Music: Bill Charlap Trio — ‘What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?’
Why Munich 1938 concessions to Nazi Germany haunt talks on Ukraine
Politico reports: Handing over massive fortification lines to an expansionist neighbor hellbent on destroying your state tends to be a bad idea. In 1938, ceding the Sudetenland and its dense network of forts, forests and trenches led to the rapid collapse of Czechoslovakia’s ability to defend itself against Nazi Germany. There are fears in Europe that Kyiv’s ability to resist Russia will be similarly devastated if Donald Trump — swayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin — presses Ukraine to hand…
Pam Bondi has turned the DOJ into a branch of the White House
Ruth Marcus writes: Other Attorneys General have shared close—to some, disconcertingly close—relationships with the Presidents who appointed them. Robert F. Kennedy was his brother’s modestly qualified A.G. and consigliere at the age of thirty-five. Eric Holder once described himself as Barack Obama’s “wingman” and the President as “my boy.” But, even on a team of Trump sycophants, Bondi stands out for her fawning devotion. At an early Cabinet Room praise session, Bondi turned to Trump and said, “President, your first…
Roger Alford: What I saw inside Pam Bondi’s DOJ
Roger P. Alford served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in the first Trump administration, and as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the division in the second term. He writes: The Republican Party today is a battleground. The confrontation isn’t between traditional conservatives and Trump supporters. Rather, it pits genuine MAGA reformers against MAGA-in-name-only lobbyists. It’s a fight over whether Americans will have equal justice under law, or whether the…
Republican bid to help Trump move past Epstein falls flat
The New York Times reports: When House Republican leaders rushed to leave Washington for a long August break, they seemed desperate to quell the anger among their supporters about the Trump administration’s backtracking on a promise to release files related to its investigation of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But halfway through a five-week congressional recess, the clamor shows little sign of quieting. While Republicans had hoped that legal rulings might insulate them from having to confront the issue,…
The lies behind Trump’s D.C. troop surge
Robert J. Shapiro writes: Last week, Donald Trump claimed the authority to deploy the country’s military to the streets of Washington, D.C. to help fight crime. Yet, hard data show it’s not about crime in the nation’s capital. Instead, the evidence points to other, more troubling reasons and aspirations, especially the president’s personal sense of entitlement to power, MAGA’s approach to partisan politics, and an implied threat to public opposition to his exercise of power in the future. Trump is…
An account using the same name as Trump’s BLS pick posted red-pilled conspiracy theories
Wired reports: In the months leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, a now deleted Twitter account bearing the full name of E. J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), betrayed a seeming obsession with promoting election denial conspiracy theories while talking about violent threats to those who stood in Trump’s way. The account, which used “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III” as its screen name for a time, was linked by the…
Earth’s continents are drying out at an unprecedented rate, new study warns
Science Alert reports: All over the world, fresh water is disappearing, and a new analysis reveals that much of it is entering the ocean, with drying continents now contributing more to the alarming rise in global sea levels than melting ice sheets. The research team, led by Earth system scientist Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar from FLAME University in India, says that urgent action is required to prepare for much drier times ahead, thanks to climate change and human groundwater depletion. Using more…
Music: Robert Wyatt — ‘A Last Straw’
Trump poses a threat to the U.S. military
David French writes: One of my life’s greatest regrets is that I didn’t join the Army sooner. I was commissioned at age 37, late for the military, and I didn’t exactly impress my officer basic course instructors with my physical prowess. But I made it through, and I spent eight years in the reserves, with active-duty deployments to Iraq and South Korea. I love this country, I believed in our missions, and I felt great purpose playing my very small…
Trump wants troops on the streets of DC — crime is a flimsy pretext
Philip Bump writes: Governors of three states — Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia — are sending members of their state National Guards to D.C. to … well, theoretically to combat crime but, if the past week is any indicator, mostly to stand near tourist sites and wear uniforms. This isn’t because there’s no crime in D.C. to combat (of course there is, as the right-wing media insists one acknowledge) but because the mission as established by President Trump isn’t…
Trump’s military occupation of D.C. is hurting local businesses too
Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital and forcing a federal law enforcement takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department is not only terrorizing residents and workers, it’s also harming local businesses. Washington, D.C., restaurants are experiencing significant drops in reservations, and bars are seeing fewer customers. Online reservations for D.C. restaurants plunged more than 25 percent in the days immediately after Trump announced the takeover of D.C. police for the first time in…
U.S. economy is on the brink of recession, says Moody’s chief economist
Business Insider reports: Mark Zandi sees trouble ahead for the US economy. The Moody’s Analytics chief economist recently predicted in a post on X that the US economy is on the brink of recession following some of the latest economic data. While Zandi later noted that he doesn’t think the US economy is in a recession yet, there are certain industries that have already entered one. Yet, that’s just one of the reasons he thinks that the US economy is…
Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism — the reason Trump defends it at all costs
Kyle J Anderson writes: How do we explain this alliance between the seemingly antisemitic Maga movement and Israel? Analysts usually point to two major factors. First is the power and influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups, donors, media figures and political operatives, famously analysed by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Second is the role of Christian Zionists in the Maga movement, including prominent figures like the current American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee has explicitly stated that his…
AI bubble: Sam Altman says, ‘investors as a whole are overexcited about AI’
TechSpot reports: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged what many economists have suspected for months: the artificial intelligence sector is in a bubble fueled by overexcited investors. In a dinner interview with reporters in San Francisco, the ChatGPT chief compared today’s AI investment frenzy to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s – a rare moment of candor from a leader whose company sits at the center of the boom. “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole…
Music: Maverick Sabre & Chronixx — ‘Her Grace’