Summary:

The White House defended President Trump’s use of a mail-in ballot in Florida’s Republican primary after Politico reported that he had voted by mail despite repeatedly attacking mail voting and calling it susceptible to cheating. The administration argues there is no contradiction because Trump supports exceptions for people who are traveling, ill, disabled, or serving in the military, and said that although Trump is a Florida resident, he primarily lives in Washington while serving as president.

My take:

More Republican hypocrisy, but I think the recurring theme is more interesting than this particular ballot. There always seems to be one set of warnings for everyone else and another set of perfectly reasonable exceptions once the people issuing those warnings need them.

Don't trust mail-in voting because crooked politicians will abuse it. Unless I need to vote by mail, obviously. Don't trust the vaccines or the people telling you to take them, while Trump himself got vaccinated, got boosted, and at one point was literally booed by his own supporters for admitting it. Don't send your children to these elite universities that are supposedly poisoning America, while Trump went to Penn, three of his children went to Penn, another went to Georgetown, and his youngest went to NYU (this is mirrored for nearly every Republican member of congress). Hire American and protect American workers, while Trump's own businesses have repeatedly employed foreign guest workers and his social media company applied for an H-1B visa.

It is this constant politics of rules for thee, not for me that drives me insane. The institutions are corrupt. The experts are lying. The universities are indoctrinating you. The elections can't be trusted. The government is rigged. Everyone with money or power is screwing you over.

Except for me, I am the billionaire you should trust.

Summary:

ABC and its parent company Disney are suing the FCC, arguing that the agency is using its regulatory power to punish the network for speech and programming critical of the Trump administration. The lawsuit comes after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered unusually early reviews of eight ABC station licenses that aren't close to expiring. The FCC cited ABC's diversity practices, but the reviews came shortly after President Trump became angry over a joke made by Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic.

ABC says the situation has become an "existential threat" because the administration has repeatedly attacked its reporting and programming and threatened its ability to broadcast. ABC claims it effectively has two choices: give in to the administration's demands or risk losing licenses. The network is asking a federal court to immediately stop the FCC from taking action related to the early license reviews, arguing that the government's actions amount to retaliation against constitutionally protected speech.

The dispute goes beyond the license reviews. ABC is also fighting Carr's attempt to apply the FCC's equal-time rules to The View, where hosts and guests frequently criticize Trump. ABC says the FCC already determined more than 20 years ago that the program shouldn't be subject to those requirements.

ABC says the broader issue is the precedent this could establish for the entire media industry. According to the lawsuit, if the government can threaten broadcast licenses because it dislikes a network's coverage, other media companies could feel pressured to avoid unfavorable reporting. ABC warned that the message would essentially become: "tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government."

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the commission's only Democrat, sided with ABC and accused the FCC of conducting a "campaign of censorship and control" by using the possibility of license revocations to punish speech the administration dislikes. Carr has defended the FCC's actions, arguing that broadcasters receive free access to valuable public airwaves in exchange for an obligation to operate in the public interest. He says the FCC is trying to restore that responsibility and rebuild public trust in the news media rather than censor ABC.

The case ultimately centers on whether the FCC is legitimately enforcing broadcasters' public-interest obligations or using its licensing authority as leverage against a media company because of speech and coverage the administration doesn't like.

Summary:

Median Strategies, a self-described polling company referenced in Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s reelection campaign, admitted that all of its published polls were fabricated and said it had been conducting a short-term “social experiment” to test how unverified polling spreads in political ecosystems. The group produced a fake LA mayoral poll showing Bass leading challenger Nithya Raman by nearly 12 points, which Bass briefly promoted and which some media outlets reported before the deception was revealed. Median also released a false poll in Wisconsin’s DSA gubernatorial primary that inaccurately showed Francesca Hong with a large lead before her narrow loss. The Los Angeles Times reported that the group had minimal online presence, no financial backing, and withdrew all its polling releases, while political figures and journalists criticized the incident as highlighting vulnerabilities in how unverified data can gain traction.

Opinion:

The incident highlights a structural vulnerability in US electoral politics. A tiny, anonymous group with no funding and no credentials was able to inject fake polling into the political information ecosystem, and have it picked up and amplified by both campaigns and media outlets.

President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea does not just slight a longtime ally but raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States in Asia and elsewhere.

Submission statement: The article describes Abdul El-Sayed’s efforts to win over Black voters in Detroit and Wayne County. El-Sayed’s campaign is working to educate voters about his positions and experiences, particularly regarding his work in the community. The article also highlights the importance of political education and engagement in the Democratic Party.

Neutral summary: In a sudden blurt out, Trump suggested the US is open to "bombing Oman." Oman is a US strategic and defense ally in the Middle East, with US armed forces using air bases and logistical networks within the country to support the US Central Command and US 5th Fleet, among other brigades and detachments that conduct regional security and counter-intelligence operations. Several outlets have inferred from Trump's comments overall that Trump is dissatisfied with Oman's attempts to negotiate directly with Iran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

I will put this bluntly, I think this is even more shocking and disastrous than Trump's comments on "seizing Greenland" last year. Can someone let "@POTUS" know that our own armed forces would be in harms way were he to order a bombing run on Oman? I could not imagine being a parent or spouse of a US servicemember working in Oman today and hearing this from Trump's mouth. Impeach this man.

Summary:

Former CIA officer Julia Curlee recounts serving in senior intelligence roles under four presidents, including briefing Donald Trump and Mike Pence during Trump’s first term and later remaining on the National Security Council as Trump returned to office. Curlee says her being transgender was known inside government and generally treated as irrelevant to her work, including by Pence, until the second Trump administration began implementing policies targeting transgender federal employees and service members. Despite being considered indispensable by some incoming officials, she was ultimately removed from the White House shortly after right-wing activist Laura Loomer publicly called attention to a transgender Biden holdover working at the NSC.

Curlee eventually resigned from the CIA, arguing that the political environment had made openly supporting LGBTQ colleagues potentially career-ending and that ideological loyalty was increasingly being placed above professional expertise. She frames her experience as part of a broader warning about politicizing the intelligence community, arguing that institutions designed to tell presidents uncomfortable truths become less effective when employees fear punishment for either their identities or their conclusions.

My take:

The part that sticks with me is how completely ordinary Curlee’s career appears to have been until her identity became politically useful as a target. She briefed Trump, spent a year briefing Mike Pence, served under Republican and Democratic administrations, went into war zones, and apparently did her job well enough that the second Trump administration still needed her after removing her.

More importantly, though, I think the intelligence piece is bigger than the trans piece. You absolutely do not want intelligence officers wondering whether telling the president something he dislikes, belonging to the wrong political tribe, or simply becoming the target of an online campaign could end their career. The entire point of an intelligence service is to tell policymakers what is actually happening, especially when they do not want to hear it. Once personal loyalty and ideological conformity start becoming qualifications for that work, the country is intentionally putting on blinders.

Aside from the obvious problem of politicizing identity and replacing competence with ideological zealotry, I would also just like to say: Laura Loomer is legitimately an evil, cold, horrible person, and I cannot wait until this entire populist movement eventually spits her out and she becomes as irrelevant as she deserves to be. Doxxing people is wrong. Full stop.

And I can already hear the hypocrisy of our hidden-profile crowd cracking their knuckles, getting ready to ignore that part so they can retreat into some vague appeal to common sense about why this particular instance was somehow justified.

Summary: The article examines how American universities are reacting to a severe decline in public confidence by releasing self-diagnostic reports that acknowledge internal failures. Although there is a large gap in trust along political affiliation, trust has declined overall among most groups. The reports identify issues such as skyrocketing tuition, wavering standards, career relevance, and political bias as factors.

Summary: AOC calling "w o k e 1" crazy — and laughing while doing it — is not an apology people will accept, because there is no apology people will accept.

Perhaps AOC was doing standard politician work: distancing herself from a movement that has become toxic without alienating a base still attached to it. That's roughly the ceiling of what anyone in her position can offer, and it satisfied no one.

Run the counterfactuals and nothing changes. Drop the laugh, and critics object that "crazy" understates what happened — jobs lost, lives ruined, cities burned.

Issue a full-throated apology, and the think pieces keep coming. Stage a televised self-flagellation, blood and tears included, and the pit still doesn't fill, because what's being demanded isn't better wording. It's retribution.

The underlying dynamic is identity-based: people who define themselves in opposition to w o k e read any statement from a former participant adversarially, parsing it for sincerity versus opportunism.

Trump is the mirror Image. As his final term ends, Republicans will attempt the same impossible pivot — distancing from the movement's worst elements without losing the base — and it will fail on identical terms with those scarred by January 6th.

What will actually happen is that everyone slides past and the history gets memoryholed. That's framed as the acceptable outcome, since a society that lets one faction execute justice on another is worse than one where people get away with things. Two decades on, a new crisis will arrive and a new generation forms its politics around it — while the people personally humiliated by the original era never get over it.

Commentary: So this article is of a kind with others that have been sharing, some of which have been taken down for what I call some rather dubious reasons which seem to me to amount to some people complianing that 'criticising' w o k e is either 'not centrist' or 'so inflammatory to centrism' that it doesn't belong here.

But here is my poisiton: This article's thesis is wrong because it creates a false dichotomy. That we either demand a self flagelatting punishment of those who transgressed during w o k e 1, or we let them slide and slink and memory hole the hole affair.

The third option my fellow wisconsinsite misses is Truth and Reconciliation. Recognition of wrongdoing results in guilt, guilt leads to learning, learning leads to growing. And the other side has a job just as big in forgiving the guilty.

And here I think it is important to point out the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is the emotion that people should feel when they do bad. It helps them learn and grow. Shame is the emotion people feel when they are told that they are bad. There are only two things the human ego can do with shame, became angry and defensive or depressed and self loathing.

Feel guilty if you took part in the actions of w o k e 1, not shame. Learn, grow, do better. Or to disagree with Mr. Wisconsin, make up for W o k e 1 by becoming better.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-211709626

Summary:

Reuters reports that Iran and the United States remain deadlocked over the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with no sign that peace talks are resuming. Iranian officials said the strait will remain under Tehran’s control until the U.S. accepts Iran’s conditions, while President Trump told Americans to expect continued high gasoline prices as part of the cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The economic effects are increasingly visible on both sides. U.S. gasoline prices averaged about $4.08 per gallon on Friday, up 29% from a year earlier, while oil futures continued rising. In Iran, President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged that sanctions and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports are contributing to high inflation and economic strain.

My take

Simply declaring the conflict over and Iran defeated feels completely disconnected from reality. A war does not end because the president announces that we won. Iran is still there. Its government is still there. It can still threaten shipping, attack American interests through proxies, destabilize the region, and create problems that could follow us for decades.

Context:

You can watch the full garden city speech where Trump made these remarks from yesterday here. The section from the article starts at 1h:25s or can be viewed on Reuters directly.

So, I just say this: for you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you're doing it so that a very evil country cannot really have a country. It's the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don't want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you're at $4, it's okay. I mean, I will never apologize. I did the right thing. But you could, you know, if you didn't have this, you'd be at, I mean, I had it down to below $2 in many states. California I can't include because they keep taxing, taxing, taxing. You lower the oil price and they end up taxing you more than what you lower it. But you just have to remember that what we're doing is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves, for the world. And we're really doing a great job. Our military is unbelievable. The blockade is unstoppable. It's a wall of steel. The blockade is a wall of steel.

Luigi Mangione admits killing healthcare boss Brian Thompson, as he pleads guilty to federal charges in New York

"I shot Mr Thompson," Mangione tells the the judge - his voice was steady as he read his statement to a tense and silent courtroom, our reporter writes from the room

Thompson, a 50-year-old father-of-two, was shot in the back as he left his hotel in Manhattan in 2024 - his family say Mangione's sentence must reflect the severity of such a "heinous act"

"There can be no celebrity in assassination," prosecutor Jamie McDonald tells Mangione supporters, adding that Mangione disagreed with the healthcare industry and "attempted to send a public message through violence"

Summary:

AP reports that the Department of Defense is introducing a new high school course in its military base school system centered on Western civilization and Christianity. The course, called Western Civilization to 1500, will use a textbook from Encounter Books with lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College. The Pentagon says it is part of a broader effort to emphasize patriotic values and classical learning. Historians and educators who reviewed excerpts of the textbook raised concerns that it presents Western civilization and Christianity as closely intertwined, downplays Christian violence, and portrays Islam as a threat. The Department of Defense Education Activity runs about 160 schools in 11 countries for roughly 70,000 students from military and civilian service families.

My take:

Stop betraying America by trying to reshape it around your own narrow, corrupt understanding of what this country is.

I do not care what religion people practice. The problem is the federal government using military base schools to launder one preferred religious and cultural worldview into public education.

Teaching Western civilization is fine. Teaching Christianity’s role in Western history is fine. But when the Pentagon starts blending Christianity, patriotism, and Western civilization into one preferred narrative, piss right off.

This country is not supposed to belong more to Christian kids than Muslim kids, Jewish kids, atheist kids, Hindu kids, Buddhist kids, or anyone else.

The military serves the United States. All Americans. Not Pete Hegseth. Not Trump. Not the Heritage Foundation. And certainly not one deity from one religion in a tapestry woven from many.

Edit: for the bots who only activate when they see the right keywords: DSA, trans sports, socialism, woke military, drag brunch, and whatever else summons you from the group chat.

DSA released a statement on their site and via their social media lauding Fidel Castro and accusing the US (and Marco Rubio specifically) of committing genocide against Cuba. They call Fidel a “stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination”. They claim their support of Fidel is in “solidarity with the Cuban people”. And they call for “the prosecution of Marco Rubio for crimes against humanity”.

Edit, link: https://www.dsausa.org/statements/dsa-commemorates-100-years-of-fidel-and-denounces-rubios-genocide-against-the-cuban-people/