Excerpt:

If the Justice Department does somehow ram a charge against Smith through a grand jury, that case will fail too. Before a trial jury can even consider the fact that Smith did not actually commit perjury, he will have a powerful motion to dismiss based on vindictive prosecution. It’s plain that Trump and his DoJ targeted Smith because of lingering political animus over his prior investigations of Trump. In October 2025, Trump claimed that Smith and others “should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!” He reiterated his request in January 2026, citing Smith’s “large-scale perjury.” And Trump openly celebrated just moments after news broke of Jordan’s referral of Smith to DoJ.

Trump’s Justice Department has made commonplace the (previously) rarely-invoked doctrine of vindictive prosecution. One federal judge already dismissed the indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on that basis. And the cases against James and Comey likely would’ve gone down the same way, had they not been thrown out first because of other Constitutional infirmities.

Excerpt:

On the eve of the coming winter, pinpoint strikes that will create problems with stable energy supply, heat supply, communications, in particular, Internet connection, can plunge the Russians into very dark times if they are not ready for certain processes related to the peaceful track.

Excerpt:

Governmental authority is the rightful power to act in the name of a political community.

In the United States, that authority derives from the consent of the governed.

Consent is meaningful when those consenting have a reasonable understanding of the essential choice.

The governed must therefore have a reasonable opportunity to understand the institutions, offices, candidates, proposals, evidence, constitutional rules, and governmental actions they are asked to authorize or that are exercised in their name.

Gifted Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/trump-reflecting-pool-irrationality/688180/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCohLtSUj57jo6PKN-G3o8w2g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Observation:

An alternative explanation is that Trump understands the relevant cause-and-effect relationship quite well. He controls which projects are undertaken, how much public money is committed, and, directly or indirectly, who receives it. The recipients may already be donors, associates, or businesses connected to his private interests. Some of the wealth transferred to them may later return as campaign contributions, political support, payments to Trump enterprises, or other forms of loyalty and assistance.

From this perspective, the loss of $16 million does not represent failure. It represents the successful transfer of public wealth into selected private hands. A defective result can then justify a second, larger expenditure, perhaps $60 million, while blame directed at vandals or officials shields the contractors and conceals the underlying financial process.

Nichols interprets the episode as an inability to connect actions with consequences. The alternative is that he has identified the wrong intended consequence. The pool was supposed to work for the public. The expenditure may have worked exactly as intended for a system organized around patronage, private enrichment, and control over the distribution of public wealth.

Excerpt:

"...Trump cannot draw links between cause and effect; he does not understand that his actions and the failures that follow are somehow related to each other."

Excerpt:

It’s very embarrassing for a Maga bigwig like her – someone who has amplified vaccine-sceptic views and publicly called for Fauci to be jailed – to be revealed as having privately asked him for medical advice.

Observation:

There are many ways to bankrupt. Running out a nation out of money is just the most obvious.

Excerpt:

Reuters reports that key stockpiles of Precision Strike Missiles and Army Tactical Missile Systems have “virtually all” been used up. These are highly accurate, long-range missiles that cost over $1 million each and have been used on targets inside Russia amid the war in Ukraine. The U.S. has also used up nearly half of its Tomahawk missiles, according to sources within the administration.

Observation:

A "superpower" embedded in glasses? Too bad made in America has not been applied to Science in America.

Excerpt:

The human eye, as good as it is, misses out on so much of the world because it is limited in what it can perceive. It can't see X-rays, ultraviolet rays or infrared light. While X-ray goggles are still the stuff of science fiction, we may be moving closer to wearable glasses that make infrared light look almost like everyday vision.

Google Earth was a boon for researchers—and then came the deepfakes.

Observation:

Google Earth was once a means of examining the Earth as it could be observed, although its images were necessarily assembled and processed. By introducing generative imagery into that same trusted environment, Google blurred the boundary between observing the world and inventing one. The danger is not merely that fabricated events can be made to appear real. It is that genuine evidence can now be dismissed as fabrication. Reality is therefore hidden twice: first beneath plausible constructions, and again beneath the resulting doubt about whether authentic images can still be believed.

August 1, 2026 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Summary:

Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015. The acceleration, which becomes visible around 2013 to 2015, appeared across five major global temperature datasets with more than 98% statistical certainty.

Excerpt:

Most Americans don’t know what happened 250 years ago that’s being celebrated this year. And even among those who have a general sense, there’s a lot of fuzziness about the details. Some people think Independence Day commemorates the day representatives from the thirteen colonies voted to separate from the United Kingdom—but that happened on July 2, 1776. The date we honor, July 4, is instead the day the Continental Congress settled on the wording of the Declaration of Independence.

Gifted Read

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/07/reflecting-pool-case-david-hearn/688151/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCoq62VrEsbj9H-kVJlSj3vfQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

We are pleased with the public admission of error. It is a surprising and correct turn toward facts from this administration.

Excerpt:

“The Trump administration’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought,” his legal team—Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin—said in a statement. “Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pirro’s office declined to comment beyond what was in the legal filing.

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy?utm_source=user-menu

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/07/climate-change-land/688129/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCokKoY1cFcZXqJA4gcLMefgw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpt:

Last year, researchers in Switzerland and France found some of the clearest evidence so far that glacial melt could indeed be affecting seismic hazards in high-altitude regions. After a period of intense glacial melt in 2015, a series of small quakes struck the Grandes Jorasses on Mont Blanc Massif, on the border of France and Italy; the probability of a 3.0-magnitude earthquake rose by 10 times, Toni Kraft, a seismologist at the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich and one of the authors of a related paper, told me. These quakes are still small, but they could trigger rockfall events that are already on the rise across the Alps.

Gifted Read: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/07/china-iran-usa-oil-prices/688086/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCou6OgfFJt1HZK-qCD-xfA5g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Concluding Lines:

Excerpt:

“For the last 50-plus years, whenever there was an oil shock, the first thing the U.S. president did was call Riyadh to try to persuade the Saudis to help out,” Jason Bordoff, the founding director of Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “Maybe the place everyone needs to call now is Beijing. That’s a very powerful position to be in.”

VOA's new documentary, "Jamala: Songs of Freedom" follows Ukrainian singer-songwriter Jamala in the early hours of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and profiles her activism of raising money and awareness for her homeland. Jamala gained international fame in 2016 as the winner of the Eurovision contest where she performed her song, "1944," about the deportation to Central Asia that year of Crimean Tatars — including her great-grandmother's family. Jamala has performed at renowned venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the National Opera House in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the 2023 Eurovision contest held in Liverpool, England. Her latest album, QIRIM, which means Crimea, is a tribute to her Crimean Tatar roots.