
Senior US military officials have privately acknowledged they have come under what could be characterized as political pressure during Hegseth’s tenure — particularly when he has prioritized culture war issues — and voiced concerns about the secretary’s recent efforts to fire or push out uniformed and civilian leaders.
A defense official in Europe told CNN that even though Hegseth has spoken about technology reform and even previously released guidance on unmanned systems, in practice they see a secretary and Pentagon leadership more focused on cultural issues than modernization.
“It’s conflicting because yeah he put out a memo saying this is important, but … he’s talking about muscles, dudes in dresses, testosterone,” the official said. “We don’t see a change at that level.”
Pete Hegseth is accused of setting the military up for potential disaster as the fallout of his ego-driven overhaul of top leadership spills into public view.
The 46-year-old former Fox News host has masterminded a massive purge within the Defense Department that saw Army Secretary Dan Driscoll walk out on Monday, raising fears about a lack of experienced leadership at the top of the military.
It comes as the Pentagon burns through resources—both material and human—in its fight with Iran, which has now dragged on for over six months despite President Trump initially projecting it to last four to five weeks.
Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll submitted his resignation to President Trump.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
The fight is thought to be exacting a heavy toll on the nation’s weapons and munitions stockpiles, which the Center for Strategic and International Studies says will last for the war in Iran, but which pose a threat to the U.S.’s ability to fight future wars. The Associated Press, however, reports that the war has used around 65 percent of Patriot interceptor missiles.
Driscoll said he feared that Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department could cause “generational damage,” a person familiar with the close JD Vance ally told the Financial Times.
He “had tried so many different ways and so many different times, but it was just clear that… Hegseth wasn’t willing to listen to the facts or the truth, or the reason, or any of that, because of his personal animosity,” they said.
Reflecting on his exit, Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Wright told the FT that it was a “revelatory moment, and I think it illustrates that the Pentagon is in disarray.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals, a purge that has hit about 10 percent of the military’s top officers and shows no signs of slowing.
In recent days, Mr. Hegseth targeted seven Army officers who had been selected for two-star general rank by a board made up of senior Army leaders, according to current and former military officials, who discussed sensitive personnel matters on the condition of anonymity.
The moves come at a time when the military is badly strained by the Iran war, which has gone on far longer than administration officials anticipated.
Pete Hegseth
The military, especially the Army, is also racing to keep up with the proliferation of sophisticated drones and precision missiles that have exposed the vulnerability of its overseas bases and weapons systems.
The firings and Mr. Hegseth’s refusal to explain the logic behind them are dividing the Pentagon and alienating many in Congress, the officials said. The latest to register his disapproval was Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, who recently submitted his resignation to Mr. Trump.
In a meeting with the president, Mr. Driscoll complained that Mr. Hegseth had fired some of the Army’s most combat-tested leaders, imperiling its efforts to modernize the force, military officials said.
He also warned Mr. Trump that the firings and blocked promotions have damaged morale, causing some in the military to question the fairness of a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, senior officials said.
Mr. Hegseth’s purge does not appear to be driven by job performance, but rather is part of a broader effort by the defense secretary to fashion a force, particularly at senior levels, that is aligned with his political and ideological views, according to military officials.
Also his preference for white males.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, defended Mr. Hegseth’s decisions as normal Pentagon business. “The idea that these lists cannot be altered is ridiculous; every single secretary has exercised this exact prerogative,” he said.
But senior officials and members of Congress have said that Mr. Hegseth’s moves are without precedent. In the past, the defense secretary and service secretaries have removed officers for moral or ethical breaches. But officials said that these officers have behaved in accordance with Pentagon policy.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called Mr. Hegseth’s removals “illegal.”
More than half of the officers affected by Mr. Hegseth’s dismissals are Black or female in a force whose senior ranks are dominated by white male officers. Of the seven officers Mr. Hegseth removed from the Army two-star promotion list, two are Black and two are female.
Use the gift link to read more if you wish.
Those are my recommended reads for today. Thoughts? What other stories are you following?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
This post is sort of a catch up if you will. So many of the references are from a week ago. Just to give you a heads up on the time frame of these cartoons and memes.
Cartoons via Cagle:
ScreenshotScreenshot
This is an open thread.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
“George Washington, he ain’t. “John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
How can you spend a springtime in the District without marveling over Cherry Blossom season? How do you repeatedly ignore the history and laws of the most historically significant places in the country? Orange Caligula, narcissist supreme, has done it again. This happened a few days ago. No one stopped him. He has a long history of destroying things only to replace them with something disgusting. The Jackie Kennedy Rose Garden and the Oval Office were only the beginning. He ignores we, the people and the law.
This was the CNN headline. “Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight agencies.” Sunlen Serfaty has the lede. The man is an international menace. No living thing is safe with him alive.
Whenever President Donald Trump gets an idea for a major project or renovation in Washington, DC, a pattern has emerged: move forward and ask questions later.
Public sagas over Trump’s proposed “triumphal arch,” the East Wing ballroom construction and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation have followed this playbook – provoking outcry and numerous legal challenges.
Now, the greenways of a manmade peninsula just south of the National Mall is next on Trump’s quest to remake the nation’s capital in his style, and they’re poised to be made over in a way that’s par for the course for this president.
The administration is on track to push ahead with turning the 300-acre East Potomac Park and its public golf course into a championship course without firstgetting approvals from two key agencies that have oversight of DC public spaces.
Neither the National Capital Planning Commission nor the Commission on Fine Arts have received any golf course plans from the Trump administration to review, officials from both told CNN. Neither agency meets in August, and ground is supposed to be broken by the start of the following month.
And based on what has been publicly reported, a project of this complexity and ambition would typically require months of regulatory reviews to examine environmental impact, questions over historical preservation, planning and design, the officials at each agency said.
On Friday, the administration provided a federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the project with new information about the venture. It included a disclosure that the government did not finish testing soil from the demolition of the East Wing that was deposited onto the golf course before deeming it was safe.
The revelation opens the door to allowing plaintiffs to question administration officials under oath.
The DC Preservation League and two local golfers are pressing US District Judge Ana Reyes to issue an order that would bar the Trump administration from moving ahead.
Critics worry that proper approvals and legal battles have hardly handicapped the president before.
“There is really this ability to ignore regulatory guardrails, rules and protocols that have existed in the past. And we just see it again and again, and the golf course, sadly, is yet another example of that,” said Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has filed lawsuits against several other Trump projects.
Those historic trees plus others could be removed to make way for Trump’s plan to turn the public East Potomac Golf Links into a “championship” venue capable of hosting major tournaments such as the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup.
No one ever stops this pathetic, destructive, personality disorder-ridden man. The warnings were clear back on July 13th. He just won’t ever do the right thing, work through the process, or listen to anyone. This article is from back on July 13. It’s from a local Ohio paper, the Ohio Capital Journal,and somehow, none of this reached the establishment national media covering our sicko president. Now, it’s too late. Acres of beautiful, mature cherry trees gifted by Japan are gone.”President Taft descendant, former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, slams Trump plan to devastate D.C. cherry trees.” Alan Johnson reports the story.
A plan that threatens some historic Washington, D.C., cherry trees to make way for President Donald Trump’s planned golf course is “very unfortunate,” said the great-grandson of William Howard Taft who received the Japanese trees more than a century ago.
“I don’t understand the idea of a championship golf course near the nation’s capital. There are already world-class golf courses there,” said former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who served from 1999 to 2007. He is the great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the 27th president.
“Now is not the time to devastate cherry trees that have an important role as part of the cultural alliance between the United States and Japan … It’s very concerning.”
Taft, a Republican as is Trump, is an avid outdoorsman and golfer. He said chopping down cherry trees is an afront to his family heritage and a threat to the beauty of Washington as an international tourist attraction.
“They are a United States institution,” Taft said. “People from all over the world come to the Cherry Blossom Festival.”
Cherry trees were given by the Japanese to former President Taft and his wife, Nellie, who had ambitions to beautify the nation’s capital. She admired the flowering trees when her husband was the presidentially appointed Governor General of the Philippines.
The plan would also eliminate a riverside bike trail and other public recreation areas. Trump toured the course June 28 with government officials and golf course planners. The project could begin as early as Sept. 1.
The Ohio connection to the threatened Japanese cherry trees goes back to 1912-1913 when 3,020 saplings from the banks of the Arakawa River in a Tokyo suburb were planted along the Tidal basin.
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s New York Times. I’m no longer surprised but will be forever appalled. Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti share the lede. “More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed. State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.” We’re a Banana Republic.
The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.
The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.
The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.
The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
Meanwhile, back in pathological liar land, The Independent had this headline that could only happen under Orange Caligula. “Trump’s fake AI video of Kharg Island ‘attack’ leaves US military scrambling to explain President’s very realistic AI slop video, posted to his official Truth Social account, forces Pentagon to step in with a denial.” Andrew Feinberg has the story.
But a U.S. official said no such attack had taken place, with Kharg Island not being among the locations targeted overnight in what has been the first exchange of fire between American and Iranian forces in weeks.
Additionally, the head of National Iranian Oil Co, Hamid Bovard, said on Monday that the president’s post was “laughable” and described conditions on Kharg Island as “calm and appropriate.”
Trump — whose White House has repeatedly stated that his Truth Social posts count as official statements from the commander in chief — also hit out at Iran again in a separate Truth Social post on Monday, writing that it was “officially a Failed Nation” and “DEAD.”
“They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead,” he said.
Iranian media outlets did report explosions near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, where an American official said Tehran had been preparing to launch mine-laying rockets as part of the country’s bid to choke off the key waterway and hamstring the American economy in response to Trump’s war, which has now passed the half-year mark without end in sight.
Here’s an FYI.
In my state and others, small and large communities are fighting to prevent Data Centers from causing irreparable damage to water supplies, the environment, animals, and communities. Here’s Trump’s response to us all via Politico. “Trump: Communities that reject data centers will end up ‘backwards and poor’. It’s the president’s latest line of support for data centers despite growing bipartisan concerns over the cost of such projects.”
President Donald Trump on Monday again championed the spread of data centers despite growing bipartisan backlash ahead of the midterms in November.
In a post to Truth Social, the president insisted data centers will lead to richer, more successful Americans and criticized those who object to them.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Data center expansion has become a critical component in the leadup to November’s midterms, with polls showing a majority of Americans oppose them being built in their communities. Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns over data centers, with lawmakers and state leaders warning about overloaded power grids, strained water systems and the level of noise the projects create.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott this month instituted new regulations on data centers despite expressing broad support for them over the last year on the campaign trail. Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Stacy Garrity have both urged for a temporary halt to some projects.
But Trump, who has met with some of the world’s leading tech giants on numerous occasions, is adamant that data centers are critical to staying ahead of China in the artificial intelligence race — a point he made in a recent interview with his former fixer Michael Cohen and which he reiterated on Monday.
“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
If only we were following China’s example. This is from Wired. “China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center. With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.”
China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country’s strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.
The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.
With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.
This feature solves one of the main energy consumption challenges of conventional data centers, where air conditioning systems typically account for 40 to 50 percent of the total electricity required to operate.
The thermal efficiency of the UDC is directly reflected in its power-usage effectiveness, or PUE. This metric is used by the industry to evaluate the energy performance of a data center; 1.0 represents the maximum theoretical efficiency. In its first phase, the Lin-gang facility is designed to achieve a PUE of no more than 1.15, a figure considered state-of-the-art within the industry.
Under this same cooling principle, HiCloud opened the world’s first commercial underwater data center in 2023 in Hainan, an island located in southern China. However, the Shanghai complex marks a milestone as the first to operate using offshore wind power.
Construction of the UDC was completed in mid-October last year. According to the Chinese government, “compared to traditional onshore data centers, the project is designed to use more than 95 percent green electricity, reducing energy consumption by 22.8 percent, and water and land use by 100 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively.”
The opening of the complex is an important step in China’s efforts to optimize energy supply through renewable sources and, at the same time, sustain its leadership in computing capacity linked to AI development.
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from The New Republic. “This Data Center Is Everything That Everyone Hates About AI. Utah’s Stratos Project is showing how everyone loses in the unregulated rush to build these Big Tech behemoths—even investors.” Luke Barnes has the analysis.
Big Tech firms are now keenly aware of the need for their data centers to have at least some environmental protections and community considerations built into development plans. Microsoft, for instance, announced its “Community-First” AI infrastructure plan in January 2026, shortly after it was forced to cancel a proposed data center in rural Wisconsin. The plan calls for covering the grid and electricity costs its data centers create, minimizing and replenishing local water use, and paying its full share of local property taxes rather than seeking the tax breaks data centers typically negotiate. OpenAI has called for significant investment in renewables to help modernize the U.S. electrical grid and make data center build-out more sustainable, while Anthropic has pledged to cover the grid infrastructure improvements and electricity cost increases that are generated from the data centers it uses.
These actions from both big business at one end and state actors at the other are a recognition of the problem. But they are the inverse of the kind of investment that the Stratos Project represents: rushed ad hoc investment on one side of the coin, and reactive ad hoc regulation on the flip side.
What’s more, both actors have fundamental limitations. Data centers are a footloose industry, meaning if one state is deemed to be overregulating, investors can easily shop for a friendlier jurisdiction. And while Big Tech firms might talk a good game, they are also subject to severe market pressures that could make them put their plans for equitable, environmentally friendly data centers on the back burner.
What’s needed is a concrete set of enforceable federal standards that can slow down the ad hoc gold rush in favor of equitable (and ultimately faster) long-term build-out. But here, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite. In its July 2025 executive order, the White House moved to ease regulatory burdens on data centers costing at least $500 million, while compressing review windows and streamlining environmental evaluations meant to identify those burdens, and saying nothing about the water consumption or community frustration driving the backlash.
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the New York Times. (I’ve gifted the links, btw.) “How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.”
Mr. Turner had helped land the largest development in Louisiana’s history: a $50 billion data center for the Silicon Valley giant Meta that planners say could cover about six square miles and use seven times as much energy as New Orleans.
Meta wanted the rebate to build its data center in Richland Parish, an impoverished farming community in Louisiana’s northeast corner. The tech company also needed a secret deal done quickly, and state officials were eager to oblige.
Rewriting the bill was a critical part of a nine-month process that Meta used to cut deals behind the scenes, avoid local opposition and offload financial risk, according to interviews with more than 40 people and a review of corporate filings, tax records, property records and meeting transcripts.
The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project.
The upshot was a deal that was nearly ironclad for Meta because everyone else took on most of the potential downside. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, also gave his company an escape hatch to get out of it years before its partners.
Those partners include Entergy Louisiana, the state’s largest power company, and Blue Owl, a Wall Street investment firm, according to public statements from the companies and investor documents. If Meta should pull out of the project because of a natural disaster, Blue Owl and its investors could be stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt. Should Meta exit its lease early for other reasons and pay high penalties for doing so, Entergy and its customers could wind up saddled with higher costs.
Adding to their risk, insurance companies would not fully insure Meta’s facility because of its size and location in the Louisiana Delta flood plains.
The New York Times’s examination shows for the first time how Meta used secrecy and speed to pave the way for its giant project, which it calls Hyperion. At a pivotal moment for the A.I. boom, Hyperion could be a blueprint for other companies intent on avoiding local opposition in order to get massive data centers built fast.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others are expected to spend more than $1 trillion on data centers in coming years, but some communities are pushing back because they are worried about water use, higher electricity rates, disruption by construction and the endless hum of giant computing centers running throughout the night.
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from The Hill. “Louisiana governor ‘not concerned’ about environmental impact of Gulf Coast SpaceX facility.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) brushed aside fears Wednesday morning about possible negative environmental impacts from SpaceX’s planned $100 billion launch facility in the state.
He told CBS News on Wednesday that he was “not concerned about the environmental impact” of the new spaceport, which will be constructed along the Gulf Coast on a former Exxon property in Vermilion Parish, La.
“What I am concerned about is the lack of economic opportunity on the coast that continues to basically rob us of opportunities to rebuild our coast,” the governor said.
The spaceport will be the company’s fourth and largest launch site, and it will serve as the main facility for Starship, SpaceX’s in-development reusable rocket launch system.
SpaceX got into hot water over its operations at its first launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
In 2024, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the company violated environmental regulations by repeatedly releasing pollutants into nearby bodies of water.
This followed an earlier warning by the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 office, which oversees Texas, that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act with these actions.
Elon Musk’s company said in a statement that it was committed to working with federal and state agencies and conservation groups “to protect shoreline, restore wetlands, and support the wildlife and recreation that depend on them” in Louisiana.
And if any one believes Musk will do that I have several bridges over the Mississippi River I’d like to sell you.
So, I end with this thought. WE ARE SO FUCKED.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
When I heard Dolly Parton had died…I was in my kitchen putting dishes away from the dishwasher. It had been run the evening before, but the dishes were still warm. I had just remarked on this when the news announced that our true original American Saint of all Goodly Humanity had passed.
It hit like a tsunami.
I knew she was sick, for a long time now. In fact, very early in the morning I had read a post on her Facebook that said:
I even went back to look for it, but it was gone. I am glad that The Irish Star published this story. Otherwise…I would have questioned my sanity.
It may seem strange but I’m going to use those dishes in that dishwasher as an analogy. I’m not religious, so if you want…you can switch what I’m about to say into a baptism story. But, Dolly Parton had a way with her words and music. It was a kind of way that washed you clean. It scrubbed all your dirt and grime. But held you accountable. It made you want to be better. It made you all warm and kept you like that for a long time because it insulated you from the hate and cruelty in the world.
She was everything you could ever hope to be…
If you truly wanted to be a good person.
For me, the quintessential Dolly has to be the Dolly of the 9 to 5 era…I guess that is because I was a kid during that time and she was so popular.
Her music was always on the radio, even on the rock/pop stations. Not a day would go by that I didn’t hear her singing. She was on talk shows and late night. She was everywhere. And no matter what she was doing, you never got tired of seeing her. It was always so charming and genuine.
She spread love to everyone. Absolutely everyone.
These are just some of the charitable things she has done:
Her production company also produced a documentary on the AIDS Quilt, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, you may remember this film:
That is a link to the full film.
Also, I want to share this video of an interview with the cast of Steel Magnolias. I saw this interview live way back in the day, and this particular part never lost my memory:
Remember what I said before about accountability? Dolly did not have any biological children, but she sure mothered us in many ways.
*Just a side note: there are so many images in this post, I had to use columns…and remember to reload the page if the Instagram post are not embedded properly.
Dolly Parton was laid to rest on Friday, a small funeral with her immediate family.
Here are some of the tributes that people, both celebrities and fans have made for Dolly these last few days:
My big sister Dolly got her wings this past Tuesday. If anyone gets to heaven I’m sure she made it right on time. I know she’s showing out big time, in all her sparkles and shine. That was my sister’s way. Every Tuesday about this time, before the sun came up and the world was still asleep, she and I for many years had our coffee together over the phone. Being little farm girls we’ve continued to be early risers. As she liked to say; “shoot Tedda we get more work done before the sun comes up than most folks do all day long!” We would catch up on gossip, as sisters do, and drink coffee and make plans as it has always been our way. My sister was one of the most generous, thoughtful and kind people I’ve ever known. What the world saw is exactly who she was, so much so, she told me recently that if there was no hope for her, she would still allow her medical team to try experimental drugs in the hope of helping others in the future. My sister was always thinking of others and if you want to honor her legacy, show more kindness, lift others up and give more of your time and resources as she continued to do to the very end. I want to personally thank all of you for the out pouring of love and respect you are showing my sister. Your love and respect for her is deeply felt by all of us who loved her first and it helps as we grieve her passing through our lives! My Tuesday morning coffee time will never be the same but her love, respect and goodness will remain. Dolly loved the world and everyone in it. I would criticize and complain about it and she would laugh and say; “shoot Tedda, we’ve got more important things to do than worry about their silly asses.” She was right and she proved it everyday. She left the world a better place by being in it so let’s follow her example. Love and respect to all of you. Stella
Some cartoons in memory:
Various images and memes:
Rest in peace Dolly, you were the best there ever was.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The disastrous floods in Nepal have been dominating the news for the past few days. This is a tragic story that has implications for all of us, because of what it tells us about the effects of global warming. Meanwhile, Trump promotes fossil fuels and tries to stop the development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.
KATHMANDU, NEPAL — Anjana Raja had long dreamed of traveling to Nepal as part of a spiritual journey to Mount Kailash ever since she was a teenager, she said.
When she and her husband finally got to make that dream a reality this month, the California mom of two told ABC News she could not have imagined that trip would force them into survival mode as they found themselves nearly swept up in the deadly landslide flood that hit the region Wednesday.
Raja recalled sitting on a bus with her husband traveling to the Chinese border on Wednesday when, all of a sudden, the driver and front passengers fled the bus and she saw the landslide coming toward their vehicle.
“It was water mixed with the mud that was a good 50 to 60 feet high. It stood like a serpent right there staring at us,” Raja told ABC News. “Like a cobra’s head staring at you.”
Raja said she didn’t hesitate and grabbed her sling bag and turned to her husband, Pattabiraman Venkatesan.
“I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, ‘Run, we need to go right now,'” she said.
“I didn’t even give time to act. I just said, ‘Leave the bus right away or we’re gonna die,'” Raja added….
Faced with the huge wall of water and mud, the couple and other bus passengers ran to a camp right next to the bus and made their way to higher ground as the water hit and completely flooded the streets, she said.
“We just blindly…climbed. We didn’t even know what direction … There was no guide for us, there was nobody, we were just frantically running. Running, literally running. It was slushy, it was muddy, we were climbing rocks, which was slippery. We just ran for our life,” she said.
“When we reached the second level … I saw the water come up to the slope and move our bus. I told my husband ‘That’s it, we’re gone. We’re going to die,'” she said.
They ultimately made their way up to the third level of the camp and they watched in shock as the wall of water rushed past them.
From their point they could see vehicles, objects and even people be taken in by the water’s power, although the water never reached their level.
“It just came like a roar, it sucked a bunch of buses, SUVs, people, the basecamp, everything — took it in, turned it, turned it all upside down and dumped it into the ground,” Raja said.
That’s a vivid and terrifying description. There’s more at the ABC link.
Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peaking out from behind a door.
These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet.
Woman with a cat, by Lina Rivo
So far, Nepal has recovered 669 bodies, but many remote areas have only been accessed by army helicopters on the hunt for survivors. Rescuers said it was too difficult to assess how many more people might be buried beneath the mud….
The task of identifying the dead is also gargantuan.
In the Nepalese city of Chitwan, the morgues have been overrun by the sheer number of bodies and a makeshift building has been set up to house the dead.
Some of the bodies were carried so far down the river by the force of the floods, they were recovered in neighbouring India.
At Tribhuvan University teaching hospital in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, desperate relatives gathered in the hope of news. Four days on since the disaster struck, people continued to crowd round the police desk to register the names of missing family members. Hundreds of the injured are recovering in the hospital’s wards and people were frantically checking lists of patients, desperate to find a sign that their loved ones were still alive.
In the absence of information and with affected areas almost completely cut off, many families have resorted to making posters to appeal for information. Yavraj Lama said his sister, her husband and their two children were missing after their village of Jaydada, in Rusawa district, had been entirely washed away.
His eyes filled with tears as he glued a photo of one-year-old Sijan Tawang, a baby in the arms of his mother, to the hospital wall. A picture of 12-year-old Sahil, his brother, hung next to it.
“We are numb, we don’t have words to say how sad and distraught we are,” said Lama. “Our main focus is trying to find baby Sijan. He was so sweet and innocent; it’s impossible for us to think he is not with us any more.
“But their whole village has disappeared,” he added, “so we have no hope left that any of them survived.”
The agency initially recorded a magnitude 4.4 earthquake along the Nepal-China border, north of Kathmandu, at about 8.37am local time on Wednesday, before revising its assessment in a statement issued that evening.
It said the seismic signal had come from “a glacial collapse and debris flow” rather than a tectonic quake, and that the collapse alone had caused the catastrophic flooding downstream. Once reclassified, the event registered at magnitude 5.2, a measure of the force of the ice and rock striking the valley floor rather than of any movement underground.
An initial study of satellite imagery from Planet Labs showed a large section of the lower end of a glacier breaking away at an altitude of about 5,200m and falling roughly 1,200m onto the valley floor, gathering rock and debris as it went.
By Bobbie Russon, British artist
The resulting avalanche struck the Lhende river in Tibet, about 20km northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing with Nepal, temporarily damming the water before the barrier gave way and released a powerful flood downstream.
The surge fed into the Bhote Koshi river and crossed into Nepal at around 9am local time, then continued into the Trishuli river, where water levels rose by as much as nine metres in just half an hour.
Officials were caught off guard because there had been no rain, according to local news reports, and some residents ignored early warnings from neighbours precisely because the danger did not resemble the monsoon flooding they were used to.
On fears it could happen again:
Why are experts worried a second flood is coming?
Both Nepal and China have issued warnings about fresh flooding in the Himalayas as two lakes that have developed on either side of their border threaten to burst.
Experts were assessing whether debris from the flood had temporarily blocked Nepal’s Trishuli river at a narrow section, forming a landslide dam, the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said.
Such a blockage can create a secondary hazard if impounded water is suddenly released.
“With a blockage still lodged upstream on the Nepal-China border, authorities warn a second flood is imminent,” Qianggong Zhang, head of climate and environmental risks at ICIMOD, said.
He added that evacuation orders were in place for Jilong Port along the border based on the risk of a second wave of flooding.
BOSTON (AP) — Climate change has been the backdrop to Charles Hughes’ entire life, from kindergarten lessons about disappearing habitats to wildfire smoke billowing through the air he breathed while growing up in Colorado. But now that he’s a college student in Massachusetts, he said global warming is rarely a top issue.
“Honestly, it doesn’t come up as much,” said Hughes, who chairs the state’s chapter of the College Democrats.
What a difference six years makes.
Willem den Ouden (NL 1928) Ferry with cat, 1964
During President Donald Trump’s first term and especially during the Democratic primaries to determine who would run against him in 2020, Democrats spoke constantly about climate change. They used it to rally young voters such as Hughes, fueling protests and sweeping demands to remake the economy with proposals like the Green New Deal.
But there has been a national shift in the conversation that is sharp enough for some researchers to coin the term “climate hushing” to describe it. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, urged the party to stop mentioning climate change because it is not a priority for voters. The Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that pushed global warming as a top issue for young people, switched its mission last fall to a broader mandate of fighting the Republican president.
The shift is encapsulated by the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts on Tuesday as the incumbent, Ed Markey, 80, tries to fend off a challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, 47. Although Markey still talks about sponsoring the Green New Deal, his campaign is more focused on other issues to burnish his left-wing bona fides and prove to voters that he is not too old for the job.
It is the latest example of how climate change has been eclipsed by issues such as affordability, U.S. support for Israel and, above all, how to confront Trump.
“Six years ago, Green New Deal was every phrase out of Ed Markey’s mouth every chance he got. That is not the case now,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic strategist in Massachusetts. “It’s about who’s best to fight. Period, full stop. Everything falls under that.”
Because we’re stuck with an insane authoritarian thug in the White House and that’s a more immediate emergency. There’s more at the link.
Our focus lately has been on Trump and the damage he is doing to democracy as well as his obsessive efforts to remake Washington DC in his own image.
Across East Potomac Golf Links, amid golfers squeezing in late-summer rounds and wondering what will become of the beloved D.C. course, newly cut stumps and bare patches of dirt mark the places where dozens of trees recently stood.
The Trump administration’s promised overhaul of the course has not officially begun. The trees, however, have been coming down for weeks.
Woman and Cat Stretching, after Edouard Manet’s Woman With A Cat of 1880, Holly Frean
President Donald Trump said June 28 that work on the historical public golf facility would begin Sept. 1, but days before that date, his administration has released no final design, construction schedule or estimated cost. Officials have not said whether the course will close next week, what work might begin, or what golfers and other visitors to the national parkland should expect.
An informal count Thursday found that more than 60 trees appeared to have been removed in recent weeks. Many were around the perimeter and parking lot, but others had been removed from playing corridors on the Blue, Red and White courses.
Among the most conspicuous was a cherry tree near the 14th green of the Blue Course, one of East Potomac’s most picturesque holes, framed by cherry trees near the southern end of Hains Point. Nearby, two large sycamores had been removed around the fourth hole.
Tree removal is common in major golf course renovations, often to widen playing corridors, improve sight lines, and allow more sunlight and air to reach the turf. But the Interior Department characterized the activity as routine maintenance and did not connect it to the proposed redesign, nor did it answer questions about whether notice of the work had been provided to the federal court overseeing a legal challenge to the administration’s plans.
Naturally, Trump just ignored instructions from the judge in the case.
During a May hearing in the lawsuit,brought by preservationists seeking to block the course overhaul,U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes declined to stop the government from performing necessary maintenance but warned administration lawyers against presenting the court with a fait accompli. She said she wanted advance notice before the government removed more than 10 trees or brought equipment larger than a sedan onto the property.
That direction was delivered orally and was not included in a formal written order. A person familiar with the legal proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said the government has not notified the plaintiffs or the court about the recent tree work.
Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.
And then there’s Trump’s ugly ballroom construction. Naturally, he lied to the Supreme Court justices about it.
The Trump administration told the Supreme Court two weeks ago that construction of a new White House East Wing was “65% finished,” part of its argument that the work was too far along for the court to halt.
But by the White House’s own standard for measuring the project’s progress, established in a confidential agreement with contractor Clark Construction that was reviewed by The Washington Post, work on the controversial project was far less complete.
Barbara Perrine Chu
The agreement, finalized before Clark began demolition last October, stipulates that payments to the contractor be proportional to the amount of work completed, and that work cannot begin until the government approves spending for it. Based on that, if 65 percent of the work has been done, then the government should already have paid 65 percent of the total cost of the project.
Publicly available appropriations data shows that as of the end of July, the White House budget office had approved $144 million in spending from an account used to pay for the East Wing and other White House projects. Even if that entire amount were spent on the East Wing, it would come to only about 24 percent of the $600 million estimated construction cost that Clark provided the White House in March. The Post has previously reported that cost estimate.
In the same mid-August court filing in which the administration claimed 65 percent of the project was done, it said that it had already spent “around $200 million.”
If the government had spent $200 million on the East Wing project, the work would be just 33 percent complete, based on the $600 million budget estimate….
The 65 percent claim was made in a sworn declarationby Joshua Fisher, the director for White House Management and Administration, who is overseeing the construction project. In the declaration, Fisher did not explain how the percentage was calculated but said, “Work has progressed too far to go back to the drawing board.”
His assertion came as the administration asked the Supreme Court to allow work on the ballroom to continue after lower courts ruled that the project was probably illegal without congressional approval and that construction must stop. The administration argued in part that stopping work while courts considered the merits of the case brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation would cause “chaos in service of nothing” because the project had already progressed “beyond the point of judicial intervention.”
Just looking at photos of the mess Trump has made at the White House, it sure doesn’t look like the project is 65 percent done. Trump lied. So what else is new?
The National Park Service released a report Friday in support of President Donald Trump’s proposed arch, while acknowledging the adverse effects the new monument could have on the district’s most iconic memorials and landmarks.
The arch project is part of Trump’s push to reshape D.C. in his image by leaving a visible mark on the nation’s capital. Critics of the arch and Trump’s other beautification initiatives have argued that the renovations obstruct the district’s sightline — concerns validated throughout the agency’s report — while Democratic lawmakers say the president is bypassing necessary congressional approval to proceed with construction.
NPS’ review was mandated by the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires agencies to evaluate how proposed new construction could directly or adversely affect any nearby landmarks and provide solutions to minimize future harm.
The proposed 250-foot arch will be located at Memorial Circle, near Arlington National Cemetery, and the agency analyzed the surrounding 3.5-mile radius as part of its study. The 133-page report says its construction will likely disturb dozens of historic sites in the area, including the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall.
The monument will adversely affect six out of 31 National Historic Landmarks in the proposed area, including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon — though the effects will mostly stem from altered sightlines and plans to light the area at night, rather than physical damage, the report noted.
While the panel acknowledged the “sensitive” nature of building an arch in the Memorial Circle landscape, the area’s significance makes it an “historically appropriate location” to build, the agency wrote.
This is all so sickening. Trump is acting like a tin-pot dictator. And here’s more proof. Normal presidents don’t kidnap a country’s leader and then strong-arm the new government into giving up the country’s natural resources.
President Trump said late Friday that the United States had struck a deal to take majority control of a huge portion of Venezuela’s oil reserves, pointing to a sweeping effort to assert U.S. dominance over energy in the Western Hemisphere.
Gertie Young, Hanging About
The agreement amounts to a highly unusual foray into another country’s oil fields through a partnership with a private company, the State Department said through a U.S. official.
That firm is affiliated with a Venezuelan businessman, Alejandro Betancourt López, according to two people familiar with the partnership.
Venezuela’s president, Delcy Rodríguez, said the “historic” agreement would involve developing 17 oil fields and have a “significant impact on our nation’s revival.”
The aim of the deal, Ms. Rodríguez said, is “putting our immense reserves at the service of national development.” It would draw more than $100 billion of investment, she said, and generate an estimated $209 billion for Venezuela’s strapped government, which has been struggling to improve living conditions after earthquakes in June left more than 6,500 people dead.
Details were sparse, however, and the text of the agreement was not immediately available. Mr. Betancourt did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the State Department did not respond to questions about Mr. Betancourt’s potential role in the arrangement.
Inside Venezuela, Mr. Betancourt is often called a “bolichico” or “Bolivarian boy” — a term used to refer to Venezuelan businessman who are favored by the government, and who have profited immensely during the country’s socialist revolution. (The government named the revolution for the country’s independence hero Simón Bolivar.)
A bit more:
Previous U.S. leaders often shied away from any suggestion that gaining sway over another country’s natural resources was a primary objective of U.S. military and foreign policy, wary of the international backlash, doubts over the legality of doing so and the potential for such moves to generate security threats against the United States.
But Mr. Trump and some of his top advisers have made it clear that oil is an important part of their foray into Venezuela.
Even before the removal of Mr. Maduro, American officials bluntly claimed that the United States had created Venezuela’s oil industry and that the country’s government had effectively stolen U.S. oil fields through nationalizations.
Trump is a gangster and a thug. We have to get rid of him.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What are your thoughts? What else is on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s 
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
If only we were following China’s example. This is from 
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from 
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments