The recent deaths of two immigrants at the hands of the administration’s racial purifying machine, aka ICE, are being memorialized this weekend in over 200 cities nationwide.

Lorenzo Salgado in Houston and Johan Sebastian in Biddeford, Maine were beloved members of their communities who were gunned down on their way to work. They left behind broken families and traumatized children.

In no sense were they a danger to their communities, but their “failure to comply” with random traffic stops by masked men in unmarked vehicles was given as the cause for their executions.

There will be no reckoning for the ICE agents who made themselves into judge, jury, and executioner on the spot. One of these men had a documented history of domestic violence and erratic behavior prior to being accepted for abbreviated training ordered by then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

FBI agents around the country were informed this week that their agency would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — cases that sometimes yield evidence that could be used to prosecute Department of Homeland Security agents implicated in violent encounters.

What was a de facto policy –covering up instances of violence by federal agents– is now reality. After six months of denying Minnesota authorities evidence connected to the shootings of three civilians by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, the US Attorney’s office has turned over hard drives containing statements and body camera footage connected with the shootings on January 7, January 14, and January 24, as well as the 2014 Honda Pilot that Renee Good was driving.

The opacity of taxpayer-funded agencies isn’t just limited to those directing immigrant roundup and detention operations. Congress members Jahana Hayes (D-CT) and Don Beyer (D-VA) are introducing legislation to “guarantee Members of Congress and accompanying congressional staff immediate access to federal buildings, including contractor-owned and operated facilities, during normal business hours for official oversight activities.”

Beyer: “I have personally been denied access to USAID, the U.S. Institute of Peace, a public meeting at the Department of the Interior, and repeatedly delayed in conducting oversight at ICE facilities. All of these were clear examples of the Trump administration’s deliberate and repeated efforts to deny, delay, or obstruct Congressional oversight of the executive branch.”

***

Organizers for this weekend’s protests say these events are “to pay our respects, to pray, to mourn, and grieve. We come together to send a message - Those impacted ARE NOT ALONE. Those lost will not be forgotten. We will not remain silent while our own gov’t officials are enabling this violence.”

On Saturday, July 25 there will be a gathering at the downtown San Diego federal building at 1pm, followed by a short procession to visit the SD Sheriff’s central jail.

We’ll speak the names of those lost. And we’ll send a message to local elected officials that continue to make excuses for this violence.

SIGN UP for the downtown San Diego event, hosted by SURJ San Diego, Indivisible CBFD, NDLON, and many San Diego volunteers and partners, HERE

There are also protests in Mira Mesa (Saturday, July 25, 10am) downtown Escondido (Friday, July 24, at 6pm).

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Some people want to contribute money to support Words & Deeds and I’m sincerely thankful. I use those proceeds to support more than twenty independent media, both locally and nationwide. You can also find my writings, along with many other local and state authors at The Jumping Off Place, co-edited by Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew.

I had a busy morning at Moores’ Cancer Center scheduled, and I unexpectedly slept through the night. As a result, there was not enough time to research and write a column for today. So I’m sharing the things that struck me as important on my morning walk through emails and such.

I draw from a wide range of (mostly) independent writers for inspiration and prompts for my own essays. The funding coming from people donating to this Substack is passed on (mostly) to them because in an era where much of the legacy media has turned to mush there has to be a way to support honest writers willing to take a chance with their essays.

I deliberately don’t put my lefty political filter of what comes into my inbox, even as most of my output seems that way. I do insist on honesty, however, and when I see ideological taint obscuring truth, unsubscribe, block, and/or mute are my screening tools of choice.

I don’t expect you’ll agree with everything I chose to share today, and that’s okay. But, please, if you feel the need to leave a comment, read the whole damn article first.

Gregg Robinson at The Jumping Off Place: Marcuse, Rufo, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism “Christopher Rufo and the larger Trumpified right-wing have projected onto Marcuse their own desire for cultural control and censorship.”

• Here is Freudian projection in its purest form. With Trump’s second coming, he and the rest of the MAGA forces have used Rufo’s critique of Marcuse to wage their own ideological repression across our country. The laughable fiction that recent efforts in some university seminars to debate Critical Race Theory, or the pressure to have more gender and racial diversity in TV shows, or the fact that a handful of corporations have sponsored DEI training amount to evidence of massive state-sponsored censorship is only a reflection of what the right-wing has wanted to do for years and is now pursuing. You have to look no further than Trump’s attack on Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes, and the New York Times to see examples of the kind of campaign Rufo has projected onto the left. If you really want to see the use of state power to censor ideas, look to the Florida governor’s purge of sociology departments throughout the state, not to a small essay by a German philosopher who was frightened of fascism.

• Beyond this obvious act of psychological projection on Rufo’s part, there is evidence that justifies Marcuse’s and the Frankfurt School’s larger fear of authoritarianism. Trump and the MAGA right-wing are proof that you cannot take too seriously the threat of authoritarian leaders. We are living through rapid social and economic changes that disrupt communities and cultural expectations. During times like this, there is a psychological hunger for the simple answers that authoritarian leaders offer to complex problems. Here is Marcuse’s fellow Frankfurt School colleague, Theodore Adorno, on this kind of psychological hunger: “Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality. During times of intense social or economic change, these individuals rely on rigid stereotypes, projecting their anxieties onto marginalized groups rather than adapting to new realities.”

• Unfortunately, too much of this Frankfurt School concern with authoritarianism is on display in our country today. So if Rufo and the rest of the Trumpian Republican Party want to see a real conspiracy to undermine American democracy, they can simply look in the mirror.

***

Dan Pfeiffer at Message Box - What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Politics of Israel It’s not just Democrats who’ve shifted — independents have too. That changes the math on moderation…. [Using the Senate Primary in Michigan as an example….]

• Chuck Schumer, the DSCC, and much of the establishment infrastructure support Stevens. They argue that El-Sayed is far more likely to lose to Republican Mike Rogers in a state Trump has won in two of the last three elections, because he is too liberal for it. Stevens, they say, gives Democrats a better shot in a must-win state precisely because she is a moderate.

• El-Sayed is a proud supporter of Medicare for All, campaigned with Hasan Piker, and made some statements about defunding the police in 2020.

• Stevens is more moderate than El-Sayed. She is not associated with the Sanders wing, doesn’t support Medicare for All, and belongs to “moderate” groups like the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. But Stevens is not a moderate in the mold of Jared Golden or Joe Manchin. At the risk of oversimplifying, she is a mainstream Democrat who voted with Joe Biden nearly 100% of the time and against Trump nearly 100% of the time. She is a moderate in persona, and certainly in comparison to El-Sayed — except on one major issue.

• Israel.

***

Judd Legum at Public Notice ICE is lying about body cams. These documents prove it. “As soon as they had funding they bought them” [ White House Border Czar Tom Homan has been saying in interviews that body-cams weren’t available in recent deadly incidents because Democrats shut down the government over a budget bill]

• On July 4, 2025, Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which provided ICE with $75 billion in additional funding — with few restrictions. Since then, ICE has been sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent funds. The government shutdowns cited by Homan had no impact on these funds. The contracting authority to purchase up to $100 million in body cams from Axon Enterprise has existed since 2023.

• Since February 2025, it has been the official policy of ICE for law enforcement officers to wear body cams “to collect audio and video recordings of interactions with the public during Enforcement Activities.” But the policy was contingent on body cams being “issued enterprise-wide.”

• They were not issued. In February 2026, months after ICE’s $75 billion windfall, Acting Director Todd Lyons said that only 3,000 of ICE’s 13,000 officers wore body cams. ICE was avoiding compliance with the policy by simply not ordering many body cams.

• Now, after many deadly unrecorded incidents, the body cams have finally been ordered. Will the body cams actually be distributed to ICE officers and used? Time will tell.

***

Miles Klee at WIRED: The Odyssey’s Success Is Inspiring Unprecedented Levels of Cope Elon Musk and the online right convinced themselves that Christopher Nolan’s “woke” epic would go down in flames. Now they’re crashing out.

• For months, Elon Musk and the right-wing cranks he caters to on X have whipped themselves into a raging froth over the supposed desecration of an ancient Greek poem by one of the most successful movie directors alive.

• Now that their manufactured backlash has bombed, they’re searching for ways to cope with the reality that they are increasingly divorced from popular opinion.

• Christopher Nolan’s artistic crimes in bringing The Odyssey to the screen, according to Musk and others in a furor, were instances of what they called “historical inaccuracy” in a lavish fantasy teeming with monsters, witches, and undead spirits—mainly the casting of Lupita Nyong’o, who is Black, as Helen of Troy, and Elliot Page, who is trans, as Sinon. The grand total of approximately 10 minutes of screen time between these actors in a three-hour saga, combined with the general hysteria over “wokeness” in Hollywood, a rejection of Americanized dialog, and lingering misogyny regarding scholar Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of Homer’s epic (the first by a woman), resulted in countless teeth-gnashing posts and calls for a boycott that never materialized.

***

Jon Sinton at Jon’s Reluctant Blog: That New Car Smell Is Chinese Detroit has decided to look backwards instead of forward

• Then, in the early 70s, Japan came to town. The paradigm shifted completely. Planned obsolescence was out, and 200,000 miles without even breathing hard was in. Honda led the insurgency.

• Detroit was caught in a trap of its own making. But they’re pretty crafty up there in Michigan, so they joint-ventured with a number of Japanese carmakers. Today, Detroit’s Metro Airport signage is in English and Japanese.

• To his credit, and yes, I’m choking on those words, Elon Musk created Tesla and gave America the early and short-lived lead in EVs. He touted the environmental importance of getting off of fossil fuels, and the Obama and Biden administrations instituted tax credits for buying EVs and aggressive mileage standards to push the industry along. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $7.5B for charging infrastructure in a public/private partnership akin to the 1960s moonshot that brought industry and government together. Holding to his promise to Big Oil, Trump killed the program.

• I was in Mexico recently, and marveled at the sheer number of Chinese EVs. Canada and the EU will end the sale of most gas-burners by 2035. California leads a handful of states with similar goals, but the president has other ideas. You can’t stop progress, but you can delay it.

• I can’t remember another time when we’ve willingly chosen to be left behind.

***

Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work: What Polls Do and Don’t Tell You Does the public oppose its own interests? Really?

• If you instead take that polling and argue that Medicare for All “is not the path forward,” as Searchlight’s Adam Jentleson does, it means that you have started this entire process with a position to advocate (namely, “I oppose Medicare for All”) and then tried to frame the poll data in support of your position. There is nothing wrong with that per se, unless you are trying to portray yourself not as just another ideological actor in an ideological debate, but rather as a good faith interpreter of the political landscape who is giving good faith advice based on a good faith desire to achieve the most beneficial policy outcomes for all Americans. Like think tanks do.

• If, theoretically, you started a think tank that got a bunch of its funding from, for example, hedge fund billionaires who have made significant investments in the private health care industry and are predictably uninterested in having the Democratic Party unite around Medicare for All, that might be a situation where you would be a less-than-good-faith participant in the public debate around Medicare for All. That could in theory be an instance where you would be motivated to search out polling numbers that could be framed to argue for a lesser health care reform agenda on the grounds that the public just doesn’t support this Medicare for All stuff. It’s right there in the numbers!

• It’s not that any of this is surprising. It would just be nice if we could be more precise in the ways that we think about who is offering polling evidence on various issues, and why, and whether that polling is actually telling is what it is purported to tell us, and whether we should be looking to public opinion polls to guide us to good public policy stances in the first place. Or whether it would be okay if we just figured out the way to help the most people and then did our very best to accomplish that. The Republicans don’t want to help people. If you allow the Democrats to choose as their starting point in policy negotiations “We don’t want to help people too much,” we are not going to get too much. Unless we are paid by hedge fund billionaires.

***

Will Sommer at The Bulwark: MAGA Rallies Around Andrew Tate Despite the serious sex trafficking charges facing the influencer and his brother, Trump supporters are going to bat for them.

• Incredibly, nearly all of the MAGA movement’s embrace of the brothers has come after they were first accused of sex trafficking in 2022. That seemed pretty crazy for a bunch of people who claim their biggest issue is child sex trafficking. But it seemed the friendly feelings for the Tates might have reached their limits last week after they were arrested to be extradited to the United Kingdom, where they face new charges related to allegedly choking women unconscious and raping them.

• And yet, despite the seriousness of the crimes, there is still a growing movement on the right urging the Trump administration to intervene and prevent the extradition.

• Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) has become one of the Tates’ most prominent defenders in the aftermath of the extradition, claiming in a tweet that they’re victims of politicized “lawfare” in both the U.K. and Romania. He doesn’t specify why he thinks the brothers would be targets of lawfare—what political reasons these countries would have for taking down the Tates. Nevertheless, Hamadeh said the Trump administration should refuse to extradite the brothers, who are dual American and British citizens.

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Driverless vehicles for hire are coming to San Diego. Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been testing its autonomous vehicles with drivers locally for more than a year.

Last November, the California Department of Motor Vehicles approved a massive new permit area, giving the company permission to operate in the entire Bay Area, Sacramento and nearly all of Southern California up to the Mexican Border.

People are starting to see driverless Waymo vehicles in San Diego, though the company is limiting its passengers to Alphabet employees, including those working for Waymo and Google. No start date has been announced for availability by the general public.

Currently, Waymo operates public commercial robotaxi services in 10 US metropolitan areas, has 3,871 robotaxis in service, provides 500,000 paid rides per week and has logged 200 million fully autonomous miles as of June, 2026.

Earlier this year, Waymo gave testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, asking the federal government to create uniform nationwide standards for autonomous vehicle deployment. The company warned that the current regulatory environment threatened US companies seeking to compete with Chinese companies in an expected trillion dollar global autonomous vehicle marketplace.

Not much is moving in congress these days, but there is bipartisan legislation—including the proposed Connected Vehicle Safety Act—to prohibit the import and sale of connected vehicles linked to adversarial nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea starting in January 2027.

So, for the time being, the best the legislative branch can do is ban a few potential competitors, on the basis of cybersecurity concerns. Don’t worry, though, Senator Ted Cruz says he’s working on it.

Last year I visited Austin, Texas, where Waymo and Tesla’s Robotaxi are both operating. It was a bit unsettling to see driverless vehicles, easily identifiable by the assorted hardware on top (Waymo) or a side decal (Tesla) driving around town. We opted to use Lyft for some evening outings; having a driver able to answer stupid tourist questions seemed like a better bet.

Tesla Robotaxis aka CyberCabs are currently operating in three Texas cities and Miami, Florida.

While Waymo and other competitors utilize lidar, Tesla Robotaxi services use eight cameras paired with artificial intelligence to navigate.

Both companies have had some well-publicized public failures with their vehicles, despite claims they are safer than human operated passenger cars.

From Public Information, via Oligarch Watch:

• While Musk and other executives have marketed Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems as up to 10 times safer than human drivers, a Reuters investigation in May found the company had significantly skewed comparison data to arrive at that claim. “The automaker counted Tesla crashes with airbag deployments and compared them with federal data on all crashes in which a tow-truck removed a vehicle — a far less restrictive criterion,” Reuters reported.

• Tesla, which has repeatedly missed deadlines set by Musk to achieve autonomous driving, also faces a growing number of lawsuits and investigations into the role its driver assistance systems — Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and Autopilot — have played in fatal crashes.

Elon Musk’s vision for the future of autonomous vehicles is, as should be expected, grandiose, behind schedule, and seemingly oblivious to how it should function in the real world. He blames a system allowing individual states and cities to decide whether automated driving systems are safe enough to deploy on public streets, for delaying in deploying the Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing service.

The Trump administration has heard his excuses and is moving to create a federal safety standard for self-driving systems along with changing vehicle safety requirements to allow for autonomous vehicles.

The recent release of the White House’s massive “2026 Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions,” includes proposals eliminating or weakening hundreds of federal regulations. Needless to say, the pipedreams of a guy who donated $290 million to the Trump election effort, got special attention.

The Department of Transportation has proposed special exceptions to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) that would apply to Tesla’s futuristic steering-wheel-less, pedal-less, and mirrorless Cybercab model.

One deregulatory change calls for an update [to] the light vehicle brake systems standard to exempt ADS-equipped vehicles from the requirements for physical brake controls, rearview mirrors and backup cameras. Instead, separate requirements would be created for the “detection of… standardized objects that simulate small obstacles such as a child,” according to an OMB deregulatory notice.

***

The pay-to-play relationships that the White House has forged with corporate America now include, according to Bloomberg, now include an option for the president to issue pardons for companies. So if a few people get mashed up along the way to our robotic transportation utopia, the companies controlling the system (trust me, it will be just a few) already know they have a free pass, at least for the next couple of years.

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Some people want to contribute money to support Words & Deeds and I’m sincerely thankful. I use those proceeds to support more than twenty independent media, both locally and nationwide. You can also find my writings, along with many other local and state authors at The Jumping Off Place, co-edited by Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew.

Some wars get fought with bombs, others get tariffs, and the truth is always a victim.

The US military finds itself in a quagmire in Iran. Intelligence officials have concluded that our war planes won’t bomb the country into submission.

Iranian response to daily bombing runs by US warplanes has been effective in a military sense via their targeting the systems providing guidance for offensive weapons and politically potent via missiles and drones aimed at strategic assets of US allies in the region.

One US official told the Washington Post the Pentagon is planning for the possibility of a wider war but warned the military is running short on the air defense systems, long-range munitions, troops, and aircraft needed to sustain a major expansion of the conflict. Another soldier said, “We’re getting beat up across the board.”

A potential next step for escalating the conflict, namely a ground incursion seizing Iranian strategic positions, has run into opposition from militaries of regional allies who have refused to participate. Iran has floated a response to any such incursion involving their own ground troops taking control of facilities in neighboring countries.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the war against Iran has been the inability of the administration to rally US public opinion in support of the war effort. Boasts about devastation accompanied by claims that negotiations have/will/are happening have been met with increasing skepticism as the war continues to drag on. And what appears as an attempt to cover up unfavorable news reporting has taken on a life of its own.

This isn’t the scenario Trump and company envisioned headed into the midterm elections. Being labeled as a ‘loser’ is the ultimate sin for a president notorious for his own thin skin.

***

When in doubt, the revised Republican strategy for the midterms now holds that the only good defense is a better offense. And ‘better offense’ involves continuing to fool the public about who actually pays when imported goods are taxed.

On Monday, the administration gave 30 days notice to Canada of 50% tariffs on a long list of goods.

Martyn Wendell Jones at the Bulwark:

• An initial estimate from Jennifer Robson, a Canadian professor of public policy, has the new duties touching roughly 5 percent of Canadian exports to the United States, resulting in roughly $10 billion of new costs likely being passed along to American consumers.

This announcement about Canada follows an earlier declaration of an added 25% tariff on goods coming from Brazil. The Financial Times reports that Trump is poised to slap fresh tariffs on dozens of countries as soon as this week, as his 10% global tariffs left over in the wake of adverse court rulings are set to expire.

Paul Krugman

• Whatever the real motivation for these new tariffs, they are almost surely illegal. They are definitely a violation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, a revision of NAFTA negotiated and signed by Trump himself during his first term. Indeed, the White House fact sheet explicitly states that the new tariffs will be imposed “regardless of whether a good originates under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).”

• So these latest actions confirm what most people around the world, from the European Commission to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, have already figured out: a deal with Donald Trump lasts only until he feels like breaking it.

***

Given that prices for goods derived from fossil fuels and other raw materials imported from the Middle East are going to increase, the Trump administration’s ability to talk up its fantasies about a ‘golden age’ for the US economy as we head into the midterms seems like a bad bet.

Welcome to the dawning of the new age of McCarthyism, wherein the right (and some of their quisling friends) screams about communism as their primary campaign attribute.

A Reuters analysis of President Trump’s public remarks between June 23 and July 6 found that he referred to communism 81 times, including describing several Democratic primary winners as “hardcore, godless communists.”

This morning House Majority Leader Steve Scalise stood with Speaker Mike Johnson at a press conference and proclaimed:

• “The Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic Party is in full swing, and communism is on the ballot this November”

***

To make this campaign strategy work, the Trump administration needed to point to a foreign boogeyman pulling the strings, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the man with a plan.

Last week, representatives from 66 countries were invited to the State Department for an event called the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” White House advisor Stephen Miller summoned up his best impersonation of Nazi leader Goebbels to rally the world against “far-left political terrorism,” predicting appeals based on “civil liberties” in order to “protect itself from facing criminal punishment.”

• “It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must fall on deaf ears. When the leftist…protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has been perpetrated against him.”

Yesterday, the State Department issued a report entitled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism. It accuses the Cuban government of carrying out a “campaign of subversion” that has “infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of leftwing terrorism on American soil”.

Dean Blundell:

• …buried inside the Cold War cosplay is something genuinely dark: a list of at least 43 living, breathing American citizens and organizations that the United States government just publicly branded as instruments of a hostile foreign power.

• Not spies. Not agents. Not people charged with crimes.

• Sitting members of Congress. The Mayor of New York. The Mayor of Los Angeles. A Twitch streamer. The guy who co-founded Ben & Jerry’s. A labor union that organized an Amazon warehouse. Lawyers. Journalists. Playwrights.

• And — I am not making this up — George Floyd. A man who has been dead for six years, murdered in cold blood, is named in a U.S. State Department report about ongoing Cuban subversion. That’s not intelligence work. That’s a McCarthyism mood board designed by Trump’s former lawyer, Roy Cohen.

This report should be construed as setting the stage for a crackdown on the Left in America on the grounds of bogus national security threats. Whether it gets used as a device for reputational smearing or as a road map for prosecutions is yet to be determined.

The communism/socialism label may be effective in motivating older voters, but not with those under 50 who have no memory of the Cold War era.

It’s important to remember the truism about all the Trump administration’s political prosecutions: it’s not so much about winning a case as it is the damage done by the process.

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Some people want to contribute money to support Words & Deeds and I’m sincerely thankful. I use those proceeds to support more than twenty independent media, both locally and nationwide. You can also find my writings, along with many other local and state authors at The Jumping Off Place, co-edited by Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew.

Summer is in full swing; it’s high travel season, and many of us are heading out on the road, the rails, to the airport to go someplace else. The impulse is strong, and, for those who can afford it, summer vacation is the thing we look forward to all year long. At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic though, perhaps it’s worth asking why this is and what it tells us about ourselves and each other.

So, before you go, perhaps it might be worth stopping to ponder—

*Are you on a commute? A business trip? A journey? A wander? A quest? A vacation? A tour? An escape? An excursion? A discovery? An adventure? A pilgrimage? A retreat? An exploration? A sojourn? A migration? A forced migration? A homecoming? A dérive? Or something else?

*Who do you think you are now and who do you think you will be upon your return?

*When will you know you need to stop and why? What will be there?

*Are you driven by necessity? Desire? Curiosity? Fear? Boredom? Routine? Opportunity? Impulse? Or a mysterious purpose?

* What is it that you think you might find? Are you open to the turns in the road or are you plugged into a Google map?

*How will you deal with the unexpected? Loneliness? Moorlessness? Open space? Silence?

*Are you using your feet? A bicycle? Motorcycle? Car? Bus? Train? Plane? What comes with each mode of transit? How does the form of your travel shape the journey itself?

*Will you go from one airconditioned room to another in an enclosed capsule of some form or will there be sun, wind, fog, or rain in your face?

At one end of the spectrum, the “vacation” is thought of as a manifestation of the poverty of our experience, a consumer opportunity to participate in the society of the spectacle that the Situationists bemoaned back in the 1960s and Jean Baudrillard refashioned as the “simulacrum” decades later. It’s simply another empty ritual in our flattened, theme park of a world where real lived experience has been demoted to a kind of exotic other in the desert of the real.

*Are you going on a holiday in someone else’s misery?

*How much of your experience will be mediated by some form of technology or another?

*What does it mean to vacation? How is that different from travelling?

*Will you do anything that you don’t need to pay for?

*How do the ways that your experience is packaged impact the quality of that experience? What happens to the character, the texture of the places you go?

*Has everywhere become the same place?

*Who will serve you along the way? What are their jobs like? Is there a relationship between your experience and the quality of life of those who make your travel possible?

*What is the difference between a consumer and a traveler? Or is there no longer even a distinction to be made?

Others, however, see traveling as opposed to “vacationing” as a precious opportunity to break out of the stale routinized world of consumer capitalism. It is one of the last ways to get outside of ourselves, at least the packaged selves we get handed to us on the marketplace, and see the world anew. When we travel, we disorient ourselves, disrupt the ordinary in an effort to lose ourselves to find ourselves. On the road, Jack Kerouac famously told us long ago, somewhere “the pearl” would be handed to us. We would find “it” and cut through the dead world of our ordinary lives and discover the extraordinary, the authentic, living, breathing heart of life itself.

*What is your relationship to the prison of measured time?

*What does it mean to be lost?

*Can you find yourself by losing yourself?

*Do we even want a destination?

*How will you see things? What will enchant you? Horrify you? Astound you? What will help you learn to see the world with new eyes?

*How much space do you have in your life for wonder? For awe? For joy? The sacred?

*What will it mean to come home? Will it be the place you left it? Who will you be?

*****

Note on the Summer Chronicles

Over a decade ago, during my time writing for the OB Rag and SD Free Press, I penned a series of pieces over the summer that moved beyond the blog/column form to something a little looser and more open to improvisation and the poetic turn.

Below is the original preface for the first series of chronicles:

In the summer of 1967, the great Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector, began a seven year stint as a writer for Jornal de Brasil [The Brazilian News ] not as a reporter but as a writer of “chronicles,” a genre peculiar to Brazil. As Giovanni Pontiero puts it in the preface to Selected Chrônicas, a chronicle, “allows poets and writers to address a wider readership on a vast range of topics and themes. The general tone is one of greater freedom and intimacy than one finds in comparable articles or columns in the European or U.S. Press.”

What Lispector left us with is an eccentric collection of “aphorisms, diary entries, reminiscences, travel notes, interviews, serialized stories, essays, loosely defined as chronicles.” As a novelist, Pontiero tells us, Lispector was anxious about her relationship with the genre, apprehensive of writing too much and too often, of, as she put it, “contaminating the word.” It was a genre alien to her introspective nature and one that challenged her to adapt.

More than forty years later, in Southern California—in San Diego no less—I look to Lispector with sufficient humility and irony from my place on the far margins of literary history with three novels, two collections of poetry, and a few other books largely set in our minor league corner of the universe. Along with this weekly column, it’s not much compared to the gravitas of someone like Lispector. So, as Allen Ginsberg once said of Whitman, “I touch your book and feel absurd.”

Nonetheless the urge to narrate persists. Along with Lispector, I am cursed with it—for better or worse. So for a few lazy weeks of summer, I will continue to try my hand at the form.

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The latest bits of performative nonsense coming from the White House and their Republican allies in Congress are threats being made against Canada because smoke from wildfires is drifting south and making the air in US cities more unhealthy.

The President apparently thinks our northern neighbor’s refusal to properly groom the 914 million acres of boreal forests covering 40% of the Canadian landmass is responsible for the 850 wildfires currently in progress. Half of Canada’s wildfires are caused by lightning, but they are responsible for 92% of the total forest surface burned, mostly in areas that are impossible to reach for firefighters.

These forests are denser than anything else in North America or Europe, and the current fire in Ontario alone, is the same square mileage as the entire state of Delaware. From the time it ignited, to covering that size, took less than 20 hours.

Trump intends to add whatever damages assessed by his golf course groundskeepers to the tariffs currently being imposed by our government on Canada. In his little world, the fact that 85% of those tariffs are paid by US consumers, and the holes being blown in the domestic economy by way of consumer and tourism boycotts from our Northern neighbors don’t exist.

The Congress hasn’t been very good with elements of the Trump agenda lately, so certain legislators of the Republican persuasion are seeking to improve their status within the MAGA cult.

Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno has introduced the Canada Fire Act, which calls for seizing the property of any Canadian official involved in resource management or policy making, along with that of their family members upon the President’s declaration of a “transboundary smoke emergency.” Upon such a determination Trump will be allowed to close the northern border, block all Canadian imports, cancel all visas, and expel the Canadian ambassador and other diplomatic personnel.

If there were scientists left in government (95,000 employees have left federal science agencies) willing to speak truth to power, they’d be telling the President and his minions that 2026 fires in Canada aren’t close to record setting; 2023 was much worse, except then we had a president who didn’t feel the need to blurt out nonsense about the world.

Via the Guardian:

• Nearly 6m acres are estimated to have burned, less than a quarter of land consumed by blazes when Canadian wildfire smoke last blanketed the US in 2023.

• The planet’s heating climate – driven by human activities – is causing warmer, drier conditions in the summer, which is amplifying wildfire activity, making extreme wildfires more intense, frequent and large. There is also a growing trend of the wildfire season – which is part of the natural cycle – becoming longer.

• The US is, by far, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-producing nation, and has historically emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country, making it a key driver of the climate crisis.

Apparently, somebody said something in front of Trump about ‘science’ and now he’s determined to suppress whatever data is made available.

• The National Academy of Sciences has historically published analytical Scientific Manuals expressly for our Federal Judiciary. Of course, the Academy has been run by Radical Left Dumocrats who, it turns out, published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change. These bogus Manuals were used by Judges to decide massive “Climate Change” Cases, and have created huge losses across our Country. These Manuals have been totally DISCREDITED. Our Nation’s Federal Judges deserve Facts and Science, not Political Fraud and False Science on Climate.

In addition to the smoke drifting southward from Canadian fires, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) says US firefighters are now battling 68 large wildfires across 15 states. Smoke from fires in the Pacific Northwest is now drifting into Canada as more than 17,400 personnel, 140 helicopters and four C-130 air tanker crews are battling flames.

The agency said that record-low snowpack across the mountain west and persistent drought have created fuel conditions “to the type of dry and fire-prone levels normally not seen until mid-August.”

According to NIFC, nearly 3.72 million acres have burned across the United States so far this year, exceeding the mid-July total recorded during the same period last year by more than a million acres.

A survey from progressive polling firm Data for Progress found that 61% of likely American voters believe extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past five years. Asked about specific forms of weather are being worsened by climate change, 67% cited heatwaves, followed by worsening wildfires (64%), droughts (63%), flooding and flash flooding (62%), hurricanes (59%), and severe thunderstorms and hailstorms (59%).

Realizing that more than 100 million Americans saw orange/grey skies from wildfire smoke, the trolls from climate change denier groups have been unusually active on social media. Don’t be fooled, climate change is affecting weather patterns worldwide, and those changes aren’t always predictable.

There can be no doubt that mass consumption of fossil fuels is not good for the planet.

***

The Best Government Money Can Buy.

2025: Taylor Farms donates $1 million to Trump’s Super PAC — 1 week later, Trump delays the “Food Traceability Rule”

New York Times:

• The United States is on track to have more cyclospora cases in 2026 than in any previous year. The agency said it was investigating more than 5,100 additional illnesses that may have been caused by the parasite, which is transmitted through food or water contaminated with feces.

• On Thursday evening, Taylor Farms executives met with the White House and the Food and Drug Administration to try to distance the company from the outbreak and air concerns about the official investigations into the outbreak.

2026: Diarrhea parasite breaks out across the US, Taylor Farms lettuce tests positive — but then the FDA quickly retracts and claims the test was a “false positive.”

Washington Post report:

• The updated laboratory finding — that the FDA did not find the parasite in a particular lettuce sample — does not change the rest of the agency’s investigation. The sample that the FDA tested was not part of the original recall; the evidence around the recall is based on epidemiological and traceback determination linking the outbreak to Taylor Farms-supplied iceberg lettuce.

***

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The White House stood up crazy grandpa in front of TV cameras Thursday evening and fell far short of getting the hoped-for result.

Two major networks (ABC, NBC) flat-out refused to bump prime time programming, and it’s safe to say a majority of outlets gave Trump’s claims the sandwich treatment, surrounding his claims with layers of truth. Little of what the President had to say was new, and those parts where he sought to use recently unclassified reports as proof were contradicted in the documents themselves.

Remember that Trump was atop the executive branch when the collection process leading to the analyses provided took place. Six years later he’s claiming that intelligence was hidden from him. More than one individual from the president’s inner circle at the time has come forward to say Trump ignored or deflected those assessments.

Damning with faint praise. Even his true believers in the Congress were unconvinced by the specificity of the ‘evidence’ offered in the speech, with Republicans limiting their support to generalizations about the 2020 election being rigged and urging passage of the SAVE Act.

As for the Democrats on the Hill, this quip from Congressman Jim McGovern says it all:

• Trump says Democrats forgot to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *he* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats supposedly stole was the one he himself controlled. You have to be a special kind of stupid

As far as the legislative branch of the US government is concerned, the President accomplished exactly nothing. The SAVE Act doesn’t and won’t get enough votes to pass. Attempts to include portions of the measure in a continuing resolution (version 4) won’t pass muster in the Senate.

Democratic members of the House of Representatives held a closed-door meeting recently for a tabletop exercise to game out what will happen if Trump tries to subvert the midterms. New York congressman Joe Morelle claimed that plans were laid out for more than 100 different ways Trump could interfere. This means the lag between executive proclamations and court filings/injunctions should be minimized.

When the nation’s intelligence agencies jointly assessed the impact that foreign entities had on the 2020 elections, they broke their conclusions into two categories: election interference (interventions in voter registration, casting and counting ballots, or reporting results) and election influence (actions regarding candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes).

While they found evidence of data collection (state voter rolls are often public or can be purchased), they did not find instances where that information was used to change results.

They did find instances where foreign actors sought to influence public opinion, notably that Russia sought to inflate claims regarding Biden family corruption. That particular conclusion somehow escaped inclusion in the President’s address, but it was prominent in the evening’s dump of formerly classified documents. Other actions by Russia mentioned in classified documents were repeated during the speech, substituting the word “China” for “Russia.”

Paul Krugman’s take:

• Trump is not, to say the least, a man with great inner strength. He lives for external validation, or the appearance of external validation. Clearly, the delusion that the world is in awe of his prowess is key to his fragile sense of self-worth.

• More important, Trump’s boasts about America’s international reputation are part of the case he is building for disrupting and/or rejecting the results of the midterm elections. Trump isn’t just insisting that everything is rigged against him. He’s also insisting that since he’s doing such an incredible job — presidenting like nobody has ever presidented before — nobody should get in his way or place any limits on his power.

• It’s safe to say that at this point nobody who wasn’t already completely in the Trump tank is being persuaded by all this strutting, or indeed by anything Trump said in last night’s low-energy, boring rant. But remember: At this point, none of what Trump says is really about persuasion. It’s all about laying the groundwork for his attempt to destroy democracy.

The inescapable conclusion from Thursday’s Presidential address is that Trump was himself engaged in an attempt to influence public opinion in advance of actions the administration is considering to interfere in the 2026 general election. Put differently, the speech was phase one of a strategy based on the 3Ds: deceive, disrupt, deny!

Thus far, the Trump administration has yet to win a single case (0-15) where states have challenged Justice Department attempts to audit their voter rolls. Homeland Security’s Markwayne Mullin held a press conference on Friday morning where he reiterated threats to withhold FEMA funding from states refusing to cooperate and threatened top election officials in all 50 states with criminal charges if they do not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to feed their voter rolls through a flawed federal database.

There will undoubtedly be other administration actions in the coming weeks. The good news here is that the Post Office has said it will comply with an injunction against a policy seeking to give the agency control over who is allowed to receive mail-in ballots.

What’s as, if not more important than, legal and public protests pushing back against Trump administration voter suppression tactics, will be broad non-partisan get out the vote efforts.

Sign up for Indivisible’s election protection program. “Hands Off Our Vote” is Indivisible’s biggest election protection program ever, organizing in all 50 states to make sure every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot and that every vote is counted. They’re preparing responses to any dirty tricks with numbers Trump can’t even imagine.

On Saturday, August 8, the League of Women Voters’ are organizing a “Unite & Rise for Voting Rights” day of action — part of their large-scale effort to mobilize voters for the 2026 midterm elections. There is already one event on the books for North County residents in Carlsbad, among those occurring in hundreds of cities across the country that day, including Phoenix, Berkeley, Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia.

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Team Trump held a working session yesterday in the White House Situation Room to game out plans for devastating strikes” against Iran in the coming days. Those in the room included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and other senior officials.

Before the meeting, Trump told the Fox News Channel that after the “hard” strikes this week, “[n]ext week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re gonna knock out all their power plants. We’re gonna knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

If the President’s boasts on social media and recent Iranian claims are to be believed, the US military will be (or has been) targeting infrastructure and facilities with the aim of inducing starvation and deprivation in the general population. In a world where the Rule of Law prevailed, these actions could be considered war crimes.

Although the US has never signed on to the International Criminal Court, the Trump administration, via an op-ed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has announced plans to “dismantle” the ICC, “brick by brick, if necessary,” using “all the tools at our government’s disposal.”

In an AI-enhanced White House social media post this week, the President was portrayed sitting with European leaders in front of a map showing Canada, Venezuela, and Greenland as part of the US. And we shouldn’t overlook frequent assertions about taking over Cuba.

Add to all the buffoonery a planned 50% increase in the military budget, is yet another tell that endless military aggressions are a key component of Trump’s vision for Making America Great Again.

On Wednesday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video announcing a new mandatory annual screening program to test all service members aged 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency.

• “I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members, ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best,” Hegseth said in the video.

• “As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting,” he added. “It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness, and by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality, and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation – the absolute best.”

This decision is insane on a bunch of levels.

The first of which is that another Trump official (RFKjr also) has legitimized claims made by ‘manly’ health hucksters on social media marketing blood tests as a means of accessing testosterone as a lifestyle supplement.

Don’t get me wrong here; something(s) in our environment are disrupting endocrine levels across the board. What those things are, who they impact, and whether genetic makeup is a determinate are still mostly unknown.

From an EPA report the Trump administration hasn’t gotten around to deleting:

• Effects from exposure to low levels of endocrine disruptors have been observed as well (e.g., parts-per-trillion levels of tributyl tin have caused masculinization of female marine molluscs such as the dog whelk and ivory shell). Adverse effects have been reported for humans exposed to relatively high concentrations of certain contaminants.

University and medical researchers working on identifying and quantifying endocrine disruptors are among those opposing OMB’s proposed sweeping changes to the processes used to award and administer all federal grant funding. Among other things, the proposal would require political appointees to review grant requests and treat scientific peer review — the current method used to award federal dollars — as merely advisory.

The public review period, which drew more than 93,000 comments, ended this week. The agency says it intends to finalize the rule in time for it to take effect in October. Given the Trump administration’s willful abandonment of standards aimed at protecting the public and environment in favor of the needs of fossil fuel and chemical businesses, there is reason to believe research in this area will be severely impacted.

The marketing of testosterone is deeply intertwined with a manufactured “masculinity crisis,” where online influencers and private clinics frame normal, everyday experiences like fatigue and stress as a hormonal deficiency. This hyper-masculine advertising heavily targets young men, pushing unproven supplements and testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) as a panacea for social and physical dominance.

Much of the testosterone product sold online comes from illicit laboratories who import bulk, raw steroid powders—often manufactured by unregulated chemical companies in countries like China—and use various solvents and carrier oils to convert the powders into injectable liquids or oral tablets.

These black market products commonly have dosages outside the ranges considered effective or safe. They are often cut with unlisted chemicals, fillers, or entirely different compounds, exposing users to unpredictable toxic side effects.

This New York Times Magazine (Gift link) article offers up a broader look at replacement therapies and includes accounts from men who say they’ve benefitted from using them.

Giving testosterone to young, healthy men can trigger severe hormonal, reproductive, and cardiovascular complications, including the shut down of the body’s own natural production. This causes: infertility, testicular atrophy, hormonal dependence, and a male body converting testosterone to estrogen. Moreover, lower testosterone levels can be markers for other serious health conditions.

The military-minded justification for testosterone treatments comes from studies showing muscle mass increases following stressful experiences. Taken by itself, such treatments could be helpful for the 5.6% of the male population with lower testosterone levels.

FYI– The Pentagon has always offered men testosterone therapy if they came in complaining of symptoms associated with testosterone deficiency and their tests showed clinically low T.

I would argue that there’s something bigger than blood tests and testosterone therapies at play here, namely a crusade to drive women and minorities out of decision making roles.

Via the New York Times (gift link)

• “Affirmative action promotions have skyrocketed with ‘firsts’ being the most important factor in filling new commands,” Mr. Hegseth wrote in the opening pages of his 2024 book “The War on Warriors.” “We will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”

• Mr. Hegseth’s book did not provide statistics to back up his claims. Women make up 21 percent of the active-duty Navy, but account for only about 7 percent of active-duty admirals.

• Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined more than two dozen generals and admirals, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, whom he dismissed last year. He has also removed about 40 senior officers, selected by boards made up of peers, from promotion lists.

• More than half of those fired or removed by Mr. Hegseth from promotion lists have been female or Black. At least one female Navy Reserve officer was nominated for promotion to one-star rank earlier this summer.

It’s also worth noting that, historically, warring nations have sought to enhance their militaries’ fighting ability through drug distribution programs. Users of testosterone replacement therapies report increased motivation and decreased fatigue.

German troops during WWII were issued a meth amphetamine marketed as Pervatin. Dubbed Panzerschokolade or ‘tank chocolate’, it was considered a miracle pill for its short-term effects of increased alertness and productivity, even when soldiers suffered from extreme sleep deprivation.

Dextroamphetamine has long been used by the militaries of several countries. US Air Force pilots reportedly still receive the drug in order to maintain concentration and alertness during long missions.

Fenethylline (aka Captagon) played a role in the Syrian civil war, both as a stimulant for combatants and as a revenue source for the Assad regime, generating $5.7 billion in export sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Iraq in 2021 alone.

***

​Hegseth’s announcement triggered backlash from ​Democrats, ⁠who pointed to his ban on transgender service members who often depended on hormone therapy.

“So now y’all support ⁠gender-affirming ​care?” Democratic Congresswoman Summer Lee ​said.

“Sounds like gender-affirming care to me,” Senator Tammy Duckworth added.

***

Final note:

The CHIPS Act funds the production of chips using leading-edge **transistors**.

Trump on the CHIPS Act: “If you weren’t transgender, you didn’t qualify. So they’d get the money, they’d look all over for transgender people to run the company.”

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The nation’s immigration enforcement agencies are once again getting some negative press in the wake of a couple of high profile killings of individuals in Texas and Maine. Neither Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, or Johan Sebastian Guerrero were on ICE lists for capture and detention. Media accounts indicate both men were in the process of legalizing their status.

As of yet (it will be created, trust me on this) no evidence has been produced that either death made the country safer by removing a dangerous individual from the streets. In both cases they were accused of being in vehicles that were being weaponized as a means of evading immigration enforcers.

In the case of the Maine killing, the reason given was that agents felt the public was endangered by this so-called vehicle weaponizing. And spokespersons for immigration agencies asked about so-called weaponization have used alternative math similar to that favored by the President in talking about drug price decreases. When DHS said there was a 1300% jump in vehicle attacks last year, it was an increase from 2 incidents in 2024 to 26 in 2025.

Always-concerned Senator Susan Collins asked for at least a temporary halt to traffic stops initiated by ICE. Word seeped out to the news media that the agency had ordered a freeze on stops initiated by immigration authorities while practices and policies were re-evaluated.

Border Czar Tom Homan went on Fox News to assure the public that any freeze was temporary, and that agents were well-trained and successful operations would continue, regardless. And this morning, the Associated Press reported ICE will be making exceptions to the moratorium on stops.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should continue traffic stops seeming to contradict the moratorium.

To remove criminals from the country, “we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” the president wrote on social media.

Okay, gang. Full stop.

ICE isn’t going to do anything differently, regardless of public reactions or congressional political pressure.

They are doing their work as ordered by the Trump administration. In fact, they weren’t living up to those expectations for a while after an executive reshuffle earlier this year, and are under pressure to ramp up arrests to 2000 daily.

Photographs of the agents on the scene of the Maine killing have been widely circulated on social media. And they are being deleted as fast as they are posted. I get it that trial by social media is always a bad idea, except that ICE enablers seemingly have an unlimited ability to circulate pictures of civilians accused of impeding their efforts. And it seems as though significant efforts are being made to encroach on the First Amendment rights of American citizens who dare to write letters of complaint to agency officials or create memes lampooning the organizations.

I had a few paragraphs written for this story concerning the previous activities of a border patrol agent photographed at the scene in Maine, but every bit of source material on that individual has disappeared from the web overnight. I am posting a photo below because it does appear to show agents wearing body cameras, something the government says they weren’t using.

The Atlantic posted an article indicating that the trigger man for the Maine killing was a new recruit.

• The officer involved in the fatal shooting in Maine was hired by ICE this year from the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, according to the senior official. The officer has worked in federal law enforcement since 2017, the official said. Neither detail has been previously reported. The shooter in Maine has not been publicly identified; neither has the shooter in Houston, where the earlier fatal ICE shooting occurred.

If, in fact, this newly hired individual had received training from a ‘normal’ law enforcement agency, they would have known that firing a weapon toward a vehicle is ‘normally’ considered a bad practice. Of course, if you watch TV copaganda entertainment programming, shooting into vehicles is almost mandatory for catching criminals and saving the world.

We’re not seeing the actions of a few bad apples or undertrained agents in stressful situations. They’re all part of a system created to wreak havoc on a targeted segment of society. For the time being, those supposedly targeted are immigrants tarred with the brush of violent criminality, or, in the case of Ohio’s Haitians, eating people’s household pets.

Here’s Jonathan V Last, in America’s Death Squads Are Real, who goes on to tell the story of Phillipines President Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power:

• In America, we have become inured to incidents in which law enforcement kills civilians. The idea that LEOs can use deadly force at the drop of a hat is accepted by the general public.

• But what the federal government has been doing to people assumed to be immigrants is different from normal police brutality. It is a targeted campaign. We are witnessing, for the first time since Jim Crow, American death squads.

• I understand if that sounds like an exaggeration. But that’s only because we are inside the story and have become acclimated to the horror. When crimes against humanity start happening, the people on the inside are often the last to understand how horrific the situation is.

The reality is that non-white individuals (and those deemed culturally non-white) are targets at present. Based on what’s being said by the White House and the House Majority Leader in requests for upcoming funding, those deemed to be communists are next in line.

I doubt that many line agents even know enough about the Great Replacement Theory to fully understand their role in making America great again for the philosophical heirs of the slaveholder system of economics and culture.

I’m not saying ICE/BP agents are dupes being manipulated by the Stephen Millers of the world -even though there’s an element of truth there. Our badge carrying, mask wearing vigilantes are part of a long tradition of people who feel undervalued being given roles that reward them with validation and opportunities for advancement into parts of the social strata of the elites.

The expansion of immigration enforcement personnel and capabilities, aside from its ugly public encounters, is an on-the-cheap social welfare program capitalizing on a perceived lack of paths to upward mobility due to the cannibalization of wealth by the top strata of society.

Under other historically authoritarian governments, military personnel have been tasked as societal cleansers. The perception of privilege afforded US armed forces and the diversity encouraged in its chains of command made them a less-than-ideal choice for the kinds of short-term carcerationist policies needed to create an authoritarian regime in the available time frames afforded by our historical limitations on governance.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, cleaning up our ‘woke’ military is Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s first priority, not because of combat prowess, but because of being pliable enough to follow illegal orders.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers have told US District Judge Beryl Alaine Howell that the agency may have thousands of documents relevant to Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents on the “potential employment of federal agents and troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices.”

• In a docket entry Monday, Howell, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, said ICE had identified at least 11,103 potentially responsive pages. In addition, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which previously told Howell that it did not have a set timeline on when its search for responsive documents would be completed, found approximately 116,779 pertinent records, the judge said.

Admitting that such documents exist and producing those documents are apparently two different questions, as the government has yet to produce items responsive to the FOIA request.

Evidence against the morality and constitutionality of the programs and practices of ICE continues to mount on a daily basis. The argument for keeping the status quo is ultimately based on the emotional response successfully generated by the right about waves of “illegals” and gang members taking property and freedoms from ‘real’ Americans.

Abolishing ICE and its ilk won’t come about due to facts, op-eds, and charts, no matter how damning. Deaths along the road to an authoritarian state will be falsely justified, denied, or deflected by claims of even greater dangers.

While I agree that Abolish ICE needs to be a baseline for the Left, especially candidates running for and those holding elected office, the larger argument about what comes next, namely a government that serves the people, not the nation’s oligarchs, should be envisioned as the solution. Going backward to the Obama/Biden/Clinton eras is not the same as going forward.

Medicare for all, support for real science, breaking up monopolies, and other sane policies are all part of the picture. Call it the Second New Deal, or the Square New Deal. Or call it something else. I don’t care. But the problems of our headlong rush into becoming an authoritarian state ruled by techno-autocrats need systemic solutions. Not every proposal will make it to the finish line, but every change not demanded will be prevented by bureaucratic inertia.

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In a world where up is down and down is up thanks to propaganda and a so-called artificial intelligence that makes dumb people sound smart and smart people sound dumb, it’s true that the weak can vanquish the strong by simply surviving. I’m not willing to say this is an absolute truth, but there certainly are examples floating around worth examining.

The ‘now it’s on and now it’s off’ war with Iran is my top of mind example at the moment. While I expect that the Trump administration will declare that they’ve ‘won’ by getting Iran to the negotiating table sometime in the next week or so, the reality is that there is no way the US can ever triumph– even if they drop a nuke in the name of stopping a nuke from being developed.

The only victory the White House and its Department of War will ever see is embodied in the satirical art group known as the Secret Handshake’s latest installation on the National Mall near the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: a 10-foot-tall gold-colored “Iran War Participation Trophy” dedicated to President Donald Trump.

• A plaque below the trophy reads: “While some concern themselves with military strategy, diplomacy, or measurable outcomes, President Trump demonstrated the courage to participate regardless of the final score.”

The Strait of Hormuz, the leverage used by the Iranian regime remains a symbol of their will to resist a super power willing to unleash almost unimaginable fire power against even the smallest of targets.

As Paul Krugman points out today, the realities of fossil fuel commerce are no longer solely determined by the amount of crude oil in the world’s marketplaces. On another battlefield where not losing is tantamount to winning, Ukraine’s long range attacks on Russia’s refineries have changed the game.

• Before that war began, Russia was a major exporter of refined petroleum products. But Ukraine’s astonishing mastery of drone warfare has enabled this valiant democracy to carry out an ever-more-effective strategic campaign against Russian energy infrastructure, above all its refineries. Russia not only can’t keep exporting gasoline and diesel fuel, it’s now facing major shortages (and huge gas lines) at home, and may soon be forced to import refined products.

• The result is, as I said, a global shortage of refining capacity. Blas suggests that around 10% of world refining capacity is now out of operation.

• And this shortage of refining capacity makes the collapse of the jerry-rigged deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz less relevant than one might have thought. To oversimplify, a true reopening of the Strait would have made more crude oil available to the global economy, but that wouldn’t have done the global economy much good in the short run, because the world doesn’t have the capacity to turn that crude into usable products.

There is more irony baked into the Trump administration’s foreign policy moves, because it appears the ‘tribute’ to the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s ‘greatness’ will be an additional influx of military aid for Ukraine.

Finally, because there is no way Iran’s theocrats will surrender power, the US is now locked into…wait for it… another ‘forever war.’ I would be remiss to point out that our country’s actual record –forget the propaganda, ask the veterans who fought in those wars– is zero wins.

***

Today’s second example of losing as a winning strategy is a bit more amorphous, in that nobody knows exactly what President Trump will declare in his televised Thursday evening address to the nation.

Not since the days when Nixon’s press conferences were mandatory viewing for lefties (silly truth: we wanted to know if martial law was being declared, triggering a mass uprising that would overthrow capitalism) have I been so on edge about an announced declaration.

What we do know about Trump’s scheduled address is that it will concern the results of the 2020 election. A right wing social media source (sorry, I’m boycotting giving out links to suspected trolls) claims the president will declare Georgia’s Democratic Senators election to be invalid. A more credible source (Reuters) claims the President will reveal new evidence that voting machines were tampered with in his loss to President Biden.

What we also know is that the interim Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, has been declassifying reams of classified information looking for proof to back Trump’s claims about election interference. A massive purge of high level intelligence officials, who conceivably might be willing to undermine those claims, on the basis they were part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy lends credibility to the notion that the President is preparing to establish a foundation for federalizing the 2026 midterm elections.

It’s important to remember at this point that Trump was president during the period he will likely claim to be rife with voter/election fraud, and that no election in history has been as scrutinized as the 2020 election, with those claiming wrong-doing losing in every instance where evidence was asked for.

So the President is going to pull a rabbit out of his toupee and make a bunch of claims. What he decides to do about it is unknowable, given his loss of non-ego related reasoning and whatever words are spoken to him by the last person he sees before taking the podium.

Parker Molloy is urging the major TV Networks not to give Trump’s speech live coverage, a mighty big ask given their willingness to broadcast previous lie-fests:

• What Trump is asking the networks for on Thursday is the one ingredient his plan can’t generate on its own: the biggest audience American television can still assemble, watching uninterrupted while the president tells them the 2020 election was compromised. Truth Social can’t produce that. Fox News will show it either way to viewers who already believe it. Only the broadcast networks can deliver the predicate to the persuadable, wrapped in the legitimacy of a formal address.

• Consider the week this speech caps off. Last week, Trump purged the Election Assistance Commission, the small federal agency that certifies voting equipment and distributes election security grants, leaving it without a single confirmed commissioner four months before the midterms. The White House’s explanation: the president can remove anyone who “may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections.” The FBI, meanwhile, is throwing 260 analysts at Fulton County, Georgia’s 2020 results, working toward a memo deadline of July 17, the day after the speech. PBS’s Liz Landers closed her report on the firings by calling this “a solution without a problem.”

• I hope networks do the right thing and refuse to air Trump’s lies live. Cover it, yes. But not live.

I, for one, believe the only cure for his fixations and tantrums will be a repudiation at the polls so massive that his enablers will be paralyzed with fear just long enough for justice to prevail. Get Out the Vote in 2026 will need to be about more than candidates or causes winning. It needs to be a social necessity. I trust voters will do the right thing if motivated to just cast their ballots.

Miles Taylor, the former Chief of Staff for Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, says we need to be prepared for swapping out a Big Lie for an even Bigger Lie:

• Add this to the list of ways the White House is trying to undermine confidence in the midterms this year. The public is already on edge. And with loyalists now installed atop the DNI, DOJ, and FBI, this administration is mounting a whole-of-government campaign to sow doubt about the vote that it fears it will lose. So much so that they’re firing off unconstitutional executive orders to take over mail-in voting, trying to seize state voter rolls, threatening local election officials with crimes for refusing to comply, dispatching monitors to Democratic cities, dangling FEMA funds as leverage, and so much more. Now add to that list the manipulation of intelligence.

• Don’t let it work. Thursday night, America won’t see any breathtaking new evidence. It will see an old man and a sore loser who still cannot accept that he lost, fair and square. And it will see a man who is willing to burn down public faith in democracy itself rather than admit it. Donald Trump is getting ready to roll out a Bigger Lie than last time. Thankfully, the truth is bigger and better, and (once again) it will defeat him.

It’s entirely possible that whatever Trump does or says about elections may have the opposite effect of what he hopes will happen. Rather than being discouraged, people will be disgusted with his clown show. We can hope that his loss in 2026 and beyond will be our win. Hope will only get us so far; actions are what can make a difference.

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This is the miracle of who we are. We are the is that occupies all of the instants we flow through . . .”

All we ever have is the right now, this very instant.

And then, it is gone. No matter how hard we try, we can never capture a moment, domesticate it, make it static, recognizable, repeatable.

The instant refuses to be bound—the moment is never anything other than a dying star in the limitless cosmos. Instants are always disappearing into the rapidly receding past, vanishing into the next space emerging before us.

At times it seems we are rushing into nothing, racing to dissolution—but the smallness of our transient, momentary selves, fragile, tentative, and trembling, is part of the larger ocean of big time, a drop of the water that is everywhere, in everything.

As Clarice Lispector muses in Chronica “As Fast as I Can Type’:

Goodness, how vast the world has always been and how certain it is that one day I will die. And until then will I have only moments? No give me more than moments. Not because moments are so brief, but because rare moments kill you out of love for their rarity. Do I love you moments? Answer me, you the life that is slowly killing me: do I love you moments? Yes? Or no? I want others to understand what I never will. I want them to give me that: not an explanation, but simple understanding. Am I going to have to live my whole life waiting for Sunday to come?

Yes, we will all die waiting for Sunday to come, pregnant with another moment waiting to be born that will not die with us. In the meantime, the rare moments kill us for their rarity—flashes of love and joy, instants of losing ourselves in the flow of the river time, not clock time but lived experience, the heart of what is.

Lispector was mad to be in contact with IS and she drives it into a corner to draw out the essence of it in Agua Viva: “And in the instant is the is of the instant. I want to seize my is. And like the bird I sing hallelujah into the air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by a hallelujah.”

To read her is to surrender to a kind of wild Zen, untranslated and undisciplined, raw. She turns the clock into something alive, breathing and coursing with the blood of aliveness. In Agua Viva again she asks:

What shall I tell you? I shall tell you the instants. I go too far and only then do I exist and in a feverish way. What a fever—will I one day manage to stop living? Woe is me, who dies so much. I follow the tortuous path of roots bursting the earth. I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze. To the span of my existence I give an occult meaning that goes beyond me. I’m a concomitant being: I gather in me time past, the present and the future, the time that pulses in the tick-tock of the clocks.

This is the miracle of who we are. We are the is that occupies all of the instants we flow through, and who “I” am now is different than who I was when I began to write this sentence as who you are, dear reader, upon your finishing this sentence is not the same as when you began.

In fact, there really is no “I” or “you” to begin with, only the moments we pass through and grasp for only to be killed by their precious rarity and transience. But if we are lucky, and I think we are, we will suffer from the grasping but also get a glimpse of the glory of the hallelujah.

*****

Note on the Summer Chronicles

Over a decade ago, during my time writing for the OB Rag and SD Free Press, I penned a series of pieces over the summer that moved beyond the blog/column form to something a little looser and more open to improvisation and the poetic turn.

Below is the original preface for the first series of chronicles:

In the summer of 1967, the great Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector, began a seven year stint as a writer for Jornal de Brasil [The Brazilian News ] not as a reporter but as a writer of “chronicles,” a genre peculiar to Brazil. As Giovanni Pontiero puts it in the preface to Selected Chrônicas, a chronicle, “allows poets and writers to address a wider readership on a vast range of topics and themes. The general tone is one of greater freedom and intimacy than one finds in comparable articles or columns in the European or U.S. Press.”

What Lispector left us with is an eccentric collection of “aphorisms, diary entries, reminiscences, travel notes, interviews, serialized stories, essays, loosely defined as chronicles.” As a novelist, Pontiero tells us, Lispector was anxious about her relationship with the genre, apprehensive of writing too much and too often, of, as she put it, “contaminating the word.” It was a genre alien to her introspective nature and one that challenged her to adapt.

More than forty years later, in Southern California—in San Diego no less—I look to Lispector with sufficient humility and irony from my place on the far margins of literary history with three novels, two collections of poetry, and a few other books largely set in our minor league corner of the universe. Along with this weekly column, it’s not much compared to the gravitas of someone like Lispector. So, as Allen Ginsberg once said of Whitman, “I touch your book and feel absurd.”

Nonetheless the urge to narrate persists. Along with Lispector, I am cursed with it—for better or worse. So for a few lazy weeks of summer, I will continue to try my hand at the form.

I rise from my slumber every day to digest a cornucopia of reports from around the world. The readers of my five-day-a-week posts help out by enabling dozens of subscriptions for independent writers who in turn have their own news ecosystems to draw from. Reader donations also make it possible for me to look past the paywalls of larger news organizations.

All of this is not a plea for more donations to this publication. I’m doing just fine, thank you. I’m saying this to counter the argument that the available information for informed citizens is shrinking, even as the legacy media shrivels up thanks to an oligarchy intent on extracting assets and leaving behind windows framed by whatever truths deemed necessary for self-preservation and expansion.

It is, however, becoming harder to discern what is real and what is illusion. Before I get to today’s topic, which involves questioning the reality being presented to the public, let me praise two outlets that are rising above the clatter and deserving of your attention–and financial support if you have the ability.

The first one is local: Times of San Diego. Since joining forces with NEWSWELL, a project out of Arizona State providing support and vital administrative services to hundreds of locally focused outlets nationwide, the Times has steadily expanded its ranks of reporters to include some of the best San Diego has to offer. While it’s not focused on scandals as its mission, their ever expanding coverage of a broad range of local issues has made it priority reading in my daily rounds.

Shoutout to editor Andy Keatts, whose years of local knowledge and reporting are being put to good use. One-quibble to just about every local outlet with an opinion section: there’s more to be said about California than what Dan Walters’ analysis offers.

The second example is a national example of a hard working reporter who left the comforts of a corporate cocoon and created an entity that is more than the sum of its parts: Scott McFarland. His morning Daily Editorial forecast of what’s happening in politics is the most comprehensive source out there, beating even outlets like Politico with far more staff and resources. One quibble: so many podcasts/sound bites. I get it; they’re a necessary part of the self promotion necessary to keep a non-corporate entity alive. But I simply will never have time to listen to them all.

***

Okay, kind words aside, here are a few examples of the warped reality existent in today’s headlines.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night, following a sudden illness.

• “Good I am glad he is dead, he can no longer hurt innocent people” -

Lest you think I’ve lowered my personal bar to make light of the dead, let me remind you that the above statement is what the President of the United States said upon learning of Robert Mueller’s death.

Senator Lindsey Graham knew better, as the testimonies about what a great guy he was from his colleagues indicate, but he chose power anyway. He believed that his subordination to the whims of Donald Trump allowed him to have influence on the things that mattered the most to himself.

His finality will be a testament to the fucked up world the South Carolina Senator enabled.

The conspiracy crazies of the MAGA infosystem will have a field day with rumors about whether Putin had Graham executed. How did the woman who called 911 for Graham know that he was having a cardiac arrest event? She was 40 miles away in Baltimore, Maryland. Just sayin…

The President’s hold on the Senate will be further weakened as the lame ducks holding seats vanquished by Dear Leader’s influence and those incumbents (Susan Collins!) who need to show their independence need to decide on whether to rise above the slime.

I’m also happy that the senior South Carolina’s Senator’s passing means the legacy media will have found something else to focus on rather than the other what-his-name Graham’s dropping out of the Maine Senate election. The pointing fingers game was getting ridiculous, and being used by the “dems-in-disarray” crowd to suck the oxygen out of the room. All the (lack of) vetting in the world doesn’t mean squat about the state of things in a political party that thought Eric Swalwell was a swell guy.

The other is it real? story about the Senate is the proof of life statement and photograph offered up by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell on Sunday. He says it will be a while until he returns to cast votes but, rest assured, he is still alive. So that’s that. Until a sudden turn for the worst, preferably at a time convenient for the White House, causes his death announcement.

Wanna laugh? The Hill, anticipating an announcement of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s death, prematurely published a story headlined, “DO NOT USE: A lookback at Mitch McConnell’s time in the Senate.”

In the House of Representatives, Congressman Ro Khanna’s detention while trying to visit a Palestinian village on the West Bank has the Netanyahu Defense League up in arms.

The back story on his detention by armed vigilantes, supported by members of the IDF is as important as the incident itself. And the after-the-fact denials/whataboutisms/dismissals of the situation speak volumes about just how morally decrepit the Netanyahu regime and its enablers are as they try to justify the unjustifiable.

I urge readers to check out the Intercept’s interview and coverage of the entirety of the Congressman’s visit. There’s much more to the story than the congressman’s detention.

What follows Khanna’s social media posts about the incident are a firehouse of attacks calling the Congressman an antisemite, making out of context claims, that he’s a Hamas supporter, and an opportunist seeking to gain stature for a future presidential campaign. It quacks like a MAGA troll brigade, walks like a MAGA troll brigade, and looks like a MAGA troll brigade.

Israel’s government actions have led even centrist Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel to say the days of unconditional support are over. (Unfortunately, he continues to patronize Palestinians, perhaps the easiest ‘balancing’ act in politics right now.)

Funding from the lobbying groups seeking to support Israel has largely become toxic for Democrats in the run up to the general elections. What’s happening now is an attempt to exert their influence to counter the aspirations of a potential candidate for the presidency in 2028. Don’t take my call out on this matter as support for Khanna–there’s too much I don’t know about his politics- but I can assure readers that he’s not the monster being portrayed in social media.

Donald Trump’s hurt feelings about the reporting on his less-than-perfect ‘gift’ Boeing 727-8 from the Qatari government opened up a new portal into the insular world of the White House.

FBI Director Kash Patel was summoned just as he was about to board a flight (mostly to see his girlfriend sing in Chicago) to the Oval Office wherein Dear Leader ordered him to personally conduct an investigation into how New York Times reporters learned that Temu Air Force One was not secure.

Instead, the old and dowdy Air Force One flew to President from Turkey to Great Britain, as an account emerged about Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian plot to assassinate the commander-in-chief. Among other things, the President’s new luxury flying palace apparently lacked the defensive gear to protect it from missile attacks.

The result of Patel’s investigation were grand jury subpoenas issued in the dead of night to the New York Times reporters who wrote about the new plane’s inadequacies. Then, the story of Patel’s working on an investigation from the confines of the White House (as opposed to the FBI offices) leaked. Obviously, the beatings will continue until morale improves at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The list of ‘what you see isn’t what’s really happening’ events grows daily. A few more…

Look for the confirmation hearings of would-be Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday to be a real shit show. Sen Lindsey Graham, who was expected to run the show, is dead. Senator Chuck Grassley has a bee up his bonnet about the president’s slush fund/ deal with the IRS and plenty of ammunition thanks to a 56 page ruling handed down Monday morning by Federal judge Kathleen Williams. And any hopes that the many questions associated with the Justice Department’s lack of compliance with the law ordering release of the Epstein files will be avoided have already been dashed by Democrats, who will hear testimony from at least one of Epstein’s victims.

Speaking of fecal matter, the worst kept secret of the damage done to US Health systems is the destruction of various oversight entities charged with protecting the public.

Heather Cox Richardson:

• The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and ten state health departments covering about 54 million people have run a program called the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, since 1995. Until last July 1 it monitored eight pathogens. Now it monitors only salmonella and toxin-producing E. coli.

Those fresh fruits and vegetables we’ve been encouraged to include more of in diets are now sickening thousands of Americans across 31 states, thanks to Cyclospora cayetanensis, a microscopic parasite that infects the intestines after a person consumes contaminated food or water. Its protective shell makes it impervious to washing of contaminated produce, cooking is required to render it harmless. Since it has as long as a six day incubation period before symptoms like explosive diarrhea manifest, tracing the sources of contamination is challenging at best. And since nobody was in charge of looking for sources until reports of hospitalization emerged, well, consumers are up a certain creek without a paddle.

Finally, there is the war with Iran, which is on again. After months of decrying Iranian/Omani statements about assessing tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration has announced its own 20% toll on all cargo exiting the choke point.

Although I won’t claim you read it here first, keep in mind that the US has already lost more than it will ever stand to gain in this conflict. Our warrior ethos has been proven to be more about flash than substance. The Middle East is undergoing a strategic realignment, one that doesn’t center on any western power for its infrastructure. The ‘drill, baby drill’ economic plan has been undermined by a rapid shift in non-Western economies toward non-fossil fuel sources of power. And the supremacy of the US dollar is no longer absolute, as China has opened the door for other currencies to serve as the benchmark for international trade.

While the legacy media and its acolytes have lost credibility with their accommodations to the oligarchy, there are a host of new outlets vying for your attention. Keeping them alive as the information ecosystems evolve is critical to restoring a time where facts are facts and spin is overt garbage posing as entertainment. In the coming weeks I promise to spend more time highlighting what I see as guideposts for truth in an era where illusion is rampant.

***

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It will take more than court decisions to beat the Trump administration’s voter suppression schemes for the mid-term elections.

As things break badly for the Trump administration –unless you’re in on the grift– it has become clear that their strategy heading into the mid term elections is an all-of-the-above approach aiming to negate voting power.

On Thursday, using the powers given to him by a recent Supreme Court ruling, the president summarily fired via email the remaining Senate confirmed Democratic members of the Federal Election Assistance Commission, an agency which helps support, train and equip local elections administrators. One Republican member of the commission was asked to resign by phone, leaving the body without leadership.

EAC is a small federal agency Congress created after the tightly contested 2000 election to write election management guidelines, provide best practices to state and municipal election officials and develop specifications for testing and certifying voting systems. EAC guidance is voluntary and the agency holds no enforcement authority.

It’s likely the administration will announce installation of “acting” commissioners, who will overlook the detail of a lack of Senate confirmation to attempt to impose a shadow version of the SAVE Act containing restrictions of voting.

While this latest administration move is prompting lots of hand wringing from voting rights advocates, it is lacking in substance and unlikely to get much accomplished without being blocked by court decisions.

No matter how many people he fires or how many executive orders Trump writes, the Federal Government has zero authority over elections. None-the-less, an assault on the infrastructure of voting via attempted withholding of funds continues.

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of federal terrorism prevention funds by requiring states to change the way they conduct elections. Documents from FEMA say states would be forced to transition to paper ballots, verify citizenship of voters and make other changes to election procedures. The funding, which totals $1 billion annually, helps pay for physical barriers and other security measures as well as planning and drill exercises and cybersecurity protections.

Similar actions on controlling voting procedures by executive order have been unilaterally blocked by the courts.

Bill Pulte’s appointment as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the president’s suggestion that he’ll be looking into “rigged elections” in that capacity, has triggered a bipartisan firestorm of criticism, since the office has typically limited its probes to foreign matters.

Department of Justice (DOJ) Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced a plan to deploy election monitors to jurisdictions in Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Dhillon was among those advocating for efforts to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, urging contributions to his defense fund, and appearing on Fox Business to urge the Supreme Court to intervene in the matter.

Via The New Republic:

• “The Department of Justice, like it has in Republican and Democrat administrations in the past, is sending election monitors to places where there have been problems with the integrity of elections,” Dhillon later said on the Joe Pags Show, a conservative radio show, before reading the list of states and the specific areas that would be watched.

• “Boston, Maricopa, Fairfax County, Detroit, Ramsey, Prince William, Lansing, East Lansing,” Dhillon said. “Some of these jurisdictions are jurisdictions where I’ve got personal knowledge of there being problems in the past ... the more eyes on elections, in my opinion, the better.”

The White House effort to force states to surrender their voter rolls has been blocked repeatedly by the courts, but the Department of Justice is actively shopping for an appellate court to overturn judicial orders. Obviously, the goal is to use any rolls it obtains (some GOP states have complied) announce it has found fraud, manufacture a pretext, and dispatch federal law enforcement to seize ballots.

According to CNN, Trump’s childhood friend Peter Ticktin has access to the president these days and is urging him to place this fall’s midterms under federal control. He reportedly helped draft a 17-page executive order that would justify the emergency on the grounds of foreign interference in electronic voting machines.

The draft order, seen by by PBS News earlier this year, the president would act to further restrict mail-in voting, mandate hand counts of ballots, force every registered voter in America to re-register in person, and effectively prohibit the machines that states use to run their own elections.

Here’s Miles Taylor, Homeland Security Director from the first Trump administration:

• If you doubt the danger here, consider three facts. Ticktin was in the Oval Office last week, seated beside Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of breaching her own voting systems and who walked free after Trump pressured Colorado’s governor into a commutation. Sources told ABC News, months ago, that Trump had personally reviewed versions of the draft order and discussed it with those involved. And the president has already signed an executive order attacking mail-in voting and voter registration, which felt like it was plucked straight from these conversations.

• So when the White House waves this all away by saying that Ticktin “overstates” his influence, just remember, that’s what they always do. Trump officials said the same thing about every crank whose proposal later appeared overthe president’s signature. Having sat in those rooms, I can tell you the distance between “the president has never heard of it” and “the president signed it this morning” is way, way shorter than most Americans can imagine.

***

Now, all of this sounds pretty grim, and on the surface it is. Even if the Trump administration loses all its court cases aimed at controlling the mid-term elections, they’re waging a propaganda battle aiming to convince reticent voters to doubt the integrity of the election process.

Many organizations have marshalled legal forces to oppose this poisoning of the electorate, and I continue to wish them well. But it strikes me that an effective counter to such nefarious propaganda will need to involve more than the traditional candidate and/or issue centered get out the vote efforts in the coming months.

The idea of celebrating the act of voting, via social media, neighborhood gatherings, concerts, and rallies by groups like Indivisible could serve as a counterforce to the negativity being projected on the public. Now is the time for creative thinkers to put forth suggestions that will make voting as much as a social necessity as it is political.

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It seems like certain people would like to make the words ‘socialism” and/or “communism” into campaign weapons.

Let me keep this simple. All the factions, be they MAGAts, old line liberals, or self described independent thinkers, are engaged in flipping the lens through which politics is viewed so that the real threats to our society’s well-being appear smaller. Think of looking through the wrong end of a set of binoculars.

The problems created by extreme wealth are impossible to ignore. Even the Wall Street Journal’s pollsters can’t spin the problem away, with a recent survey finding that the number of Americans who think capitalism is working very or somewhat well has dropped from 60% a decade ago to 48% today.

Paul Waldman at Public Notice:

• The idea that the economic system is rigged in favor of powerful interests is so obvious that it’s almost impossible to deny; three-quarters of Americans in a recent CNN poll agreed that it’s rigged. While Trump himself made that argument in 2016, he has done everything he could to rig it even further: cutting taxes for the wealthy, slashing regulations on behalf of corporations, eliminating consumer protections, and targeting every program in sight that offers respite or benefit to those without power, from food stamps to rural development to protection for people with disabilities.

• At the same time, Trump has allied himself closely with the increasingly unpopular tech industry and its repellent leaders, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. The ludicrous wealth of these centibillionaires has become a symbol of capitalism’s injustice and tendency toward inequality, while Americans grow livid about rapacious tech companies planning to eliminate their jobs with AI and planting data centers on every available patch of land.

• On top of that, Trump has rapidly accelerated almost every aspect of what we might call the Scam Economy. Crypto schemes, ubiquitous gambling, hidden fees for everything, a mountain of social media cons — this administration’s attitude is to let it all bloom (especially if Trump and his family can cash in).

Those with (or worshiping at the altar of) extreme wealth base their being on the notion that property rights are a human right. There is no “center” when it comes to what morally, psychologically, and/or philosophically drives humans.

For those who believe human rights take precedence, property rights are a tool through which society’s well-being can be attained. Tools like laws aren’t perfect, and refining them is a necessary part of the process.

President Trump’s adopted the idea of impending communism as a substitute for migrant caravans as a tool for motivating his base. The problems with this approach are myriad, starting with the administration’s acquisitions of ownership shares in major industries, whatever it is at the moment that Trump sees as a direction for the economy, and the reality that the number of Americans who remember the Cold War days is rapidly declining.

What’s more dangerous at this point are the establishmentarian Democrats and the liberal pundit class who are focused on the victories of a class of upstart politicians and tier activists supporters as a threat… to a return to the neo-liberal politics of the last half-century.

As American liberals abandoned the premises of Roosevelt’s New Deal, they replaced them with the concept of a market-driven society/economy/ethic, with financial gain (or loss) as the arbiter of success. This opened the door for all kinds of compromises, from charter schools to for-profit health insurance to techno-worship, as pathways for the future.

Given the obvious failures and excesses arising from this strategic mindset, a brigade of wannabe influencers and consultants are engaging in slapping warning labels on what they see as threats to the way things are (or used to be).

For purposes of this essay, I’ll cite articles in the current edition of The Atlantic, long considered a prism for lefty/intellectual thought. (All the links are gifted, so you should be able to read them)

Staff writer Idrees Kahloon (formerly of the Economist) has taken on the role of debunking what he calls The Consumer Socialism Trap. It’s an almost gleeful take down of the promises socialist leaning electeds in big blue cities are making; noting the revival of Milwaukee’s ‘sewer socialism’ by the likes of NYC’s Mamdani.

He’s eager to point out the idea of delivering excellent public goods and competing directly with private enterprise, modern elected activists are seeking to prove the viability of public ownership and build long-term working-class power. …Until the money runs out.

• Perhaps cities like New York will refine a functional version of consumer socialism, in which subsidies are balanced with enormous supply-side expansions in the number of homes and child-care centers, leaving everyone better off. Perhaps capitalism can be appropriately fettered within the confines of a select few cities, inspiring a nonviolent, nationwide socialist revolution. That would be a remarkable triumph for Mamdani’s consumerist ideology, which wears the transgressive label of socialism but is born primarily out of anger over prices (and an innate American antipathy toward taxes). American collectivism may be, as Mamdani promised, warmer than rugged individualism. It will certainly be warmer than Soviet or Maoist collectivism. It could also be just as unworkable. And it will certainly be extraordinarily expensive.

Next up is David Brooks, always ready to slap a respectable veneer on maintaining the way things are (or how he thinks they should be), with Democrats Became Great by Fighting the Left. He’s ready to revive the Cold War struggles within the Democratic party, calling for sensible moralists in the cult of Hubert Humphrey to prevail over authoritarians dressed in keffiyeh drag.

Never mind that we find ourselves in an objectively different situation than that of a century ago; that the floodgates of wealth can be opened at will to subjugate even modest change. Taking back the damage of Citizens United or emptying our concentration camps or the gutting of science isn’t ever going to happen thanks to the leadership of Chuck Schumer or Rahm Emanuel.

• But at least the battle lines are clear. Every Democrat is going to have to ask themselves: Do I support the moral realism of the mainstream Democrats, with their pragmatic reformist temper, or do I support the progressives, with their utopian belief in human perfectibility and their willingness to concentrate power in order to take aggressive action on behalf of social justice?

• I was the kind of kid who had a Hubert Humphrey poster on my bedroom wall (I know, I know), so I’m on team moral realism. I’m a big fan of the virtue of humility and get a little nervous when I run across people who think they are so smart that they can redesign society from the ground up.

Finally, there is Jonathan Chait in There’s Nothing Democratic About These Socialists, wherein he characterizes the rhetoric of individuals in a pluralistic organization and brush strokes of anti-imperialist sentiment as evidence of antipathy toward democratic politics, with and without the capital “D.” We’re supposed to buy into the fact that successful organizing campaigns have caused DSA to become what it originally opposed.

• What the DSA demands of the Democrats is not merely to advocate more generous social policies, or more cautious foreign affairs, but to welcome, or at least accept, authoritarians as their coalition partners. Democrats are likely to face the same kind of pressure that Republicans confronted with MAGA’s hostile takeover: first to ignore their allies’ sinister goals, and then to rationalize and eventually justify them.

• As authoritarian elements gain strength, they become more essential to the success of a political coalition, and the price of confronting them rises. The Republican Party has long since passed the point of no return. The easiest time to draw clear moral lines against the encroachment of illiberalism within one’s own camp is at the beginning.

I’m not a member of DSA, and if I cared enough to dive deeply into their internal politics, I would likely find profound differences with my beliefs. I support the DSA on the level that they are at least willing to acknowledge the supremacy of human rights over property rights. As is true with any fundamental reckoning of what a system has become, this is bound to be a bumpy road.

But at least it’s a road and not a detour.

Longtime DSA member Bhaskar Sakara, writing at Jacobin, does a good job of seeing through Chait’s claims for those readers who’d like more detail.

I’ll close by quoting Cory Doctorow’s essay du jour, which popped up in my mail box as I struggled through the dozens of rewrites that came together in today’s posting. I realize he’s more libertarian than I’ll ever be, but see his voice as a necessary ingredient in understanding the world today.

• If you believe property rights are tools, you can order landlords who want to ban their tenants from installing balcony solar to fuck off. If you believe property rights are human rights, then landlords can force their tenants to pay every dime the fossil fuel industry demands of them. “Property right as tool” allows you to defend a farmer’s right to install a wind-farm, and still, to block a data-center from installing a gas turbine on its own land.

• “Post-political” movements are made up of people who don’t know what politics are. A “centrist” is ultimately a rightist, because the foundation of rightism is the supremacy of property. It is the ideology that breeds hereditary aristocracy (”property is a human right” means that it’s a violation of your human rights to expect you to work for a living if you emerged from a lucky orifice). It’s the ideology that breeds oligarchy.

• Politics aren’t a bunch of cultural signifiers or identity markers. Politics aren’t about who rules - it’s about whether we are ruled *at all*, or whether we are free.

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You know, if former president Biden –hell, any former president– did the things our current chief executive did on a foreign trip, the conservative media and their allies would be demanding he step down immediately and get the healthcare he obviously needed.

The US is once again at war with Iran. The memo of understanding between the two nations has officially been discarded, the Straits of Hormuz is a battlefield where commerce dares not happen, US allies Kuwait and Bahrain have been bombed by Tehran, Iranian facilities have been targeted over 80 times by assorted weaponry, and ‘our’ president is openly talking about targeting civilian infrastructure that should be considered a war crime.

The devil here is in the details, and Trump’s trip to Turkey for a NATO summit is chock full of them. Coming off a not-so-good week in his scheme to make over the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s capitol’s appearance, the President has attempted to assert his personal dominance over European allies. The harder he tries, the worse it gets.

The trip across the Atlantic was portrayed as an opportunity to show off the Boeing 747-8 Qatari gifted to Trump personally, and refurbished to be even more luxurious as the new Air Force One. The jet was updated from its light blue and silver design to a new red, white, navy, and gold color scheme featuring a massive American flag on the tail.

The US President was met at the airport by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who took Trump’s elbow to guide him (he appeared confused) as they walked to an awaiting motorcade.

Via France 24 News:

• In Ankara, Turkish riders on horseback flanked Trump’s limousine as it drove through the hushed streets to the presidential palace where an honour guard in red and blue uniforms greeted him.

• Trump stood to attention as the “Star Spangled Banner” played and even attempted a greeting in Turkish -- before Turkish fighter jets streaked overhead trailing red, white and blue smoke.

• In a theatrical touch, around two dozen soldiers wearing historic-style suits of armour, pointed helmets and what appeared to be fake beards and moustaches stood outside the palace itself.

In advance of the summit, Trump reignited a feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, posting a doctored photo of her seeming to adore him with the caption “Restraining order needed.”

New York Times reporting on the summit noted the ‘carnivalesque quality at this year’s NATO.

• After Mr. Trump arrived, he sat beside Mr. Erdogan at a bilateral meeting in the Turkish presidential complex and promptly stirred up some fresh drama. He criticized Denmark and reminded NATO leaders that he still had designs on Greenland; complained that Britain, France and Italy did not do enough to support the United States in its war against Iran; said Europe was a lot better 20 years ago; and mused on Ms. Meloni, characterizing his quarrel that has caused so much international agita as something verging on playful.

Trump later plunged the gathering into disarray by ordering the US to ⁠cut trade ties ⁠with Spain

• “I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said of the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. “Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.”

An otherwise positive meeting with Ukraine’s President was marred by Trump, who repeatedly called Zelensky “Putin.” At various points during a Q&A with reporters, the President referred to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Japan,” saying they’d fired more than 100 missiles at a US aircraft carrier.

Asked if he thought the ceasefire with Iran was dead, Trump responded, “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. Do you know what scum is? They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people. They’re liars. They’re cuckoo.”

Seeking to put a positive spin on Trump’s statements, NATO ⁠Secretary-General Mark Rutte went so far as to tell reporters that the summit of the ⁠alliance’s leaders produced a huge sense of unity, saying, “We felt this ⁠alliance is ⁠more together than ever.”

Then there was a last minute change of schedule. The President announced he’d be taking the old Air Force One ‘for old times sake” to Mildenhall Air Force based in Great Britain, sending the newer plane in advance “to give our Great Military Heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new addition to the Air Force fleet.”

In reality, given the escalating conflict with Iran, the president’s security team opted for the older plane because the newer version lacked the air defense systems needed in case of confrontation.

***

Steven Semler at Popular Information has been digging into the actual costs of the war with Iran: $103 billion over 120 days and counting. A detailed methodology for the $103 billion estimate is available HERE.

***

In case you haven’t heard, Republicans in Washington DC pushed back against reports that Sen. Mitch McConnell is brain dead by claiming to have “20 minute phone calls” with the former Majority Leader. His office said he’s “working closely with his staff” from the hospital.

Jay Kuo:

• CNN commentator and longtime McConnell adviser Scott Jennings posted that he spoke with McConnell “for just shy of 20 minutes” about Iran, Ukraine, “the unfolding situation in Maine” and Senate history. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he had a “lengthy and substantive conversation” with McConnell covering national security, and a spokeswoman for Senate Whip John Barrasso said he and McConnell spoke for about 20 minutes on the Platner scandal and a recent Supreme Court ruling.

No doubt they’re hoping for a hologram version for McConnell’s defense appropriations subcommittee to get moving on the Trump administration’s request for a massive funding increase for military spending.

***

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I awoke this morning at 3am and my brain was on full throttle. That’s life on chemo.

There was that episode of Dark Winds (Netflix) that we watched last night, telling a story from the point of view of the Navajo Tribal Police that’s a lot different from what we hear from “regular” shoot-em-up copaganda. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. Opened up ye olde emails and there was…

The collapse of Platner’s campaign for Senate in Maine. I couldn’t help but think of Nathan Fletcher’s fall from grace. He learned the hard way that healing society’s wounds starts with oneself. (And I think he’s putting in the work.) Platner’s reportedly trying to hold off quitting to influence who should replace him on the ballot. He should just quit; his influence can only serve as an obstacle.

There have been lots of mea culpas from Platner supporters in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, proof that viewing candidates through a populist lens isn’t enough. There are systemic issues involving behavioral patterns cultivated to encourage preservation of patriarchy and racism worth considering. I’m not talking about ‘political correctness’; this is a necessary part of thinking about the place where Democrats want to see our country go.

The historical connection between Zionist ultra-nationalists and the Democratic party’s center will be officially dead, as establishmentarian Rahm Emmanuel delivers a speech at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday. His condemnation of Netanyahu and the Israeli government’s actions towards the Palestinians and the Middle East in general will give cover to mainline Democratic candidates for office to support ending US subsidies for Israeli procurement, and sanctions against people/institutions participating in violence against Palestinian civilians or property. Where this leaves the PACs and SuperPacs dumping money against candidates not worshiping at Netanyahu’s throne is anybody’s guess.

The progressivism of Emanuel’s stance ends at the point where he calls for a “23 state solution” to the creation of a Palestinian state. It reeks of the kind of neo-liberalism that’s taken center-stage in US Foreign policy for the past 50 years. I’m not going any further on this subject, as the abject genocide against Gazans and the oppressive rule of Hamas have made a way out to sovereignty for Palestinians impossible to imagine at present. I know that the nepo-baby Kushner’s plans would end up creating an apartheid state; figuring out a way for reconstruction and representative governance shouldn’t include a Riviera on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

While I’m on the topic of religious nationalism, I saw two articles worth considering this morning.

At the New Republic, The Ultimate Goal of the Right’s “Religious Liberty” Crusade by Charles McCrary, covers the Trumpian Religious Liberty Commission report, making it clear this issue is a stalking horse for a much greater scheme to remold America into a place where theology takes over reality.

At The Bulwark, three mainstream protestant scholars penned Why We Won’t Stay Silent About Christian Nationalists in Our Own Churches. It points out that the ideas behind Hitler’s heretical Deutsche Christen movement are alive and well, via experiences at the June conference in Ogden, Utah, titled “The War for Normal,” organized by fledgling religious publisher New Christendom Press.

• The conference, which was extreme enough in its own ways, was dwarfed by attention in Christian and then secular spaces on Antelope Hill—which was not only a vendor but a sponsor of the event. In addition to the SS material, the Antelope Hill table also featured The Sword of Christ, a volume Sauvé and his copastor and podcast cohost Eric Conn admitted to owning and praised as “anti-Zionist” in their hour-long response video. The book contains the bizarre assertion that Christianity explicitly condemns interracial relationships. Nowhere in the response did the pastors condemn Antelope Hill; instead, they affirmed the importance of publishing “historical” sources. (Clearly not committed to historical accuracy, Antelope Hill has been caught editing anti-Christian passages out of at least one of its volumes.)

Fuckery with health benefits. Data reported by the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that 2.6 million people dropped out of Affordable Care Act plans as of February, 2026.

Via The Associated Press:

• An AP analysis of the data finds that Ohio and Oklahoma each saw a more than 32% decline in ACA enrollment over the past year. They lost larger shares of their covered populations than any other state.

• Following closely behind, and losing more than a fourth of their enrollees, were Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri.

• Florida, a state that relies highly on ACA insurance in part because it did not expand Medicaid and is home to many gig workers and entrepreneurs, still has more residents in the marketplace than any other state, at nearly 4 million. But it also saw the highest number of enrollees drop coverage this year — around 443,000.

The Trump administration would like us to believe these drops in enrolment came because of anti-fraud programs baked into the last year’s Big Beautiful Budget Bill, but a state official in Oklahoma tells another story:

• “It’s all about affordability at this point in time,” he said in an interview, adding that he expects the problem to continue with insurers forecast to raise rates again next year.

The number of ACA enrollees departing from the plan as of February does not include those who stayed enrolled but are unable to afford the payments, a number that will grow as the months go by and inflation eats away at consumer buying power.

Those who have insurance shouldn’t be breathing a sigh of relief, as RFKjr is preparing to announce eight new members of the US Preventive Services Task Force ahead of an August meeting for the panel. It will be the first meeting for the group since the HHS Secretary dismissed members and cancelled the last four scheduled sessions.

The task force plays a major role in determining how easily Americans can access screenings for cancer and other illnesses, via recommendations and grades based on their assessment of confidence in the screenings’ net health benefit. Insurers are generally required to provide free coverage for whichever screenings the group gives an “A” or “B.”

I don’t know if snake handling or eating dead raccoon penises will be blessed, but considering that the bosses are RFKjr and Dear Leader, anything is possible.

Of particular concern (for me, anyway) will be decisions covering imaging (Xrays, CT scans, PET Scans and MRI’s) which are costly and sometimes inconclusive. I sweat each and every one of those imaging sessions, and wouldn’t think about saying no even if the results are muddied.

I’ve gone far enough into my early morning list for today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll cover “consumer socialism” and ideas for a New Square Deal.

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In the artist’s house, the walls were covered with paintings of California dreamscapes, a rugged path in the woods that led to a clearing where a river flowed to the sea, cows grazing in vast green pastures, a solitary wanderer on a dirt roadside in the country—and in all of them scores of vivid golden poppies, larger than life, gleaming, imbuing the world with their radiant glory. With the paintings filling nearly every bit of wall space, the house had been transformed into a world of deep blue skies and lush horizons. The skylights and large windows bathed the rooms with sunshine at the break of day.

I moved slowly past a friend sleeping on the couch to get my coffee, quietly returned to the back room, opened the door and stood still with the dawn, taking a sip from my mug.

The backyard was home to a flood of nasturtiums and a weathered wooden chair next to a rusty bicycle. Behind the fence were chickens clucking in the yard next door, and you could hear them rustling in the coop before a rooster crowed. It was a lovely damp and misty morning, but it was taking a while for the detritus of bad dreams and insomnia to clear out of my head.

Always, in the wee hours, the dark patches come, the fears and regrets, the dread and yearning, the inexplicable landscape of the endlessly wandering mind. Breathing deeply in the pitch black, heart beating, your thoughts race and cycle through, over and over again. You pray for the annihilation of sleep and slowly disappear back into nothing, dream fitfully, then fade into grace.

In the guest room off the side yard, there was a large parchment hanging on the wall over the bed with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Write it on your heart that every single day is the best day of the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.

Amid my reading of Emerson, a train rolled by in the middle of the street in front of the house. I went back outside, headed down the walkway on the side of the house to the front porch and watched it. It was empty, nobody to wave to, just the clatter of the wheels on the rails, a ghost train. The yard was full of wisteria and Lilies of the Nile and the air was sweet. As the train moved on into the distance, it was quiet again. The coffee was strong and nicely bitter. I gazed at the jacaranda by the sidewalk surrounded by fallen purple blossoms, like beautiful tears.

The night before, my dreams were tinged with strife and death and loss and grief. I couldn’t remember anything but the feeling, deep blue and aching, before the sleep came like velvet.

Later that day, after my friend had left, I drove over to help my son move out of the room he rented in a little country house that he loved and was sad to be leaving. The skies had cleared, and it was gorgeous, one of those rare moments that shakes you out of your complacency and makes you grateful for being alive.

Taking a break from hauling boxes, I sat on the back porch and stared at the distant trees across the meadow beyond the white fence, their leaves fluttering and glowing in the afternoon sun in a way that made them seem to burst with life. It was as if they were beckoning to me in some unknown language.

Time slowed to a crawl as I sat and meditated on the scene. It was as if the whole of the physical world was infused with consciousness, and I was merged with it. And there we were, singing like the poppies in the pictures by the artist I didn’t know, but nonetheless, shared this mystery with somehow. My son put down his box and came over silently to join me. I put my arm around him, and we sat back for a long while, doing nothing, lost in reverie.

We drove nine hours on the open road before hitting grueling traffic with the car packed with boxes, moving home. The next day in the brilliant morning light, the Mexican poppies danced in a gentle breeze in our front yard. I drank my coffee on the front porch, stood up, and walked over to take in this last burst of bloom before they died for the season. The vivid yellow core of the flower held the whole universe. As the bees buzzed and flitted around my head, I was filled with joy.

Everything is always ending, always being born.

Note on the Summer Chronicles

Over a decade ago, during my time writing for the OB Rag and SD Free Press, I penned a series of pieces over the summer that moved beyond the blog/column form to something a little looser and more open to improvisation and the poetic turn.

Below is the original preface for the first series of chronicles:

In the summer of 1967, the great Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector, began a seven year stint as a writer for Jornal de Brasil [The Brazilian News ] not as a reporter but as a writer of “chronicles,” a genre peculiar to Brazil. As Giovanni Pontiero puts it in the preface to Selected Chrônicas, a chronicle, “allows poets and writers to address a wider readership on a vast range of topics and themes. The general tone is one of greater freedom and intimacy than one finds in comparable articles or columns in the European or U.S. Press.”

What Lispector left us with is an eccentric collection of “aphorisms, diary entries, reminiscences, travel notes, interviews, serialized stories, essays, loosely defined as chronicles.” As a novelist, Pontiero tells us, Lispector was anxious about her relationship with the genre, apprehensive of writing too much and too often, of, as she put it, “contaminating the word.” It was a genre alien to her introspective nature and one that challenged her to adapt.

More than forty years later, in Southern California—in San Diego no less—I look to Lispector with sufficient humility and irony from my place on the far margins of literary history with three novels, two collections of poetry, and a few other books largely set in our minor league corner of the universe. Along with this weekly column, it’s not much compared to the gravitas of someone like Lispector. So, as Allen Ginsberg once said of Whitman, “I touch your book and feel absurd.”

Nonetheless the urge to narrate persists. Along with Lispector, I am cursed with it—for better or worse. So for a few lazy weeks of summer, I will continue to try my hand at the form.

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Core Civic, the private prison company, has sold two of the largest immigration detention facilities in California to the Department of Homeland Security, according to according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with the federal government paying $739.2 million for the 1994-bed Otay Mesa facility and $732.6 million for the newly-opened 2,560-bed California City facility. The sale closed on July 2.

The company said via press release it anticipates the sale of the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County and the California City Detention Facility in Kern County will bring the company an estimated net proceeds of approximately $1.1 billion. The press release said it expects CoreCivic will continue running the day-to-day operations of both facilities under existing contacts with ICE.

This transaction is a win-win for the company, which says it is exploring selling more sites to DHS, and Donald Trump, who owns shares in Core Civic. The California facilities sale and continuing operating contracts means the company no longer has the burdens of property ownership and continues to collect income from ICE. The Securities Exchange commission filing says $716 million will go to debt paydown, which will enable the company to buy back stock, increasing the value to existing shareholders.

Finally –the big reason why this sale stinks– is that it frees the company from compliance with the California law allowing state authorities, including health officials, to inspect private prison facilities.

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There is nothing Trump touches in the present that is not immediately corrupted to the core: crypto, global trade, AI, tariffs, the international legal system, humanitarian aid, chips and even football/soccer.

There are a couple of “clips” on my writer’s board saved up for use after the holiday weekend that I’m going to take a stab at mentioning today. Post July 4th to Labor Day is normally a quieter time in politics. This is definitely an abnormal year.

Also I’m learning to recognize the patterns in chemo treatments (I had a five hour session on Sunday); namely that whatever steroids get included give me a day’s grace period from the worst of the mind-numbing fatigue that settles in on days two and three.

***

Communism seems to be the buzz word in MAGA land in recent days. The President is upping the core of his stump speech, including that word right next to his self-praise and attacks on immigrants. There’s a great deal of irony going on there, historically speaking, given comparisons with the economic actions of dead communist nation-state leaders.

The White House campaign can be best summered up by the following social media message: “You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

As Betty Bowers(*) noted, “Democrats are communists in the same sense that Donald Trump is a Christian: They are not.” (*America’s Finest Christian)

Via the New York Times article on Trump’s visit to South Dakota and his ‘conversation’ with Theodore Roosevelt’s hologram:

• Mr. Trump paid special tribute to President Theodore Roosevelt, attending the opening of his library last week. Mr. Trump cast Roosevelt as his presidential alter ego, whom he deemed “a great he-man,” and compared Roosevelt’s ethos and accomplishments to his own.

• But Mr. Trump and Roosevelt may disagree on one thing. “Patriotism means to stand by the country,” Roosevelt wrote in 1918. “It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”

• “It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth,” he added, “whether about the president or anyone else.”

The rise of the communist boogie man is about more than DSA-type candidates winning elections. Some of the highest profile opponents of Democrats in general are having a problem; pro-Israel and crypto/tech/AI PACs involvement of election contests has become a negative factor.

The extent of the Trump administration’s dump and pump crypto schemes, where smaller and less savvy investors got their clocks cleaned; the ‘Summer of Lude’ phenomenon represents a turning away by younger people from the promises tech bros have been making; and the movement against data centers has crossed partisan lines.

NOTE: On July 4, 2026, Democratic Socialists of America passed 120,000 members, making them the largest socialist organization in United States history and surpassing the Socialist Party of America under Eugene Debs, which reached its peak dues-paying membership in 1912.

***

The mess called Congress. A real-life “Weekend at Bernies” scenario is unfolding. Media outlets have obtained June 14 recordings of a DC dispatcher calling for an ambulance to be sent for an “unconscious, unresponsive” individual at the address where Senator Mitch McConnell resides.

The former majority leader is slated to retire at the end of this year, and his health problems have been obvious to many on capitol hill and in the media for months now. Now, it is being suggested that McConnell had a serious heart attack three weeks ago.

His office admitted that the Kentucky Senator was hospitalized in a June 22 press release, claiming he was awake and working on issues with staff, adding that he wouldn’t be voting.

Take those statements with a grain of salt. An frail 80 year old man receiving CPR would end up with a damaged sternum leading to breathing problems, which would require intubation. Short version: he’s on life support.

Getting him declared legally dead would require the opinions of two physicians and McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, left for China three days after the dispatcher call, for “long-planned philanthropic endeavors and a meeting with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.” Her spokesperson has noted her stay in China was for family matters and did not necessitate an immediate return.

There is lots of confusion about the August 3rd date circulating in relation to McConnell being declared legally dead. Kentucky’s constitution does not make such an exclusion: a special election would still be required 90 days after his death; that election would fall on November 9, the Monday after the general election, for a replacement Senator serving out the rest of the term, which ends in January.

Then there’s bill 622, which Kentucky’s legislature passed after the election of Democrat Andy Beshear, taking away the governor’s ability to veto legislation. HB 622 did not amend the state constitution’s language concerning special elections. So what’s likely to happen is that an appeal will be made to the US Supreme Court, which will wait for hints/instructions from Dear Leader before making or not making a decision.

So it’s a mess, complicated by the fact that McConnell serves as Chair of an otherwise evenly divided Senate Rules Committee, which effectively creates a deadlock should any legislation requiring its involvement arise. Additionally, there’s the speculation that recently primaried out Rep. Thomas Massie might run for the Senate seat; he might not win, but it would cause a glorious drain on various MAGA PACs’ treasuries.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has announced the chamber will resume efforts this week, and that he’s hoping that a rebellion of right wingers blocking attachment of the SAVE Action to a Defense Department resolution will end.

***

I don’t expect Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch to get tossed out of a third story window, mainly because the White House isn’t tall enough to ensure such a death, and because we haven’t adopted all those Russian procedures for disposing of disloyal officials yet.

But, if last weekend’s White House report, branding Smithsonian leadership as radical activists who can’t be trusted is any indication, there are changes coming for the institution.

• “As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

Bunch is a tough cookie, and certainly can be expected to push back against his probably fake.

Certainly there will be an effort to fire Historian Anthea M. Hartig, the first woman to serve as director of the National Museum of American History. (You know, that horrible place where as many as five thousand July 4th attendees were forced to shelter during a storm.)

The Council’s report said that institution:

• “confronts visitors with materials intended to undermine faith in American institutions and the longstanding shared ideals of the American people. We must be committed to restoring truth and sanity in how American history is presented and taught.”

***

The New York Times reports that Trump personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asked him to review Team USA’s Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension after his red card.

Days later, FIFA reversed the suspension. It’s the first time since 1962 that FIFA has overturned a World Cup red-card suspension. FIFA is supposed to suspend countries whose politicians interfere in how the World Cup is managed. You can expect this issue to be brought before the Arbitration in Sport committee in Switzerland.

Via Jordan Zakarin at Progress Report:

• Like America’s CEOs, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has fallen over himself to flatter Trump, including handing him the organization’s inaugural “peace prize” weeks before the president attacked Venezuela and Iran. The soccer federation also rents an office in Trump Tower that it barely uses. The Balogun decision is another tribute to Trump, and it’s already triggered international outrage.

• Belgium’s coach likened it to April Fool’s Day. The Belgian football federation has called for an investigation. And UEFA, the governing body of European football, plans to echo that demand. Triggering Europeans probably delights Trump’s base, but this entire tournament has been focused on finally establishing the United States as a true soccer nation, and as much as that requires Americans to love the sport, it also mandates the rest of the world respecting the American game.

***

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Seated behind a desk once used by George Washington, surrounded by immigrants who’d recently taken the oath to become US citizens, New York’s Mayor gave a patriotic speech on July 3.

To hear the right wing media and their echoists on social media talk about it, you’d think he was ripping a page out of Vladimir Lenin’s playbook.

Since being accused of being a communist is just about the only thing left in the GOP’s bag of political tricks, I thought it would be useful to post the entire text and video so people could see for themselves just how ridiculous those commentaries are. (Video at the end of post)

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York Harbor. Long before the name “New York” had ever been spoken, Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazzano and Hudson after whom we’ve named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs.

When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land, lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising, a city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing world-wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.

Tomorrow, our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. Two hundred and fifty years of a grand experiment in self-governance — an experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. Two hundred and fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together — both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see?

Here at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City.

The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington. In July of 1776, our city simmered under the yoke of oppression. The British had imposed a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers, and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self-evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill.

The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governors Island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned and we were soundly defeated. After only a few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse.

But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat-bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental Army survived to fight another day. Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river’s edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City’s waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since — an opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities — like everything in New York City — are not given. They are won.

In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a recently emancipated Black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well — and to help hundreds of others do the same. He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York Harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before: a home. Weeksville still stands today — a living, breathing testament to what we know America to be: a place each of us has the power to make.

The Harbor was busy those years, as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today, Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island — Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity.

Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew.

Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of Black Americans north during the Great Migration; it drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War; it invited countless others from the West Indies, and South Asia, and West Africa, and across the world. And it is what brought my family to this city when I was seven years old.

My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America — the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here.

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty [...] hither have they fled.” And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see?

We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.

Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.

Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family.

Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.

We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods.

We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots.

We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: “Love it or leave it,” they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?

Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July — I think too of the ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons — today, we call it City Hall Park.

There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow — that we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison — grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name: America.

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.

Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.

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