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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Dr. John

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans r&b piano wizard Dr. John. Enjoy!

^{Dr. John - Such a Night}

“ONE YEAR AGO, AMERICA WAS A DEAD COUNTRY, NOW IT IS THE ‘HOTTEST’ COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.”

-- Donald Trump

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News and Opinion

Scott Ritter : Trump deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia over Social Media Rift

Israel Apologists Think “No No, We’re Starving SICK Kids!” Is A Winning Argument

I will probably spend the foreseeable future periodically reminding the world that when everyone was angry at Israel for starving children in Gaza, Israel’s apologists spent days loudly proclaiming that no, they were actually just starving sick children.

As their defense they said this. They actually believed this helped their case.

Let me back up a bit.

On Wednesday, The New York Times posted an editor’s note on an article it had published the previous Friday which included a horrifying photo of an emaciated child named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq. Caving to pressure from Zionists and influence ops like the Israeli propaganda outlet HonestReporting, the Times went out of its way to clarify that al-Mutawaq “had pre-existing health problems,” which Israel apologists instantly and predictably spun as proof that the media are lying about Israel starving Gaza.

This is simply unbelievable.

After generating a tsunami of hate towards Israel with that terrifying picture, the NYT now quietly admits that the boy has preexisting conditions.

NYT, you knew that Hamas uses babies with preexisting illnesses.
We’ve been saying this for months… https://t.co/SOwZ0LMtyS

— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) July 29, 2025

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet claimed that The New York Times was guilty of “a blood libel in 2025.”

Israeli media outlets like The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, i24 News, YNET and Israel Hayom went ballistic, as did Jewish News Syndicate.

“New York Times stunningly rolls back claims about viral photo of starving Gaza boy,” reads a New York Post headline.

“New York Times admits using misleading cover photo of emaciated Gaza child,” blared Fox News.

“NYT Adds Sick Editors’ Note to Viral Photo of Child Starving in Gaza,” proclaimed The New Republic.

Conservative pundit Glenn Beck threw a furious shit fit.

AIPAC hilariously accused the notoriously pro-Israel New York Times of being “instinctively against Israel”.

Israel apologists like David Frum, Gad Saad, Brianna Wu, Eyal Yakoby, Eylon Levy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Eli David, Stephen L Miller, David Collier, Noah Pollak, and John Podhoretz went nuts on Twitter.

“They quietly added an editor’s note, but the lie already went global,” tweeted the Israel Foreign Ministry account.

Zionist billionaire Bill Ackman said that Israel should sue The New York Times and other outlets for libel.

CNN’s Scott Jennings tweeted that the photo was evidence that a “propaganda mission” had been fulfilled.

And it was all complete bullshit. All of it.

The mother of this child has been interviewed.

She said: “My son was born in December 2023, during the war, without any chronic illnesses. Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war.” https://t.co/zBWOFVe1jL

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) July 30, 2025

Any expert in the field will tell you that the first people likely to die in any famine will be young children, the elderly, and people with chronic health problems. Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq is two of the three. Israel apologists are citing obvious evidence that Gaza is being starved and claiming it’s evidence that Gaza is not being starved, and bizarrely acting as though sick children being starved to death makes Israel look better instead of worse.

An independent fact-checking platform called Misbar reports the following:

“Misbar interviewed Hedaya al-Mutawaq, the mother of 19-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, and found Israeli claims about her son’s condition to be misleading.

“‘My son Mohammed was born in December 2023, during the war, without any chronic illnesses,’ Hedaya told Misbar. ‘Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war.’

“She emphasized that Mohammed was healthy and of normal weight at birth. ‘Over the past four months of displacement, his condition worsened due to the severe shortage of food. That is when he developed acute malnutrition.’

Misbar included a photo of Mohammed which his mother provided, showing a healthy-looking infant prior to Israel’s increased starvation campaign. [go to link to see photo. -js]

So Israel is killing disabled kids using siege warfare to deprive them of food and medical care, and its defenders are claiming this makes Israel look like the heroes in this story rather than the villains. It takes a special kind of psychopathy to think this is a winning argument.

This isn’t even the only time they’ve done this.

The other day Israel’s official Twitter account tried to claim that a photo of a dead skeletal man proves people are sharing disinformation about Israel, because it turns out the man had untreated diabetes. Back in December 2023, Human Rights Watch published an article titled “Gaza Blockade Puts People with Diabetes at Risk.”

Israel’s COGAT account tweeted that “Hamas is using photos of sick children to push the ‘starvation’ narrative and blame Israel” by pointing out that a starving 14 year-old child in a photograph actually has “a genetic disease.”

They’re actually trying to argue that people with chronic illness suffering under a siege more than healthy people is evidence of their innocence, rather than the normal thing you’d expect to be seeing at this point if Israel was intentionally starving a civilian population.

This is a new level of disgusting, in two years of record-shattering levels of disgusting.

I don’t expect that I will ever let Israel’s supporters live this one down, and neither should you.

NY Times Issues SHAMEFUL "Editors' Note" on Gaza Famine Story

The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza

The mathematics of famine are simple in Gaza. Palestinians cannot leave, war has ended farming and Israel has banned fishing, so practically every calorie its population eats must be brought in from outside. Israel knows how much food is needed. It has been calibrating hunger in Gaza for decades, initially calculating shipments to exert pressure while avoiding starvation.

“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” a senior adviser to the then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said in 2006. An Israeli court ordered the release of documents showing the details of those macabre sums two years later. Cogat, the Israeli agency that still controls aid shipments to Gaza, calculated then that Palestinians needed an average minimum 2,279 calories per person per day, which could be provided through 1.836kg of food.

Today, humanitarian organisations are asking for an even smaller minimum ration: 62,000 metric tonnes of dry and canned food to meet basic needs for 2.1 million people each month, or around 1kg of food per person per day. As Gaza has slid into famine this summer, Israeli officials have variously denied the existence of mass starvation, claimed without evidence that Hamas steals and hoards aid, or blamed hunger on UN distribution failures, sharing pictures of aid pallets awaiting collection inside the border.

They pointed to deadly and chaotic food distributions by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US and Israeli-backed logistics startup, as proof that Palestinians had access to food. Yet data compiled and published by Israel’s own government makes clear that it has been starving Gaza. Between March and June, Israel allowed just 56,000 tonnes of food to enter the territory, Cogat records show, less than a quarter of Gaza’s minimum needs for that period.

Even if every bag of UN flour had been collected and handed out, and the GHF had developed safe systems for equitable distribution, starvation was inevitable. Palestinians did not have enough to eat.

At least 91 killed seeking aid in Gaza as US envoy Steve Witkoff visits Israel

At least 91 people have been killed and 600 wounded while waiting for aid in Gaza over the past 24 hours, as the US envoy, Steve Witkoff, visits Israel for ceasefire discussions and to inspect food distribution. On Wednesday night, crowds of hungry people had gathered at the Zikim crossing with Israel, waiting for trucks loaded with humanitarian aid to enter the besieged strip, when they were shot. Al-Saraya field hospital said it had received more than 100 dead and wounded after the shooting, while the death toll was expected to rise, the Associated Press reported.

On Thursday morning, 19 people seeking aid were killed by Israeli soldiers outside aid distribution points in the central Gaza Strip and in Rafah in south Gaza. Gaza is in the throes of famine, according to the international authority on food insecurity. Seven children died of hunger on Wednesday, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths to 154, the Gaza health authority said.

“Dying of starvation is slow and painful,” the World Health Organization said in a statement on Thursday. “A starving child, among the most vulnerable, might cry constantly from pain until becoming too weak to even do that. If not urgently treated, a child with acute malnutrition will die.” The UN agency added that it would take “months, if not years” to reverse what it called a “man-made tragedy”.

As Gaza’s famine has deepened, social order has broken down. It is common for crowds of hundreds of desperate people to wait for the rare aid truck to enter Gaza and to loot the vehicle once it arrives. ... The UN has said the key to stopping the looting of aid is to reassure the population that a constant, adequate supply will enter Gaza. Israel controls aid crossings into Gaza and has been accused of creating the hunger crisis through its blockades of humanitarian supplies – something it denies, alongside its rejection that there is starvation in Gaza.

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 1-August

Israeli police release settler accused of killing Palestinian activist

Israeli police have refused to release the body of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and journalist who helped make the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, while the settler accused of killing him, Yinon Levi, has been released from custody.

Hathaleen was shot to death on Monday night during a confrontation between settlers driving a bulldozer in the village of Umm al-Khair in the occupied West Bank and residents of the town. A video appears to show Levi firing his gun wildly and then people screaming as Hathaleen, standing a distance away in the town centre, collapsed.

Levi was released from custody by a court on Tuesday and placed under three days of house arrest, which ends tomorrow and allows him to roam free. According to Levi’s lawyer, Avihai Hajabi, the court found that there was evidence supporting his claims that he acted in self-defence, and ordered his release.

Levi, who was earlier put under sanctions by the then US president Joe Biden and later removed from the sanctions list by Donald Trump, could still face charges. Despite the release of Levi, Hathaleen’s family is still struggling to recover his body from Israeli police so that they can hold his funeral. ...

Israeli police said they would not release Hathaleen’s body until his family agreed to 10 conditions, including limiting the funeral to 15 people and burying his body outside his birth village, according to a lawyer representing the family.

Israel Tells Hamas It Will Start Annexing Parts of Gaza If It Doesn’t Agree to Israel’s Ceasefire Terms

Israeli officials have sent a message to Hamas that if the group doesn’t accept the latest ceasefire proposal, Israel will begin annexing parts of Gaza, The Times of Israel reported Wednesday, citing other reports in Israeli media.

According to Israel’s Channel 12, Israel gave mediators its response to Hamas’s latest proposal on Tuesday night and isn’t expecting Hamas to accept the offer. Israel is threatening that if Hamas doesn’t agree to its terms, it will start annexing the so-called “buffer zone” Israel established along the Israel-Gaza border that cuts into Gaza’s territory.

Haaretz reported earlier this week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed the idea of annexing Gaza to appease Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is threatening to quit the government over the small amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza in recent days due to the international outrage over Israel’s starvation of Palestinians.

Dmitry Orlov: Israel’s WORST Defeat Yet - Putin Stuns Trump with Bombshell

Trump Says India Will Face 25% Tariffs and a ‘Penalty’ for Buying Russian Oil and Military Equipment

President Trump announced on Wednesday that he will be imposing 25% tariffs on India and an unspecified “penalty,” steps he said were being taken in response to New Delhi’s own trade barriers as well as its trade relationship with Russia.

The announcement came after the president had been threatening to impose “secondary tariffs” on Russia’s trading partners if a deal wasn’t reached to end the war in Ukraine. On Monday, Trump said Russia had “10 or 12 days” to conclude the conflict, shortening a deadline that he had set earlier.

“Remember, while India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their Tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the World, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

“Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE — ALL THINGS NOT GOOD!” the president added.

Russian economy interest rate cut

‘Classic tinpot dictator’: Trump exports his assault on democracy to Brazil

Over the past six months, Donald Trump has been accused of rapidly dragging the largest democracy in the Americas towards authoritarianism. Now, the US president seems bent on undermining the region’s second largest democracy too. Since early July, Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Brazil’s institutions, slapping 50% tariffs on imports from the South American country and sanctions on a supreme court judge – partly in retribution for what he called the political persecution of his ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly masterminding a failed coup.

“Rarely since the end of the cold war has the United States interfered so deeply with a Latin American country,” the Economist declared last week. “I feel for the Brazilians,” said Steven Levitsky, the Harvard University political scientist who co-wrote How Democracies Die, a bestselling book about democratic erosion. “This is a very authoritarian political force that’s doing enormous damage to my country’s democratic institutions and rights – and I wish it would stop at that. It’s painful to see the [US] government do damage to other countries’ democratic institutions as well.”

The US has an ignominious track record of interfering in Latin American affairs, through CIA-backed coups and military interventions. But Levitsky said he had never seen trade policy weaponized in such a way: “Brazilians have worked now for generations to build the strongest, most democratic system they’ve ever had … and this sort of reckless, casual assault on democratic institutions pains me.”

Trump’s effort to help Bolsonaro dodge justice over his alleged 2022 coup, by pressuring Brazil’s government and supreme court, has thrilled the ex-president’s supporters. They see Trump as Bolsonaro’s best chance of avoiding jail when the supreme court announces its verdict in the coming weeks. But Trump’s meddling has infuriated millions of Brazilians from across the political spectrum who are appalled at what they call an intolerable foreign ploy to subvert their democracy, 40 years after it was restored after two decades of dictatorship.

“In the old days they’d send in the marines. Now they impose tariffs,” said Rubens Ricupero, a former finance minister and ambassador to Washington, who predicted that Trump’s behaviour would provoke a wave of anti-US nationalism.

Trump’s tariffs face skepticism in court hours before latest round is set to kick in

Donald Trump’s global tariffs faced significant skepticism in a federal appeals court on Thursday, as judges investigated whether the president had overstretched his powers just hours before the latest sweeping round of duties is set to kick in. The full 11-strong bench of the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC is considering whether Trump exceeded his authority in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on a large number of US trading partners. Judges repeatedly asked if Trump was justified in relying on emergency powers to effectively tear up the US tariff schedule without consulting Congress.

Businesses challenging his strategy accused the White House of engineering a “breathtaking” attempt to force it through, unlike any trade move attempted by a US administration in two centuries. The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump has used to invoke emergency powers and enforce many of his tariffs, “doesn’t even say ‘tariffs’”, one of the judges noted. “Doesn’t even mention them.” In May a three-judge panel of the court of international trade blocked the import duties on grounds that Trump’s use of IEEPA was unjustified. The appeals court has stayed that ruling pending the outcome of Thursday’s hearing.

“The government uses IEEPA all the time,” said Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil division, representing the administration, to the court. He conceded, however, that it was the first IEEPA had been used to implement tariffs. The US trade deficit – the gap between what it imports to and exports from the world – has “reached a tipping point”, claimed Shumate, enabling Trump to take emergency action. “It’s affecting our military readiness,” he said. “It’s affecting our domestic manufacturing capability.”

But Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing businesses challenging the tariffs, argued that Trump was laying a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years”. The administration is effectively saying “that our federal courts are powerless; that the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long he wants – so long as he declares an emergency”, Katyal argued.

Trump's BRICS anger and ephemeral deals

Trump imposes tariffs of 10% to 41% on dozens of countries, hours before deadline

US president Donald Trump has signed an executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs ranging from 10% to 41% on imports from dozens of countries and foreign locations, as he extended the deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico by another 90 days.

Rates were set at 25% for India’s US-bound exports, 20% for Taiwan and 30% for South Africa ahead of Trump’s self-imposed deadline to strike trade deals with countries around the world by 1 August.

Brazil’s tariff rate was set at 10%, but a previous order signed by Trump placed a 40% tariff on some Brazilian goods, to punish the country for prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for trying to overturn an election he lost and inspiring his supporters to storm the seat of government.

Separately, the White House announced that Canadian imports will face tariffs of 35%, not the current 25%. Trump had threatened on Wednesday that Ottawa’s move to recognise a Palestinian state would make agreeing a trade deal “very hard”.

Some of the world’s poorest and most war-torn countries were hit with punitive rates, including Syria, which faces a levy of 41%; Laos and Myanmar with rates of 40%; Libya with a rate of 30%; Iraq with 35% and Sri Lanka with 20%. Switzerland faces a rate of 39%. The rates are set to go into effect in seven days, according to the order.

Trump threatens drug giants with crackdown over prices

Donald Trump has threatened to use “every tool in our arsenal” to crack down on pharmaceutical giants if they fail to cut drug prices for Americans within 60 days.

The president wrote to executives at 17 companies on Thursday, demanding they match their US prices for prescription drugs with the lowest price offered in other developed nations.

Current prices were an “unacceptable burden” on US families, Trump said, claiming they could be up to three times higher than in other countries.

After returning to the White House earlier this year and pledging to bring down drug prices, the president claimed that “most proposals” from the pharmaceutical industry amounted to “more of the same”, accusing firms of seeking to shift blame and requesting policies that would pave the way for handouts worths billions of dollars for the sector.

“Make no mistake: a collaborative effort towards achieving global pricing parity would be the most effective path for companies, the government, and American patients,” Trump wrote. “But if you refuse to step up we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices."

Campaign's Interactive Tool Tracks How Much Trump and GOP Are Raising the Cost of Living

Six months into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, an economic justice group on Thursday unveiled an interactive tool to help Americans put a number on the unmistakable feeling many have reported having about the Republican leader who promised to "make America affordable again": that costs have in fact gone up under Trump, and that the White House and the GOP are to blame.

Using the tool introduced by Unrig Our Economy, people across the U.S. can see exactly how much the price of essentials has gone up in their state, with the advocacy group connecting the dots between the rising cost of living and Trump's tariffs as well as corporate tax breaks Republicans have relentlessly pushed to pass.

According to the "Don't Inflate Our Plates" tool, the price of beef in Texas has gone up nearly 47% since the early days of Trump's second term, while eggs cost $3.19 more than they did before Trump took office.

In California, eggs now cost over $5.00 more than they did before Trump's second term, based on "historical trends, real-time supplier data, and market analysis" that Unrig Our Economy examined.

Unrig Our Economy gained some of its data from Kroger's pricing data, finding that in states with Kroger stores, the price of beef has gone up between 16% and 72%, with the biggest price hikes in Alaska and Utah.

Egg prices in particular were a talking point for Trump during his presidential campaign, but they've risen in many states where Kroger operates, with customers in Michigan—where the president won in 2024—paying 58% more for eggs.

"Trump and Republicans in Congress are singlehandedly inflating the cost of everyday items that Americans rely on," said Leor Tal, campaign director for Unrig Our Economy. "While billionaires and corporations cash in on Republican-backed tax breaks, working-class families are left paying higher prices for eggs, coffee, and more."

Unrig Our Economy pointed to reporting on Trump's tariffs, more of which are set to be announced Friday, with the president expected to impose rates up to 50% on some imports.

As Common Dreams reported this week, the advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative found that just as corporate executives used labor shortages and supply chain disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic as cover to keep prices high even after those problems were resolved, many are now using tariffs as a justification for price increases.

"We certainly welcome a reduction in the Chinese tariffs, but we'll be announcing a price increase here regardless of any changes of the Chinese tariffs over the next week or two to go into effect in June," the CEO of one footwear brand said in a recent earnings call.

Unrig Our Economy pointed to recent polling that showed Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump's tariffs, including 47% of Republican voters.

The Trump administration has also made a number of regulatory moves benefiting corporations that aim to take as much money from working families' household budgets as possible, including a push for the cancellation of a Biden-era Federal Trade Commission rule allowing consumers to easily cancel subscriptions; the FTC's decision to drop a lawsuit challenging price discrimination by PepsiCo; and the commission's move shutting down public comments on corporate pricing tactics.

The interactive tool was unveiled weeks after the president signed into law his sweeping domestic policy and budget package, which includes the largest cuts to public programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in history, increases monthly payments for student loan borrowers under repayment assistance plans, and hands out $117 billion in tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans while providing just $77 billion in cumulative savings to the bottom 60% of earners.

As Unrig Our Economy unveiled its tool allowing Americans to see exactly how their household budgets are being impacted under the Trump administration, the Century Foundation (TCF) and Morning Consult released the results of a poll in which they asked more than 2,000 people in June how they were being affected by the high cost of living over the past six months.

More than half of respondents said "billionaires, corporations, and congressional Republicans have made their lives harder," and 60% said the Trump administration is to blame for the higher cost of living.

More than 4 in 5 Americans said they were concerned about the price of groceries, and nearly half were concerned about their ability to pay their rent or mortgage. Forty-eight percent said they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill, like a home repair or medical bill, without borrowing or using credit, and nearly 20% said it would be "very difficult" to make the payment.

Even among households with incomes over $100,000, more than a third said they would have a hard time meeting the surprise expense without dipping into savings or using credit cards—suggesting that these households are using a large proportion of their relatively comfortable monthly income for essentials

"While the federal government tears down programs such as Medicaid and food assistance and federal regulators give the green light to companies to rip off consumers, families are being forced to construct their own safety nets from a web of risky financial practices," said TCF.

Unrig the Economy said that with Don't Inflate Our Plates, the group is calling out "the Republican-backed policies that got us here" and demanding "that Congress put working people first."

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Trump Wants to Gerrymander Texas. Is He Rigging the Next Election?

Krystal And Saagar GRILL Dem Senator On Epstein, Zohran, Israel

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Scientists map Antarctic seafloor canyons to help predict climate breakdown

Scientists have mapped 332 Antarctic canyon networks to help assess the future course of climate breakdown. The research, published in the journal Marine Geology, shows in high resolution submarine valleys that can reach down more than 4,000 metres, more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the US.

The resulting data shows that the canyons may have a bigger impact than thought on ocean circulation, ice-shelf thinning and climate change. ...

Scientists have been able to map in high resolution only 27% of the Earth’s seafloor, uncovering 10,000 submarine canyons worldwide. But most of these canyons remain underexplored, especially in polar regions. ...

Maps of the Antarctic submarine canyons are increasingly recognised by scientists as essential for understanding the impact of the climate crisis. The canyons channel warm water from the open sea towards the coastline, thinning the floating ice shelves and contributing to the rise in global sea levels, said Riccardo Arosio, another of the researchers.

Mapping the seafloor and its influence on the movement of water is necessary to build accurate ocean circulation models that can be used to predict the impact of the climate crisis, especially in vulnerable polar regions.

Trump's EPA Is Gutting "The Main Tool We Have to Reduce Carbon Emissions"

Fema denies grants to three Kentucky counties hit by devastating storms

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) denied requests for three Kentucky counties affected by severe storms last spring, and deemed the state ineligible for hazard mitigation grants that would help prepare for future disasters .

Fema officials claimed the areas did not suffer enough damage to merit federal support, in a letter issued to the governor on Tuesday. But the move is just the latest in a series of denials from the agency, as the Trump administration seeks to shift the burden of responding to and recovering from disasters on to states.

Last week, Fema also rejected Maryland’s request for disaster assistance after near-record-level flooding in May destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and tore into roads and public infrastructure, leaving close to $16m in damages.

“Our communities need help recovering from a massive storm,” Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, said in a video about the denial of his disaster assistance request, adding that he “saw the devastation up close”. He acknowledged that there were specific criteria to qualify for the designations that were met. “It is an insult to Marylanders and the communities still suffering in the aftermath of this storm.”

Fema, which is responsible for an on-the-ground response during large-scale emergencies along with coordinating resource deployment, funding recovery and supporting efforts to mitigate risks, has been left critically under-resourced and unprepared for the escalating and compounding catastrophes wreaking havoc across the US with greater intensity and frequency.

"Cancer Alley" Residents Take On "Toxic Billionaires" of Big Oil & Wall Street

State of emergency in New York City and New Jersey over rains and flash flooding

A state of emergency has been declared in New York City and New Jersey as a powerful storm system hits the US east coast from New York to Washington DC, with dangerous torrential rainfall and flash flooding under way in the region.

Forecasters had predicted intense rainfall, with rates possibly reaching up to 3 inches an hour and some isolated locations could see as much as 5 to 8 inches.

New York City officials warned that heavy rain could flood some streets, parts of the subway and basements. They urged people living in basements to move to higher floors and issued an advisory asking New Yorkers to avoid travel from Thursday afternoon through Friday afternoon.

The Clearview Expressway, a major highway in the borough of Queens, was closed in both directions, and at least two cars were submerged on the expressway, a law enforcement official told CNN. The commuter rail system into suburban Long Island suspended service on one of its busiest lines during rush hour.

In Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service issued warnings for up to 3 in of rain in an hour and the downpour produced flooding in the streets of Reading. One video online showed water pouring down a city street, rising halfway up a parked car, and rendering a busy commercial intersection nearly impassable as waters rose into a car’s wheel wells. In Maryland, multiple water rescues were reported in communities north of Baltimore.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Chris Hedges: Abolishing the First Amendment

This isn't a 'war' — Israel is destroying a population

Ukraine - Anti-Corruption Independence Restored, Zelenski Weakened, Four Cities Are Falling

Kremlin spokesman says Moscow 'takes note' of all Trump's statements

Oddly, Canada Has More Leverage In A Trade Deal Than Anyone Except Maybe China

DOGE Wasted Tens of Billions While Chainsawing the Government in the Name of 'Efficiency': Senate Report

Consumers Are Footing the Bill for AI’s Insatiable Appetite for Energy

How an 18th-century law enabled internment – and may do so again

Radioactive wasp nest discovered at nuclear waste storage site in South Carolina

Colbert Comments DESTROY Slotkin, New Kamala WORD SALAD, "Target Practice" Dr REVEALS IDF Crimes

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A Little Night Music

Dr. John – She's Just A Square

Dr. John – Let's Make A Better World

Dr. John – I Walk On Guilded Splinters

Dr. John – Dance The Night Away With You

Dr. John – Mess Around

Dr. John - Goin' Back To New Orleans

Dr. John - Revolution

Dr. John - Iko Iko

Dr. John – (Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away

Dr. John - Right Place Wrong Time

Dr John - Mac's Boogie

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