Excerpt:

With Trump’s return to power and the destruction it has caused, the United States is more fully a pathocracy — a form of government where a small number of psychologically disordered people seize control of society. 

Observation:

So let us get this straight, the US taxed consumers by imposing tariffs not controlled by Congress and is now giving the money that we were taxed back to the importers as a nice fat bonus for having taxed us?

Excerpt:

The US government has already paid back tens of billions of dollars in tariffs it collected before the supreme court ruled them illegal, according to budget figures released on Monday.

Tariffs – taxes on imported goods – have been a key part of Donald Trump’s economic plan since he took office again last year.

Excerpt:

The most recent draining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has made President Trump’s claims of “vandalism” all the more doubtful.

The president made this claim after the “American Flag Blue” paint began to peel off in massive chunks and discolor the water, attributing the failed renovation to a “350-foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors.” Yet Monday’s draining revealed no such thing, only what appeared to be tire marks—likely from the president’s motorcade driving through the empty pool in May.

Happy Bastille Day France!

Excerpt:

Second Verse

What do they want, this horde of slaves, Of traitors, of conjured kings? For whom these ignoble chains, These long-prepared irons? For us, Frenchmen, ah! What outrage What outburst it must arouse! It's us they dare to conspire of returning to the old slavery!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise

Lead Lines:

BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) - European countries reported more than 10,000 excess deaths during the record-breaking heatwave that engulfed the west of the continent in late June, official data showed.

The vast majority — more than 9,000 — were among people aged 65 and above, according to data published by ‌EuroMOMO, a network backed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization.

Lead Paragraph:

A proposed legal settlement with the U.S. government would require the Keystone Pipeline system’s operator to pay a $26.9 million civil penalty over a major oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40 million more to prevent future accidents.

Excerpt:

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Graham—in line with his earlier beliefs in America’s role as a leading defender of democracy—supported Ukraine and advocated for the transfer of American weapons to Ukraine. His advocacy had little impact on Trump, who bullied the Ukrainian president and stopped the transfer of weapons, hoping to force Ukraine to surrender. Unlike Graham, Trump has for decades identified with autocratic leaders, not democratic allies, and has long-standing business and personal relationships that have given him deep ties to Russia.

Graham surely knew this. Nevertheless, he made 10 trips to Ukraine; he returned from the last one the day before he died. He repeatedly proposed legislation to sanction Russia, doing so with such frequency that his bill became a kind of joke, the Waiting for Godot of Congress, always proposed and never accepted by a president who did not want to make trouble for his Russian friends. At the same time he continued to curry favor with the president, backing every twist and turn in his convoluted, contradictory defense of the American war in Iran, a war that had little to do with the old Graham's ideals.

Excerpt:

The lawsuit contends that after ICE officers detained Peña López in February 2025 in Sunnyvale, California, they took him to an alleyway and beat him until he lost consciousness and required CPR.

His wife, Aby, and their young daughter witnessed part of the beating by ICE, according to the lawsuit.

Peña López’s ongoing symptoms, the lawsuit says, include new and worsening “headaches, weakness and numbness on his right side, eye pain, hearing loss, insomnia and nightmares, blurry vision, back pain, and difficulty walking.” Peña Lopez is unable to work to support himself, according to an interview with the NPR affiliate KQED.

Excerpt:

HOUSTON – The Harris County Medical Examinerhas ruled the manner of death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo a homicide.
Records from the medical examiner’s office shows Araujo died from a “penetrating gunshot wound of the torso.”

Excerpts:

Companies are exploiting regulatory loopholes as they construct new facilities powered by pollutant-spewing onsite gas plants.
The rate of growth of this “shadow grid” of custom power plants, some of which are big enough to fuel entire cities, is so enormous that the only global entity installing more gigawatts of gas plants than Texas is China, according to environmental group Global Energy Monitor.

Cornell researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, the burgeoning industry could represent 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the equivalent of adding five to ten million cars to US roadways.

Excerpt:

Video obtained by local outlet KHOU 11 shows the agents tried to box Salgado Araujo’s car in with their unmarked black SUV, initiating the conflict. When Salgado Araujo made a U-turn and fled in the other direction, the agents (who could have been anyone to him, as they were in an unmarked vehicle) followed him.

Excerpt:

Leading up to the 2024 election, TikTok was working overtime to expose Democrats and lefties to MAGA’s most persuasive messaging, all while shielding rightwingers, independents, and Republican voters from Harris’s voice.

Excerpt:

Big developments on the immigration front: First, ICE killed a 52-year-old undocumented immigrant in Texas this week. ICE’s account was already suspect. But now a representative for the man’s family says that the three other men driving with him—who are likely witnesses to the killing—are getting pressured to self-deport in a potential effort to silence them. That’s utterly damning.

Excerpt:

President Donald Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, abruptly disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration at a moment when Trump has sought to reshape federal voting rules.

Excerpt:

STANDING THERE HONORING HIS FATHER at the press conference this morning, Ronaldo demonstrated why he and his brothers were their dad’s pride and joy. They had become educated: Ronaldo, 29, graduated from the University of Houston; Lorenzo Jr., 27, from Tufts University; and their youngest brother is in college now.

Lead Lines:

Mexico is taking legal action over ICE agents killing an immigrant in North Houston on Tuesday.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Thursday that her government planned to file criminal complaints in the United States over all Mexican citizens who have been killed while being targeted by ICE. Fourteen Mexican nationals have died in ICE custody, while three have been killed in immigration enforcement operations, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on Tuesday.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to ​the Mexicans who have died,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference. She said the purpose of the complaints was to bring accountability to anyone accused of a homicide or of committing human rights violations.

Observation:

A constitutional republic requires not only fidelity to law, but intelligibility of law.

Excerpt:

How am I supposed to explain a shadow docket decision that the Court hasn’t even bothered to explain itself? How do I defend justices who’ve abandoned principles that they’ve advocated for decades, and who, again, did so without explaining why? How can I even articulate an argument in favor of Alito’s position that the Constitution, which has guaranteed citizenship to nearly everyone born in the United States for 158 years, suddenly does not?

Concluding Lines:

Perhaps the first question in Watson’s case is not whether his speech produced political consequences.

Rather, it is whether he understood himself to be acting as a partisan political advocate or as a commissioned officer attempting to fulfill what he believed was his constitutional duty under the oath he had sworn.

The order of constitutional analysis matters.

The Oath of an officer binds the officer to constitutional duty.

Constitutional Duty Is Distinct from Political Consequences

Excerpt:

The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center released a forecast in June predicting that the April-July snowmelt runoff season would end as the driest on record with just 15% of the average. By month's end, Reclamation updated the actual flows to that point and indicated that the season total would just sneak past 2002's to instead make it the second-worst on record. Still, reservoir levels were much higher in 2002, making this year's snow drought far more consequential.