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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Yank Rachell

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues mandolin player Yank Rachell. Enjoy!

^{Yank Rachell - Tappin' That Thing}

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

-- Will Rogers

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News and Opinion

The Problem Isn’t “Kings”, The Problem Is US Presidents

There’s another giant “No Kings” protest scheduled for this weekend, and right now all I can think about is how disgusting it is that this is the closest thing to a mass-scale antiwar protest in the United States right now.

The problem with the “No Kings” protests is right there in the title. They’re saying “We don’t want a king, we want a president!” But Donald Trump is not a king. He is a president. And that’s the real problem: US presidents are extremely evil men who do extremely evil things.

Donald Trump is a US president who is doing US president things. US presidents consistently murder people with unforgivable acts of mass military violence, mistreat immigrants and marginalized communities, and promote tyranny for the benefit of corrupting special interests in defense of the US empire and the capitalist status quo. That’s what their job is. If they weren’t willing to do these things, they wouldn’t get the job.

Trump is not some freakish aberration; he is the product of the same American political status quo as his predecessors. He became president the same way they did, and the powers he now wields were given to his office via mundane executive, legislative and judicial decisions and precedents before he was ever elected.

But because the “No Kings” protests are organized by liberal defenders of that same political status quo, the demonstrations cannot address any of this. The whole thing is designed to be as large and inclusive as possible while also ensuring that it doesn’t disrupt the established order in any meaningful way. They make no real demands. They coordinate the demonstrations with police and government officials. Protesters show up for a few hours with their brunch signs and their orange guy shirts, and then they go home without inconveniencing anybody.

They are not protesting against the US empire. They just want a more polite, photogenic empire.

They are not protesting the corrupt oligarchic political system which gave rise to Donald Trump. They just want the corrupt oligarchic political system to give rise to presidents who make them feel less uncomfortable.

The problem is US presidents, not kings. The problem is the US empire, not Trump. The United States needs drastic, revolutionary change, not daytime protests designed to be as inoffensive as possible. As long as Americans are protesting against fictional monarchies and easily replaceable oligarchic puppets instead of resisting the actual imperial machine, the abuses are going to continue.

The war in Iran is the most obviously evil American war in generations. People should be flooding the streets in every major US city. Washington DC should be on fire. Soldiers should be deserting en masse. Instead we’re seeing these stupid fluffy lib theater conventions where people get together to do nothing.

Americans of conscience should be feeling deeply embarrassed right now.

Lt Col. Daniel Davis: Iran’s Trap Is Already Set… And the U.S. Is Moving In

US set to send airborne troops to Middle East as Trump claims talks with Iran taking place

The US is poised to deploy airborne troops to the Middle East as strikes intensified across the region on Tuesday and Donald Trump claimed the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war. Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic. Israel indicated that it planned to occupy control over swaths of southern Lebanon in what one Hezbollah official told Reuters was an “existential threat” to the Lebanese state.

The US on Tuesday appeared poised to send a combat team to the Middle East of 3,000 troops from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division, which can deploy anywhere in the world in under 24 hours, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paratroopers would join thousands of US marines already heading for the Gulf, where Trump could order them to wrest control of the strait of Hormuz or storm or blockade Iran’s oil hub on Kharg Island.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the war would continue “unabated” even as she said Trump was exploring the “possibility” of diplomacy. Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump did not give specific details of the supposed talks with Iran but said “they’re going to make a deal”. Tehran had offered the US a “very specific prize” related to the flow of oil and gas through the strait of Hormuz, he said. It had given Washington a “very big present worth a significant amount of money” that proved “we’re dealing with the right people”.

Trump also claimed Iran “agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon”. He told reporters: “It all starts with they cannot have a nuclear weapon … I don’t want to say in advance, but they’ve agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that.” He said the US vice-president, JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his envoy Jared Kushner were involved in the ongoing talks.

Official sources in Tehran have denied that any talks are under way. Tehran distrusts any US offer of negotiations in part because it was in talks with the US before the surprise attack that started the war and killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of senior officials. Iran was also in talks last year when the US and Israel attacked its nuclear facilities, starting a 12-day war. “We must think wisely,” Esmail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. “Their nature is to sow discord so that they can make people distrust officials and believe that such actions have taken place, whereas no such action has occurred.”

Jeffrey Sachs: Iran is the Graveyard of American Hegemony

Trump & Israel ATTACK Iran's Power Grid, Iran POUNDS Gulf Energy & Tel Aviv | Patrick Henningsen

Trump’s rehashed 15-point Iran plan unlikely to appease Tehran

The 15-point framework plan for peace with Iran that Donald Trump has said is being discussed is based on a proposal put forward by his negotiating team during nuclear talks almost a year ago, diplomats with knowledge of the talks believe. That original 15-point plan was the basis for negotiations in late May 2025, shortly before the talks collapsed due to Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear programme.

There has been much speculation as to what Trump’s latest claimed plan contains, and how much of it has been updated from the now outdated document the US presented to the Iranians last May. The fact that the plan may largely be a rehash of something that Iran did not accept a year ago suggests either a lack of US seriousness about the talks being planned for this week, or more likely a desire by Trump, for whatever reason, to pretend on Monday he had made more progress towards a deal than in reality he had.

The Iranians accused Trump of trying to calm the US markets before they opened by saying he was not going ahead with his threatened attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure on Monday night. He said he was postponing the strikes for five days to give time to see if “15 points of agreement” could be reached.

Iran, in any new talks probably overseen by Pakistan and held in Islamabad, would likely seek that the discussions focus on some kind of hard to deliver undertaking that the US will not mount further military attacks on Iran. The issue of freedom of navigation along the strait of Hormuz would also have to be addressed by Iran. The Gulf states will also be looking for some kind of guarantees from Iran through a non-aggression pact. As a result, it is likely any deal will be even harder to strike than the previous US-Iran talks since the number of issues have spiralled well beyond simply Iran’s nuclear programme, the chief focus of the 15-point plan.

The splits between the US and the rest of the G7 industrialised nations about the wisdom of launching the attack on Iran will be laid bare on Thursday and Friday at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Paris. Due to be attended by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Iran war is due to be discussed on Friday lunchtime, but France, Germany, Italy, UK, Canada and Japan have all said that they do not support what they regard as an unlawful and unnecessary war.

Iran REJECTS Ceasefire, HAMMERS Israel as Trump DEPLOYS 3,000 US Troops | Elijah Magnier

Putin Threatens To NUKE Israel!

Trump to Send 3,000 More Troops to Mideast as Saudi Crown Prince Pushes Iran Ground Invasion

The Pentagon is preparing to deploy around 3,000 troops to the Middle East as thousands of Marines also head to the region amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, stoking fears of a possible ground invasion that is reportedly being pushed by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

Two unidentified US officials told The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets Tuesday that soldiers from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division quick reaction brigade—which can send troops almost anywhere in the world in under a day’s time—would be ordered to deploy in the coming hours.

While the officials said that no decision has been made regarding a ground invasion of Iran, the deployment marks the latest escalation in the 24-day war—which President Donald Trump claimed was “very complete, pretty much” over two weeks ago.

The United States already has approximately 50,000 troops in the Middle East, where the US has attacked four countries—Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—along with Libya and Somalia in Africa and Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia, since 2001.

The US deployments come as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—who is often called by his initials MBS—is reportedly pushing Trump to launch a ground invasion of Iran with the objective of toppling its current government, which, despite assassinations of numerous leaders, has so far demonstrated a resiliency experts say is rooted in its decentralized and highly flexible “horizontal” command structure.

According to The New York Times, the crown prince is arguing that the war on Iran offers a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. Saudi officials denied any such lobbying.

This, as Gulf monarchies are reportedly inching closer to getting directly involved in the war, as Iranian counterattacks target regional US allies including Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Previous reporting by The Washington Post and others detailed how, before the war, MBS and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly pressed Trump to attack Iran for the second time in as many years.

Asked during a Tuesday White House press conference if MBS has “been encouraging you to do certain things related to Iran,” the president replied: “He’s a warrior. Yeah, he does. He’s a warrior. He’s fighting with us, by the way.”

Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said on Bluesky Tuesday that MBS’ reported lobbying of Trump “is a great example of why a strong Presidential Records Act is essential for accountability.”

Following Trump’s deletion of social media posts—including a racist video amplifying lies about the 2020 election in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are portrayed as apes—there have been renewed calls for robust enforcement of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which requires preservation of “the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of the president’s constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties.”

“Want to read the notes or the telcons (telephone conversations) between Trump and MBS re: Iran? Then you need an enforceable PRA that doesn’t let Trump get away with not keeping or destroying records,” Harper wrote.

US Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) said Tuesday on Bluesky: “I’ve listened to Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. The American people deserve to know exactly what he promised MBS—and at what cost to our troops and our values.”

Some critics took aim at Trump’s campaign promise of no new wars, part of his so-called “America First” agenda.

“The America First guy keeps getting headlines about the war with Iran being pursued to fulfill the aims of Netanyahu or MBS,” said Chad Stanton, political director at the faith-based progressive advocacy group SojoAction.

Trita Parsi on a “Lose-Lose” War Between the U.S. and Iran

Pentagon Whistleblower Criticizes "Bloodthirst" of Iran War, Says Hegseth Is Enabling War Crimes

UN Experts Urge Israel to Free Gaza Doctor, Citing Reports of ‘Severe Torture’

A pair of United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday called on Israel to immediately release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian physician and hospital director who has been imprisoned for more than 450 days and allegedly tortured by his captors.

Israel must ensure Abu Safiya “is granted access to medical examination and treatment,” UN Special Rapporteurs Tlaleng Mofokeng and Ben Saul said, adding that the doctor reportedly suffered “severe torture.”

“We have received reports that Dr. Abu Safiya has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, and that his health condition remains dire,” the experts continued. “The conditions of his detention appear to be flagrantly arbitrary and manifestly inconsistent with the Mandela Rules, which establish the obligation of states to ensure prisoners have access to healthcare.”

“He has been systematically denied critical medical examination and treatment, and deprived of essential care to such an extent that his life, health, and well-being have been gravely endangered,” the pair added.

Israeli troops detained Abu Safiya, who is now 52 years old, on December 28, 2024 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where he served as director. Abu Safiya which refused to evacuate the facility as long as patients were still being treated.

Former detainees released from the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israel said they met Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Abu Safiya was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the facility.

Abu Safiya was subsequently transferred to Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, where another renowned Gaza physician, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, died after reportedly enduring torture. UN Palestine expert Francesca Albanese cited reports that al-Bursh was “likely raped to death.”

During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.

Shortly after Abu Safiya’s detention, his mother died of a heart attack attributed to “severe sadness” by the medical charity for which the doctor worked.

UN experts asserted that countries “have the power to end [Abu Safiya’s] torment, and we call on them to use it.”

“It is incumbent upon states with influence on Israel and the international community to use all avenues to ensure prevention, recourse, and justice,” they added. “Israel must release Dr. Abu Safiya and all healthcare workers, and ensure they have access to appropriate medical care.”

Israel DEMANDS Lebanon CONQUEST As Bombing Intensifies

Israel says it will seize parts of southern Lebanon as ‘defensive buffer’

Israel said on Tuesday it would seize parts of southern Lebanon to create what it called a “defensive buffer”, while Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue striking Iran, dimming hopes of de-escalation even as Donald Trump talked up the prospects of a deal to end the conflict.

During a meeting with the military chief of staff, Israel defence minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces would “control the remaining bridges and the security zone up to the Litani”, a river in Lebanon that meets the Mediterranean about 30km (20 miles) north of Israel’s border.

Katz’s remarks appeared to suggest the presence of Israeli troops could become prolonged, with Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed armed group, calling the move an “existential threat” to the Lebanese state.

Katz added all bridges over the Litani river, which he said had been used by Hezbollah to move operatives and weapons into southern Lebanon, “have been blown up and the IDF will control the remaining bridges”.

The previous day, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, said Israel should “apply sovereignity” areas in southern Lebanon, signalling an expansionist vision that has alarmed critics at home and abroad.

Elections France, Germany, Italy. Center collapse

New York Times accuses Pentagon of defying judge’s press access order

The New York Times on Tuesday accused the Pentagon of disobeying a judge’s ruling that undid much of the restrictive agreement journalists were forced to sign or lose access to the building. The judge, Paul Friedman, granted an injunction on Friday that overturned much of the language in the “media in-brief” document that had so concerned many news organizations that cover the Pentagon that almost all journalists chose instead to give back their press badges. He also ordered that seven journalists from the Times be returned their badges.

Instead of complying with the judge’s order, the Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on Monday night that the department would permanently close a designated work space for journalists known as “correspondents’ corridor” and create a “new and improved press workspace” in an annexed facility outside the building. The Pentagon also issued a revised policy that now requires journalists to be escorted into the building.

“Rather than comply with the court’s order and accompanying opinion, defendants are contemptuously defying it – both in letter and spirit in a newly released ‘interim’ policy,” lawyers for the Times wrote. “Among other things, for the first time in history, the interim policy bars reporters with press passes from entering the building without an escort, sets up unprecedented rules governing when a reporter can offer anonymity to a source, and leaves in place provisions that this court’s order struck.”

Although the government claimed that it satisfied the judge’s order, the revised policy still prevents journalists from intentionally inducing the “unauthorized disclosure” of government information – though not from receiving “unsolicited information”. And it includes an assertion that by offering a potential source anonymity, journalists are acknowledging that a defense department employee was not authorized to release the information.

“The intent is obvious: the interim policy is an attempted end-run around this court’s ruling,” the Times charged, saying it constitutes “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to flout this court’s ruling and prevent journalists and news organizations whose editorial viewpoints defendants dislike from engaging in independent, protected newsgathering and reporting at the Pentagon”.

US supreme court appears sympathetic to Trump administration in asylum case

US supreme court justices indicated sympathy on Tuesday toward Donald Trump’s administration in its defense of the government’s authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem US-Mexico border crossings too overburdened to handle additional claims. The legal dispute centers on a policy called “metering” that the Republican president’s administration may seek to revive after it was dropped by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden in 2021. The policy allowed US immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and indefinitely decline to process their claims.

The Trump administration has appealed a lower court’s finding that the policy violated federal law. This policy is separate from the sweeping ban on asylum at the border that Trump announced after returning to the presidency last year. That policy also faces an ongoing legal challenge.

Under US law, a migrant who “arrives in the United States” may apply for asylum and must be inspected by a federal immigration official. The narrow legal issue in the current case is whether asylum seekers who are stopped on the Mexican side of the border have arrived in the United States.

Vivek Suri, the justice department lawyer who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, told the justices during the arguments, “You can’t arrive in the United States while you’re still standing in Mexico. That should be the end of this case.“

A ruling in the case is expected by the end of June. The supreme court has backed Trump in several immigration-related rulings issued on an emergency basis since his return to the presidency, including allowing him to deport migrants to countries other than their own and to revoke temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the United States.

Minnesota Sues Trump Admin Over Killings of Good and Pretti, Shooting of Sosa-Celis

Minnesota officials on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state investigators probing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents earlier this year, as well as the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was wounded but survived.

Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies descended on Minnesota’s Twin Cities and surrounding communities in January. Protests and national outrage over President Donald Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” mounted after a series of related shootings in Minneapolis, leading to the current funding fight in Congress that has partially shut down DHS.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, on January 7; an unidentified agent shot Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, on January 14; and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez fatally shot Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen and nurse, on January 24.

“These shootings are just three examples of the violent actions committed by federal agents in Minnesota during the surge,” stresses the new lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC federal court by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans.

“Federal agents also carried out illegal stops, sweeps, arrests, and dangerous raids in sensitive public spaces,” the complaint notes. “The surge created widespread fear among Minnesota residents, both citizens and noncitizens. It caused hundreds of millions of dollars in economic harm. And it flooded Minnesota’s federal courts with lawsuits challenging the unlawful detentions that resulted from the operation.”

With the three shootings, “Minnesota authorities responded to the scene of each shooting to investigate” and “expected federal cooperation,” the filing explains. “At the scene of the first two incidents—the killing of Renee Good and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis—federal agents initially indicated that they would work with Minnesota authorities and share relevant information. State investigators thus began their work in reliance on that understanding.”

“But in both cases, federal agents quickly reneged on their pledges to cooperate. Instead of sharing information, federal authorities took exclusive possession of evidence that had been collected, and they denied Minnesota investigators access to key information,” the document details. “At the scene of the third shooting—the killing of Alex Pretti—federal immigration officers physically blocked investigators of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) from accessing the scene. That physical obstruction persisted even after state officials obtained a judicial warrant authorizing access to the scene.”

The filing points out that when “faced with unprecedented noncooperation,” the plaintiffs submitted formal requests to DHS and the US Department of Justice—which are named as defendants, as are their leaders, outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Noem’s replacement, Markwayne Mullin, was sworn in Tuesday afternoon.

“Defendants’ responses to those requests—indeed, by and large, their refusal to respond at all—confirm that the federal government has adopted a policy and practice of refusing Minnesota authorities access to investigative materials relating to uses of force by federal immigration officers deployed to Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge,” the complaint says.

Emphasizing Minnesota’s “authority and responsibility to protect against and address violence within its borders,” as well as the history of cooperation between federal and state authorities in significant criminal investigations, the plaintiffs are asking the court to rule the administration’s policy of noncooperation and their resulting refusal to comply with these shooting probes unlawful.

According to The Associated Press, while the two departments haven’t responded to requests for comment, Moriarty of Hennepin County told reporters that “we are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid.”

Former Defense Sec. Says Trump Wanted To Shoot All U.S. Protesters!

Remorseless Bovino defends his record after exit: ‘I wish I’d caught more illegal aliens’

As his retirement looms, Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol’s former commander-at-large, has contended that efforts to curb illegal immigration by Donald Trump’s administration have not gone far enough – showing no remorse over federal agents’ killings of two US citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“I wish I’d caught even more illegal aliens,” he told the New York Times on Tuesday in an exit interview, during which he also referred to the Republican president as “the Trumpster” and acknowledged his retirement at the end of March was not entirely voluntary. “We went as hard as we could, but there’s always a creative and innovative solution to catching even more.”

Bovino announced his retirement from the patrol earlier in March. He had spent most of his 30-year career in California’s El Centro sector before being tapped by the Trump administration to lead its sweeping Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Trump then demoted Bovino after federal agents fatally shot 37-year-old US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in separate encounters in January, each of which remains under investigation.

Bovino said his plan – the White House cut it short – was to enable the deportation of 100 million people (far more than the number of immigrants estimated to be in the US without permission). The Times cited previously unreported legal documents which show Bovino referred to undocumented immigrants as “scum”, “trash” and “filth”.

Bovino said the immigration raids he led were targeted at criminals, though agents didn’t know the criminal or immigration history of most people they arrested, according to a judicial ruling generated by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The Times interview alluded to how a homeland security spokesperson told another outlet that the Trump administration had selected Bovino to lead its immigration crackdown “because he’s a badass”.

Canadian woman held with daughter by ICE warns all immigrants to ‘lie low’

A Canadian woman who has been imprisoned with her seven-year-old daughter by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has cautioned other immigrants that they are at risk of detention, even if they follow the correct legal process – and warned them to keep out of sight for as long as Donald Trump is president.

“Don’t go anywhere near a checkpoint, and if your papers are in processing, just lay low. Trump meant what he said – he is trying to get rid of everyone, whether they are good or bad,” said Tania Warner, 47, who is currently held with her autistic daughter, Ayla, at the Dilley immigration processing center in south Texas.

The pair moved from British Columbia to Kingsville, Texas, in 2021 when Warner married Edward Warner, who is a US citizen. The family was driving home from a baby shower in Raymondville, Texas, on 14 March when they were stopped at a border patrol checkpoint in Sarita. Tania Warner and her daughter were taken in by ICE agents to be fingerprinted, and neither returned. Warner’s husband told the Vancouver Sun last week that ICE officials said “she overstayed her visa,” though he provided the paper with a copy of a US “employment authorization” card issued to his wife last year, and it had an expiry date of 8 June 2030.

Tania Warner described the treatment of her and her daughter as “horrific” from the start. After being held for about five and a half hours at the checkpoint, they were sent to the first facility, where “every single person … was handcuffed – including children”, the mother said. There, they slept on the floor on 2in mats and the lights were on 24 hours a day. Agents would not let Warner call a lawyer and constantly pressured her to sign documents agreeing to “self-deport”.

“They’re abusive, and their tactics are to threaten you and to be so inhospitable that you deport yourself,” Warner said. She and her family say she has made it clear they have all the correct documents to live and work in the US, but that has been ignored. My life is here with my husband. I love him. I don’t want to leave. But at the same time, I’ve gotten a really ugly taste in my mouth for the United States,” she said.

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Trump calls voting by mail ‘cheating’ just days after voting by mail

Donald Trump has described voting by mail as “cheating” at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, just days after casting a mail‑in ballot himself. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” the US president said on Monday, in remarks to a roundtable on his administration’s crime taskforce.

Records show Trump voted by mail in the special election for House district 87, which encompasses his Mar-a-Lago golf club, according to the Palm Beach county supervisor of elections website. Trump has endorsed the Republican candidate, Jon Maples, in the race against Democrat Emily Gregory.

Trump chose to mail his ballot even though he has recently been in Palm Beach where early in-person voting was available until Sunday evening.

In recent months, Trump has renewed his baseless claims that the practice is subject to widespread fraud, as he pressures Senate Republicans to pass a restrictive voting bill that would require proof of US citizenship for new voters, as well as other measures. The president is also pushing for amendments to the legislation, notably a ban on mail-in ballots with limited exceptions.

On social media, Trump has railed against voting by mail, calling it a “scam”, and has vowed to gut the process. During his State of the Union address last month, he demanded “no more crooked mail-in ballots”.

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Epic river migrations of fish rapidly collapsing

“It’s very hard to imagine what’s going on beneath the water when you look at a river – but you have billions of fish making these epic migrations, some of the largest animal migrations on Earth,” said Dr Zeb Hogan, at the University of Nevada in the US.

The longest migration of any freshwater fish species is that of the dorado catfish, which makes a migration of 7,000 miles (11,000km), from spawning in the foothills of the Andes to feeding in the Amazon estuary and back again. The silver-gold fish themselves were incredible, said Hogan: “They get to about 2 metres long.”

Such fish migrations happen in rivers across the world – salmon and eels are more familiar examples – but many are rapidly collapsing, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date. The analysis, by the UN’s convention on the conservation of migratory species (CMS) and led by Hogan, found freshwater fish populations worldwide have crashed by about 81% since 1970.

Freshwater species are especially vulnerable to harm caused by humans because pollution often drains into rivers and lakes, dams block vital waterways and overfishing decimates populations. The climate crisis is adding to the damage by raising water temperatures.

Migratory freshwater fish also underpin some of the world’s largest inland fisheries and sustain hundreds of millions of people but are among the most imperilled wildlife on the planet.

BLACKOUTS IMMINENT As AI Strains Power Grids

US public health groups urge firing of EPA boss Zeldin, saying he ‘brazenly betrayed’ agency

More than 160 environmental and public health organizations on Tuesday called for Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, to resign or be fired. “No [EPA] administrator in history – Democratic or Republican – has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission,” the groups wrote in an open letter. “EPA’s foremost purpose is to protect human health and the environment. With Administrator Lee Zeldin at the helm, EPA has abandoned its mission, creating damage that will take decades to address.”

Under Zeldin, the EPA has rolled back or weakened dozens of environmental protections aimed at slowing the climate crisis, protecting clean air and water, and safeguarding Americans’ health. “He slashed vital funding, gutted agency staff, and has rigged the system to put corporate polluters first, at the expense of our health,” the letter continues.

Organized by the Climate Action Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force green advocacy groups, the letter was signed by 163 local and national organizations including the consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice green groups, the GreenRoots and GreenLatinos environmental justice organizations, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, a health advocacy group.

“The public deserves an EPA administrator who will face the challenge of the climate crisis and fossil fuel and toxic pollution head-on with proven policy solutions, not actively serve as an agent of destruction beholden to the whims of oil, gas, and chemical industry executives and an authoritarian, anti-science US president,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy organization that signed the letter.

Zeldin has also faced sharp criticism from current and former EPA staff, who in June signed the EPA “Declaration of Dissent” that harshly critiqued his treatment of the agency’s scientific programming and workers. Some staff were suspended or fired for signing the latter, though agency officials found their behavior did not violate ethics rules, E&E News reported this month.

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Also of Interest

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

Shockwaves From The Second Iranian American War

War On Iran: – Trump Cashes Out – Social Unrest – Arabs Joining The War – Iran Invasion

Iran reports strikes on gas facilities despite Trump's pause signal

Iran says US and Israel attacked vicinity of Bushehr nuclear plant

Iran War: US/Israel Attacks Near Iran Energy Infrastructure; Temporary TACO as Boots on the Ground Moves Continue? Postol on How Iran Nukes Israel in Retaliation and the Horrific Consequences; Gulf States Double Down on Loyalty to US

DAYS 21-23: WAR ON IRAN — Trump Backs Down

“We negotiate with bombs”: US moves to deploy 82nd Airborne to Iran

Iran trained in ‘asymmetrical warfare’ for two decades waiting for US troops: Defense official

UK Saw Israel as ‘Chief Problem’ Curbing Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

Donald Trump and the Truth About Robert Mueller

Trump’s sanctions against a UN human rights expert show free speech is dying

Prisoner number 804: the plot to erase Imran Khan

Fate of Argentina’s disappeared remains ‘open wound’ as more victims identified

Iran Now OPENLY TAUNTING Donald Trump!

Mortgage Rates SPIRAL As Trump Polling TANKS

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A Little Night Music

Yank Rachell - Roll Me over Baby

Sleepy John Estes & Yank Rachell • Mailman Blues

Yank Rachell – Peach Tree Blues

Sleepy John Estes & Yank Rachell – You Shouldn't Do It

Yank Rachell – Diving Duck

Yank Rachell & Sonny Boy Williamson – 38 Pistol Blues

Yank Rachell – My Baby's Gone

Yank Rachell and Homesick James 5-28-93 Chicago Blues Fest

Yank Rachell – Going To St Louis

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