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This evening's music features blues guitarist Larry Johnson. Enjoy!

AI isn’t going to save us. Techno utopianism only sounds reasonable when you don’t know the tech is run by an alliance of narcissistic billionaires and psychopathic government agencies who have no interest in creating a better world and would happily incinerate billions of people to obtain more money and power.

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Today In Dystopia: Pentagon Puppets

Today in dystopia, a Pentagon employee has published a McCarthyite list of suspected leftists and socialists who can now be tracked with the help of an interactive map.

In an article titled “Pentagon Employee Launches ‘DSA Explorer’ Site to Track Left-Wing Groups”, Newsweek reports the following:

“A Defense Department employee known online as the conservative influencer ‘DataRepublican’ has launched a website mapping the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a broader network of left-wing activist organizations, raising new questions about political targeting, government ethics, and the Trump administration’s increasingly confrontational stance toward some activist groups.

“The website, called DSA Explorer, was launched Friday and describes itself as an interactive map showing organizations and individuals connected to the DSA and what it calls a wider ‘anti-imperialist solidarity network.’ The site says it draws from publicly available information and includes a disclaimer warning that some relationships shown are based on analytical inferences rather than established affiliations.

“Its debut comes just days after reports identified the woman behind DataRepublican, Jennica Pounds, as a special government employee at the Pentagon. A Pentagon official confirmed to Newsweek that Pounds works for the department as ‘a Special Government Employee,’ and said the department had nothing further to add.”

The site networks connections between known DSA members and outside organizations, presented as a research tool. https://t.co/LM1qcngBLq

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) August 28, 2026

Pounds told Newsweek that the website “is not a government funded or government sanctioned project,” but I dunno man. If Iran revealed that I was a “special employee” of the IRGC but I claimed that my work is not government funded or government sanctioned, I highly doubt people like Jennica Pounds would accept that claim as credible.

Nima R. Alkhorshid: Iran Launches MAJOR Retaliation…Record-Speed Strike on Jordan Changes Everything

Iran Retaliates Against the Devastated U.S. Military

US strikes Iranian launchers in strait of Hormuz, sparking reprisal attack on airbases in Jordan

Iran has launched retaliatory strikes on airbases in Jordan after the United States attacked Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the strait of Hormuz, the first such strikes in a month. “I can confirm that earlier today US forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak island,” a US official said on Sunday. “Islamic ⁠Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the strait of Hormuz.”

Iran’s ⁠Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said the US attack killed and wounded several soldiers and citizens and ​would be met with a “response ‌and punishment” from ‌Tehran, Iranian state media reported. In response, the IRGC “targeted technical infrastructure, maintenance facilities, and enemy fighter jet positions at the US-operated King Hussein and al-Azraq airbases in Jordan” with ballistic missiles, causing “heavy damage”, according to state TV.

A spokesperson said the US would pay for the attack economically and militarily, according to the semi-official news agency Fars. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported the US attack was ‌a drone strike.

On Sunday night, Reuters reported a US source as saying that all incoming missiles on US forces in Jordan had been intercepted with no significant impact so far. The exchange of strikes came shortly after the US-Iran war hit the six-month mark, and at a time when hostilities had been subsiding. The US said its attacks were aimed at preventing Iran from launching more sea mines into the strait, days after it announced it had completed clearing explosives from the strategic waterway.

Top Generals REBEL Against Trump Plan For Iran Forever War

NBC News Crew BEATEN LIVE By Israeli Settlers

Masked Israeli Settlers Attack, Injure Palestinian Woman and NBC Crew

Israeli settlers attacked and wounded a Palestinian woman and four NBC team members who were interviewing her in the West Bank on Saturday, amid ongoing settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The settlers, who were wearing masks, drove up as Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family were telling NBC about how settlers forced them from their home in the town of Jalud.

“They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley told the outlet.

Make This Go VIRAL

Masked Israeli Settlers ATTACK Palestinian Woman and NBC News Crew in the West Bank

NBC correspondent Matt Bradley was struck twice pic.twitter.com/EMmWGsNk2X

— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 30, 2026

Bradley was hit twice on the arm by the attackers, who carried sticks. They also threw rocks. Abdullah, Bradley, West Bank-based cameraman Khaldoon Eid, producer Producer Lawahez Jabari, and a driver were all injured in the ambush and treated afterword. Abdullah remained in the hospital as of Saturday night.

Both Eid and Jabari also described the assault.

“We didn’t expect that—that they would come to attack,” Eid told NBC. “We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses.”

Jabari said, “Suddenly a car came to us,” adding, “the settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”

Jeremy Diamond, a CNN correspondent in Jerusalem, called the incident “horrific” on social media and said it was “the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians.”

The NBC crew and their interviewee were not the only targets of such violence on Saturday, as attacks continued in the town of Qusra, where settlers have been conducting a nearly three-week siege of three Palestinian homes. Settlers pepper sprayed Palestinian workers, threw rocks at a building, and besieged a fourth home with at least four Palestinian residents inside, according to Hareetz and Al Jazeera.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Saturday’s attacks, characterizing them as “criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Qusra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in fulfilling its missions, and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”

Yet Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued on social media:

1. The settler wouldn’t do this to Americans had they not received a green light from the Israeli gov.
2. Israel’s gov would not have given such a green light unless it felt confident that the US gov—and Amb. [Mike] Huckabee—wouldn’t lift a finger to defend the Americans.

Journalists trying to report in both Gaza and the West Bank have long been targets of both settlers and the Israeli military. The IDF was found to be the leading killer of journalists worldwide for the third year in a row in 2025, and even before the Gaza genocide began in 2023, there were cases like the IDF killing of Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in 2022.

The attacks on the NBC team also come amid an uptick in setter violence in the West Bank since 2023, which humans rights observers say is enabled by the Israeli government. Netanyahu’s government has expanded settlements in the West Bank despite the fact that they are illegal under international law.

Max Blumenthal : Why Laura Loomer Hates Me!

After Supreme Court Ruling, 4th Circuit Tosses Verdict Against US Company for Abu Ghraib Torture

The US Supreme Court recently delivered a “lethal blow” to lawsuits filed under an 18th-century law, including a case brought by Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib as part of the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, whose landmark verdict was struck down on Friday by a federal appellate court.

The Iraqis’ case against US military contractor CACI Premier Technology was first filed in 2008, and eventually led to a trial and retrial in 2024. That November, a federal jury found the company liable for torture at the notorious prison in Iraq, and ordered it to pay the three prisoners a total of $42 million.

After unsuccessfully seeking another trial at the US District Court for the District of Virginia, CACI turned to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which this past March upheld the historic verdict in favor of the three tortured men: middle school principal Suhail Al Shimari, fruit vendor Asa’ad Zuba’e, and journalist Salah Al-Ejaili.

Then came the Supreme Court’s June decision in Cisco Systems v. Doe, which effectively reversed the high court’s 2004 ruling on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), nullifying “a vital law that could check corporate abuses and provide an essential remedy to those whose rights have been violated,” as University of California, Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky wrote earlier this week.

As legal experts feared, the 4th Circuit reconsidered the CACI verdict in the wake of the June decision, and determined that “just as the court concluded that the Cisco plaintiffs’ ATS claims—including aiding and abetting torture—must be dismissed, so too must we dismiss plaintiffs’ claims here—conspiracy to commit torture” and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the Iraqis alongside other law firms, responded with a Friday statement calling out both the Supreme Court and CACI.

“As radical and regressive as the Supreme Court’s decision in Cisco is,” Azmy said, “it will never change this fundamental truth: A jury heard voluminous testimony and unanimously concluded CACI was responsible for the torture and abuse of dozens of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, including these plaintiffs, rendering CACI, in the words of a foundational ATS-human rights case, ‘hostis humani generis’—an ‘enemy of all mankind.’”

“We remain in awe of the bravery and dedication of our clients, who fought for 18 years for justice for themselves, their families, and other survivors of horrific human rights abuses,” Azmy added. “This Supreme Court may continue to do great damage to human rights cases, but it cannot take the courage and dignity away from our clients’ historic achievement.”

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Al-Ejaili, also took aim at the country’s highest court, which is dominated by right-wing justices.

“What we did in pursuing accountability for 18 years for the torture we suffered at Abu Ghraib was a big thing. We trusted a US jury with our stories, and they believed us and sided with us—this is the most important part of the case,” he said Friday. “History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Iran War is the Worst Blunder in U.S. History

US Diplomat Who Resigned Over Gaza Condemns Biden Officials Who Defended Genocide—And Now Claim to Regret It

Recent expressions of regret by top Biden administration officials who vehemently defended the United States’ billions of dollars in military aid to Israel as it was bombarding Gaza have not gone far with former diplomat Hala Rharrit, who was retaliated against for speaking out about the US policy before she ultimately resigned, and who condemned her former colleagues recent “PR game” this week.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Rharrit said the former officials who have mused that they would now support withholding weapons from Israel, or that they should have backed such a move while serving under President Joe Biden, are “just so despicable.”

“They’re so disgusting,” Rharrit said. “Those individuals, particularly [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan and a handful of others, actually had the power to save human lives. They actually had the power to stop unconditional arms assistance to Israel, right? The Israelis were not killing the Palestinians by themselves. The Israelis were killing the Palestinians with American bombs, with American jets, with American everything. We enabled it 100%. They enabled it 100%.”

"They’re so disgusting."

Former US diplomat Hala Rharrit, who resigned in 2024 over Gaza, responds to the Biden officials who’ve recently claimed they should have done more on Gaza.

Watch early by joining MEE's YouTube membership https://t.co/kSRg1sVXCo pic.twitter.com/szijxYjczk

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 27, 2026

Rharrit, who resigned as the Arabic language spokesperson for the US State Department in April 2024, six months into Israel’s US-backed assault—which has been called a genocide by leading human rights organizations and Holocaust experts—spoke to MEE months after former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US should have called for a ceasefire earlier than it did, “such that the suffering the people endured, the loss of the children, so many others, could have been averted.”

Sullivan last year said—weeks before a ceasefire was finally agreed to—that he’d had a change of heart regarding providing Israel with weapons, and that he would no longer support the policy.

In November, Sullivan added in an interview with The Dartmouth that “it’s fair to say that there were a lot of objections from a lot of parts of the international community about the US continuing to support Israel over the course of last year—2024—and over the course of this year in 2025. I think a lot about what we could have done differently.”

Rharrit told MEE that “it’s despicable that now they’re trying to make themselves look like, ‘Oh we should have done better and we’re so sorry.’”

The former diplomat emphasized that the apology tour has taken place as it’s become increasingly clear that “America has changed” in terms of its views on Israel, Palestine, and the United States’ decadeslong, unconditional support for the Israeli military—despite US statutes like the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Leahy Laws, which bar the government from providing military aid to countries that block humanitarian assistance and that are accused of human rights abuses.

A poll released this week showed that large majorities of Democratic voters in the first six states that will vote in the 2028 presidential primaries support cutting off weapons aid to Israel, and another survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies in March found that just 32% of Americans viewed Israel positively, compared with 47% in 2023.

“America is forever changed,” said Rharrit. “Americans no longer support these forever wars, they no longer support unconditional arms assistance to Israel. They no longer agree with US policy in the Middle East. And so now... they’re doing a PR game. This is just pure PR.”

Rharrit and other officials who resigned over the US policy on Israel and Gaza “were vindicated,” she said. “Of course we were right the whole time, because it’s international law. It’s US law. I abided by my oath to the Constitution... That is exactly what I did. That is exactly why I resigned.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Rharrit is one of “a rare breed” of diplomats.

“During this genocide I’ve met courageous diplomats and officials who denounced it at real personal cost,” said Albanese, whom the Trump administration targeted with sanctions earlier this year. “Imagine foreign policy built by more of them. Because the problem is never one unfit minister/head of state: It’s whole spineless cohorts around them.”

Russian Strikes Are Breaking The Zelensky Regime

Iceland rejects EU accession talks after divisive referendum campaign

Voters in Iceland have ⁠rejected ⁠a government proposal ​to reopen ⁠accession talks with ⁠the ​EU after a closely fought referendum campaign that divided the country against a backdrop of global volatility. After a long and anxious night for those on both sides of the debate, the no camp ended up with 52.8% of votes on Sunday morning and the yes camp with 47.2%. Voter turnout was high at 82.5%.

At a press conference the prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, said the campaign had “raised the debate in Iceland to a higher level” while acknowledging that there were aspects that “could have been done better”. She said the government would wait to decide on whether to submit a parliamentary resolution formally withdrawing its EU membership application. Iceland originally applied in 2009 after the financial crash but pulled out of talks in 2013, saying it could not go any further without a referendum.

There will be disappointment in Brussels, which had been keen to welcome a wealthy new member and appeared willing to compromise with Iceland on thorny issues such as fishing to facilitate its accession. But the no campaigners’ warnings that EU membership would threaten the country’s sovereignty and fishing waters turned the vote in their favour.

The vote exposed a stark divide between rural and urban areas, with the capital, Reykjavik, the only area in the island nation of 400,000 people where a majority supported yes.

Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez defends ‘endless’ benefits of her oil deal with Trump

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves. Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”.

“The benefits are endless,” claimed Rodríguez, a former vice-president whom Trump backed after ordering Maduro’s capture during a special forces raid on the capital, Caracas. During a six-minute television broadcast, Venezuela’s acting leader claimed the deal would help her resource-rich country develop its economy, earn revenues of more than $209bn (£154bn), and become “an energy powerhouse”.

Rodríguez said: “As everyone knows, our country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. But having resources underground isn’t enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure [and] production capacity to convert this wealth into wellbeing for our people.” She added: “It’s no use having our oil reserves underground, only to appear in statistics or bookkeeping … and for us not to be able to convert and translate them into development for Venezuela.”

But the deal has provoked outrage, both among members of Venezuela’s opposition and within the Chavismo political movement of which Rodríguez is part. Speaking on Friday, one prominent opposition figure, who asked not to be named, called the agreement “a massive land grab” by a “rapacious, mafioso United States”.On Saturday, dozens of leftwing protesters marched through Caracas with banners reading: “We are neither a colony, nor a back yard” and “Yankees go home!” Critics of the agreement shared an ironic meme on social media suggesting the state oil company’s name should be changed from PDVSA to “PDUSA”.

The deal represents an astonishing U-turn from Rodríguez and the socialist, anti-imperialist political movement she and Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez after his death in 2013. In one 2024 speech, footage of which circulated on social media after Friday’s announcement, Rodríguez lambasted the Venezuelan opposition, accusing it of seeking to surrender the country’s oil, natural gas and gold reserves to its “masters” in Washington.

Describing oil you are looting by force as a “Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States” is straight mobster language. pic.twitter.com/zw4RTLDUfR

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) August 30, 2026

Milo DEPORTED

Trump ‘border czar’ denies Milo Yiannopoulos was deported quickly to spare him from ICE detention

The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment. Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.

“He didn’t show up,” Homan told CNN’s State of the Union. “The judge ordered him deported. So, once ICE gets an order of deportation from a federal judge, their job is to execute that order, and that’s what they did.” He added: “He had his due process, ordered removed by a federal judge, and ICE removed him. It’s that simple.”

Yiannopoulos’s removal one day after his arrest, when many others who have been deported had first endured lengthy detention center incarcerations, has prompted questions about whether he received preferential treatment in that respect. Homan said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, was trying to speed up the deportation process.

Trump says NBC’s Kristen ‌Welker should face ‘punishment’ from FCC

Donald Trump ⁠on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen ‌Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington, DC, affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired prior to Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.

Trump “is going to loom large over these midterms,” Welker remarked on that live shot. “He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He’s had some mixed results.” But Welker went on to mention Trump’s endorsement of appointed interim US senator Darline Graham, sister of her late predecessor Lindsey Graham, who was successful in her primary battle.

Nonetheless, the president then took verbal aim at Welker with a social media post deriding her as the “Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of … Meet the Fake Press,” accused her of “purposeful inaccuracy” and warned that she would “be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment”. The post also said that Trump hoped his appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr – and Carr’s colleagues on the commission – “take this Threat to our Country very seriously”.

Welker and Trump have a contentious relationship. In June, he walked out of an hour-long interview with the host after being asked, among other unpleasant topics for him, about having pledged “no new wars” during his successful run for a second presidency.

Trump’s DHS is using an obscure law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions

The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight. In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.

In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering. A judge twice rejected the request, writing that the government had failed to establish probable cause of a crime and that he wanted Lemon and Fort to be informed of the request so they could have a chance to challenge it. About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request. But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.

Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.

The DHS summons was issued under a statute that does give the agency broad power to demand records, but only in the limited circumstance of there being a need to investigate a customs issue, said Chris Duncan, a former lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. “These laws have absolutely nothing to do with a domestic situation at a church, a social media post, even an immigration matter,” he said. “It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,” said John Roth, who served as the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017. “This is an improper use of the subpoena under any circumstances. This is not a customs case; it is not a customs violation. They are not investigating a customs violation.” The episode in Minnesota was particularly alarming because it appeared to be an end run around a judge who was skeptical of the government’s need for the information.

The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist. In addition to Fort and Lemon, the DHS also sought information on the YouTube accounts for the left-leaning outlet Democracy Now, conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and an independent journalist named Brendan Gutenschwager. Some of the videos they cited in the summons were livestreams of the protest, but not all of them. It’s unclear why exactly the DHS wanted the YouTube account information, which includes things like a user’s IP address, and information about when a user was logging in.

[More at the link. - js]

Discount gas stations praised by Trump sold $4m of stolen fuel, lawsuit claims

The company that supplied fuel to the discount gas stations praised by Donald Trump is being sued for allegedly stealing nearly $4m worth of gas. Mansfield Oil Company of Gainesville sued KRSM and its president, Syed Kazmi, for allegedly picking up about 1.1m gallons of fuel from 21 May to 7 July, worth more than $3,998,000, and not paying for it. KRSM sold some of the fuel to stations that are part of the Freedom Fuel Network, according to the suit.

The dispute comes after the Trump administration promoted the Freedom Fuel Network, which offered gas for the low price of $3.47 per gallon in July, when drivers were facing higher oil prices amid the war with Iran and the busy summer travel season was driving up demand.

“I am pleased to announce that a VERY smart Retailer, located throughout the Northeast, is stepping up,” the US president said in a Truth Social post just a few days before the Fourth of July weekend, pointing to the Freedom Fuel Network. “America has never been stronger than it is now, and Gas Prices will soon be back to the Record Low Prices Americans enjoyed at the pump before our very successful ‘excursion’ in Iran.”

The lawsuit, filed on 19 August, alleges: “KRSM was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such publicity because it never paid Plaintiff for such fuel.” Freedom Fuel Network is a private gas chain with 29 locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Canada erects giant ‘Lake Ontario’ sign as spat with Trump over name escalates

Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.

Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.

Trump’s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order.

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great” that dates back more than 400 years.

USDA reportedly shelves cyclospora research amid relocations and fund cuts

The Trump administration is shuttering ⁠two of the three US Department of Agriculture research projects studying cyclospora after the foodborne parasite has ⁠sickened tens of thousands of Americans during the summer, Politico reported on Sunday. The two projects were defunded by Congress earlier in the year, while the third is ⁠due to be moved in coming months from Maryland to Iowa as part of a broader USDA reorganization, according to the ⁠report.

Although the third project remains funded, all scientists working on the ​parasite have declined to relocate ‌to Iowa, Politico reported, citing ‌people familiar with the plans and internal documents. “None of the research has been disrupted, and research will continue without disruption,” a USDA spokesperson said, while pointing to Congress over the funding cuts.

The Centers for Disease ​Control and Prevention has ​recorded more than 17,000 confirmed cyclosporiasis cases across 48 states ​plus Washington DC, from 1 May to 24 August, making ​it one ​of the largest foodborne illness outbreaks in recent US history. At least 11,844 additional cases may require further investigation and analysis, the CDC said.

Everything is for sale in the Trump Administration and the Republican Doormat Congress won’t lift a finger to stop it. 67 days to end the rubber stamping of the unmitigated corruption and theft of our public property and taxes. https://t.co/qYPgoWzD5r

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) August 28, 2026

Interesting article:

The datacenter backlash is bringing the entire political spectrum together – against big tech billionaires

Today, three-quarters of Americans oppose local datacenter development, a swing of more than 30 points in just a year. More than 500 counties and municipalities have passed datacenter bans or moratoria, while dozens of proposed projects have been killed outright. And the issue has come to define some of the highest-profile political races in the country. In the battle for US Senate in Ohio, populist Democrat Sherrod Brown has made Republican senator Jon Husted’s support of datacenters the centerpiece of his campaign, prompting warnings from the National Republican senatorial committee that “datacenters are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck”.

Other Republicans are taking notice. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott once touted the state as the “epicenter of AI development”; last week he said datacenters had “dug their own grave”. In Michigan, days after The Lever news outlet revealed that GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers held millions in AI-related investments, he announced his support for a one-year moratorium on their construction in the state.

Big tech billionaires may finally be beginning to realize that this backlash poses real complications for them. But they still don’t understand the nature of the threat they’ve called down upon themselves, because the movement against datacenters represents more than just a series of local fights against a new kind of infrastructure project. It may, in fact, constitute the best opportunity we’ve had in generations to truly shake up American politics, by redirecting the partisan anger that oligarchic forces have long used to divide regular Americans and channeling that energy instead against the billionaires that are actually the cause of so many of our shared problems.

The political science term for this strategy, coined by Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer, is “transformative repolarization”. McCoy and Somer argue that authoritarians and oligarchs often stoke what they call “pernicious polarization” – extreme toxic polarization that uses “us versus them” rhetoric, often on social and culture war issues, to divide the public in ways that harm democracy. In the face of such intense suspicion and distrust, depolarizing a society – trying to get people to stop viewing their fellow citizens as an existential danger – may not work on its own, in the absence of a unifying struggle to address underlying grievances. Instead, McCoy and Somer argue that opponents of authoritarianism need to redraw the lines of contestation that define their politics – to shift the “us versus them” struggle from, for example, a left-to-right polarization, to a different axis of conflict that can bring a large majority of the public together against real structural threats.

When you speak to organizers and community leaders on the frontlines of local datacenter campaigns, it immediately becomes clear that they are seeing new configurations of people coming together in precisely this way. “On many issues, people come in with a baked-in partisan lens that influences their thinking,” said Ben Inskeep, program director at CAC. “On datacenters, we don’t have those firm camps formed. And so we’re seeing broad concern from Republicans, Democrats and everyone else on the political spectrum. We’re seeing folks saying, ‘Hey, I might be a Maga Republican and you might be a liberal yahoo from the big city, but if you’re coming to our community to help us fight this datacenter, you’re my best friend.’”

William Lawrence has been seeing the same thing in Michigan. The Sunrise Movement co-founder and congressional candidate made opposition to datacenters a main focus of his successful campaign for the Democratic nomination to represent the Lansing area. He’s now hammering his Republican opponent on the issue – to great apparent effect, according to a recent poll finding Lawrence leading in the district, which is now held by a Republican. “At a time when people are so polarized and isolated from each other, something that brings people together is rare,” he said. “We can all get together to watch the Spartans play at Spartan Stadium, but to get together in a context where you’re also talking about politics? That is a gift, and is not at all to be taken for granted.”

Scientists turn to OnlyFans to support their work habit ...

‘Humongous’ marmot crowned winner in inaugural Fat Marmot Week contest

A marmot contest started by researchers who turned to OnlyFans to help save a decades-long research project has chosen its champion in its inaugural Fat Marmot Week. Dawn was crowned the winner of Fat Marmot Week 2026 after securing back-to-back victories in both the mass-gain and popular-vote competitions, according to the organizers of the marmot project at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.

Julien Martin, professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Ottawa and co-leader of the marmot project, said that Dawn, the six-year-old marmot, ended up weighing about 6kg (13.2lb). “That’s one of the heaviest animals we’ve ever measured,” Martin said. “Six kilos is really humongous for that species.”

More than 23,000 votes were cast during the Marmot Project’s first-ever marmot tournament, a competition inspired by Alaska’s popular Fat Bear Week. Dawn was crowned the contest’s champion after a week of public voting that lined up eight yellow-bellied marmots as they fattened up for the long winter ahead. Votes were cast between 24 August and 29 August.

The competition comes as researchers behind the marmot study started in 1962 have found themselves fighting to keep the project alive amid federal science funding cuts. Scientists made international headlines earlier this month when they launched an OnlyFans account, called OnlyMarms, to raise money for the marmot project based in Colorado. The account, despite its platform, featured videos and photos of marmots scurrying across rocky landscapes and disappearing into their burrows.

The fundraising effort has brought in more than $100,000 through a combination of OnlyFans subscriptions, outside donations and a marmot-themed cryptocurrency created by online supporters.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: How the Media Sells Genocide

Judge Rules the Trump Admin Can’t Deport International Students for Free Speech

US Bombs Iran’s Larak Island; IRGC Strikes US Bases in Jordan

Budanov – Ukraine Is Losing 30,000 Soldiers Per Month

Funny Media Speculations About CIA Ratcliffe’s Russia Visit

VIPS MEMO: Dangerous Talk of Putin’s ‘Loss’ in Ukraine

Russian Strike on Ukrainian Ammo Depot Kills at Least 38

Ghislaine Maxwell has virtually run out of legal routes to overturn conviction, experts say

Fire in California’s Big Sur region doubles in size overnight, forcing evacuations

A Little Night Music

Larry Johnson & Rob Fleder – Keep A Knockin' An' You Can't Come In

Larry Johnson – That's The Wrong Woman

Larry Johnson - Catfish Blues

Larry Johnson - Spoonful Blues

Larry Johnson - Two White Horses

Larry Johnson – Saturday Evening Blues

Larry Johnson & Woody Mann – Barrelhouse Blues

Larry Johnson - The Beat From Rampart Street

Larry Johnson - Pick Poor Robin Clean