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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: T–Bone Walker

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features West coast blues guitarist T–Bone Walker. Enjoy!

^{T-Bone Walker – Stormy Monday}

“If one tallied all of the losses suffered by victims of robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts combined, the figure wouldn't even approach what is taken from hardworking Americans' pockets by employers who violate the nation's labor laws.”

-- Kathryn Edin

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News and Opinion

Under Capitalism It’s Legal For Employers To Steal From Employees

Doordash has reached a historic $131.5 million settlement to repay workers in New York City for wages the food delivery app stole from them over the last four years, which sounds like a big win for the little guy if you don’t think about it too hard.

The Hill reports:

“Under the settlement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), which New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and city officials announced on Tuesday, DoorDash will pay $115 million to 260,000-plus workers it either did not pay at all or paid late. The food delivery company will also pay more than $16 million in civil penalties and costs.”

So all Doordash has to do is return the money it stole and pay a microscopic fraction of its $13.7 billion yearly revenue in penalties, and that’s it. Nobody’s going to prison. Nobody was threatened with jail time. It wasn’t even a criminal case; it was an administrative enforcement action by New York City regulators. Doordash’s billionaire CEO Tony Xu is as free as a bird.

A hundred and fifteen million dollars.

What do you think would happen to you if you stole $115 million from your employer?

Can you imagine that not being treated as a crime? Can you imagine going “Haha, ya got me! I’ll return the cash. Can’t blame a guy for trying!” and then paying a small fine and just going back to your life like it was no big deal?

Of course you can’t. You know you’d be arrested, handcuffed, prosecuted for grand larceny, and then spend many years behind bars.

Under capitalism it is strictly illegal for employees to steal from their employers, but if employers steal from their employees it’s not even a crime. It’s not even a petty misdemeanor. It’s perfectly legal.

Which is so obnoxious, because stealing from workers is obviously much more abusive and destructive than stealing from billionaire corporations. The wealthy executives of a gig economy app would not have their lives affected in the slightest by an employee stealing from their company, but workers who are struggling to pay their bills can be devastated by even a few missing dollars in their paycheck.

Employers stealing from employees is also plainly worse than the reverse because when an employer steals from an employee, they’re not just stealing their money. They’re stealing their labor. They’re stealing their time, which is the one thing you can’t make more of in this life. They’re stealing slices of your lifespan which you would otherwise be spending with loved ones and doing things that fulfill you. They’re actually stealing your life.

And yet it’s only illegal for employees to steal from their employers. Employers stealing from employees? That’s just business.

This glaring disparity between the rights of employers and employees exists because capitalism is all about using state power to protect the interests of capital. The most ardent proponents of our present system like to contrast capitalism with communism by claiming that communism can only be enforced through abusive excesses of state power, as though we don’t see state power dropping the hammer on the working class every minute of every day throughout our society. In practice the most significant difference between a socialist state and a capitalist one is whose interests state power is used to protect.

We live in a tiered society where the people actually turning the wheels of civilization through their sweat and toil are legally inferior to the parasitic middle men who skim the profits from their labor. This is not justice, and this is not equality, as hard as the propagandists of the capitalist empire might try to indoctrinate us into believing the contrary.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Could Israel and Saudi Arabia Disappear?

Iran’s president hits out at ‘bully’ Trump in UN speech but signals willingness to talk

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, turned the tables on Donald Trump, describing the US as the true bully and terrorist in the Middle East while insisting that Iran had always shown a commitment to the negotiating table. In a defiant speech to the UN general assembly in New York, his first since the US and Israel launched an all-out war on Iran, Pezeshkian repeatedly vowed that Tehran would never bend the knee to the US.

But he balanced defiance with a willingness to talk, saying: “It must be understood by President Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations but without the language of force.” On Tuesday, the US president had told the UN he was weighing whether to “annihilate” Iran, but went on to hail renewed talks between Tehran and Washington’s negotiators.

A surprise three-hour meeting between Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and the US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the assembly the same day was regarded as constructive by both sides. It was the first such meeting since June, but did not stop the US delegation from walking out at the start of Pezeshkian’s speech.

Pezeshkian’s speech received domestic praise, but the hardline secretary of the supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei, refused to describe the talks with the Americans as negotiations. He said: “Mr Araghchi [Iran’s foreign minister] has announced Iran’s conditions, and until Iran’s conditions are implemented, the strait of Hormuz will not be opened nor will there be any negotiation.”

He warned Iran’s neighbours implementing a US-induced ban on Iranian travel: “If you stand alongside the United States, we will not stand by and watch.” He cautioned that should Iranian flights face bans through regional cooperation with Washington, “their airports will have no flights either”.

Max Blumenthal : Trump’s Deranged UN Threats

Iran denies dropping preconditions amid ‘very productive’ three-hour UN talks in New York

Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.

In Tehran, the foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed the talks had occurred, but appeared not to confirm any shift in the Iranian negotiating position. He said: “The interaction that took place with the American side was through Qatari mediation. This interaction was aimed at conveying Iran’s conditions, including the end of the war in all its dimensions, the cessation of American aggressive actions, the naval siege, and the economic war, the release of Iranian assets and so on.” Aware of the potential domestic backlash, he added that Iran’s conditions had been conveyed.

Iran set seven preconditions before returning to talks, and in a new development over the past 48 hours said the crucial strait of Hormuz could be reopened within seven days if those conditions were met. It is likely that the US and the Gulf states would have to accept a navigational route for shipping in the strait of Hormuz – a key waterway for transporting oil – that requires commercial shipping to enter through a sea lane mainly in Iranian waters and under Iranian rather than Omani control.

The fact that the talks lasted three hours suggests some progress was made. The US side is under pressure to leverage down oil prices and increase the availability of refined oil before the midterm elections in November. Latest published figures suggest the number of identifiable tankers making it through the strait is fewer than five a day, but estimates of the US navy are much higher. There is little sign that Trump wants to relaunch a full-scale war with Iran or indeed with the Houthis as Republicans battle to turn the domestic political agenda away from a hugely unpopular war that the Americans think they are losing.

Senate Democrats Push Sanctions Over E1 Settlement Construction in Israeli-Occupied West Bank

Nineteen US Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill to sanction people or companies that facilitate the construction of Israeli settlements in the E1 area east of Jerusalem in the West Bank, which would split the illegally occupied Palestinian territory in two.

“The E1 settlement project is a move towards de facto annexation of the West Bank, and those who choose to facilitate settlement construction should understand that they risk losing access to the US financial system,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is leading the legislation with Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

“The United States must use all diplomatic and economic tools available to counter rapid settlement expansion and extremist settler violence in the West Bank, spiraling trends that will only undermine the prospect of lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” she argued.

Critics of the plan to build 3,401 housing units in the E1 area—and recent unprecedented violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers toward Palestinians in the West Bank—have pressured governments across the globe to respond with sanctions. In the face of such pressure, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said earlier this month that the E1 plan was designed to “make the two-state solution unviable.”

Within the next nine months, Miliband pledged, the United Kingdom’s Labour government will “take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion,” and penalize “those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements.”

The United Kingdom, France, and Canada have joined forces to ban imports of goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements. Their foreign ministers also partnered with those from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden for a joint statement in which they said the situation in the West Bank is “rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.”

The foreign ministers confirmed their “intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law, or that they are actively considering these and other measures, in accordance with their national procedures.”

Coming also from very pro-Israel Senator Coons, this is another sign of US politics shifting.

And a knock-on effect of UK leadership.

— Martin Konečný (@MartinKonecny) September 23, 2026

In the United States on Wednesday, Wyden took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is heading to New York City this week for the United Nations General Assembly, which has sparked fresh calls for his arrest in accordance with an International Criminal Court warrant issued over his government’s genocidal war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Benjamin Netanyahu’s disgraceful policy of expanding West Bank settlements crosses a clear red line and makes Palestinian statehood and lasting peace even more difficult,” said Wyden. “The United States must stand up against Netanyahu’s campaign of violence and aggression against Palestinian civilians and sanction individuals and companies that are complicit in this unlawful action.”

Under both Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden, the US has given Israel billions of dollars in military support, despite the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

As the Trump administration pushes a proposed $2.8 billion transfer of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel—weapons Israeli forces have dropped on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon—polling commissioned by the magazine Liberal Currents and released Monday by the Center for Strategic Politics shows that Americans want Trump and Biden officials held accountable for the genocide.

Although a growing number of lawmakers have joined scholars and rights advocates around the world in condemning Israel’s war on Gaza since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack as a genocide, Congress hasn’t taken any concrete action to limit military aid to Israel.

The bill unveiled Wednesday is similarly unlikely to go anywhere—even though, as Gallego noted, “for decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have pushed for a two-state solution,” and the Israeli construction would “threaten a viable Palestinian state.”

“It’s a step in the wrong direction,” Gallego said of the settlement plan. “This legislation sends a clear message to Prime Minister Netanyahu: The United States stands firmly behind a two-state solution as the only path to real peace and security for all.”

Coons—a “staunch” longtime supporter of Israel—pointed out that “for decades, American presidents from both parties have warned successive Israeli governments that construction in E1 threatened the viability of a Palestinian state and was unacceptable to the United States.”

However, even if Democrats win back control of the Senate, or perhaps both congressional chambers, in November’s midterm elections, there appears to be little appetite within the Trump administration to do or say anything about the E1 plan.

After the European nations’ moves earlier this month, Politico highlighted that “the White House’s approach to US allies hitting Israeli settlers with sanctions comes down to this: Say as little as possible and let it happen.”

Still, according to Coons, “as Palestinian civilians face a campaign of devastation and fear from violent extremist settlers, the United States must send a strong message that this behavior is unacceptable and that it remains committed to freedom, security, prosperity and self-determination for all Israelis and Palestinians.”

The bill [https://www.commondreams.org/news/e1-settlement is backed by the liberal Zionist organization J Street, whose president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, also pointed to previous administrations treating E1 construction “as a clear red line because of the devastating blow it would deal to the possibility of a negotiated resolution to the conflict,” and called Trump’s failure to enforce that same standard “shameful.”]

“We applaud Sen. Coons, Warren, Wyden, and Gallego for taking a clear stand to preserve the possibility of peace and long-term security for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Ben-Ami, whose group opposes broad boycotts of Israel.

In addition to the four lead sponsors, the bill is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Martin Heinrich (NM), Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Andy Kim (NJ), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jack Reed (RI), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), and Peter Welch (Vt.).

Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Middle East program and adjunct instructor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, offered some criticism of the bill.

“The ‘individuals or groups’ enabling E1 is called the Israeli [government],” Elgindy wrote on social media. “This looks like another attempt by D’s to look like they’re doing something without actually doing something.”

Eight USS Lincoln personnel have attempted suicide, US navy confirms

Eight US navy personnel assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group have attempted suicide since the start of their lengthy deployment as part of the US war on Iran, Hung Cao, the acting US navy secretary, revealed in a letter to the US senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Tuesday.

“Since the beginning of Lincoln’s deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group,” Cao wrote, responding on behalf of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth to Gillibrand’s inquiry about the quality of life aboard the fleet. “This number includes the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons.”

As details of low morale trickled out of the Lincoln, Hegseth downplayed the media coverage, saying news outlets “completely misrepresented” the situation. “We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” he told reporters in August.

“What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” Gillibrand said in a Wednesday statement to the Guardian. “Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect. That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable.”

Max Blumenthal TELLS All!

Delcy Rodríguez poses with Trump in New York as Maduro languishes in jail nearby

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has celebrated a “historic” meeting with Donald Trump in New York, posing for a smiley photo with the US president, less than nine months after he ordered the abduction of her boss, Nicolás Maduro. The former foes met at a five-star hotel a few blocks from Trump Tower in Manhattan late on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. The hotel is about 7 miles from the Brooklyn prison where Maduro has been held since he was snatched during a special forces raid on Caracas in January.

On the eve of Tuesday’s encounter, an American reporter asked Rodríguez if she would be visiting Maduro, under whom she served as vice-president, during her stay in New York. She did not reply. But she did find time to meet Trump at the luxury Lotte New York Palace hotel, with the get-together seen as a key part of Rodríguez’s push for international legitimacy after years of Venezuela’s diplomatic isolation under Maduro’s dictatorship. On Wednesday she is expected to address the annual UN assembly.

“We held a historic meeting with … Donald Trump, with whom we discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, security and other matters of common interest,” Rodríguez wrote on Instagram, in a 133-word statement that made no mention of her incarcerated ally.

Oliver Blanco, one of Rodríguez’s top diplomats, claimed the meeting marked “a new stage of dialogue and understanding between both countries” and was “an important step toward new opportunities for our country and our people”. Blanco also posted a cheery photo in which he and Trump smiled and gave the thumbs up to the camera. A White House aide said the meeting was also attended by top US officials including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Hours earlier, Rodríguez had sat in the general assembly hall watching Trump celebrate the “massive military operation” during which Maduro – whom he called an “outlaw dictator” and “a real criminal” – was captured. “It was a war … [and] to the victor belong the spoils,” Trump bragged of the recent oil deal between the US and Venezuela, as Rodríguez appeared to wince. After Maduro’s capture, Trump warned that Rodríguez would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” if she did not toe the US line. Since then, Rodríguez has made a series of concessions, including ceding control of Venezuela’s oil revenues to Washington and agreeing to a controversial 65bn-barrel oil deal that Trump on Tuesday called “the largest oil deal in history”.

Trump greets Xi Jinping at plane as Chinese leader arrives for state visit

Donald Trump welcomed Xi Jinping on Wednesday evening, taking the unusual step of greeting the Chinese leader on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to kick off his state visit to Washington.

Xi’s plane was met with a lavish arrival ceremony that included a 100ft long red carpet flanked by US service members, a military flyover by two B-1 bombers and a presentation of the flags and national anthems of both countries. US presidents typically welcome foreign leaders at the White House, but Trump and first lady Melania Trump traveled to the the military base in Maryland, just outside Washington, to personally shake Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan’s hands upon their arrival in the US.

It came as Scott ⁠Bessent, the US treasury secretary, announced that the US ⁠and ​China agreed on Wednesday to extend the so-called “Busan ⁠agreement” – a temporary trade truce between the world’s two biggest economies. Bessent, who met Chinese ‌vice-premier He Lifeng earlier on Wednesday, told Fox News the agreement would be extended until 10 January, two months after it was due to expire.

The simmering trade war is one of many thorny issues Trump and Xi must confront during the visit, including the race in artificial intelligence development and geopolitical instability during the two-day visit. On Thursday, the White House has invited major tech leaders, such as executives from OpenAI, Apple, xAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta and others, to a state dinner being held for Xi.

Albanese says OpenAI hacked Medicare and told Australia months later via email to generic inbox

Anthony Albanese says an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI hacked Medicare in June and the tech giant notified the government earlier this month using an email sent to a “public mailbox”. Australia’s prime minister made the comments at the UN summit in New York, saying it appeared no personal information had been accessed in the AI breach.

Investigations assisted by the Australian Signals Directorate were ongoing into how the agent had infiltrated Australia’s government-run universal health care system, as well as three others. They were the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Medicare statistics reporting service portal of Services Australia.

“This situation is obviously unacceptable,” Albanese said. “Today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident and I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred.” Albanese said both the delay and the manner in which OpenAI notified the government was disappointing.

Lizzie O’Shea, spokesperson for Digital Rights Watch, said the fact it took three months for OpenAI to tell the government showed that there needed to be “basic rules and standards for tech companies”.

“Artificial intelligence has potential to do some things well, but it also poses huge risks – like hacking systems that store Australians’ sensitive personal data,” O’Shea said on Thursday. “The question is whether governments are going to let AI and tech companies run wild or whether they, on behalf of ordinary people, will put rules in place for tech companies that will promote accountability and trust.”

‘The Decline of the US Empire Is Here’ | w/ Prof. Richard Wolff

Critics Warn Trump-Backed Diesel Export Ban Could Further Drive US Economy Into the Ground

In an effort to blunt price hikes from his war with Iran, President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing a 90-day ban on diesel exports from the United States.

The cost of diesel—which is used to power semitrucks, trains, construction and farm equipment, and other large machines—has soared since Trump launched the war at the end of February, prompting Iran to restrict oil shipments through the critical Strait of Hormuz.

As of Wednesday, according to the American Automobile Association, average US diesel prices have jumped to $6.52 per gallon, a 77% increase from last year. Over the past month, as Trump has ramped up hostilities with Iran, prices have risen by 91 cents a gallon, a 16.2% increase.

Heightened diesel prices increase the cost of everything else—including food, transportation, and other energy sources. And while Trump claimed earlier this month to be bringing prices “way down, way, way down,” the latest federal data show consumer prices rising 0.4% in August—four times July’s monthly increase—and 3.4% over the past year.

With the midterms less than two months away and many voters blaming Trump for the strain on their pocketbooks, several GOP members of Congress, including some facing tough Senate races, such as Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and Rep. Ashley Hinson (Iowa), have cheered the idea.

Trump endorses a ban on diesel exports: "I've called for that too. I've said, let's not send out the diesel." (Trump has in fact called for other nations to buy energy from the US!) https://t.co/GVYILw1ou4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2026

During a press conference on Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel. It could have a little bit of an effect on regular automobile gasoline because when you do that, you know, it’s a sort of a flow. It’s a balance. But no, I’ve called for it. I’ve called for it within my people. I’ve been talking about it.”

But while the plan may help to keep diesel prices down for long enough to help Republicans stop the bleeding before November, some economists are warning that it could make things much worse in the long term.

“The US Gulf Coast would get a temporary pump price dip, at the cost of likely higher coastal prices [elsewhere] and eventually, higher prices for everyone as investment gets scared away,” explained Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House energy adviser under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

“You would get a short-term, abrupt collapse in pump prices” in some regions, McNally said, but “the US would shatter its reputation as a safe place to invest for a generation.”

Energy economist Philip Verleger said that a ban, even if temporary, “would have the same long-term effect as President [Richard] Nixon’s soybean embargo: the world would no longer view the United States as a dependable source.”

Speaking to Reuters, Verleger warned that in an already undersupplied market, removing US barrels could potentially double global prices.

But the short term seems to be all Trump and those around him pushing the ban are considering. An oil industry executive who discussed the proposed ban with White House officials told Politico that Trump viewed any fallout as “a December problem.”

He said that “cooler heads” in the White House have been “overpowered” by the “political camp” that has a “sky-is-falling, we-have-to-do-something concern about prices at the pump.”

Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International, argued that there was a much simpler solution: ending the war that has caused oil prices to spike in the first place.

“The proposed diesel export ban is a short-sighted ‘America First’ response to a global crisis his reckless war helped create,” Stockman said. “The US exports about 5% of global diesel, and a ban risks turning a severe shortage into a global economic disaster.”

“It could send international prices soaring, drive up the cost of food, fertilizer, and essential goods, deepen hunger, and push already-struggling economies toward recession,” he continued. “At the same time, it would likely do nothing for people in the US, as refineries would cut production and gasoline prices would rise even further.”

He said, “Congress should use its constitutional powers to stop Trump’s war, tax the oil industry’s soaring windfall profits, and support farmers and other hard-hit sectors, and accelerate renewable energy and electrification, not hoard fuel and force the rest of the world to pay the price.”

Aaron Maté : Is Ukraine the US’s Proxy or Partner?

Judge dismisses Trump’s ‘extraordinary’ lawsuit against Iowa newspaper and pollster

A judge on Wednesday dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit accusing the Des Moines Register and its former pollster of misrepresenting the state of the 2024 presidential race, rejecting the president’s claim that the newspaper’s poll coverage violated Iowa’s consumer fraud law.

Calling the case extraordinary, Scott J Beattie, the Iowa district judge, said that the argument could have a chilling effect that “can discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs”.

He sided with pollster J Ann Selzer and the newspaper, who described the lawsuit as a conspiracy theory and an affront to free speech protections.

Beattie wrote that Trump’s suit sought to “stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability”. After hearing the arguments, the judge concluded the constitutional protection “is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”

Trump filed the lawsuit against Selzer, the Des Moines Register and the newspaper’s parent company in December 2024, accusing them of fraudulently publishing inaccurate poll results to damage him and help Democrats, saying coverage of polls was not protected speech. The judge made clear that the poll and coverage of it was constitutionally protected political speech and not a commercial product. He wrote that “allowing a legally faulty claim like this to proceed carries a cost that an ordinary case does not”.

Judge seems inclined to side with media outlets who were banned from White House in lawsuit

A US district judge on Wednesday heard arguments in the extraordinary showdown between Donald Trump and CNN, MS Now and Politico, suggesting in comments that he was more inclined to side with the media plaintiffs who sued the president on Monday.

Lawyers representing the media organizations have asked Timothy J Kelly, a district judge, to force the White House to return the press badges that were taken over the weekend after Trump banned their journalists from the building. While the judge declined to rule on Wednesday, he acknowledged that due process had not been followed in revoking access.

The three news organizations were not given advance notice that they were in violation of any set of standards and only received formal notice – in letters sent to each news organization on Tuesday – that they “exhibited behavior in violation of the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information”. When he originally announced the ban in a Friday post on Truth Social, Trump cited “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS”, rather than any violation of national security protocols.

During a tele-hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Kelly cited past case law that clearly laid out the need for a distinct process that involved advance notice of an infraction and the opportunity to plead one’s case. “I think it is fair to say that the processes that the circuit laid out in those two cases wasn’t followed here,” the judge said, referring to two similar cases involving journalists who had either lost access or were denied access to the White House. The judge said that the cases made clear that “before a journalist’s White House hard pass was suspended or revoked, that the journalist was entitled to pre-deprivation notice and an opportunity to be heard”.

Michael Kenneth Velchik, a justice department attorney representing the Trump White House, argued that such a process had been laid out in the letters, which informed each news organization that they had until 5pm on Friday to contest the ban. (The letters said that if the organizations did not submit such a challenge, it would become final.)

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Professor Pape DIRE WARNING: Most Dangerous Election In History!

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Huge El Niño projected to cause more than 450,000 deaths by February

More than 450,000 people are projected to die from the additional heat brought by the super El Niño by February, according to estimates by climate scientists. The toll is on top of the early deaths resulting from temperatures already driven up by the climate crisis. It will strike across the globe, from Indonesia to India, and Nigeria to the US. Many further deaths are expected from the droughts, wildfires and flooding that El Niños bring.

The El Niño currently heating up the planet burst through the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon on Monday, several months before its expected peak. The heat is so much greater than previous events that scientists have called it “mind-blowing” and “Godzilla-level”. El Niños are natural climate events but may be made worse by global heating.

The estimate of deaths is for the period June 2026, as some heat deaths will have already occurred, to February 2027, which is when current temperature forecasts end. But elevated levels of heat deaths are expected to continue until June or July 2027. The most affected countries in the next six months are the tropical nations of Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India and Brazil. The US is in the top 20 most affected nations, with 3,500 projected additional heat deaths. More broadly, the Sahel region in Africa and south-east Asia are heavily affected.

The El Niño is also a “postcard from our future”, the researchers said, pushing up temperatures to the level the climate crisis is projected to deliver in 20 years’ time. “Increasing emergency response and better targeting our efforts can save many lives this year,” said report co-author Dr Tamma Carleton at the University of California, Berkeley. “But 20 years from now, once today’s extreme temperatures become the new normal, we don’t want to be in a constant state of emergency.. We need to mobilise now to design, deploy and evaluate the tools that will save lives in the years ahead.”

Food supplies will also be hit by El Niño, with the World Food Programme warning in August that its impacts were likely to push about 50 million people into acute hunger and drive prices up. A major El Niño in 1877-1878 led to more than 50m deaths due to drought and famine, with India, Brazil and China severely affected.

In historic first, tropical turtles spotted nesting on California beaches

A sea turtle crawled out of the surf in southern California last weekend around sunset and started laying eggs in the sand. People on Huntington Beach who saw the female olive ridley sea turtle were shocked and excited. And they weren’t the only ones freaking out, said Justin Viezbicke, the California stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa). “This is the first documented case of a turtle nesting on the west coast,” Viezbicke said.

What made the sighting even more noteworthy is that two different olive ridley sea turtles were identified laying eggs on Orange county beaches in the last week, the first on Seal Beach and the second on Huntington Beach. It’s a pattern that has scientists questioning whether the nestings are a freak occurrence, or the beginnings of a more lasting trend.

While early news reports suggested that a single female turtle laid eggs on both California beaches, scientists further analyzed photographs of the turtles’ shell shape and barnacle patterns and determined that two separate olive ridley turtles had begun nesting on the US coast, Viezbicke said.

Olive ridley turtles typically lay their eggs on beaches much further to the south, in Mexico and Central America, Viezbicke said. What caused the turtles to begin nesting further north than usual is the “million dollar question”, he said. Scientists are examining several different theories, including the environmental factor of warmer coastal waters, to other effects of El Niño, or whether the turtles “could have been blown off course by the recent hurricane”.

While it’s too soon to tell, it’s also possible that these first recorded US coastal nests could herald a broader northward shift in the olive ridley turtle’s nesting patterns, one driven by climate crisis and the warming ocean waters in the turtles’ native nesting areas, said Lance Adams, an aquarium veterinarian at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

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Also of Interest

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

Stop Mad King Donald’s Iran War: An Open Letter to Members of the US Congress

Iran War: WaPo Notices Casualty Count a Bit Off, GOP Senators Run for the Exits, Trump Freestyles at the UN

Ansar Allah Warns US Against Direct Military Intervention in Yemen War

Yemeni Media Reports Major Ansar Allah Attack on Southern Saudi Arabia

Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 3

What Lavrov Told the UN Security Council

ICE Is Disappearing People

House Republicans Pitch a Plan to Cut Social Security to Billionaire Donor Harlan Crow

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A Little Night Music

T–Bone Walker – T-Bone Shuffle

Memphis Slim & T Bone Walker – Bye Bye Baby

T-Bone Walker – For B.B. King

T-Bone Walker – Little Girl, Don't You Know

T-Bone Walker – I Hate To See You Go

T–Bone Walker – Long Skirt Baby Blues

T–Bone Walker – Why Not

T Bone Walker – Why My Baby (Keep On Bothering Me)

T-Bone Walker & The Blues Band – Shake It Baby

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