Mrs. Hegseth was for years Mr. Hegseth’s producer at Fox News as he built a broadcast career. Now, seven years into their marriage, she is his most influential adviser and his de facto producer at the Pentagon. She has prepped him for appearances, sat in on his meetings with journalists, interviewed potential members of his staff and brainstormed ideas for the Defense Department videos he — and sometimes she — appears in.

You see, Pete’s not the Secretary of Defense. He’s actually the host of an infotainment program, much like you’d see on the weekend at FOX News or on FOX Nation. He’s not managing the war or the defense production deficit or anything else a Secretary of Defense is expected to do. He is the star of a show being produced on the fly by his wife. It has all the gaudy, over-the-top hyperpatriotism and kulturkampf accoutrements you’ll find on many of FOX’s vividly-colored, graphics-laden programs.

It’s the Department of War, starring Pete Hegseth! And Jennifer Hegseth is right there to make sure he hits his marks … and not the bottle. And it explains why everything is being mismanaged. The Iran War has been all but lost. The Navy is mired in a morale morass. The Army’s chain of command has been crippled by purges. And Pete’s busy in hair and makeup, getting ready for his next staged performance.

At least someone—perhaps Jennifer—realized months ago that Pete’s orgiastic glee about blowing up stuff wasn’t a hit with viewers, so they cancelled the “Pentagon Briefing” segment. His orgiastic glee is also why the US shot its kinetic wad all over Iran … and still the regime stands, thus demonstrating the limits of the vaunted US military. Now they are scrambling to invent some new leverage with double secret probation-level economic sanctions.

The Iranians responded by announcing a tentative power and revenue-sharing deal with Oman that would give Iran a far stronger hold on the Strait than it had seven months ago. Sec’y of State Marco Rubio responded by announcing a pause in bombing … until after the midterms. Pete, of course, said bombing could still happen … really … he knows it can happen … he really wants it to happen … hey, is anybody even listening to him?

Meanwhile, the real world consequences of governing like a reality show are piling up like tankers on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. If nothing else, this utterly dysfunctional approach to running the world’s largest military and its most sprawling bureaucracy is defeating itself. I just wonder what Pete’s patriarchal guru thinks about Jennifer wearing the battle fatigues in the family. - jp

A trillion budget but military can't 'afford' to attack mold on bases?
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Military buildings need $285 billion worth of maintenance, report says
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The Costly Blunders in the Army’s $533 Million Fiasco
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Twenty-One Days to Save the Arsenal? The Pentagon’s Munitions Crisis Meets Reality
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The US Munitions Crisis Goes Back Further than Iran
https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-munitions-crisis-goes-back-further-iran

The US Navy has battled operational tempo ordeals for years. The Iran war exposed the flaws.
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Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless
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‘Tell the General I’m Sorry’: Trump Reportedly Blamed Hegseth for Army Chief’s Firing in Call With GOP Senator
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Before Hegseth fired him, top general was advised to drop Kid Rock probe
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Billboard campaign in military cities connects Iran war to high prices
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Opinion: Trump’s war of choice in Iran is straining the armed forces for nothing
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Pete Hegseth blames "tra**ies" for US military troubles in bizarre speech line
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Pete Hegseth-style masculinity is full of downsides | Opinion
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Pete Hegseth is bringing Christian propaganda to schools on military bases
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How to Be a Proper Military Wife: Dress Modestly, Smile, and Keep Opinions to Yourself
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‘It’s Bonkers’: Jennifer Hegseth’s Hands-On Role in Her Husband’s Pentagon
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/style/jennifer-hegseth.html

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At least, that what they’re supposed to do with the horses.

Instead, horses are being sold to “hard-luck livestock” traders like Brandon Jones. He’s buying ‘em for twenty-five bucks apiece. He quickly turns around and sells them for a profit to … well, he wouldn’t tell reporter Dave Phillipps, but it’s well-established that horses sold to traders like Jones for a pittance invariably end up in slaughterhouses north and south of the border. That’s despite the fact that it is illegal for the US government to sell them to slaughterhouses.

But they can sell them to people who resell them to slaughterhouses.

That’s the “loophole.”

It’s based on a convenient, disingenuous misreading of the letter of the law that utterly disregards the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is clear—the American people don’t like the idea of iconic wild horses being slaughtered for human or animal consumption. They don’t really like the idea of horsemeat, period. That’s why BLM is forbidden from selling them to slaughterhouses. But the apparatchiks now running all the Federal agencies were put there to find and/or create “loopholes” through reinterpretation of existing statutes and rules, and through widespread regulatory indifference.

In the case of the wild horses, they’re relying on a technicality … they are not *directly* selling the horses to slaughterhouses. It doesn’t matter that they, Philipps and anyone who knows anything about this story knows full-well that the horses are being flipped to slaughterhouses.

Interestingly enough, culling the wild horses was recommended in the Project 2025 “blueprint” for Trump’s second term. But, Philipps noted, even the architects of that reactionary plan said that Congress “must enact laws permitting the B.L.M. to dispose humanely of these animals.”

That’s “must enact laws” … not “must use a disingenuous reading of the law” to ignore it. But disingenuous readings are the Trump Regime’s specialty. That’s how they are gutting the Endangered Species Act … just reinterpret “harm” to only include the physical body of a protected species, but not the ecosystems they depend upon to live. And you have to wonder how this callow brand of revisionism is being used at all the agencies. - jp

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/trump-administration-noaa-commercial-fisheries-profits-marine-conservation/

Trump Administration to Rescind Rule Protecting Old-Growth Forests
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/trump-administration-to-rescind-rule-protecting-old-growth-forests

Paving paradise: Dismantling the Roadless Rule threatens to disrupt wildlife, water and peace in the last quiet places in America
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Trump Admin Moves to Expand Access for Hunters to Federal Lands in 32 States
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Trump Is Destroying Pristine Public Lands to Build His Border Wall — Again
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Trump Signs Space Transportation Policy Ordering Interior to Find Federal Land for a New Spaceport
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Developers Now Targeting Public Lands To Build Huge AI Data Centers
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Now he gets the honor of wearing the burning tire around his neck.

That said, he’ll probably do a better job of communicating than the hormonally-obsessed Hegseth … although Hegseth’s orgasmic celebration of kinetic force did set the bar awfully low. It’s no accident that Hegseth hasn’t held a presser since the first week of May. But now Trump’s turning to the man who convinced him that the early stages of the current tech bubble was actually sparked by Wall Street’s alleged belief that Trump would win the 2024 election. Therefore, Bessent told Trump (according to a tale Trump told daily on the stump), the stock market’s rise during Biden was Trump’s accomplishment.

In other words, Bessent is a salesman.

America’s “top bond salesman,” said Bessent when he launched his widely panned bond buyback. He was not nearly as confident in his new role as the face of Trump’s failing war. His dry mouth and quavering voice announced the start of “economic D-Day” with a nervousness that shows he knows he’s out of his depth.

Just how deeply he’s in it came through loudly and clearly when he blurted out an unintentional admission to a probing question about decision to announce the sanctions without implementing them:

"Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?"

Why indeed?

Why would Bessent entertain any approach that runs the risk of blowing up the global financial system? That he said it at all seems like he’s tipping his hand and, if Trump’s track record is any indication, it may be just another threat … a bluff … one that Iran quickly laughed off and one that didn’t seem to affect Wall Street.

The reality, though, is that this new-ish strategy—inartfully dubbed Operation Economic Outcast—is more like a surrender than an escalation. It’s a rather explicit admission that the military campaign has failed. Hegseth shot America’s wad, supplies are thin, sailors are suffering and the war is a political disaster. Trump no doubt sees this as way out of the military campaign … one that he can sustain through the midterms.

But therein lies the rub.

Bessent can try to coyly shift the Iran War away from kinetic action and into a post-war version of the sanctions regime that was in place when Trump started his deadly misadventure started, but that political battle is already lost. The war is a sunk cost that’s not nearly as pressing as the issue of affordability … or data centers. The two are intertwined, in fact, with the preferences Trump’s given Silicon Valley looming as a damning example of wealthy oligarchs buying favoritism from Trump while ignoring the concerns of the American people.

It’s all made worse by the mounting evidence that those favors often translate into higher utility bills for wage earning Americans. And it’s all underscored by his renewed trade war with Canada, which means he’s currently got America fighting two costly economic wars of choice.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans have and will continue to lose SNAP food assistance, and millions more are facing the end of Medicaid coverage. In effect, they are and have been fighting an economic war here at home. Wasn’t that a major reason why Trump was elected? - jp

Canada lumber exports to U.S. fall 13% as trade talks collapse
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Trump’s tariffs on Canadian plywood and laminated wood panels just went into effect—what does it mean for the AEC industry?
https://www.archpaper.com/2026/08/canada-plywood-tariffs/

How increased Canadian tariffs could have impact Maine’s housing market
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Data Centers Are Sucking Up So Many Construction Workers That There Isn’t Anybody Left to Build Houses, Expert Says
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-centers-construction-worker-labor-housing-market

The AI boom made San Francisco so crowded ‘tech bros’ making six figures are scrounging for homes
https://fortune.com/article/ai-boom-san-francisco-tech-bros-six-figures-housing-08-10-2026/

Santa Cruz County housing market stalls, then rebounds as AI wealth boom looms
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US Housing Markets Face Escalating Affordability and Neighbor Disputes
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U.S. Housing Affordability Gets More Difficult
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Manufactured housing’s affordability problem
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Amid housing crisis, Maine mobile home residents make strides to protect themselves
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Affordability takes center stage as poll shows Georgia governor’s race locked in dead heat
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Affordability concerns loom over New York midterms
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Affordability, healthcare among top concerns for Arizona seniors
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Arizona regulators approve safeguard to keep co-op customers from footing data center grid costs
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Trump defends AI data center buildout amid pushback
https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/24/trump-defends-ai-data-center-buildout-amid-pushback/

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The calculus is simple.

Become indispensable to business and government and, therefore, too important to regulate and too necessary to extricate. The sooner business and government adopt and grow dependent upon their AI agents, the better. The trick is to get there before the backlash can stop it.

Trump gave them a significant head start, too.

But that was then, and this is now … and now things are looking a bit less inevitable. It seems the Valley was not able to hyperscale faster than the public could mount challenges at the city, county and state level. Trump’s political capital is long gone, but he’s still cheering on data centers … despite data centers emerging as a top issue in the midterms.

Honestly, Trump is almost as toxic as the data centers he’s associated himself with since his first day in office. But now, data centers are so toxic even Republicans are touting their newfound opposition to ‘em in their advertising.

And that’s not all.

In a related development, Americans are suddenly revolting against Flock surveillance cameras, driven in no small part by a surge in reported abuses by law enforcement. It could be a coincidence that both backlashes are happening now, but I suspect that people are uncomfortable with inevitability … and I suspect that Silicon Valley’s enmeshment with Trump is blowing back onto them.

The bottom line is that all the smarmy Hegelianism in the world cannot hide the parasitic business model that animates all of their “tech.” Agentic AI is just another version of the tollbooth Silicon Valley inevitably installs whenever it uses the next whiz-bang “innovation” to “disrupt” existing transactions or relationships and, therefore, horn its way into the middle of those transactions and relationships with an app or a device or, if AI works out for them, a dedicated minder and toll-taker.

It could be that its dawning on Americans that they are paying for their own imprisonment. - jp

The new kingmakers: Crypto, AI and betting firms fuel record spending on the 2026 midterms
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Are Flock cameras the next bipartisan political issue?
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‘F**k Flock!’ Vandals wage war on AI surveillance cameras
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259 Plate Searches, Zero Warrants: A Cop Turned Traffic Cameras Into Her Personal Stalking Tool
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Former Deputy Charged For Improper Flock Use
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3 deputies’ access to Flock cameras suspended, Harris County Sheriff’s Office says
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Georgia school resource officer suspended as Flock camera misuse cases grow
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2 Mass. police officers on leave after city’s license plate reader system audit
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Did someone wearing Meta Glasses film you today? Are you sure?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/aug/19/meta-glasses-privacy-surveillance

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But it is also highly volatile.

It vaporizes easily, and it can do so for days after it is applied … particularly in hot and dry conditions. And when it does, it drifts. And when it drifts, it can drift for miles, damaging or destroying nearby crops, trees and other “non-target” foliage along the way. That bug, which a cynically-minded observer could plausibly regard as a feature that forces nearby farms to convert to GMO soybeans and cotton, has fueled a decade-long controversy over “dicamba drift” that’s been largely contained within the agriculture industry.

Until now.

The difference now is that pesticides like dicamba are drifting into classrooms and exposing non-GMO children to the same vaporized poison that’s withered neighboring fields for the last ten years. No doubt, pesticide drift has been going on for decades. Take, for instance, a potent poison called chlorpyrifos. Applied to nearly a dozen food crops, it is also a powerful neurotoxin that’ll shave points off the IQ of young people, which is a significant concern to parents of kids in farming communities. The schools they attend tend to be surrounded by fields targeted by chlorpyrifos and therefore run the risk of exposure to deadly drifts.

That said, a study published in 2025 by researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Keck School of Medicine at USC found chlorpyrifos newborns in northern Manhattan and South Bronx, New York. Obviously, the problem stretches well-beyond rural schoolhouses. Lead author Virginia A Rauh, ScD, MSW of Columbia University summarized their findings:

The 270 children and adolescents are participants in the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health birth cohort study and were born to Latino and African-American mothers. They had measurable quantities of CPF in their umbilical cord blood and were assessed by brain imaging and behavioral tests between the ages of 6 and 14 years. Progressively higher insecticide exposure levels were significantly associated with progressively greater alterations in brain structure, function, and metabolism, as well as poorer measures of motor speed and motor programming. Links between higher CPF and greater anomalies across different neuroimaging measures suggest that prenatal exposure produces enduring disturbances in brain structure, function, and metabolism in direct proportion to the level of exposure.

Study co-author Bradley Peterson, MD, Vice Chair for Research and Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said this:

“The disturbances in brain tissue and metabolism that we observed with prenatal exposure to this one pesticide were remarkably widespread throughout the brain. Other organophosphate pesticides likely produce similar effects, warranting caution to minimize exposures in pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood, when brain development is rapid and especially vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

Of course, Trump’s EPA reversed Obama-Era restrictions on chlorpyrifos at the start of this year. Similarly, Trump’s EPA has embraced dicamba, although with two new restrictions. One mandates maintaining a buffer zone around a new applications and the other is a ban on its use when the temperature hits 95 degrees to minimize vaporization. But, at the same time, the EPA dropped a ban on its use after June, when summer temperatures could “lead to more vapor drift.”

That’s a shell game.

Obviously, the 95 degree restriction is not nearly as effective as a summer-long ban. And, as a new report in the Chicago Tribune shows, buffer zones are easily rendered functionally irrelevant by a stiff breeze:

On her 43 acres of woods and reclaimed native prairie in rural Tazewell County, Katie VandenBerg walked the edge of her property, inspecting a line of oaks bordered by miles of corn and soybean fields.

The oak leaves are curled and stunted — damage she believes is tied to pesticide applications on nearby farms.

Since buying the land three years ago, VandenBerg, whose family has lived in Tazewell County for seven generations, said she has “gone down a rabbit hole” trying to understand how drifting chemicals are affecting her trees.

Then, this spring, that threat reached her 10-year-old daughter, Genevieve.

Hundreds of children had gathered outside Bethel Lutheran School in nearby Morton for a jump-rope fundraiser when a chemical odor swept across the parking lot. Across the street, according to Illinois Department of Agriculture records, farmer Mark Eigsti was spraying pesticides on his soybean fields as wind gusts topped 19 miles per hour. These kinds of conditions are known to increase the risk of drift — when chemicals move beyond their intended targets.

That evening, parents received an unusual message from the school principal: “Showers for All Tonight.”

For VandenBerg, the email was immediately alarming.

“Well, hold on. This is more than just showers for everybody,” she said. “This is a big deal. This is not OK.”

The principal’s recommendation made sense. Testing around the school and of students’ clothing found traces of two other herbicides—Glory 4L and Trifluralin 4EC—the EPA classifies as a possible human carcinogen. It certainly sickened those unfortunate enough to catch that drift:

In the days that followed, students and staff reported headaches, sore throats, skin irritation and red eyes, according to state Agriculture Department interviews. Investigators later concluded that more than 200 children and staff were exposed.

Although they didn’t find dicamba, the controversy around dicamba drift highlights a long overlooked problem with pesticides:

“Dicamba is a notorious bad actor, but so are a lot of the pesticides we’re using,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of ecological health for Prairie Rivers Network. “They’re traveling (farther) than most people think.”

Erndt-Pitcher denounced a “lack of routine pesticide air monitoring” in Illinois, which leaves citizens “without a clear picture of how frequently agrochemicals move through communities”:

“If the Department of Agriculture and EPA aren’t looking for it and no one is documenting it, how can you say it really exists?” said Erndt-Pitcher. “We’re documenting it, and we’re saying it does.”

They are not alone.

The controversy over dicamba—which has produced a few successful lawsuits against Bayer—has been driven by angry farmers who’ve suffered crippling losses. As Public Harvest Media noted:

Herbicide drift can be a big deal for a grower’s bottom line, he added. If a producer loses 5 percent of their crop and profit margins are around 5 percent, it’s hard to make money.

At the same time, soybean and cotton farmers who’ve made the leap to the GMO versions of those crops want to reap the rewards of switching to costly proprietary seeds … and that has led a stark divide:

The herbicide has been a topic of heated disagreement among growers in years past and can still be controversial, said Aaron Hager, a professor of weed science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The divide between farmers who use dicamba and those who don’t “was like the 2016 presidential election,” Hager said. “You were in one camp or the other. And if you weren’t in my camp, you were wrong — if for no other reason than you’re not in my camp.”

The reality that drift may occur leaves neighbors of those using dicamba in awkward or sometimes contentious situations, said Randall Vos, a horticulture specialist with Iowa State University Extension.

“You don’t want to be the squeaky wheel in the community,” said Vos, who advises Iowa fruit producers.

For the fruit producers Vos works with, reporting drift can also create a conundrum.

It may take the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship one week to investigate a plant that’s suspected of being damaged by drift. By that point, the herbicide levels may be undetectable, so the state agency may not be able to come to a conclusion — and that’s especially problematic for organic farmers, Vos said.

And that underscores the problem of all drifting pesticides. They are impossible to contain and by the time you catch on to the drift, it’s already too late. Only traces and dead plants will be left behind. But eventually, perhaps decades later, the drift will finally catch up with you. - jp

Pesticides make Argentine ants go crazy, sending them roaming or clustering before workers die
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Childhood Pesticide Exposure May Shift the Timing of Puberty
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Illinois Pesticide Drift Sickened 200 at Morton School, Families Demand Warnings
https://hoodline.com/2026/08/illinois-pesticide-drift-sickened-200-at-morton-school-families-demand-warnings/

As study shows pesticides drifting onto Illinois schools and parks, residents push for better tracking
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/08/16/pesticide-drift-illinois-farmers/

Pesticides Can Drift For Miles, Injuring Plants. That Can Hurt Farmers’ Bottom-line
https://www.farms.com/news/pesticides-can-drift-for-miles-injuring-plants-that-can-hurt-farmers-bottom-line-245860.aspx

Farmer Follows AI Chatbot’s Advice About Pesticide, A Million Square Feet Of Crops Die The Next Day
https://brobible.com/culture/article/farmer-ai-chatbot-advice-pesticide-crops-die/

As Temperatures Get Hotter, Pesticides Are More Dangerous to Farmworkers
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17082026/florida-heat-amplifies-pesticides-dangers-for-farmworkers/

At Bangladesh’s top cancer hospital, the farmers keep coming
https://netra.news/2026/bangladesh-farmers-cancer-pesticide/

Parkinson’s Disease cases are growing worldwide. Is chemical exposure to blame?
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article316662510.html

Gulf War Veteran Parkinson’s Disease Lawsuits Investigated Over Pesticide Use During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm
https://www.aboutlawsuits.com/chlorpyrifos-lawsuit/gulf-war-veteran-parkinsons-disease-lawsuits-pesticide-use-desert-shield-desert-storm/

Is There A Link Between Golf Courses And Parkinson’s Disease?
https://allthatsinteresting.com/parkinsons-disease-golf-courses

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It’s not that the US is exempt … to the contrary, much like the dwindling Danube, Lake Mead and the Colorado River are increasingly in jeopardy and cattle ranchers in South Dakota, Wyoming and Mississippi are struggling to keep their herds alive amid heatwaves and drought. The only difference is that their government pretends that the superheated world doesn’t exist. It does … in fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quietly announced that July was the hottest month on record. CNN’s climate reporter Bill Weir noted that NOAA put the announcement under a cryptic headline with a picture of a grazing horse … apparently hoping to slip it by Trump’s thought police. It worked, too.

Sadly, it’s a Pyrrhic Victory.

Disappearing grasslands impact bird populations, study finds
https://india.mongabay.com/2026/08/disappearing-grasslands-impact-bird-populations-study-finds/

Extreme weather is pushing birds out of their usual ranges
https://www.earth.com/climate/extreme-weather-is-pushing-birds-out-of-their-usual-ranges/

Study finds extreme weather increasingly predicts North American bird species distributions
https://bioengineer.org/study-finds-extreme-weather-increasingly-predicts-north-american-bird-species-distributions/

A global finding: 80% of butterfly species are changing their distribution due to climate change
https://noticiasambientales.com/science/a-global-finding-80-of-butterfly-species-are-changing-their-distribution-due-to-climate-change/

Climate change helps invasive species spread across South | Exclusive
https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/environment/2026/08/12/invasive-species-in-georgia-and-sc-may-spread-with-climate-change/91245260007/

Climate change helps invasive species thrive in the Mediterranean
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/climate-change-helps-invasive-species-thrive-in-the-mediterranean/video/a7667243be1b5aa0eca686e27309a9b4

Mediterranean Sea Passes 1,000 Invasive Species; Scientists Declare Ecology Gone Forever
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/324170/20260812/mediterranean-sea-passes-1000-invasive-species-scientists-declare-ecology-gone-forever.htm

Conservationists in Europe are racing to stop the next invasive species before it spreads
https://iucn.org/news/202608/conservationists-europe-are-racing-stop-next-invasive-species-it-spreads

Experts warn that stranded cargo ships could cause an invasive species ‘super-spreader’ event
https://cottagelife.com/general/experts-warn-that-stranded-cargo-ships-could-cause-an-invasive-species-super-spreader-event/

What my Maine dock taught me about the threat of invasive marine life looming in the Persian Gulf
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/12/metro/strait-of-hormuz-barnacle-invasion/

New report finds LNG expansion raises invasive species risks in the Gulf of California
https://safety4sea.com/new-report-finds-lng-expansion-raises-invasive-species-risks-in-the-gulf-of-california/

Invasive crayfish claw their way across America and take over US lakes
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/invasive-crayfish-america-taking-over-us-lakes

The US Lakes Overrun By Invasive Catfish
https://www.worldatlas.com/lakes/the-us-lakes-overrun-by-invasive-catfish.html

These fish escaped confinement in the 1970s: 50 years on, they are now massive invasive species threatening the Great Lakes
https://en.as.com/latest_news/these-fish-escaped-confinement-in-the-1970s-50-years-on-they-are-now-massive-invasive-species-threatening-the-great-lakes-f202608-n-2/

Can anything stop invasive golden mussels? A test project in Stockton may provide an answer
https://stocktonia.org/news/environment/2026/08/14/golden-mussels-test-project-stockton/

Texas research lab hopes to curb invasive species affecting prickly pear cacti
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2026/08/10/prickly-pear-invasive-species

Kansas to quarantine invasive Callery pear trees beginning in 2027
https://www.ksnt.com/news/kansas/kansas-to-quarantine-invasive-callery-pear-trees-beginning-in-2027/

Beautiful but vicious: invasive roses a menace to N.S. ecosystems
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/invasive-multiflora-rose-threatening-n-s-ecosystems-9.7304682

Volunteers plant native vegetation at Anchorage park to combat invasive species
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2026/08/12/volunteers-plant-native-vegetation-anchorage-park-combat-invasive-species/

It’s time to check trees for invasive Asian longhorned beetle
https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/news/2026/08/10/time-to-check-trees

Tiny invasive snail spreading across north-central Montana — here’s what to look for
https://www.krtv.com/news/tiny-invasive-snail-spreading-across-north-central-montana-heres-what-to-look-for

Toxic hammerhead worms spread across Tennessee: Officials urge residents not to touch them
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/toxic-hammerhead-worms-spread-across-tennessee-officials-urge-residents-not-to-touch-them

Invasive jumping worms are stripping New Hampshire gardens of mulch, compost, and healthy soil
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-home/jumping-worms-new-hampshire-gardeners-fight-back/

This ‘perfect invader’ is spreading across the world. It’s costing economies billions
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/13/science/shot-hole-borer-invasive-beetle-africa-intl

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It’s irony is rooted in the nature of the disease, which causes a potentially deadly allergic reaction to meat and dairy. The ironic coincidence that an allergy to meat was being carried by a tick named after Texas was matched by the irony of a Texas-named tick spreading that allergy thanks in large part to Texas’ climate-altering oil and gas industry.

Seven years later the irony is not nearly as delicious as it once was. Back then, public opinion was trending toward wider public acknowledgement of something the oil companies knew for decades. Against that backdrop, the lone star tick and Alpha-gal Syndrome were ironic harbingers of things to come … things, it seemed, we could still do something to avoid. But the shocking ease with which Donald Trump simply waved away concerns about or mentions of the climate or anything that has to do with the environment showed us how unlikely a course correction was then, and how unlikely it is going forward.

Now, seven years later, the lone star tick is spreading another disease—so-called Bourbon virus. Named after the Kansas county where it was first discovered, the virus is potentially deadly and wholly uncurable. And that’s just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Tick-borne diseases are proliferating.

Waving away the issue may have fired-up his base and rewarded donors, but it did nothing to stop the ticks or the ever-warmer weather that’s opened up most of North America to them. Because climate change no longer officially exists for the US federal government, little else will be done. - jp

What is rabbit fever? Disease you can catch mowing your lawn has infected 3 on Long Island
https://nypost.com/health/what-is-rabbit-fever-tularemia/

Three cases of rare tick-borne disease ‘rabbit fever’ suspected in New York
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/health/rabbit-fever-tularemia-new-york

Rare Tick Virus Is 'Just the Tip of the Iceberg,' Infectious Disease Expert Says
https://wjactv.com/news/local/rare-tick-virus-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-infectious-disease-expert-says

No cure, no vaccine: Experts warn of rare Bourbon virus after first NY case
https://www.foxnews.com/health/no-cure-no-vaccine-experts-warn-rare-bourbon-virus-after-first-ny-case

New York, the Bourbon virus and Lone Star ticks
https://outbreaknewstoday.substack.com/p/new-york-the-bourbon-virus-and-lone

Hiker stopped at his tent flap in New York's Catskills and found 20 lone star ticks at 3,000 feet
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/hiker-finds-lone-star-ticks-catskills/

The great tick explosion: a tiny threat tests America’s love of nature
https://www.ft.com/content/16b0f91e-3615-4e77-96cb-f2edb5f36ea6

Lyme disease is becoming one of Canada's defining climate-health challenges
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/07/20/news/canada-climate-change-lyme-disease

Tick bites drive global surge in alpha-gal meat allergy with no cure
https://www.dongascience.com/en/news/79225

The Ticks Are Winning
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/08/the-ticks-are-winning/

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Could you ever imagine Trump befriending a dog, cat or a bird, let alone caring for a mouse?

Of course not.

Although it might seem rather picayune to point it out amidst his regime’s rampant corruption and intolerable cruelty, it is indicative of his general attitude toward animals and the natural world. For Trump, ecosystems are merely resources that haven’t been converted to dollars, and animals are just waiting for Eric and Don Jr. to convert them into trophies.

Yes, he’s expressed faux concern for whales and birds, but that’s not because he likes whales and birds. He just hates windmills, and he thinks people will respond to dead birds and disturbed whales. Frankly, he’ll say anything in pursuit of his vendetta against windmills, including the gobsmacking claim they cause cancer.

Ironically, his vendetta is traceable back to his environmentally destructive golf course in Scotland, which was opposed by many Scots. Trump was livid when an offshore windfarm was built within eyeshot of the course. He sued to halt the project, but ultimately lost his case before the UK Supreme Court.

Now, however, he’s got a hand-picked US Supreme Court that’s as hostile to environmental protections as he is … and he’s using that fact to run roughshod on the perennially popular Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Under rules his regime recently rewrote, it is still illegal to kill or directly harm animals listed under the ESA, but the habitat they rely upon to survive is no longer fully protected. That’s the greenlight ranchers, drillers and developers have been dreaming of for decades. The only caveat to the rule is that you cannot harm a species’ “critical habitat” if it literally leads to the extinction of said species.

Here’s new rule as described by a Department of Interior press release:

Critical habitat exclusions (Section 4(b)(2)): Revises the “critical habitat” designation process to follow the law and consider the economic, national security and other relevant impacts following the designation of any particular area as “critical habitat.” The revision also allows an area to be excluded from a “critical habitat” designation if that exclusion will not cause the extinction of the species.

In other words, they draw the line at cutting down a tree that’s hosting the last nest of the last Spotted Owl. Short of that, everything is negotiable. Maybe it’s the economic impact of a proposed sprawling data center, or the national security impact of the AI it’s hosting. So long as the diesel-powered graders do not destroy the last remaining nests of the last Attwater’s Greater Prairie-Chicken, no worries.

But it’s not just the ESA that’s being rewritten to match the President’s priorities. Amazingly, the Federal Aviation Administration just gave itself the power to trump a host of environmental regulations. Per Tech Times:

The Federal Aviation Administration published a proposed rule on Tuesday that would give it the power to waive requirements under 13 federal environmental and natural resource laws for every commercial space license it issues — including the Endangered Species Act, portions of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Communities living near launch sites, tribal nations with ancestral ties to those lands, and wildlife advocates have 30 days to submit public comment before the window closes — and environmental groups are already vowing legal challenges.

Not surprisingly, the regime is using the rule-making process to create expansive new powers. Also unsurprisingly, that’s what conservative critics accused the ESA’s rulemakers of doing when the law was first implemented. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to apply the principle universally.

Once finalized, the rule—which does seem to solve a problem SpaceX has in both Texas and California—will likely be tied-up in the courts though the Midterms. Should the Democrats take the House, it’s possible, perhaps even likely they will take up a new bipartisan bill from Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) that “would reverse the federal government’s decision to roll back the definition of ‘harm’ under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to exclude habitat destruction.” As a recent write-up from the Sierra Club noted:

“Habitat destruction is the biggest driver of extinction, and it was squarely in Congress's sights when the Endangered Species Act was passed,” said Ben Levitan, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, who is representing nine conservation groups suing the Trump administration over the change. “Everybody knew, just like everybody still knows, that if you want to save a species, it has to have habitat.”

It’s not going to be an issue in the Midterms, but the Midterms will determine the fates of many species and their habitats. Alas, they don’t get a vote. - jp

Endangered Species Act changes will strip already weak protections for https://www.cfpublic.org/environment/2026-07-27/endangered-species-act-changes-strip-weak-protections-plants

Federal rule cuts Canada lynx critical habitat in Montana by 43%
https://www.livingstonenterprise.com/news/federal-rule-cuts-canada-lynx-critical-habitat-in-montana-by-43/article_f0ce80bb-0352-5058-8bc8-4cc6d50f42be.html

Florida manatees could face greater risk under ESA rollback
https://www.keybiscayneportal.com/news_in_english/florida-manatees-could-face-greater-risk-under-esa-rollback/article_28d12171-41b0-50b6-ac4b-9563eac6ac56.html

NOAA Fisheries denies ESA listing for smalltail sharks
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/noaa-fisheries-denies-esa-listing-for-smalltail-sharks

Experts talk about gopher tortoise threats amid endangered status from wildlife group
https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/florida-gopher-tortoise-endangered-status/73288676

Battle swirls around fate of Mexican Grey Wolves
https://www.paysonroundup.com/news/battle-swirls-around-fate-of-mexican-grey-wolves/article_0c79fded-d954-4842-a877-12dae640991d.html

Endangered red wolves rebound in NC with four litters of pups born this year
https://www.thecoastlandtimes.com/news/endangered-red-wolves-rebound-in-nc-with-four-litters-of-pups-born-this-year-de41db02

Formerly endangered ospreys bounce back in record numbers in Pennsylvania
https://www.thedailynewsonline.com/news/formerly-endangered-ospreys-bounce-back-in-record-numbers-in-pennsylvania/article_202dc39c-7286-4986-a14c-c56b069d26ec.html

This Hawaiian Waterbird Is Making A Comeback. Should It Still Be Endangered?
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/07/this-hawaiian-waterbird-is-making-a-comeback-should-it-still-be-endangered/

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Celebrates Razorback Sucker Recovery Milestone
https://northfortynews.com/category/news/colorado-parks-and-wildlife-celebrates-razorback-sucker-recovery-milestone/

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A perennial winner of the award, the six oil majors faced stiff competition this year from the private prison industry, which is reaping a windfall from President Donald J. Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants living and working in the United States.

Private prison giants CoreCivic and GEO Group were joined by shadowy newcomers like Acquisition Logistics LLC in an impressive effort to wring every last drop of profit out of the suffering of anyone unfortunate enough to be warehoused in deadly hellholes like Camp East Montana in Texas.

But Big Oil’s unparalleled penchant for profiting off human suffering won the day with an impressive one-two punch of recurring war in the oil-rich Middle East and anthropogenic climate change. While profiteering off war has kept Big Oil near the top of the leaderboard for decades, the arrival of ever-deadlier heatwaves in Europe and South Asia is the ultimate realization of the industry’s long-term commitment to the profit motive in spite of knowing full-well what it would trigger. The move that truly set them apart was the pursuit of a new slate of environmentally destructive drilling projects in Africa and South America, thereby demonstrating a willingness or even an eagerness to add more gases to the hothouse currently cooking Europe for the fourth time this year.

It was a masterstroke of unrepentant greed that borders on the sadistic.

And they’ve been richly rewarded for it.

According to newly released numbers by the crunchers at Oxfam:

The projected full-year profits of BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies amount to $147 billion, more than their combined profits over the previous 21 months (Q2 2024 to Q4 2025). Among the biggest winners, Chevron is expected to report that it has quadrupled its profits to $1,200 a second in the last three months, while ExxonMobil’s profits are expected to have tripled to $1,800 a second.

Breaking down to profit per second (pps) illustrates the vast gulf between people struggling to afford fuel and unwillingness of the industry to absorb any of the additional cost of doing their business. In fact, they use crisis as a permission slip to go further. And the future of other people is a sacrifice they are willing to make:

New Oxfam analysis of academic data published in Nature finds that the emissions from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies were sufficient to cause around 1 in 4 heatwaves reported globally between 2000 and 2023 – heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change.

Oxfam also took note of the “masterstroke” move:

Yet rather than scaling back fossil fuel production and accelerating the transition to renewable energy, the six largest fossil fuel corporations plan to increase oil and gas production by 14 percent by 2030 compared to 2024 levels, equivalent to pumping an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil a day.

Oxfam’s inequality analysts posted their full analysis on the org’s Substack. Yes, it’s daunting stuff. But there’s also no shortage of news detailing a surge in clean energy projects since the Iran War disrupted planet petroleum. Ironically, the Iran War may be enriching the usual suspects now … but it might already be boomeranging on them. - jp

Latin America’s First Solar Train Launches: It Will Travel 26 miles With Zero Emissions
https://www.cronista.com/en/today/latin-americas-first-solar-train-launches-it-will-travel-26-miles-with-zero-emissions/

Pakistan’s 27 Gigawatts of Solar Boom Matches Its Entire Fossil-Fuel Power Legacy
https://www.gadgetreview.com/pakistans-27-gigawatts-of-solar-boom-matches-its-entire-fossil-fuel-power-legacy

Wind, solar and heat pumps offer EU escape from LNG dependence by 2030, study says

In Germany, Wind and Solar Overtake Fossil Fuels
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-wind-solar-power-2025

Spain’s Solaria gets EIS approval for 600-MW Italian solar project
https://renewablesnow.com/news/spains-solaria-gets-eis-approval-for-600-mw-italian-solar-project-1298802/

Britain has approved a 700-acre solar farm in Cumbria, a project so vast it could take nearly two years to build
https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/britain-has-approved-a-700-acre-solar-farm-in-cumbria-a-project-so-vast-it-could-take-nearly-two-years-to-build/7743/

EPC firm SunEarth Solar tapped for 30-MW project in Romania
https://renewablesnow.com/news/epc-firm-sunearth-solar-tapped-for-30-mw-project-in-romania-1298792/

Eureka Gold Mine inaugurates a 5.4 MW solar power plant in Zimbabwe
https://www.financialafrik.com/en/2026/07/28/eureka-gold-mine-inaugurates-a-5-4-mw-solar-power-plant-in-zimbabwe/

SolarAfrica, MPower to build 184 MW solar, 300 MWh storage plant in Mpumalanga
https://www.financialafrik.com/en/2026/07/28/eureka-gold-mine-inaugurates-a-5-4-mw-solar-power-plant-in-zimbabwe/

Algeria’s solar market moves beyond potential
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/07/28/algerias-solar-market-moves-beyond-potential/

As US Residential Solar Industry Craters, Florida Bucks Trend
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2026/07/28/879331.htm

Trinity Energy project takes Florida Costco distribution center off-grid
https://solarbuildermag.com/projects/trinity-energy-project-takes-florida-costco-distribution-center-off-grid/

Texas is Constructing the Largest Coal Plant Solar Project in North America
https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/manufacturing/texas-is-constructing-the-largest-coal-plant-solar-project-in-north-america/

As central Minnesota coal plant edges toward closure, massive solar project keeps growing
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/07/28/xcel-energys-sherco-solar-project-near-becker-gets-bigger

Virginia clean energy firm plans 350-megawatt solar plant near Buckeye
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2026/07/28/apex-energy-grande-verde-solar-buckeye-az.html

Indiana lands first US factory for high-efficiency bifacial solar cells, creating 1,200 jobs
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/indiana-solar-cell-factory-1200-jobs/

New Solar Cell Design Solves A Problem That’s Plagued Panels for Decades
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/New-Solar-Cell-Design-Solves-A-Problem-Thats-Plagued-Panels-for-Decades.html

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RT’s India desk captured and reposted the segment on the platform formerly known as Twitter, no doubt because it’s a bald-faced admission that the US is plundering Venezuela.

Although Bessent claims the gold and the oil the US is taking out of the beleaguered nation is going back to help the people of Venezuela, his boss told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One (not the mothballed Qatari jet reporters have dubbed “Bribe Force One”) to a Michigan campaign rally that his regime had collected at least $13 billion from sales of the absconded oil. And it might “even more than that,” added the President in an apparent confirmation of the Financial Times’ tabulation in a story published on July 22.

Trump took it even further during the rally. He touted the competitive advantage his blatant act of imperial extraction gives the US over China:

“We have a thousand years, we have more gasoline, we have more oil … now, when you add Venezuela to it, we really have more oil.”

“We” have more oil?

As far as “we” know, their oil is being sold to benefit them. The problem is “we” have no idea where the money goes after the oil is sold, let alone how much oil has been taking and sold. The first half-billion was deposited into a special account in Qatar (the same people who gave Trump Bribe Force One,) but Energy Sec’y Chris Wright said that ended in February. The Financial Times noted that the Venezuelan government, such as it is, has a website up to “track the revenue from US-run oil sales, but it has only one entry — a transfer of $300mn in March.”

That’s chump change compared to the $13 billion total FT came up with and Trump confirmed on Air Force One. And it could be higher. We don’t know because the Trump Regime has (of course) felt no need to tell us. And that’s because Republicans in Congress don’t seem interested in finding out. That would change if the Democrats take the House and/or the Senate.

Until then, we have to rely on reporting. To wit, FT also asked economists for their analysis of the economic impact of the oil revenue supposedly making it back to the earthquake-ravaged nation:

Many economists had expected Venezuela to enjoy a strong economic recovery this year, given that until January the country was forced to sell oil at a significant discount in international markets to get around US sanctions. The government has introduced a new resources law to encourage investment in oil and gas, and production has ticked up this year.

However, Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said the official first-quarter growth rate of 2.5 per cent was the lowest in nearly five years.

“Venezuela likely did not grow more rapidly despite increased oil revenues in the first quarter because the US didn’t transfer to the Venezuelan government the totality of its increased oil revenues,” he said.

José Guerra, a Venezuelan economist and former opposition lawmaker, said oil revenues should be much higher than in recent years. “Where is the money? There is no transparency and the US government does not inform us.”

The same is true of the gold the US has been commandeering without any real oversight. We know that $100 million of gold was shipped to US refiners in March. And, thanks to FOX News’ lower third, we can assume it must still be coming at the same time the cash-starved nation is trying to regain control over $4 billion gold tied-up by British restrictions put in place after Venezuela’s disputed 2018 election.

In the meantime, the Venezuela government has been fighting criminal gangs for control of gold mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc with the intent of ejecting them and replacing them with corporate mining interests.

Hmmm … I wonder what country those mining interests hail from?

Perhaps it’s the country that doesn’t flinch when its President drops all pretense, says he’s going to take the oil … and he takes it, sells it and brags about it. I guess once you’ve crossed that bridge, nothing is too far … not gold, not fertilizer … nada.

Killing Spree: Extrajudicial executions in the U.S. boat strikes campaign
https://www.wola.org/analysis/killing-spree-extrajudicial-executions-in-the-u-s-boat-strikes-campaign/

67 boat strikes. 221 dead. The cocaine hasn’t slowed, officials report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/07/27/operation-southern-spear-has-not-slowed-cocaine-entering-us/

US Southern Command Ends Earthquake Mission in Venezuela as Death Toll Tops 5,000 and Humanitarian Needs Persist
https://www.latintimes.com/us-southern-command-ends-earthquake-mission-venezuela-death-toll-tops-5000-humanitarian-needs-598324

Vultures Circling the Rubble: US Troops and Businesses Descend on Venezuela
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/vultures-circling-the-rubble-us-troops-and-businesses-descend-on-venezuela/

The mysterious "disappearance" of $10 billion worth of Venezuelan oil under US custody.
https://neofeed.com.br/economia/o-misterioso-sumico-de-us-10-bilhoes-do-petroleo-da-venezuela-sob-guarda-dos-eua/en/

‘Blood Gold’, Malaria Tarnish Venezuela’s Newly Liberalized Mines
https://www.theenergymix.com/blood-gold-malaria-tarnish-venezuelas-newly-liberalized-mines/

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The first sordid tale was told by New York Times finance reporter Maureen Farrell under this mind-numbing headline: Donald Trump Jr.’s Investment Firm Posts Staggering Returns of 200 Percent.

And how did 1789 Capital deliver those “staggering returns”?

According to Farrell’s reporting, Donald Trump Jr. and his partner Omeed Malik are “cashing in on the policies of the current administration openly and without apology”:

Many of the companies 1789 has invested in have large government contracts while others, like Polymarket, have benefited directly from new Trump policies or rollbacks of existing laws. The firm bought shares in some of the most coveted private companies before many went public, including SpaceX, Anduril, Cerebras and Reflection AI, often by leveraging their political and business connections to secure a stake or to help boost the companies’ sales.

“Boost” is an understatement:

Just two years ago, 1789 managed a few hundred million dollars. It now oversees more than $3 billion. Its main investment fund generated returns of roughly 200 percent as of June 30, according to a person familiar with the firm’s performance. While still early in its investment cycle, those returns eclipse the average returns of about 21 percent from venture capital firms started in 2023, according to PitchBook, a provider of financial data.

One of the more glaring and troubling “boosts” came from Don Jr.’s association with and the firm’s investment in Polymarket:

In the case of Polymarket, the government had banned it from taking monetary wagers from U.S. residents, but last year a federal regulator granted it an operating license in the United States. Worth $300 million when 1789 invested, the platform is now valued at $15 billion.

Just as amazing as 1789’s massive $14.7 billion gain is the fact that Don Jr. also holds a substantial stake in Polymarket’s main competitor. For some reason (wink-wink), Kalshi gave Trump’s namesake approximately $300,000 in equity back in 2025 when the company was valued at just under $2 billion. Now it’s worth $22 billion, meaning Don Jr. has realized a tenfold increase in his gifted investment as a “strategic advisor” to a company that Trump’s teleprompter operator was using to make “predictive bets” on the speeches the teleprompter operator scrolled for Don Jr’s dad.

The teleprompter operator has been put on leave during the investigation into the latest likely example of insider trading on Trump’s words and deeds as president.

The second sordid story comes from Sam Fortier at NOTUS and in some ways it’s far more demoralizing than yet another Trump grift: Suspicion and Doubt at the National Civics Contest.

At issue is the outcome of the Presidential 1776 Award, which the Department of Education describes as “a national student competition recognizing excellence in American founding history.” It was a spelling bee for civics that culminated in a televised final phase hosted by professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon.

One of the finalists was a 15 year-old son of Indian immigrants who excelled in the grand finale, but somehow finished out of the top three. His name is Aangad Singh and he got the ultimate lesson in the current state of his parents beloved adopted nation when it dawned on him and his parents that he’d been screwed out of his rightful place alongside the other winners:

Although Aangad nailed most, if not all of his answers, his parents were crestfallen by the inexplicable result. The problem was the lack of any official scoreboard. It was impossible to know who scored what. To make matters worse, numerous other contestants and their families were “shocked” by Aangad’s absence from the top three. The final straw came when one of the youngsters approached Aangad’s mother and said a group of contestants had kept score themselves:

“We thought he won,” the boy said.

When Aangad’s mother approached an official from the Department of Education seeking access to the final scores, the official told her the scores are “proprietary.”

Proprietary?

Or inconvenient?

Still, they thought they’d be able to get their answer when the competition eventually and fittingly aired on CBS.

Nope.

They watched in vain as each round passed by without a scoreboard. And as they tried to keep track themselves, Aangad realized that he’d been dinged on answers that were correct, but may have been misunderstood or misheard by the judges. The other possibility is that Linda McMahon’s “competition” had a preordained outcome in mind, and the judges made sure that the picture in the Oval Office would not have this face in the frame:

Now, Aangad and his family have split into “two factions” over the incident: Aangad and his father thought the judges must just be incompetent or mistaken; Aangad’s mother and uncle suspected a conspiracy. Either way, Aangad and his family may never know what happened or why their son’s stellar performance was not enough.

But they did learn a valuable civics lesson about Trump’s America.

Judge Williams Trump Settlement Ruling: A 56-Page Demolition of Presidential Self-Dealing
https://www.lawnews.co.uk/featured-2/judge-williams-trump-settlement-ruling-a-56-page-demolition-of-presidential-self-dealing/

In New Corruption Report, Senate Democrats Shine Light on ‘Eye-Popping’ Trump Profiteering
https://www.causes.com/post/corruption-report-senate-democrats-shine-light-eye-popping-trump-profiteering

Senators Question ‘Insider’ Access to Trump Truth Social Posts
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-21/senators-question-insider-access-to-trump-truth-social-posts

SEC Asked to Probe Trump’s $100K ‘Truth API’ Over Insider Trading
https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/07/22/sec-asked-to-probe-trumps-100k-truth-api-over-insider-trading/

Sources: Aide Trump called ‘excellent’ now facing insider trading probe
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/17/us/video/ebof-tom-foreman-trump-teleprompter

How Tether Benefited as Trump Insiders Shaped First US Crypto Law
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-07-22/how-tether-benefited-as-trump-insiders-shaped-first-us-crypto-law

Clarity Act Language Would Immunize Trump Digital Asset Ventures from Oversight
https://www.democracydefendersaction.org/news/clarity-act-language-would-immunize-trump-digital-asset-ventures-from-oversight/

Trump Reportedly Made $2.4B in 2025—Equal to 6,000 Years of Presidential Salary—as Family Crypto Ventures Boomed
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/donald-trump-2025-income-crypto-ventures-1810058

Trump threatens to destroy Iranian infrastructure over Strait of Hormuz attacks, rattling oil and crypto markets
https://cryptobriefing.com/trump-iran-strait-hormuz-infrastructure-threat/

Trump’s escalating trade fights create a strange safe harbor for crypto
https://cryptobriefing.com/trump-trade-fights-crypto-safe-harbor/

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Instead, fraud is primarily perpetrated by unscrupulous Medicaid providers, by opportunistic individuals inside the organizations that administer Medicaid programs and by professional scammers. Despite that fact, enrollees are about to be forced to navigate a Congressionally mandated obstacle course they designed with the expressed intent of pushing people out of the program.

That’s happening right now with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). So far, nearly 5 million people have been booted from SNAP, and it will accelerate in the coming months. It will also become a perfect storm when people lose SNAP and Medicaid after the new laws fully kick-in after the midterms.

Cuts and work requirements were sold as cracking down on lazy dudes who are supposedly milking the system while they hang out in their parents’ basement playing Call Of Duty, among other Welfare Queen-style tropes they trotted-out before bill passed. That was the all the justification they needed to carve out enough to “pay for” the tax cuts they lavished on their donors. But there is an additional motivation that traces back to the Calvinist roots of the earliest colonists. Here’s Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt in a recent interview with Stateline:

“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed,” he told Stateline. “Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…”

It’s not that Stitt doesn’t realize SNAP helps keep working Americans, military families and the elderly afloat … particularly in this K-shaped economy. Stitt simply wants people who use SNAP and, it stands to reason, Medicaid to feel worse than they probably already do if they have to rely on a foodbank to feed their kids or themselves.

‘Fraud industrial complex:’ Inside Maryland’s homecare Medicaid money trail
https://foxbaltimore.com/spotlight-on-maryland/fraud-industrial-complex-inside-marylands-homecare-medicaid-money-trail

EXCERPT: A months-long Spotlight on Maryland investigation identified roughly a dozen Maryland-based homecare providers billing Washington, D.C.’s Medicaid program that collectively received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars while carrying significant tax liens, facing labor and malpractice lawsuits, operating from seemingly vacant offices or being cited in serious allegations involving patient care.

Thousands of fraudulent Medicaid registrations by foreign crime ring, says OHCA
https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/thousands-fraudulent-medicaid-registrations-foreign-crime-ring-says-ohca

EXCERPT: The Oklahoma Health Care Authority has identified and acted on a foreign crime syndicate’s fraudulent Medicaid enrollment, according to a statement released Thursday.

OHCA did not specify the exact number of fraudulent enrollments, but referred to the claim that the crime ring “fraudulently registered thousands of Oklahomans for Medicaid.”

CT lab and owner to pay $145K to settle allegations of Medicaid enrollment fraud
https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-haven-county/ct-lab-owner-to-pay-145k-to-settle-allegations-of-medicaid-enrollment-fraud/520-54c7b84a-3e2b-4450-8090-5281667997e1

EXCERPT: A Branford lab and its owner have agreed a payout to resolve allegations with the federal government about falsifications on the company’s application to participate in the Connecticut Medicaid program.

Coastal Diagnostics, LLC, a reference laboratory in Branford, and its owner, Tricia Conroy, have entered into a civil settlement agreement with the federal and state governments and have paid $145,720 to resolve the allegations.

Up to 2,000 Native Americans dead or missing in Medicaid fraud scheme: Attorneys
https://www.newsnationnow.com/missing/medicaid-fraud-arizona-sober-living-facilities/

EXCERPT: Under Arizona’s American Indian Health Program, registered providers can bill Medicaid directly for addiction and behavioral health services delivered to eligible Native American patients.

Attorneys John Brewer and Dane Wood told NewsNation’s “Jesse Weber Live” that fraudsters exploited that system by recruiting people from tribal communities in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Montana and the Dakotas, funneling them into fake “sober living” homes that billed Medicaid for treatment rarely, if ever, given.

“It clearly is a human trafficking [scheme] and not just a Medicaid fraud scheme,” Brewer said. “They were held against their will, they were given drugs, they were given alcohol … their phones were taken away.”

Two Philadelphia women admit they traveled to MN to cash-in on Medicaid fraud
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/investigations/two-philadelphia-women-admit-they-traveled-to-mn-to-cash-in-on-medicaid-fraud/89-77507d1c-b291-4616-a022-a3f8bfd2724b

EXCERPT: Federal prosecutors say Langley, an Essence magazine curvy model, and Allen, a missionary and former Netflix actress, opened [Medicaid-funded Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) ] companies in Minneapolis after learning the program was “easy money”. According to court documents, the pair fabricated client records and inflated billing, ultimately pocketing approximately $3.4 million.

Terrance Darby told KARE 11 he was living in a homeless shelter while Langley’s company billed Medicaid for Housing Stabilization Services in his name.

When KARE 11 Investigates asked Darby about records showing at least $1,600 in claims, he said he received virtually nothing in return.

“What do you think the help they gave you was actually worth?” KARE 11 Investigates asked.

“Zero,” Darby responded. “I didn’t get anything.”

AG: 4 from Greater Cincinnati accused of stealing from Medicaid program
https://www.wlwt.com/article/medicaid-fraud-ohio-cincinnati-indictments/72198887

EXCERPT: The Ohio Attorney General’s Office said 10 Medicaid providers were indicted this week in Franklin County, accused of stealing a combined $563,860 from the program.

Ohio Bhutanese community says broad blame for Medicaid fraud ‘very inhuman’
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2026/07/17/columbus-bhutanese-nepali-community-responds-ohio-medicaid-suspensions/90509110007/

Doctors fear Medicaid changes will force them to decide who’s too sick to work
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/07/17/doctors-fear-medicaid-changes-will-force-them-decide-whos-too-sick-work/

Fraud investigations are crumbling this state’s Medicaid system
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/15/medicaid-fraud-minnesota-oz-trump-autism-00993313

NC Medicaid spending nears $42B after 93% growth in 4 years
https://www.carolinajournal.com/nc-medicaid-spending-nears-42b-after-93-growth-in-4-years/

Oregon behavioral health service providers sound the alarm about state’s $421M Medicaid shortfall
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/oregon-medicaid-healthcare-funding-gap-shortfall-421m-addiction-mental/283-25f31baa-1c90-4e06-959e-16ebc402cd46

Report: New York Medicaid Spending Surpasses K-12 Education, Raising Long-Term Budget Concerns
https://5townscentral.com/2026/07/17/report-new-york-medicaid-spending-surpasses-k-12-education-raising-long-term-budget-concerns/

Medicaid and SNAP cuts are exacerbating the intertwined problems of hunger and mental illness
https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/16/snap-cuts-mental-illness-hunger-psychiatric-emergency/

9 Leading Civil Rights Groups Predict the Largest Coverage Decline in Modern History—And Black Americans Will Suffer Most
https://www.theroot.com/9-leading-civil-rights-groups-predict-the-largest-cover-2000116695

‘I’m not giving up’: Florida mom battles Medicaid denials for special needs son
https://www.tampabay28.com/news/local-news/im-not-giving-up-florida-mom-battles-medicaid-denials-for-special-needs-son

Military families still struggle with food insecurity, housing, and dwindling savings
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-milspouse/food-insecurity-military-families-housing-savings/

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Over the last year, ultra-wealthy buyers flexed the arm of the K-shaped economy, lifting the median price of a home to an all-time high of $440,600 in June. But June also saw sales of previously owned homes drop 2.4% from May.

This dichotomy is not inexplicable, though, in the K-shaped real estate market.

The Robb Report explained it:

Market activity has picked up, but much of that fast-paced buying is happening at the high end of the market, skewing the average higher, while first-time buyers are largely being left behind. That momentum is heavily concentrated in major coastal hotspots. San Francisco led the country with a 9.2 percent jump in home prices over the past year, closely followed by West Palm Beach at 8.6 percent. Both cities saw the total number of homes sold surge by roughly 23 percent, making them the hottest real estate markets in the country.

San Francisco is experiencing yet another Big Tech-fueled spike, this time from the massive investment pouring into all things artificial intelligence. West Palm Beach’s boom is due to a migration of Big Finance to a town that just slapped Trump’s name on its airport. The arrival of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan has led to the one-time hometown of Jeffrey Epstein now being referred to as “Wall Street South.” That sparked a 187% increase in the price of luxury homes over the last decade.

Meanwhile…

Monthly payments are too expensive for both first-time buyers and families looking to move up to a larger home, but wealthier buyers are in a much different position, with many being able to make large down payments or pay cash, making borrowing costs less of an issue.

Essentially, Americans clinging to the K’s leg are getting kicked to the curb by ultra-wealthy buyers who “can and are willing to spend more” … and that concentration of wealth led to “over one in five homes sold above the asking price in June.”

Lending Tree research released in June found that “fewer than 4 in 10 nonhomeowner households nationwide can afford a starter home.” And a Zillow analysis released in June found that a “record 242 U.S. cities now have entry-level homes priced at $1 million or more, nearly triple the count before the pandemic.”

That’s up from 80 cities in February 2020.

But that’s not all.

Coldwell Banker just released its “Global Luxury 2026 Mid-Year Report,” which found that the “widening liquidity line is splitting the luxury market.” And that means:

Ultra-high-net-worth buyers, insulated by cash and liquidity, are accelerating their real estate activity, particularly for single-family homes and unique properties, while buyers just below that threshold are pulling back, perhaps waiting for rate or economic clarity before committing.

Many of the ultra-wealthy buyers are pouring money into real estate as a “safe haven asset.” The ability to use real estate as a safe haven where the can park their wealth is itself a luxury most American cannot afford.

It’s hard to compete in a market with so much wealth, capital and liquidity in the hands of a small cadre of economic elites, as these datapoints from the Coldwell Banker report illustrate:

• Almost two-thirds (63%) of Luxury Property Specialists say there is an increase in all-cash purchases among their luxury clients, up from 51% who said the same thing a year ago.

• More than a quarter (25.5%) of Luxury Property Specialists identified the wealth divide as an active trend in their markets, up from 20.4% who said the same one year ago.

• In May 2026, the top 5% of all luxury transactions accounted for nearly two-thirds (65.6%) of total dollar volume of homes sold in the single-family sector.

• The top 1–5% bracket alone captured 42.8% of single-family dollar volume and 42.7% of attached properties, with both segments securing larger market shares than in 2025. This lopsided spending power is evident in the median sold price: the top 5% rose 8%, and the top 1% climbed 6.5%, while the top 10% trailed at 4.7% YOY.

The ultra-wealthy’s willingness to pay more for homes, for food, clothing and transportation is not only a hallmark of the K-shaped economy, it’s probably why inflation is so “sticky.” And it likely accounts for another K-shaped survey released this week by Lending Tree detailing Americans growing reliance on “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) lenders to buy daily necessities:

• More than half of BNPL users say they wouldn’t be able to make ends meet without these loans. Among users, 54% agree that they need BNPL loans to make ends meet. Just 25% disagree. Among users most likely to say they need the loans to make ends meet: 62% of parents with kids younger than 18 and 59% of millennials.

• Twice the rate of users have bought groceries with BNPL than two years ago. 29% of BNPL users say they’ve used the loans for groceries, up from 25% a year ago and 14% two years ago. 38% of Gen Z users have bought groceries with BNPL, as have 34% of users with kids younger than 18 and 33% of users who earn $100,000 or more. Only clothing, shoes and accessories (39%) and tech devices (34%) are more commonly bought via BNPL.

• 1 in 4 BNPL users have had three or more active BNPL loans at one time. That’s up slightly from 23% last year. Gen Zers (29%) and millennials (28%) are among the most likely users to say so. In addition, 68% of BNPL users agree that the loans cause them to overspend, and 54% of BNPL users say they’ve regretted buying with BNPL, including 18% who’ve regretted it multiple times.

• Nearly half of buy now, pay later users say they’ve paid late on a BNPL loan in the past year. 47% of users say they’ve paid late in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024. (Another 15% say they’ve paid late before, but not in the past year.) However, 72% of late payers say their most recent late payment was no more than a week or so late.

Not coincidentally, another report—this time from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia—was touted by MarketWatch as a “glimmer of good news in the story of Americans’ whopping credit-card bill”:

A record percentage of credit-card accounts were fully paying off their balances each month during the first quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s latest look at how households are using their credit cards.

Almost 37% of accounts (36.93%) were fully paying balances month to month, Philadelphia Fed researchers said Monday.

That sounds great … until you get into the details. One issue is the scope of the survey, which only included “credit-card data from big banks with at least $100 billion in total assets.” That excludes smaller banks, payday lenders and the “But Now, Pay Later” lenders who’ve seen their market grow from $116 billion in 2025 to $157 billion in 2025. No doubt, that number is only getting bigger in 2026.

Another key factor is, according to the Philadelphia Fed, wealth cardholders’ ability to accelerate their repayments to avoid the cost of higher interests rates. Basically, the people who can afford to pay more than the monthly minimum are doing just that … and, as MarketWatch also reported, that is likely distorting the picture of consumer debt repayments:

The Philadelphia Fed’s data appear to fit the theme of U.S. consumers splitting between those who are thriving and those are struggling, [said Grace Zwemmer, U.S. economist at Oxford Economics]. In recent years, fully paid balances have increased, as well as those only paying the minimum.

“That leaves the accounts in between — paying more than the minimum but not the full balance — as a shrinking share of the total, which could suggest the middle is thinning out rather than the typical cardholder simply doing better,” Zwemmer said.

Additionally, banks are likely “tightening their standards, which means more creditworthy accounts are getting counted while nonpaying accounts are charged off or slip into delinquency.” And that, in turn, could be adding to the reliance on BNPL loans for groceries.

It all adds-up to a K-shaped recovery that’s not only become a K-shaped economy, but is now hardening into a K-shaped society.

Ad Spend Data Reveals K-Shape To U.S. Ad Economy
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416263/ad-spend-data-reveals-k-shape-to-us-ad-economy.html

Selling in a Bisected Economy
https://www.floorcoveringweekly.com/tise2026/topnews/selling-in-a-bisected-economy-46855

How to strategize with private label in a K-shaped economy
https://www.supermarketperimeter.com/articles/14341-how-to-strategize-with-private-label-in-a-k-shaped-economy

CoBank Quarterly Report: Inflation and High Costs Tighten Margins Across U.S. Agriculture and Food Sectors
https://www.oklahomafarmreport.com/2026/07/09/cobank-quarterly-report-inflation-and-high-costs-tighten-margins-across-u-s-agriculture-and-food-sectors/

Food inflation reshapes animal protein demand across markets
https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/33772-food-inflation-reshapes-animal-protein-demand-across-markets

‘Biggest hunger crisis in a long time’: NC Food Bank triple match donations
https://abc11.com/post/food-bank-holds-triple-match-day-biggest-hunger-crisis-long-time/19476187/

Help Needed for 100,000 Ohioans Who Lost SNAP after Trump Cuts
https://columbusunderground.com/help-needed-for-100000-ohioans-who-lost-snap-after-trump-cuts-ocj1/

Thousands of Iowans lose food support under One Big Beautiful Bill
https://www.kcrg.com/2026/07/10/thousands-iowans-lose-food-support-under-one-big-beautiful-bill/

14K West Virginians have lost food assistance because of Big Beautiful Bill changes
https://westvirginiawatch.com/2026/07/06/15k-west-virginians-have-lost-food-assistance-benefits-because-of-big-beautiful-bill-changes/

Federal cuts to SNAP benefits causes uptick in food bank usage across central IL
https://www.wandtv.com/news/illinois/federal-cuts-to-snap-benefits-causes-uptick-in-food-bank-usage-across-central-il/article_215e3790-6c2a-4ff5-9457-b626cf723b32.html

Waiting for SNAP benefits, disabled 60-year old VB woman faces hunger
https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/virginia-beach/waiting-for-snap-benefits-disabled-60-year-old-vb-woman-faces-hunger/

Military families still struggle with food insecurity, housing, and dwindling savings
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-milspouse/food-insecurity-military-families-housing-savings/

1 in 5 moms are going hungry so their kids don’t have to
https://mother.ly/parenting/moms-food-insecurity-snap-no-kid-hungry/

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So, they did not bring back the dire wolf. Nor did they make much of a case for doing so even if they could. Science noted that “dire wolves were once an important species in ancient ecosystems, the habitats they lived in—and many of the animals on which they preyed—no longer exist.”

What they did do was generate a ton of media coverage and investor buzz for their multi-billion dollar company, which is no doubt why the Trump Regime enlisted them into an effort “to store samples from every animal and plant protected under the Endangered Species Act, which includes more than 2,300 listings worldwide.”

But, as Carl Zimmer and Catrin Einhorn also reported in the New York Times:

As more species face the risk of extinction, scientists see such biobanks as a critical backup. But concerns are also growing that the rise of genetic engineering and efforts to revive extinct species will erode support for on-the-ground conservation, which often requires protecting habitat from drilling, mining and other development.

Of course, that’s the whole point of the “partnership,” as evidenced by a new report by the same duo on Trump’s evisceration of the popular and successful Endangered Species Act:

The Trump administration on Friday 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.

It didn’t take much to upend the 53 year-old law. They just redefined the definition of “harm” to exclude anything that doesn’t directly injure or harm an animal. Up to today, the law forbade “any significant ‘modification or degradation’ of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed.”

Now, “harm” has been pared down to direct physical injury of a protected species. It’s still illegal to purposefully injure or kill an individual animal, but it’s no longer illegal to destroy their habitat, their nests or the ecosystems that support them. Zimmer and Einhorn gave three good examples of what the change means going forward:

Piping plovers, for instance, need undisturbed beaches to nest and raise their young. They return to the same sites year after year, but only occupy them in the spring and summer. During winter, when the birds have migrated south, a property owner could develop a beach without immediately hurting any individual piping plovers. But come spring, the returning plovers would find themselves without a place to feed, nest and raise their chicks.

Or take red-cockaded woodpeckers, which are not migratory but require mature pine trees to hollow out the cavities where extended families roost. Even if a timber company or developer cut down those trees without causing direct injury to any birds, they could not survive without other unoccupied old trees.

Amphibians like California tiger salamanders begin their lives in seasonal ponds but move into upland burrows after metamorphosis. If a pond were drained during the summer, the salamanders that returned to the spot would not have the water they need to produce the next generation.

And, apparently, that’s where Colossal Biosciences comes in. They will collect the genetic material from piping plovers, red-cockaded woodpeckers and California tiger salamanders just in case some future iteration of our species decides they’d like to revive the species we saw fit to wipe out in exchange for a couple cents knocked-off the price of a gallon of gas. By the way, Colossal Biosciences is not altruistically trying to save species from humanity’s greed and narcissism:

The company will have the right to access the biobanked material for research, including “biotechnology development,” according to the memorandum. The agreement will remain in effect for five years, but can be unilaterally terminated by either party. If the memorandum is terminated, Colossal will retain all the samples it collected with its own funding, equipment, or personnel.

Frankly, that’s exactly what we should expect from this regime. The natural world and its plants, animals, minerals and soil have no intrinsic value to Trump. He’s the first president in some time who doesn’t live with dogs or cats. He never expresses any fondness for animals or the natural world or its awe-inspiring web of life. He doesn’t care about the environment at all … and no, pesticide-soaked golf courses don’t count.

For him and the largely Evangelical base that has long hated the Endangered Species Act, the natural world is nothing more than resources that have yet to be converted into dollars. Well, now they can get busy converting piping plovers into luxury beach homes. If nothing else, Mother Nature will have the final say when the rising seas come to collect on an account that’s badly in arrears. - jp

Trump admin scraps ‘weaponized’ wildlife rule that became ‘burden’ on American families and businesses: Burgum
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-admin-scraps-weaponized-wildlife-rule-became-burden-american-families-businesses-burgum

Nature’s Ingenious Survival Strategies Are No Match for Human Destruction
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/nature-survival-human-destruction-mining-red-list-threatened-endangered-species/

Lax oversight of hog CAFOs harms endangered species, study finds
https://www.thenewlede.org/2026/07/hog-cafos-endangered-species/

Pacific gray whales facing ‘catastrophic’ die-off as climate crisis hits food supply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/10/pacific-gray-whales-population-climate-change

Environmentalists Demand Endangered Species Act Protections for Pacific Gray Whales
https://www.asatunews.co.id/en/gray-whale-endangered-species-petition

Nonprofit sues Trump administration to learn why it’s modifying right whale speed rule
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/nonprofit-sues-trump-administration-to-learn-why-it-s-modifying-right-whale-speed-rule

Center for Biological Diversity sues over protections for queen conch
https://www.wmnf.org/queen-conch-lawsuit/

Local Conservation Groups are Set to Sue the Trump Administration Over Its Redefinition of ‘Harm’ in the Endangered Species Act
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2026/jul/10/local-conservation-groups-are-set-sue-trump-admini/

‘Many species will go extinct’: Feds’ ESA rule threatens habitat
https://www.times-standard.com/2026/07/10/many-species-will-go-extinct-feds-esa-rule-threatens-habitat/

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From what I’ve seen, he and a cadre of industry shills and pre-vetted ideologues are using the absence of Congressional oversight and minimal public scrutiny to do anything and everything they can—from big things like dismantling the Endangered Species Act, shutting down the collection of climate data and attempting to kill off renewable energy … to smaller, obscure things like opening fishing in newly protected waters and this new recission first reported by E&E News:

EPA plans to remove a regulation that accelerated Freedom of Information Act requests for underserved communities encumbered with pollution.

The agency is slated to issue a final rule this month to eliminate expedited processing criteria for environmental justice-related requests under its revised FOIA regulations, according to the governmentwide regulatory agenda released last week. The move will end another part of the Biden administration’s work at EPA, which strived to promote relief for areas where low-income populations and people of color live adjacent to industrial sites.

Asked about the coming final rule, EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said the agency “is committed to enhancing its implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) consistent with applicable law to better serve the American public.”

Hirsch added, “If finalized, the proposed rulemaking could save the agency time and money and is intended to align EPA’s FOIA regulations with government-wide policy consistent with” President Donald Trump’s executive order to rid the federal government of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

This isn’t about DEI. This is about letting the petrochemical industry get away with murder. Just ask the perennially poisoned people living in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley.

For decades, major technological advances in processing hydrocarbons transformed an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River into an engine of economic growth for the purveyors and purchasers of toxic petrochemicals. It’s also an engine of growth for the tumors afflicting those who live and work there, many of whom are poor and struggling with negative trade-offs they had no role in making. They get the asthma and cancer and crippling neurological maladies. Investors get wealthier.

Indeed, the externalities they endure are so negative, Cancer Alley has been characterized as a “sacrifice zone.” The concept was first adapted in the 1970s from an agricultural term for “natural spaces ‘sacrificed’ to the irreparable consequences of heavy grazing by hoofed animals.” By “sacrificing” the topsoil in one area, the rancher preserves the surrounding pastures. It’s since become an all-too apt analogy for the lives and landscapes trampled by the march of so-called progress:

From coal and uranium mining on Native reservations in the ‘80s, to toxic industrial pollution in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the concept of a “sacrifice area” or “zone” readily explained the brutal logic of sacrificing the health, welfare and the lives of those living on lands that, essentially, were written off to protect and/or enrich others living on the equivalent of protected pastures.

Not coincidentally, the people of Cancer Alley spent years trying to get someone at the state or federal level to do something about their poisoned air, water, soil and bodies. Finally, in 2023, their government brought a case against one of the polluters. But their struggle for equal justice under the law was trumped in 2025 by a President who prioritized the petrochemical industry over the lives of human beings. And it’s a precedent that will no doubt apply to a whole new crop of sacrifice zones being created around data centers. - jp

EPA’s Pesticide Approvals Prompt Fears of PFAS on Farms
https://civileats.com/2026/07/08/epas-pesticide-approvals-prompt-fears-of-pfas-contamination-on-farms/

Trump administration erodes marine protections, invites more fishing
https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2026-07-09/trump-administration-erodes-marine-protections-in-warming-ocean

Trump administration approves California company’s plan to pipe water out of the Mojave Desert
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-07-09/cadiz-water-pipeline

Trump’s push to revive coal forces Arizona power plants to remain open
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2026/07/06/arizona-coal-power-plants-are-remaining-open-to-meet-trump-demands/90770653007/

EPA proposes to loosen requirements for truck pollution controls
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5961282-epa-truck-pollution-regs/

Trump’s Latest Pardons Include Diesel Tuners Who Violated Clean Air Act
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a71858929/trump-diesel-tuners-presidential-pardons/

‘Can you help us?’: US oil execs turn to Trump to topple Europe’s climate rules
https://www.eenews.net/articles/can-you-help-us-us-oil-execs-turn-to-trump-to-topple-europes-climate-rules/

Big Oil Takeover ‘Now Complete,’ Watchdog Warns as Exxon Lawyer Joins Trump DOJ
https://www.commondreams.org/news/big-oil-takeover-now-complete-watchdog-warns-as-exxon-lawyer-joins-trump-doj

Trump White House Environmental Council Chair Exits for K Street
https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/trump-white-house-environmental-council-chair-exits-for-k-street

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We changed Israel's security doctrine.
We initiate.
We attack.
We surprise.
And we attack those enemies that seek our destruction, that seek to kill us. We attack them before they have a chance to do so. If you know Hebrew, הקם להורגך, השכם להורגו. Kill them first.

If you don’t know Hebrew, here’s the widely accepted translation: “If someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first.” That phrase comes from the Talmud and it is explained thusly by the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center:

These mysterious creations, human men and women, are important. Every single one of them. Their lives are precious and cannot be thrown away. Murder is forbidden for both Jew and non-Jew. However, if a person tragically is trying to destroy others, and if despotic leaders persuade their people to engage in and to support acts of destruction, one must defend oneself, even preemptively. “If someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first,” says the Talmud (Sanhedrin 72a). The Lubavitcher Rebbe adds that your clear readiness to defend yourself could save your enemy’s life as well as your own.

“However” is the operative word. Along with the Torah’s call to commit genocide against the ancient Amalekites, it’s an invitation to preemptive war Netanyahu has used and expanded to justify the brutal rules of engagement that wiped out entire families in Gaza and left thousands of children dead, maimed or orphaned … despite the fact that they were not combatants.

That’s the perilously thin line that exists between preemptively killing someone who is setting up a rocket launcher and someone who happens to live in an apartment building where someone sent a text message to another someone about his or her desire to launch a rocket. Maybe it was sent in anger after an Israeli strike killed their entire extended family. If so, is that person fair game? Is there a set of benchmarks that have to be met? When does one’s opposition to the Israeli government become a threat to Israel? Where is the line?

These questions are both trenchant and ominous in light of the pager attack on Hezbollah. As far as Israel was concerned, it didn’t matter if you were a school teacher or a medic or an armed fighter … any link to Hezbollah was enough. The same has been true about Hamas in Gaza. Frankly, proximity was all they needed to “rise and kill” in Gaza, and it has been since Israel pulled out and gave it to Hamas, along with giving it money to survive as a rationale for not negotiating a final settlement.

In fact, the “Rise and Kill First” doctrine has been around for years and it spawned a covert assassination program that killed dozens of Iranian scientists and researchers. It obviously informed Netanyahu’s 20 year-long campaign to convince the US to attack Iran. And it explains his exhortations to attack Iraq. And his current campaign in Lebanon.

Now, Netanyahu—who enjoyed a long relationship with the Lubavitcher movement left behind by Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a controversial, messianic religious leader based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn until his death in 1994—is expanding the doctrine again.

The next preemptive war?

Türkiye.

While it will probably come as a surprise to most Americans, the campaign to target Türkiye has been in motion for a while. But the Iran War emboldened its advocates to speak publicly of a strategy that’s been largely obscured. One such advocate is former PM Naftali Bennett. A political foe of Netanyahu, they are (of course) on the same page about Türkiye. In February, Bennett gave a speech in which he proclaimed: “Türkiye is the new Iran.”

Now, Netanyahu is rolling out the same laundry list he used to exhort the US to attack Iraq and Iran. It was probably as simple as using “find and replace” to insert “Türkiye” where Iraq and Iran appeared on the list. The unoriginality of the argument is evident in a Times of Israel summary of Netanyahu’s appearance today on CNN:

Netanyahu on CNN accuses Turkey of being “infected” with the Muslim Brotherhood, threatening EU states, occupying Cyprus, harboring Hamas, and throwing political opponents and journalists in jail.

…and…

“He’s not exactly a model ally of the United States,” says Netanyahu, adding that Erdogan threatens to destroy Israel.

Turkey has “aggressive aspirations,” he says.

“This is not a force for peace and stability,” Netanyahu continues, arguing that giving Turkey F-35s will bring “aggression in its wake.”

Türkiye’s purchase of F-35s has been blocked by Congress since Türkiye purchased a Russian S-400 air defense system in 2019. Blocking the sale has been one of Israel’s priorities. But now Trump is threatening to bypass Congress and bring Türkiye back into the F-35 program. The issue for Netanyahu is not one of military capabilities per se. Rather, he knows full-well that it would cement Türkiye’s relationship with Washington.

That’s what the purchase of advance weapons systems does for nations like Saudi Arabia and Poland … become a customer in Uncle Sam’s Military Hardware store and you enter into a special club with exclusive privileges … like those enjoyed by the Saudis … and the by the Israelis, for that matter. A nation with a long-term deal with Lockheed Martin for upgrades and repairs and maintenance can get away with a lot … like the Israelis do and have for decades.

Keeping Türkiye and the United States apart is crucial to the “Kill Firsters” who plan on turning Türkiye into “the new Iran.” But preemption is a tricky thing. Just ask the architects of the Iraq War. Or anyone who got stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. Now imagine how tricky it will get if the NATO alliance doesn’t break-up and Türkiye is a loyal customer. - jp

Turkey and future threats
https://www.jns.org/opinion/shmuel-katz/turkey-and-future-threats

Turkey Is a Bigger Threat to Israel Than Iran
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/turkey-is-a-bigger-threat-to-israel-than-iran/

Israel-Greece Air Force drill sends message in Turkey’s backyard
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/07/06/israeli-air-force-drill-with-greece-sends-signal-in-turkeys-backyard/

Israel Must Start Arming the PKK
https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/israel-must-start-arming-the-pkk

Israel’s ‘kill first’ strategy is now aimed at Turkey. Will the region respond?
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israels-kill-first-strategy-now-aimed-turkey-will-region-respond

Why renewed Egypt-Turkey military cooperation concerns Israel
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/why-renewed-egypt-turkey-military-cooperation-concerns-israel

Saudi-Turkish Rail Corridor Raises Concerns in Israel
https://alhurra.com/en/25651

The Syrian Radar Threat: Jerusalem Fears Turkish Advanced Tracking Systems Will Block Air Force Flights to Iran
https://www.jfeed.com/middleeast/turkish-radar-syria-israel-iran

Sa’ar: I hope F-35 sale to Turkey won’t happen, US supports ‘critical’ need to preserve Israel’s military edge
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saar-i-hope-f-35-sale-to-turkey-wont-happen-us-supports-critical-need-to-preserve-israels-military-edge/

Netanyahu Warns U.S. Sale of F-35 Jets to Turkey Would ‘Upset Balance of Power’
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-07-06/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-warns-u-s-sale-of-f-35-jets-to-turkey-would-upset-balance-of-power/0000019f-380a-d269-af9f-3edf1d630000

WATCH: Netanyahu slams Turkey as ‘Hamas harborers,’ opposes F-35 sale
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-netanyahu-slams-turkey-as-hamas-harborers-opposes-f-35-sale/

Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-901665

Netanyahu warns Turkey should not get F-35s, citing Erdoğan’s hostility toward NATO allies
https://www.foxnews.com/media/netanyahu-warns-turkey-should-not-get-f-35s-citing-erdogan-hostility-toward-nato-allies

Erdogan hopes for positive outcome on Turkey’s F-35 bid after Trump meeting
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2616972/trump-says-he-will-lift-turkiye-sanctions-decide-on-f-35-fighter-jet-sale

Trump signals support for F-35s to Turkey despite Israeli objections
https://worldisraelnews.com/trump-expected-to-back-f-35-sale-to-turkey-despite-israeli-concerns/

Trump says US will lift sanctions on Türkiye during Erdogan meeting
https://en.yenisafak.com/world/trump-announces-us-will-lift-sanctions-on-turkiye-3720535

Trump Spurs Europe and Israel to Embrace A Rising NATO Ally in Middle East
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-spurs-europe-israel-embrace-turkey-12167671

Türkiye says Ankara NATO summit opens ‘new chapter’ for alliance’s defense industry
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkiye/turkiye-says-ankara-nato-summit-opens-new-chapter-for-alliances-defense-industry/3989538

Turkish defense firm Baykar’s CEO urges stronger NATO cooperation on drone capabilities
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/turkish-defense-firm-baykar-s-ceo-urges-stronger-nato-cooperation-on-drone-capabilities/3989580

NATO militaries aim to have 5 times as many drone operators ready for a new kind of war by the end of next year
https://www.businessinsider.com/nato-increasing-trained-drone-operators-ready-ukraine-lessons-2026-7

NATO Seeks To Strengthen Strike, Space, Missile Defense Capabilities
https://aviationweek.com/defense/budget-policy-operations/nato-seeks-strengthen-strike-space-missile-defense-capabilities

Israel wants to build space attack lasers now
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/laser-israel-space/

Israel’s Powerful ‘Iron Beam’ Laser Is Going Airborne - Here’s How
https://www.bgr.com/2204101/israel-iron-beam-laser-technology-going-airborne/

Israel’s defense boom pushes high-tech employment to record high
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjhkvv5qme

Washington is subsidizing Israel’s booming global arms trade
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-arms-exports/

How Congress manipulates its own rules to make sure Israel still gets its weapons
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/how-congress-manipulates-its-own-rules-to-make-sure-israel-still-gets-its-weapons/

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BlackRock’s AUM is roughly $14 trillion. The US’s GDP is approximately $30 trillion and China’s is just north of $20 trillion. The next on the list is Germany’s $5.45 trillion. It’s an impressive number for a nation of 83 million people, but BlackRock’s $5.72 trillion investment in just the stock market is larger than Germany’s GDP … and it’s doing it with just 29k employees.

It’s current stock portfolio is also a bit less than the $6.3 trillion in total AUM BlackRock controlled when Bloomberg profiled its post-Crash rise in 2018. It’s AUM has more than doubled in size in just eight years. It should come as no surprise … private equity’s roll-up of small business exemplifies the transition of the K-shaped recovery to a K-shaped economy and, now, a K-shaped society of owners and rent-paying serfs.

The Buyback Divide: How Stock Buybacks Distort Markets and Deepen Wealth Inequality
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/the-buyback-divide/

BUYOUTS: Private Equity Reshaping the Economy
https://cepr.net/publications/buyouts-private-equity-reshaping-the-economy-july-2026/

Private Equity Industrial Sector Investment Pacing For New High In 2026
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4919052-private-equity-industrial-sector-investment-pacing-for-new-high-in-2026

How Some Private-Equity Managers Collect Big Fees on Paper Gains
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/how-some-private-equity-managers-collect-big-fees-on-paper-gains-2f449976

Private equity fund investors turn to debt-like deals in downturn
https://www.ft.com/content/4675b8bb-4047-458a-be01-90c2aff29219?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Global Private Equity deals slow down, but assets are more expensive – Bain&Co Midyear Report 2026
https://bebeez.eu/2026/07/03/global-private-equity-deals-slow-down-but-assets-are-more-expensive-bainco-midyear-report-2026/

Private markets are not in retreat — they are resetting
https://www.pwmnet.com/content/efea459f-2c93-4ffd-abb6-3514828f3d17

Private equity is struggling with exits, even as the AI deal boom takes over Wall Street
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/private-equity-is-struggling-with-exits-even-as-the-ai-deal-boom-takes-over-wall-street-133536900.html

Concentration risk rises as private equity pours billions into AI
https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2026/6/concentration-risk-rises-as-private-equity-pours-billions-into-ai-103088317

CPP Investments spends $2.4B with EQT to build AI infrastructure
https://www.wsj.com/pro/private-equity/peak-rock-capital-bets-on-specialty-drug-boom-with-asembia-acquisition-038b353c

Magnify Ventures closes $46.6m Fund II to back AI infrastructure for care economy
https://www.altassets.net/private-equity-news/by-news-type/fund-news/funds-closed/magnify-ventures-closes-46-6m-fund-ii-to-back-ai-infrastructure-for-care-economy.html

Blackstone’s BXPE Posts Record 4.3% Monthly Return on AI Bets
https://www.tradingview.com/news/gurufocus:1acaf6fe0094b:0-blackstone-s-bxpe-posts-record-4-3-monthly-return-on-ai-bets/

Exclusive | Peak Rock Capital Bets on Specialty Drug Boom With Asembia Acquisition
https://www.wsj.com/pro/private-equity/peak-rock-capital-bets-on-specialty-drug-boom-with-asembia-acquisition-038b353c

Private Equity Targets Healthcare and AI Infrastructure as Core Growth Engines
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/private-markets/26/07/60232708/private-equity-targets-healthcare-and-ai-infrastructure-as-core-growth-engines

How private equity is squeezing more profit out of hospital patients
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/hospital-run-private-equity-expect-bigger-bill-rcna350755

Congress looks to drag healthcare private equity into the light
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/politics-regulation/mh-private-equity-healthcare-congress-transparency/

Private equity in youth sports draws bipartisan scrutiny in Congress
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/30/private-equity-youth-sports-congress-scrutiny.html

Congress weighs role of private equity in soaring youth sports costs in US
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/07/03/congress-weighs-role-of-private-equity-in-soaring-youth-sports-costs-in-us/

As veterinary costs climb, private equity ownership of clinics draws scrutiny
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-veterinary-costs-climb-private-equity-ownership-of-clinics-draws-scrutiny

Private Equity Firms Taking Over Local Veterinary Practices
https://blogforiowa.com/2026/07/02/private-equity-firms-taking-over-local-veterinary-practices/

Nurseries, vets and shops: the sectors where private equity plays a big role
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/28/nurseries-vets-and-shops-the-sectors-where-private-equity-plays-a-big-role

Private equity firm buys Italian ingredients business
https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2026/06/30/a-private-equity-firm-has-bought-out-an-italian-ingredients-producer/

Sandwich chain Jersey Mike’s files for IPO as Blackstone eyes windfall
https://www.ft.com/content/e6a97eaf-b19f-4016-827b-ae069f0ce08a

How a greeting card company produced a 200x return in just 18 months
https://www.ft.com/video/7b64e684-0032-4d8b-8212-9a3aaff6fabd

Largest golf management companies grow 54% since 2019
https://golfincmagazine.com/largest-golf-management-companies-grow-54-since-2019/

How private equity destroyed an American pastime
https://www.salon.com/2026/07/03/how-private-equity-destroyed-an-american-pastime/

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One of the more egregious examples of this pattern happened in February when, as the OHCHR detailed in a June 12th report:

Israeli forces opened fire on an encampment for displaced people in Al Tuffah, Gaza City, killing five Palestinians, including two women and two baby girls: 5-month-old Mira Al Khabbaz and Watein Al Khabbaz, born less than a week before.

That’s one of the many Israeli attacks that have killed children in Gaza in spite of a ceasefire the Israelis are loathe to honor. To wit, in the handful of days since the OHCHR released its latest update, the IDF has pushed the overall number killed during the so-called ceasefire closer to 1,000. In one incident, the IDF killed an emergency room nurse at al-Shifa Hospital and his six year-old son while his was filling water tanks on the roof of their home.

In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot a three year-old boy and his father while they were walking outside of the IDF’s no-go zone. The boy’s grandfather described the kill shot to Aljazeera:

“My grandson, Rayan, was killed by a gunshot to the head; the bullet entered his head and exited through his eye,” Jaber [Abu al-Ajeen] told Al Jazeera. “His mother is devastated by what happened.”

Jaber’s son was carrying his grandson when the boy was shot. He took a bullet in the leg. But, accord to Jaber, his wounded son was picked up by Israeli soldiers and, Haaretz reported, he was “held for several hours before being released overnight near a concrete barrier at Kissufim, still handcuffed and bleeding.” He finally made it to a hospital, but, as of June 15th, he had not been stabilized.

Those killings were part of deadly 24 hours that pushed the total to 992 killed during the so-called ceasefire. Antiwar.com reported 3,144 Gazans have also been injured by Israel’s ceaseless military campaign, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Just two weeks ago, Bibi Netanyahu confirmed that he ordered the IDF to expand its operation to control 70% of the Strip.

Prior to that, the IDF controlled 60% of the territory behind its “Yellow Line.” The area behind that line is largely depopulated, which means an area that had long been one of the world’s most densely populated areas is becoming ever-more concentrated as internally displaced Gazans are forced into camps crammed along a tiny strip of the Strip. That concentration of camps lacks the water and sanitation necessary to sustain the refugees created by Israel’s widespread demolition of apartment blocks, water and sewage systems, and power plants.

On June 10th, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) described the disease-harboring conditions:

Health partners report widespread proliferation of rats, cockroaches, flies, lice and bedbugs, further increasing the risks of communicable disease transmission. A growing outbreak of skin diseases is surging across the camps, including scabies, chickenpox and dermatitis. More recently, cases of rodent bites have also risen sharply — more than 70,000 cases of rodent and ectoparasitic infestations have been reported in 2026 alone.

Of course, Israel has made sure that “limited access to essential medications” also makes it “difficult to respond to all cases.” Water is similarly limited:

Drinking water distributions are reaching up to 1.5 million people, often through water trucking. Despite these efforts, most families (82 percent) remain water insecure and up to 70 percent are unable to collect the minimum six liters per day for drinking and cooking.

The struggle for food, water and medicine. An absence of basic sanitation. And near daily drone and missile attacks. It all adds up to the phoniest ceasefire in recent memory.

Even more telling, though, is Israel’s creeping Yellow Line. Like the Death Star’s trash compactor, it’s obviously designed to squeeze Gazans until they die or find a way to escape. If their lives are behind the line, it is likely they’ll never see it again if Israel has its way. One family’s experience portends the kind of perpetual displacement that has incubated desperation and militancy for nearly eight decades:

Like almost everyone else in Gaza, we have been permanently homeless now for many months. During the previous ceasefire – from mid-January to mid-March 2025 – we returned to our home in Khan Younis, which was still partially habitable. We spent more than $7,000 on repairs. It was far from adequate. We told ourselves it would be enough. But in May 2025 – only five months after we had returned – the Israeli military ordered us to leave again.

Following the ceasefire agreement signed last October, we were finally able to return to check on our house again. It was completely demolished. Not partially damaged as before. Gone.

Now, my family of seven – myself, my wife, and our five children: Dana; 15-year-old Liyan; 13-year-old Raza; eight-year-old Lama; and Imran, who has not yet turned four – have moved from our two-storey, 200-square-metre home into a tent for the foreseeable future.

Despite the US-brokered ceasefire agreement, Israel is barring cement and all construction materials and heavy machinery from entering Gaza. There is no reconstruction. There are only tents, some sturdier than others. The sturdier version is what I am now trying to build for my family, and it comes at a steep cost.

Given Trump’s split with Netanyahu over Iran and Lebanon, and the predictable disappearing act by Trump’s Board of Peace, it is likely that Netanyahu will continue enjoy Washington’s tacit approval of its ethnic cleansing, its continued killing and of the collective traumas being inflicted on a generation of children. It is Israel’s criminally inhumane treatment of children that gives away its game.

For every “four year-old girl with a head wound from Israeli gunfire,” there are dozens more who’ve lost their limbs, their families and their futures. They will carry these traumas with them for the rest of their lives. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying to have a future … and, because they are children, that means trying to get an education when 97% of the schools are damaged or destroyed. As Ali Rogin observed in a heartbreaking report for PBS’s NewsHour:

The United Nations says, with high demand and limited space, most children in Gaza are only able to attend a few hours of classes three days of the week. But so many children in Gaza will never return to a classroom.

Put more bluntly:

For many of Gaza's youngest residents, attending funerals is now more common than attending class.

The one lesson they all have learned or will learn soon enough is that the word ceasefire doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Violence and killings at Gaza’s food distribution points leave survivors suffering one year on
https://www.msf.org/horrors-ghf-sites-gaza-leave-survivors-suffering-one-year

7-year-old mourns father and brother killed in Israeli strike on Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/6/15/7-year-old-mourns-father-and-brother-killed-in-israeli-strike-on-gaza

Israeli military takes more territory, kills two people in Gaza, medics and witnesses say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-takes-more-territory-kills-two-people-gaza-medics-witnesses-say-2026-06-16/

As a father in Gaza, the new home I am building for my children is a nylon tent
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/first-person/2026/06/16/father-gaza-new-home-i-am-building-my-children-nylon-tent

Why Are Children Still Suffering in Gaza?
https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/why-are-children-still-suffering-gaza

‘Wall of Tears’ mural in Dearborn lists Palestinian children killed in Gaza
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2026/06/15/names-palestinian-children-killed-gaza-dearborn-park/90521915007/

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For the casual observer in the United States, ”finishing the job” probably sounds like military defeat on the battlefield and an official act of surrender. It’s General Robert E. Lee at the Appomattox Court house or Japan’s Foreign Minister and a General officially capitulating aboard the USS Missouri.

Typically, the defeated army drops its guns and heads home to a nation suddenly under occupation by the winning army. After a ceremony on USS Missouri, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan drafted a constitution and oversaw the reconstruction of a country it had just destroyed with gravity, incendiary and nuclear bombs. In that case, finishing the job ultimately meant transforming an enemy into a staunch ally.

But that’s not what Israel seeks. Not by a longshot.

Benjamin Netanyahu set the tone early by immediately and repeatedly invoking the Biblical story of Amalek in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack. Here’s the New King James version of First Samuel 15:3:

Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

That repeated call to eliminate Amalek in its current form—a.k.a. the people of Gaza—was echoed by Israeli politicians, by Israeli television, and by popular podcasters. For these Israelis—some of whom are in Netanyahu’s cabinet—when will the job be officially finished?

What does “victory” look like?

Gaza is the obvious answer. It is an unlivable, depopulated hellscape in which Israel incrementally takes more land and, in the meantime, it reserves the right to kill anyone still living there … all they need to say is “Hamas.” Because Hamas also functioned as a government that ran schools and hospitals and ambulances … it touched the lives of many Gazans. A touched or “Hamas-linked” life all the IDF needs to kill. It’s why the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza has been violated on a nearly daily basis since it was declared.

There is no ceasefire, in fact. Israel reserves the right to kill anybody and their entire family if they are suspected or linked to Hamas. That means every Gazan is a viable target. It’s how they killed 19k Gazans under the age of 18 without a hint of remorse or shame. They were killing future Hamas-linked Gazans. As many Israeli politicians and citizens have said, there are no innocent Gazans. That’s why there isn’t a viable scenario for Hamas’ surrender. They know they’ll end up dead or consigned to a torturous prison system. And there is no home to go back to, anyway.

The same goes for Hezbollah.

It is a government and schools and healthcare and religious instruction. It, like Hamas, touches many lives that have nothing to do with rockets. In the past, Gazans and Lebanese were “mowed” like grass, just to maintain fear and control and to appease Israeli hawks.

Now mowing the grass is not enough.

Netanyahu set a new bar when he promised to “finish the job,” like he did during his infamous speech before a joint session of Congress on July 24, 2024. It was a seminal moment in the history of US-Israeli relations and, in retrospect, for Netanyahu.

Instead of acknowledging the political price his benefactor was paying for his support of Bibi’s brutality, he defied him, did an end-run and spoke to Congress. He basically said to Biden, “I can do whatever I want and you cannot stop me, or the aid my country depends upon.” Any concerns about the massive number of children being killed or orphaned fell by the wayside after Bibi soaked-in one standing ovation after another. He pulled the strings AIPAC attached to members of Congress and, in so doing, he spoke with an air of invincibility. He dismissed mounting concerns about Israel’s brutal campaign by framing the fight as Western Civilization against barbarians.

It was quite a ballsy display by a client state, particularly one that depends so heavily upon its benefactor. But Bibi probably felt fairly certain that Jared’s father-in-law would soon be President and then he could go even further in Gaza. That’s exactly what happened, too.

Once the phony ceasefire was in place, Israel then exported their Gaza model to Lebanon. They’d signaled their intent via pager. It showed Lebanon and the world that Israel is not above indiscriminate killing or the killing of bystanders. It also showed the world it can kill anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Hezbollah, like Hamas, arose in response to Israeli military power. But Israel doesn’t want anyone to think of Palestinian or Lebanese fighters as soldiers. They never refer them as “soldiers,” perhaps hoping the world will give them a pass from the Geneva Conventions because they are fighting “terrorists” instead of soldiers. Soldiers are human beings with some basic rights. Terrorists cede their rights because they are terrorists.

That die was cast in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The US and its hyperpatriotic media called the people shooting at American invaders “terrorists” or, maybe, “fighters.” Most avoided terms that imbued Iraqis or Afghans with humanity.

The same is true of Iranians. It’s a nation-state with a standing army, but you never hear about Iran’s Army or Iranian soldiers. You do hear about the Revolutionary Guard, which is couched in the language of terrorism and referred to as a terrorist organization.

It’s also why infotainers, influencers and politicians make a point of saying “Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” No evidence is given, nor is the term defined. But it is repeated with a Pavlovian reliability because no one challenges the assertion. What is the metric for measuring “state sponsors of terrorism,” anyway? Is there a point system? And what is a terrorist act? Or is all of this just an effective way to dehumanize your enemy?

Now, though, Netanyahu is a bit trapped by his rhetoric and his maximalist demands. Jared’s father-in-law is desperate. He wants to get Iran off his plate and give gas prices a chance to leave a good taste in the mouths of voters before the Midterms. He doesn’t care about Lebanon. He does care about Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

And they want to get Hormuz open.

In the final analysis, Netanyahu hasn’t been motivated by Iran’s nuclear program. That’s the excuse, but Israel intelligence knows Iran was not making a bomb. It’s always been a bargaining chip. The Ayatollah Khamenei even issued a fatwa stating that nuclear weapons are haram. But Bibi knew that. He’s known that. The real reason to bomb Iran and Lebanon … is to cut Palestinians off from outside help and, in the process, stretch Israel’s functional hegemony to the borders of Türkiye, Afghanistan and Egypt.

They want Iran to be another regional failed state … a bombing range they can hit without consequence and in perpetuity. And that’s why hawkish Israelis should be grateful to Trump for giving them the weapons and the latitude to destroy Gaza and to destroy the lives of so many families. But they are not grateful. They are angry and confused by Trump’s desire to move on, his impending midterms catastrophe notwithstanding. Israel’s hawkish majority doesn’t want to move on. It seeks seek elimination.

Eliminate Hamas. Eliminate Hezbollah. Eliminate the Iranian regime. That’s what Bibi & Co. mean by “finish the job.”

And if they ever got close to doing so, they might realize they’ve become the monsters they claim to be fighting.

Trump’s Iran deal sidelines Israel as regional tensions shift into new phase
https://jewishinsider.com/2026/06/u-s-israel-iran-war-peace-deal-trump-netanyahu/

Humiliated by Trump on the Iran Front, Netanyahu May Set the Middle East Ablaze
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2026-06-14/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/humiliated-by-trump-on-the-iran-front-netanyahu-may-set-the-middle-east-ablaze/0000019e-c654-d7bd-addf-ee56f7c60000

Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahus-iran-strategy.html

Ministers say Israel won’t be bound by Iran deal, as opposition castigates Netanyahu’s ‘absolute failure’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-vows-to-stay-in-south-lebanon-if-iran-strikes-well-hit-it-with-full-force/

‘Don’t Bullshit Us, Trump’ Netanyahu Loyalists Rage at ‘Treacherous’ United States Over Iran Deal
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-06-15/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-loyalists-rage-at-treacherous-united-states-over-iran-deal/0000019e-cb57-d1bc-abbe-cf5fa9ac0000

‘This Is Precarious’: Fox’s Bill Hemmer Worries Trump Has Been ‘Suckered Into’ Iran Deal
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/this-is-precarious-foxs-bill-hemmer-worries-trump-has-been-suckered-into-iran-deal/

Interview: ‘The Iranians took advantage of all of Trump’s weaknesses’
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/428667

The Iran deal is an American failure that endangers Israel
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/06/15/the-iran-deal-is-an-american-failure-that-endangers-israel/

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We were not alone.

A new analysis of a long-overlooked population strengthens the case that our ancestors were not only “not alone” … they often “didn’t want to be alone tonight” (if you know what I mean) … and we have the DNA to prove it. That’s the big takeaway from a just-released study of human geonomics around the South Pacific. It’s a population that’s been ignored by Euro-centric scientists, until now.

Here’s what they did:

By tracing the deep history of the Pacific's earliest pioneers, who migrated to the region at least 45,000 years ago, the researchers uncovered unprecedented insights into human evolutionary history and adaptation. For example, they discovered that ancestors of Near Oceanic populations mated with at least three distinct groups related to Denisovans—an enigmatic hominin group initially discovered from fossil fragments in Siberia.

Here’s how they did it:

For the new study, the researchers used an advanced functional genomic technique known as a massively parallel reporter assay to physically test the functional consequences of these genetic variants and identified more than 3,100 that alter gene expression. This analysis provided some of the largest-scale evidence for how specific, adaptive genetic variants inherited from Denisovans function inside humans today.

Here’s what they found:

The team found that a substantial proportion of these adaptive and functional variants affected the interferon-gamma signaling pathway, a vital component of the human immune system that defends against infectious pathogens.

And this:

The study also revealed that Denisovan DNA influences skeletal development. The researchers discovered adaptive variants inherited from Denisovans in a specific gene called TRPS1. This same gene has been under strong positive selection in central African rainforest hunter-gatherers and highland populations in Ecuador, showing how evolution can result in recurrent local adaptations in different regions of the world.

Our cousins’ DNA is not just a historical curiosity, it continues to be an evolutionary force:

The study shows that archaic DNA is still actively shaping human biology, noted Steven Reilly, assistant professor of genetics at Yale School of Medicine and co-author of the study.

“We found thousands of archaic variants that tune genes up or down, concentrated in immune and antiviral pathways,” he said. “Neanderthals and Denisovans had adapted to life outside Africa over hundreds of thousands of years, and we inherited some of those genetic programs and co-opted them. Tens of thousands of years later, this DNA may still shape how these populations fight viruses—or their risk for autoimmune disease.”

“Inherited” and “co-opted” are, of course, euphemisms.

Our direct ancestors left Africa and found hominins already living around Eurasia, and they were adapted to Eurasia in ways our ancestors were not. The math after that is quite simple.

How? and why? they mated are still unclear, but science is making a lot of headway.

We know for certain that we evolved alongside other species and populations we could and did interbreed with. It might’ve been violent, too. That’s the rub. Do we even want to know how we became the last hominin standing? Or is answering that question crucial to our evolution as a species?

The question is of particular importance now that we are on the verge of fully automating warfare.

That’s an invitation to humanity’s inhumanity if there ever was one. History shows we rarely turn down an invitation to be inhumane. And we do seem to be barreling toward a “Great Filter” moment when our technology so grotesquely outstrips our wisdom that it will inevitably snuff us out before we can explore space.

The irony is that these advances in understanding our species come at the same time the US government is being run by people who think Earth is less than 10k years old. Big decisions about war and peace and the fate of millions are being based upon ancient folklore about a tribal warlord-god, maybe we should begin to look at the nearly 300k years prior to that tribal warlord-god’s creation.

Even that is a geological blip compared to the fossil record and the geological record.

And no, Pete Hegseth, the fossils are not a trick to deceive mankind. Hopefully some time soon, humanity will stop deceiving itself.

A lack of sex held back life’s diversity for millions of years
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/a-lack-of-sex-held-back-lifes-diversity-for-millions-of-years

Scientists discover ancient single-celled ancestors still live on in your blood
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260526022006.htm

Human evolution was messy and gradual, not an abrupt revolution, argues archaeologist
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-human-evolution-messy-gradual-abrupt.html

New fossils suggest human evolution was more crowded than scientists thought
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/06/09/human-evolution-crowded/

800,000 Years Ago, Ancient Humans Knew Which Stones Made the Best Tools
https://www.discovermagazine.com/800-000-years-ago-ancient-humans-knew-which-stones-made-the-best-tools-49223

Human Ancestors Were Using Fire Earlier Than Previously Thought
https://nautil.us/human-ancestors-were-using-fire-earlier-than-previously-thought-1281795

Wonderwerk Cave bones reveal possible fire use by human ancestors 1.79 million years ago
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-wonderwerk-cave-bones-reveal-human.html

Ancient DNA shared with Neanderthals may explain human language
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260611024612.htm

In 1926, Archaeologists Found The Skull Of The “Devil’s Tower Child” Neanderthal And Changed Everything We Knew About This Extinct Human Species
https://www.iflscience.com/in-1926-archaeologists-found-the-skull-of-the-devils-tower-child-neanderthal-and-changed-everything-we-knew-about-this-extinct-human-species-83797

Pangenomics transforms evolutionary biology
https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2026/06/pangenomics/

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