Renaming the Defense Department is a pathetic (and expensive) stunt

Renaming the Defense Department is a pathetic (and expensive) stunt

Tom Nichols writes: In 1949, after two years that included a massive reorganization of the U.S. military (and the establishment of an air force), Truman christened the new United States Department of Defense, which consolidated elements of the previous War and Navy Departments. That name was good enough for Truman, who served in combat in World War I and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. And it was good enough for President Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme allied commander, who…

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The multiple factions that make up MAGA

The multiple factions that make up MAGA

Asha Rangappa writes: It’s tempting to think of MAGA as a single movement, but it’s really a composite of several factions with parallel (and occasionally conflicting) agendas in play. That’s why it’s so hard to get a handle on what, exactly, is going on — especially when there are so many things going on at once. Ever since the Musk takeover of government in Trump 2.1 (where is he now, btw?), I have been meaning to map out the different…

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Decision-making far more widely distributed across the brain than previously thought, study finds

Decision-making far more widely distributed across the brain than previously thought, study finds

Live Science reports: Researchers have completed the first-ever activity map of a mammalian brain in a groundbreaking duo of studies, and it has rewritten scientists’ understanding of how decisions are made. The project, involving a dozen labs and data from over 600,000 individual mouse brain cells, covered areas representing over 95% of the brain. Findings from the research, published in two papers in the journal Nature, suggest that decision-making involves far more of the brain than previously thought. The mammoth…

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Federal judges voice their frustration with the Supreme Court: ‘They don’t have our backs’

Federal judges voice their frustration with the Supreme Court: ‘They don’t have our backs’

NBC News reports: Federal judges are frustrated with the Supreme Court for increasingly overturning lower court rulings involving the Trump administration with little or no explanation, with some worried the practice is undermining the judiciary at a sensitive time. Some judges believe the Supreme Court, and in particular Chief Justice John Roberts, could be doing more to defend the integrity of their work as President Donald Trump and his allies harshly criticize those who rule against him and as violent…

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Trump is erasing the boundary between law enforcement and warfare

Trump is erasing the boundary between law enforcement and warfare

The Intercept reports: President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela. “We just … shot out a drug-carrying boat, lot of drugs in that boat,” he said. “These came out of Venezuela.” A senior U.S. defense official offered a more coherent statement, confirming to The Intercept that “the U.S. military conducted a precision strike against a drug vessel operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”…

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Trump is using scare tactics to pressure the Supreme Court to rule in his favor on tariffs

Trump is using scare tactics to pressure the Supreme Court to rule in his favor on tariffs

Ankush Khardori writes: Donald Trump is making a last-ditch effort to salvage his beloved, beleaguered tariff policy, heading to the Supreme Court in hopes that the Republican appointees will come to his rescue. The desperation is both palpable and warranted given the conspicuous weakness of the administration’s legal arguments, as underscored by a series of lower court rulings against him. That has in turn led the president and his aides to make increasingly histrionic public claims about what will happen…

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RFK Jr. and the White House buried a major study highlighting the risk of cancer caused by alcohol

RFK Jr. and the White House buried a major study highlighting the risk of cancer caused by alcohol

Vox reports: Most Americans still don’t know that alcohol can cause cancer — and the alcohol industry is working hard to make sure it stays that way. For the past three years, the industry, aided by its allies in Congress and later the Trump administration, has sought to discredit and eventually bury a major analysis that offers new evidence of the link between drinking alcohol and getting sick and dying from various causes, including cancer. It appears their campaign has…

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Trump is accusing foes with multiple mortgages of fraud. Records show 3 of his cabinet members have them

Trump is accusing foes with multiple mortgages of fraud. Records show 3 of his cabinet members have them

By Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers. President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator and a state attorney general. Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages…

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Trump’s military deployment in LA cost taxpayers $120 million, Newsom says

Trump’s military deployment in LA cost taxpayers $120 million, Newsom says

The Los Angeles Times reports: California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles amounted to costly political theater, saddling taxpayers with a nearly $120-million bill. Newsom’s office said the newly revealed price tag was tallied from estimates provided by the California National Guard about costs incurred since June, when Trump sent more than 4,200 National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles. That included $71 million for food and…

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Why we should tune into the orchestra of the animal world

Why we should tune into the orchestra of the animal world

Jay Griffiths writes: Sound is life. The sound of God’s voice created life, in Christian understanding. In the womb, sound is the first of the senses to apprehend the world beyond the body: a fetus is able to hear their mother’s voice, while a chick in the egg hears the song of its parent birds. Hearing is thought to be the last sense to leave us in our dying, and we speak of the silence of the grave. Healing has…

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The Trump regime’s fake transparency on Epstein

The Trump regime’s fake transparency on Epstein

Aaron Blake writes: We don’t know why the Trump administration suddenly reversed itself this summer on its promises to release extensive new documents about the Jeffrey Epstein case. What we do know is that the administration has responded to a bipartisan outcry over its handling of the matter by repeatedly doing things that might seem on paper like significant steps toward transparency, but have proven to be far less than meets the eye. Many of them point to what a…

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The MAGA influencers who are rehabilitating Hitler

The MAGA influencers who are rehabilitating Hitler

Yair Rosenberg writes: “The story we got about World War II is all wrong,” a guest told Tucker Carlson on his podcast two weeks ago. “I think that’s right,” replied Carlson. The guest, a Cornell chemistry professor named David Collum, then spelled out what he meant: “One can make the argument we should have sided with Hitler and fought Stalin.” Such sentiments might sound shocking to the uninitiated, but they are not to Carlson’s audience. In fact, the notion that…

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Project 2025 group wants women to get married, stay at home and have lots of babies

Project 2025 group wants women to get married, stay at home and have lots of babies

The Independent reports: The right-wing think tank behind Project 2025 is now crafting new policy suggestions, including an incentive for married couples to have more children, according to a report. Following its controversial 900-page blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term, the Heritage Foundation is now drafting a new position paper that includes calls for a “Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family,” referring to the program to develop the first nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported. The forthcoming paper,…

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Graham Platner’s campaign to unseat Sen. Susan Collins is off to a strong start

Graham Platner’s campaign to unseat Sen. Susan Collins is off to a strong start

Eoin Higgins writes: Speaking to a crowd of over 6,500 in Portland, Maine, on Labor Day, Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner offered his assessment of the American political system. “We do not live in a system that is broken,” said Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer and combat veteran who aims to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2026. “We live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended.” Platner was appearing alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as…

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