Music: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest — ‘Recurrent’
JD Vance pretends almost no Americans are antisemitic
The Times of Israel reports: US Vice President JD Vance claimed in an interview on Sunday that almost no Americans are antisemitic and that concerns about antisemitic voices are raised as a way to avoid discussing “a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy” on Israel. In the interview with the publication Unherd, Vance also downplayed concerns about Nick Fuentes, the popular far-right antisemitic podcaster, and said that Christianity is “very much at the heart” of America’s…
Neo-Nazi terror group, the Base, steps up U.S. operations as FBI pulls back
The Guardian reports: Amid high-profile arrests in its Spanish cell, the American-born and designated neo-Nazi terrorist group the Base – once a major preoccupation of FBI counter-terrorism efforts – has all but faded from US headlines. But a flurry of online activities shows the group is still active stateside and considers the US an operational nerve center. Headed by Rinaldo Nazzaro, an ex-Pentagon contractor turned alleged Russian intelligence asset, the Base has been busy of late pursuing European expansion: besides…
In Congress and at home, Ilhan Omar faces Trump’s anti-Somali racist attacks
The New York Times reports: When Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, became an American citizen in 2000, she viewed her U.S. passport with pride. But ever since President Trump was first elected in 2016, she said, she has come to view it as a “document of safety.” “I have carried my passport with me since he first became president,” Ms. Omar, a Somali-born refugee who emigrated to the United States when she was 12, said in an interview on…
Trump’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is Stalinist
Michael Mann and Bob Ward write: The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would no doubt have understood and even appreciated the latest attack by the Trump administration on climate researchers and their work. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is to be dismantled after more than 50 years at the forefront of global research on climate science and monitoring. This is the latest step in the administration’s climate Lysenkoism and its relentless purge of climate researchers who…
CBS and CNN are being sacrificed to Trump
Franklin Foer writes: The fate of Warner Bros. Discovery is no longer a regulatory matter. It is a medieval tournament, in which the king invites rival bidders to compete for his approval. To acquire the media company, the aspirants—Paramount and Netflix—will have to offer a sacrifice: Whoever can damage CNN the most stands to walk away with the prize. This is one of those moments in Donald Trump’s presidency when an event that would otherwise be recognized as a death…
The genocides The New York Times forgot
Zachary Jablow writes: In the winter of 1981, six years into Indonesia’s occupation of the island nation East Timor, The New York Times Magazine published a report about the island that may as well have been written about Gaza any time since October 7th, 2023. Referring to the relatively small groups in the United States protesting their government’s role in the occupation, correspondent Henry Kamm wrote, “There is substance to these protests, even if, at their most extreme, they degenerate into hyperbole—accusations of ‘genocide’ rather…
The universe may be lopsided – new research
By Subir Sarkar, University of Oxford The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. But my colleagues and I have published a new study suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction. Should we care about this? Well, today’s “standard cosmological model” – which describes the dynamics and structure of the entire cosmos – rests squarely on the assumption that it is isotropic (looks the same in all directions), and…
Music: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest — ‘It Stays With You’
U.S. oil blockade of Venezuela is pushing Cuba toward economic collapse
The Wall Street Journal reports: Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis. And it’s about to get worse. The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to…
Tucker Carlson at center of raging battle for MAGA’s future
The Washington Post reports: Tucker Carlson had some concerns. So he called President Donald Trump. The right-wing podcaster and provocateur wanted to understand why the U.S. was attacking alleged drug smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, and he warned against pursuing regime change there — a prospect that has alarmed the more isolationist “America First” Republicans in Trump’s movement. The conversations last weekend, which Carlson recalled in an interview, show how the Fox News castoff is at the center…
Turning Point USA is lining up behind a JD Vance presidential bid
The Wall Street Journal reports: Before Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, he was readying for JD Vance to become the next president of the United States. Now, Erika Kirk is determined to make that happen. In her kickoff remarks for Turning Point USA’s first major event since his death, Kirk’s widow told the 31,000 attendees: “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” The vice president will be the…
Paulina Borsook predicted the rise of tech fascism
Tech fascism didn’t rise in secret — it grew in plain sight. Why didn’t most journalists or politicians notice? In this episode of The Nerd Reich Podcast, host Gil Duran speaks with legendary tech critic Paulina Borsook, author of Cyberselfish, the prophetic book that warned about the rise of Silicon Valley authoritarianism and technofascism decades before Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the far-right tech elite took power. We dive deep into how Silicon Valley’s toxic libertarianism evolved into a…
If you are an American who isn’t white, you are at risk of being kidnapped by federal agents
Adam Serwer writes: Last July, while on his way to his job as a security guard at a cannabis farm in California, George Retes was tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and arrested by federal agents conducting an immigration raid. The agents ignored the license plate on Retes’s car and the sticker on his windshield, both of which identified him as a U.S. Army veteran, and did not even bother to determine whether he was a citizen before strip-searching him and locking him up…
Reps. Khanna and Massie seek to find Bondi in contempt over Epstein files
The Washington Post reports: Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) said Sunday that they will seek to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress for not releasing more documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi’s top aide, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he didn’t take their threats seriously. Khanna and Massie wrote legislation that passed Congress nearly unanimously and was signed by President Donald…
U.S. government’s historic role as trusted information source is under threat
The Washington Post reports: The covid.gov website says covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese lab, although scientists are in fact deeply divided over its origin. A widely read report posted on energy.gov/topics/climate concludes that humans’ impact on climate is relatively small, a finding sharply at odds with the scientific consensus. On DHS.gov, the government informs Americans that nearly 2 million undocumented migrants have “self-deported” this year, an assertion that mystifies researchers. And cdc.gov/vaccine-safety dismisses the conclusion that vaccines do…