The Evening Blues - 11-2-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues guitarist Big Bill Broonzy. Enjoy!
Big Bill Broonzy - Hey Hey
"Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves."
-- Oscar Wilde
News and Opinion
The War Propaganda Is Even Dumber This Time
As CENTCOM meets with Trump to plan more Iran strikes, the war propaganda is dumber than it has ever been.
Fox News is running stories about an Iranian “plot” to kill US military personnel in the middle east, as though a country planning ways to defend itself from hostile attackers is some sinister new development.
CBC ran a completely evidence-free report alleging that Iran has been paying gunmen to shoot bullets into empty buildings in Toronto, Canada. One of the dumbest things we are asked to believe about Iran is that it keeps taking time away from defending itself against US-Israeli aggressions in order to orchestrate random acts of arson and vandalism in mid-power western states for no discernible benefit to its strategic interests.
Today CBC published an article with the headline: “Why a spate of gun-for-hire shootings in Toronto were likely paid for by Iran.”
I was intrigued, as there has been almost 0 evidence offered for this claim thus far.
Unfortunately this article doesn’t offer any either, adding nothing new. CBC says they spent weeks on the investigation, so these are pretty pitiful results, at least in terms of finding evidence of who paid for the shootings.
I’m not sure why they feel comfortable with such a declarative headline given the lack of evidence (other than journalistic standards going out the window when the subject is an Official Enemy country).
Also, CBC and other journalists continue platforming police claims that they need backdoor access to messaging apps to solve these shootings, with no push back or critique about how these powers can be abused, including against journalists.
— Davide Mastracci (@DavideMastracci) October 27, 2026
Former Israeli military intelligence officer Mordechai Kedar went on Piers Morgan to call Iran an “artificial state”, saying “its fate is to be dismantled, is to be shattered to pieces, as it should have been from the beginning.” Calling one of the world’s oldest civilizations an “artificial state” from inside a country that’s younger than Mick Jagger and has been propped up by nonstop western military aggression throughout 100 percent of its existence is, uh, certainly a choice.
Under Trump, the war propagandists don’t even need to try anymore. He’s just going to inflict all sorts of horrors upon the middle east and Latin America with blunt-force military aggression, and then when he leaves office they’re going to act like he’s carrying all the sins of the US empire with him on his back.
Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. ‘Insane’ War Plans — Iran Offers Last-Minute Off-Ramp
Trita Parsi: Nuclear Strike on Iran After Trump Humiliation in the Midterms?
Negotiators ‘braced for worst’ over US-Iran talks to reopen strait of Hormuz
Officials from the Gulf states are “braced for the worst” as they wait for Washington’s response to an Iranian proposal that could reopen the strait of Hormuz before the US midterm elections on Tuesday. Indirect talks in Doha ran into a third day on Sunday with Qatar trying to negotiate the release of more than $6bn in Iranian assets, which could lead to the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and the restart of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.
In a bid to overcome the lack of trust on both sides, Qatar has been focusing its efforts on reaching an agreement for a plan to compress the process by which the US lifts sanctions and then Iran reopens the strait of Hormuz and starts nuclear talks. Iran has agreed to cut the timetable from seven to two days. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he hoped the US would choose “diplomacy over other paths”. He said Iran was ready for both defence and diplomacy, depending on Washington’s “rationality”. Araghchi said there were currently no plans for direct talks with Washington.
Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, once again signalled that Tehran would be unwilling to discuss its nuclear programme, saying: “Our enemies must understand that the Iranian nation has made a decision not to negotiate on the nuclear issue under any circumstances or under any pressure. This great nation gave its enemies enough opportunity to negotiate in this area, but was faced with repeated breaches of promises and illegal bombing of part of peaceful nuclear facilities.”
Yemen Takes Taiz, Marches on Aden as Saudi Airport BOMBED on Runway | Laith Marouf
As President Donald Trump and Iranian officials traded threats over the weekend, and with the Trump administration reportedly considering renewed attacks against an underground complex it claims is a nuclear site—which Iran denies—critics of the illegal US-Israeli war on the Middle Eastern country called on Democrats to take decisive action to end the conflict after the midterm elections, in which the party could take control of one or both chambers of Congress.
The nonprofit group Just Foreign Policy (JFP) was among those pointing to comments from last week by US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said members of Congress recently attended a confidential briefing about possible strikes on Iran after the midterms—a plan whose details he called “insane.”
As Common Dreams reported Friday, Iranian officials are taking steps to prepare the population for a potential US nuclear attack, which Trump has threatened multiple times since launching the war in February. He went to war with the preemptive aim of defending Israel from Iran’s retaliation if the Israeli government waged an attack on its own, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned the US and Israel on Saturday against renewing attacks, saying they would be met with “geographically unrestricted” retaliation. He expressed hope Sunday that “that there is rationality on the other side to prefer diplomacy to other paths.”
But with government funding expiring December 11, including money for the US Department of Defense “that is illegally bombing and blockading Iranian civilians,” said JFP, “Democrats can block war funding” before the new year.
“Senate Democrats must not send another dollar to [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth’s War Department unless the US stops the illegal war that is harming 90 million Iranian civilians and 300 million US drivers,” said JFP, referring to the skyrocketing gas prices that have resulted from the conflict. “No excuses. Not another dollar for this illegal war.”
Dems can END the Iran war BEFORE the new Congress!
@SenateDems must not send another dollar to Hegseth's War Dept. unless US stops the illegal war that is harming 90M Iranian civilians and 300M US drivers
No excuses. Not another dollar for this illegal war. December 11 https://t.co/bU2nKtTwuN
— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) October 31, 2026
JFP referred to Murphy’s comments at the Middle East Institute last Wednesday, where he said Democrats in Congress must “use our spending power to end the war.”
“I imagine what will happen is that there will be a continuing resolution after the election, and we’ll push off the budget until January or February of next year,” said Murphy. “And then if Democrats are in charge, we will essentially say we want to fund the Department of Defense, but we are not going to fund the Department of Defense if it’s funding this war. And so there will have to be some provision in the bill that denies any funding to be used for the continuation of a war against Iran that’s making us less safe and costing billions to American citizens.”
JFP emphasized that even if Democrats don’t win a majority in Congress in Tuesday’s elections, Democratic senators would be able to block the continuing resolution that would keep the war funded into February, because Republicans with their current majority would need seven Democrats to join them in supporting the funding.
“Democrats must block Iran war funding in 2026,” said JFP. “Democrats do NOT need to win or wait. Murphy’s approach here means Democrats would agree to fund the Iran war for months or years to come.”
If the new Iran war plans are “insane” — and I have no doubt that they are — it would logically hold that it would be utterly and completely insane for Democrats to follow a landslide in November by passing a continuing resolution in December that funds the war into February.
Yet bizarrely that is what Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters is the plan, even though they would have the votes to block it:
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 31, 2026
“If Democrats win a big blue wave rebuke of this patently unconstitutional war, and Trump comes out of the midterms escalating it, Democrats should move to block it and impeach him over it,” said another commentator. “Voting to enable it would be a corrupt abdication.”
Al Jazeera reported Sunday that Iran was continuing negotiations with the US through Qatari mediators, “but it does not have the slightest optimism about Trump’s intentions even for a moment,” according to a security source.
“We think that there may be different voices in the US, but experience has shown that the US president and his circle are succumbing to the temptations of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the warmongering extremists who support him,” the source said. “For this reason we are obliged to maintain our focus on being fully prepared for a decisive and punitive defense against any aggression and crime by the United States and Israel.”
DEBATE: WILL Pro-Palestine Candidates FORCE THE VOTE for Palestine? (w/ Miko Peled)
Dockworkers in 22 Countries Strike Against Gaza Genocide
Dockworkers in more than 20 countries — from France to India to Greece — are withholding their labor on Friday to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and highlight the role that commercial ports play in fueling deadly militarism worldwide.
Organizers said the work stoppages, led by dockworkers’ unions at 113 ports across 22 countries, would be the “largest coordinated port action ever,” easily surpassing the international day of action held in February. No Harbour for Genocide, a collective of trade unions and others supporting the day of action, said $2.8 billion worth of cargo will be halted at Mediterranean ports, where workers are planning to strike for 24 hours.
As 17 containers of India-origin steel bound for Israel remain blocked at Italy’s Gioia Tauro port, dockworkers are mobilising for a global strike against war, genocide and the militarisation of ports.
Alex Colston reports:
— Maktoob (@MaktoobMedia) October 30, 2026
“A cargo refused in one port sails on to the next,” said No Harbour for Genocide. “Refused in every port, it stops, and the workers have enforced the embargo that governments announced and did not.”
“Our strength lies in organization. It lies in our unions, in general assemblies, in collective decisions, in solidarity among workers from different countries,” the unions said. “We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.”
Ukraine Supply Lines at Risk; Vivaldi Unravels; West Casualty Narrative Exposed
Ukraine defies Trump to resume attacks on Russian oil refineries
Ukraine has resumed its attacks on Russian oil refineries in defiance of pressure from Donald Trump ahead of the US midterm elections, as a ceasefire in the occupied town of Oleshky ended on Sunday night. Russian state media said on Sunday Ukrainian long-range drones had set fire to the Kstovo refinery in Nizhny Novgorod oblast overnight, soon after a major strike against another big refinery in Samara oblast, owned by the Russian state energy giant Rosneft.
The Wall Street Journal had reported that Ukraine had given in to pressure from the White House to stop bombing Russian energy infrastructure. Ukrainian officials, however, told the Kyiv Independent newspaper that they never agreed to a demand from Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law, to pause refinery strikes for 30 days. The raids on Russia restarted on Friday, Kremlin officials said, complaining that Kyiv was now “simply ignoring” US wishes.
Zelenskyy said his country was obliged to retaliate because of a remorseless campaign by Moscow, using drones and ballistic missiles, against vulnerable city-based energy facilities. Four Ukrainian regions were hit by Russia overnight, with electricity cut as a result in hundreds of thousands of households.
Alastair Crooke : US at Cross Purposes on Ukraine: CIA vs Trump
BREAKING: Coup d'état underway in Poland
Coup d'état underway in Poland after EU-aligned Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent police forces to the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw right after President Nawrocki left for Senegal for a diplomatic visit.
Nawrocki is currently headed back to Poland.
The President of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw, Bogdan Swieczkowski, was suspended and possibly arrested. He is a known support of President Nawrocki.
Several right-wing Polish MPs and their supports are reportedly on their way to the Constitutional Tribunal to defend the institution from being taken over by Donald Tusk.
Warsaw's police forces are preventing the President of the Constitutional Tribunal Bogdan Święczkowski, members of the Sejm and protesters from entering the Constitutional Court.
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) October 30, 2026
Alexander Mercouris gives an excellent explanation of the judicial coup in Poland with extensive background.
Poland Judicial Coup; Belgium Crisis; UK £10 Billion to Zelensky
Tusk defends overhaul of Poland’s constitutional court despite protests
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has vowed to see through a contested overhaul of the country’s constitutional court, declaring that “in certain matters, there can be no compromise”. In a prime-time television address on Saturday night, Tusk was defiant, despite overnight protests that saw riot police drafted to protect the court’s building, saying the shake-up was vital to restore a tribunal crippled by years of political disputes.
Paralysed for more than a decade, the court sat at the core of rule of law clashes between the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party and the EU during the party’s eight-year rule. Since returning to office in 2023, the centre-right Tusk has sought to unwind those judicial changes, but his agenda has been frustrated by opposition-aligned presidents with extensive veto powers. Earlier this year, president Karol Nawrocki refused to swear in five judges approved by parliament.
The crisis flared again on Friday when a group of government-backed judges attempted to seize procedural control of the tribunal, suspending the PiS-appointed chief judge and deputy and prompting street protests. Defending the action, Tusk said “there was never any doubt that the court in the form imposed by PiS was not a genuine court”, citing adverse rulings from European tribunals. He also criticised opposition-aligned Nawrocki for joining the protests on Friday night and forcing his entry into the court’s building to intervene. “In a democratic state, no politician can enter a court to issue orders or intimidate judges – not even the president,” Tusk said. “We Poles have succeeded too well in building a strong state to surrender now.”
The confrontation sets the battle lines before next year’s parliamentary election, with polls pointing to a close race between Tusk’s broad coalition and the nationalist right. However, experts remain divided over whether the government’s procedural gambit at the court is lawful. Poland’s Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said on Saturday the legal basis for the temporary suspension was “questionable”, warning it would “not contribute” to restoring the court.
Nawrocki held some cross-party political talks on Saturday, with no apparent breakthrough. His senior aide, Zbigniew Bogucki, responded to Tusk’s address, calling the prime minister “a pathological liar, who is setting Poland ablaze”.
Attempted murder probe after petrol bomb thrown at French riot police
French officials have opened an investigation into the attempted murder of a police officer and Germany’s interior minister has called for harsh penalties after peaceful and mainly youth-led protests across Europe ended in violence. In Portugal, police – some with dogs – cleared protest camps with baton charges, while security forces in Switzerland were attacked with paving stones.
Protests over the education system, deteriorating public services, declining prospects, unaffordable housing and the spiralling cost of living have shaken a number of countries this autumn. Violence erupted in the French capital as well as Marseille, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse on Saturday night after an estimated 320,000 demonstrators, some in Halloween costumes, took to the streets.
As the rallies ended, masked and hooded rioters arrived and caused what the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, described as an “extraordinary” level of violence. More than 770 people were arrested. In Paris, the prosecutor’s office said incendiary devices were thrown at a group of about 15 gendarmes and police officers and a formal investigation had been opened for “attempted murder of persons vested with public authority”. Injuries reportedly included second-degree burns in an incident captured on mobile phone video and shared on social media and broadcast on French television.
The level of physical violence and looting was significantly lower than on 17 October, when 2,600 people were arrested and as many as 3,000 shops pillaged in one of the worst nights of urban unrest in France’s recent history.
[More details at the link. - js]
Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday letter
A US judge dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal with prejudice on Saturday, according to a court filing, bringing an end to his legal challenge over the newspaper’s reporting on his alleged birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. The decision follows an earlier dismissal in April that had allowed Trump to revise his complaint. As of Saturday, the case is dismissed with prejudice, meaning the lawsuit cannot be amended or refiled.
The case stemmed from a Wall Street Journal article alleging that Trump had sent a “bawdy” letter to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump denied the letter was real, insisting instead it had been fabricated. Throughout the proceedings, the court repeatedly pointed to the newspaper’s efforts to obtain Trump’s response before publication and its inclusion of his direct denials as evidence that it had followed appropriate reporting standards.
Judge Darrin P Gayles issued the final dismissal on Saturday after determining that Trump’s amended complaint still failed to establish “actual malice”, the high legal threshold public figures must meet when pursuing defamation claims. “As President Trump has not plausibly alleged that each Defendant made defamatory statements with actual malice, the Amended Complaint must be dismissed,” the ruling said. “And because this is President Trump’s second attempt to allege his claims, the Court finds that dismissal with prejudice is appropriate.”
‘We spend our days in silence’: fear and repression in Ohio as ICE terrorizes Haitian immigrants
In August, Michaelle Louis spent five days huddling with her daughter and brother in the basement of her Springfield home. The family went without electricity during daylight hours out of fear that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers might come knocking on her door to deport them. “I closed the curtains. I didn’t want anyone to know there was people living in our house,” she recalls. “We spent our days in silence.”
For months, ICE has terrorized members of Springfield’s immigrant community, speeding after vehicles down normally placid streets and causing crashes. Chief among those being targeted are the city’s Haitian community, who began immigrating to the struggling town of 60,000 residents eight years ago to fill hundreds of open blue-collar jobs. But a supreme court ruling allowing the Trump administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals in July meant they could no longer work legally, and within days, dozens of ICE agents descended on Springfield. In September, Markwayne Mullin, the US homeland security secretary, said 380 people had been detained by ICE agents in Springfield.
It’s not only Haitians who feel harassed by federal immigration agents in Springfield. When ICE began patrolling city streets in August, resident Sean Moorman set about monitoring their activities and following their vehicles around town. But that soon drew unwanted attention from arguably the most powerful federal law enforcement agency in the country today. In a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio against seven ICE officers last month, Moorman claimed agents swerved one of their vehicles towards his, “as if to ram him”, took photos of his car and used several of their vehicles to corner Moorman in his car, “making him fear for his life”.
Agents also allegedly drove by and photographed his home while his wife was inside. Last month, a federal judge ordered ICE to stop “retaliatory action” against Moorman and granted a temporary restraining order against seven of its agents, all of whom remained unnamed. But many of the ICE officers operating in Springfield at the time were moved out of state and the judicial order ran out on 18 September.
Around the country, ICE “watchers” such as Moorman have become essential in bringing to light the agency’s dangerous and often homicidal actions in their attempts to detain immigrants. More than two dozen people have been shot by ICE officers, many in front of their children, since the beginning of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in February 2025. Among them are three US citizens who were shot dead in Minneapolis and Texas. Two of those people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were, like Moorman, monitoring the actions of Ice agents.
US attorneys are freeing children from Trump’s ‘deportation machine’ with a new strategy
Migrant children stranded alone in prolonged Trump administration custody and targeted by whole-of-government efforts to deport them are starting to win release while they fight their cases – with a fresh legal strategy, the Guardian has found. A growing army of attorneys across the US is racing around the clock like legal first responders to file petitions of habeas corpus in federal courts demanding freedom for their young clients.
Organizers of the new movement as well as pro-immigration advocates accuse the government of unconstitutional conduct and plain cruelty, keeping families apart and rushing small children into court without lawyers – to feed Donald Trump’s “deportation machine”. Now they are hitting back with a rare habeas tactic and it is proving surprisingly successful amid the US president’s harsh crackdown that has swept up thousands of minors, according to leaders of the advocacy movement the Guardian first revealed in September.
Researchers estimate nearly all these cases end with a child’s release from federal custody. Some don’t even get as far as a court hearing before the administration backs down and lets the child go, likely in order to avoid having to explain their policy decisions to a judge. Since Trump retook the White House, officials have taken to keeping children who crossed the US-Mexico border unaccompanied in prolonged custody instead of allowing them to be with relatives or other vetted sponsors stateside while their legal case plays out. Immigration enforcement activity is also “creating” new unaccompanied children, after sweeping up migrant kids in the country’s interior and separating them from their caregivers.
As of September, more than 1,800 unaccompanied children have spent six months on average in federal custody, compared with an average of 44 days between 2015 and 2024. “The government is violating the law, and the regulations, and their own policy sometimes in this area,” said Marie Silver, supervising attorney at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, which is co-managing the new initiative, called the Children’s Due Process Project. But, Silver continued, “I think the core of what the judges are picking up on and really sort of incensed about is just the true, underlying constitutional problems here when we keep children from their family members for no reason.”
Judge dismisses Trump attempt to block Alaska Senate race results if Republican loses
A judge has dismissed the Donald Trump-backed lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s US Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. Trump said on 23 October that he had ordered the justice department to file the lawsuit in a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.
The justice department argued in its lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before election day, that there could be “voter confusion” over the presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan on the November ballot, which Republicans fear could take away votes from the incumbent and influence the race’s outcome in favor of the Democratic nominee, Mary Peltola.
Sullivan, in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning, said that he would accept the results of his upcoming election.
According to a recent New York Times investigation, aides from Peltola’s campaign recruited another man who shared Sullivan’s name to join the race in a ploy to peel away votes from the Republican incumbent. Since those revelations, Republicans, including Donald Trump, have called for Peltola to be disqualified from the race and criminally prosecuted. Peltola has continued to deny any knowledge of such a scheme on the part of her campaign, recently telling a reporter at a campaign event that she had “no idea” if any of her staff were involved.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Republicans tried to boost unviable Democratic candidates in the Alaska primaries as well. A Republican Super Pac boosted two candidates for Senate who did not live in Alaska, and praised them as “progressives” similar to Bernie Sanders.
Haley Stevens MELTS DOWN IN TRAINWRECK CNN Interview
Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Abdul El-Sayed’s Republican rival Mike Rogers
Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, in an extraordinary rebuke of her party’s nominee on the eve of the midterm elections. Her endorsement came in a video posted to X after she attended an event with Rogers at the predominantly Black Perfecting church in Detroit on Sunday. Stevens’s endorsement was the culmination of an escalating feud between the former primary rivals – primarily over support for Israel – that has roiled one of the most fiercely contested Senate contests of the cycle. The endorsement was met with immediate pushback from Democrats, who condemned Stevens for her “betrayal”.
Some of the people who worked for Stevens’s campaign also reportedly quit following her Rogers endorsement. Her long-time chief of staff, Justin German, and her communications director, Logan Basch, were among those who left, according to CNN correspondent Manu Raju. Stevens had lost by a close margin in this year’s primary, and for months had refused to openly campaign for El-Sayed, as had his other opponent Mallory McMorrow. But top Democrats had brokered the truce between El-Sayed and Stevens. After the two had sparred viciously in the primary campaign Stevens extended him a tepid endorsement, and this weekend was scheduled to join El-Sayed at a predominantly Black church in Detroit’s North End.
Those plans have quickly unraveled over an issue that divided Stevens and El-Sayed perhaps more than any other: Israel. Later last week, Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel, made clear that her appearance alongside El-Sayed was preconditioned on his denouncing of an outside group’s campaign ad that had blamed US support of Israel for the rising cost of living. El-Sayed declined the request, accusing Stevens of needlessly reopening debates from a settled primary. As the feud escalated, El-Sayed’s campaign went further, formally disinviting Stevens from his campaign events in the closing days of the campaign.
Earlier on Sunday Stevens had put out a statement that said she expected El-Sayed to win and telling people to vote. But just hours later she appeared with Donald Trump’s Senate pick and in one comment said she supported Rogers’s purported future investment in Black businesses. On Sunday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer also responded negatively to the endorsement. Schumer’s campaign account called it a “despicable betrayal” from Stevens in a statement, but continued to push for unity among Democrats.
Ryan Grim PREDICTION: DEM SUPERMAJORITY
Ads accusing Republican candidates of protecting Epstein fill airwaves in final midterm push
In races across the country, Democratic candidates or groups that support them have released ads accusing Republicans of protecting pedophiles by voting against legislation to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The ads appear intended to evoke an emotional response by accusing candidates of “protecting” Epstein, a notorious pedophile accused of running a sex-trafficking ring involving minors.
An analysis from CNN found that candidates and outside groups have spent more than $35m on Epstein-related ads. Another from the Washington Post found that Democrats spent more than $40m on Epstein-related ads across six key Senate races. In Colorado, ads targeting Republican Jeff Crank note that the lawmaker voted against releasing the Epstein files. In one, the family members of Virginia Giuffre, a woman who survived abuse at the hands of Epstein and died by suicide last year, claim Crank “covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump”.
Ashley Hinson, a Senate candidate in Iowa, was accused of voting to “protect her donors” by refusing to vote to release the Epstein files. An ad targeting Mike Collins, the Republican running for a Georgia Senate seat, says “Mike Collins voted against releasing the Epstein files even after he knew Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation exploited 14-year-old girls for sex”. Florida Republican Jimmy Patronis faced an attack from his Democratic opponent, claiming he called investigating Epstein “a waste of his time”.
Last year, Democrats and a select few House Republicans tried to force a vote on the Epstein files through a discharge petition – a procedure used in Congress to bypass the traditional steps of legislation and force a vote on the House floor. Donald Trump, who knew Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, opposed the discharge petition for the files, reversing his campaign promise to increase government transparency. House Republicans largely aligned themselves with him, prompting anger from high-profile Trump voters.
Colorado community fights plan to use drones to spray weed killer
Soon, weed-killing chemicals will start falling from the sky over the Red Hill area of Boulder county, Colorado. The wildland is known for its biodiversity, home to hundreds of important species and a concentration of rare environmental resources. It is a key habitat for beloved herds of elk and bighorn sheep, with farms and ranchland lying at its base. But any day now, hundreds of acres of Red Hill are set to become the target for drone spraying of a chemical herbicide that some researchers warn come with concerns.
County officials say the plan is an effective and essential move that will wipe out invasive weeds and mitigate the risk of dangerous and costly wildfires that could use the unwanted vegetation as fuel. They tout Boulder county as “ground zero” for research and testing of indaziflam - a relatively new herbicide developed by Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate, that has been approved for use across millions of acres of public lands as a tool for preserving native ecosystems.
But the drone spray project has prompted an outcry from many people living and working in the area as some scientists say the chemical comes with serious risks for vulnerable species and poses health dangers for people and animals, including through water that runs off the steep slope into rivers and creeks and into groundwater supplies for crop irrigation, though the chemical’s manufacturer denies that it is unsafe.
In June, two University of Colorado researchers added fuel to the community concerns, publishing a journal article highlighting risks to ecological and human health from indaziflam spraying and arguing that the cheatgrass issues cited as a basis for spraying are overblown. They cited prior published studies that raise concerns about genotoxicity and neurotoxicity. “It really directly affects all residents downstream from this,” said Azuraye Wycoff, owner of Yellow Barn Farm, a regenerative agricultural operation tending to crops, sheep, pigs and other livestock located at the base of Red Hill. “There are a lot of people in our community who are really livid about it.”
Adding to the worries is evidence that the indaziflam product to be used, sold under the brand name Rejuvra, contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas), a class of chemicals linked to a range of health risks and known to persist in the environment. There have been years of ongoing federal and state actions to rein in Pfas contamination. The drone plan for Boulder county is not new. Spraying over Red Hill was supposed to start last year but county officials paused the plan in the face of a backlash from community residents.The county plan includes mitigation measures aimed at protecting people and protected species, such as no-spray buffer zones around residential properties and measures to reduce chemical drift. But critics are not mollified.
Trump boosted half of US coal plants with taxpayer dollars and ‘free passes to pollute’, report says
It’s a good time to be a coal plant in the US. The Trump administration has given support to almost half of the nation’s coal plants, helping them to continue operating despite economic and regulatory headwinds, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund. The analysis, which looked at the 184 operating coal plants that are connected to the grid, found that 90 received support from the Trump administration through “cash handouts, free passes to pollute, and requirements to stay online past their retirement dates”.
The administration provided $950m in taxpayer dollars to 24 coal plants and handed Clean Air Act exemptions from toxic pollution limits to 70 coal plants, according to the EDF analysis. “It’s extending the life of these coal plants,” said Surbhi Sarang, director and senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The administration has leveraged a multitude of tools to prop up coal plants, and ultimately all of that is harming Americans even more by increasing electricity costs, by increasing pollution – it’s like Americans are getting hit twice.”
In 2015, the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards first took effect, driving down dangerous pollution from power plants by more than 90%. In 2024, the EPA updated the standards to further reduce harmful pollution from coal-fired power plants. In the early days of the second Trump term, companies were invited to email the administration to request an exemption from the 2024 standards. According to emails obtained by the EDF through Freedom of Information Act requests, companies expressed concern that the standards would cost them too much money.
The Colstrip plant in Montana has operated for more than 40 years, affecting nearby communities like the Northern Cheyenne reservation by releasing toxic chemicals like mercury, arsenic, lead and nickel. “That’s one of the dirtiest coal plants that’s still operating in the nation,” Sarang said. In 2024, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants was strengthened in several ways. For example, the standard for fine particulate matter, or fPM, reduced allowable emissions of nickel, arsenic, lead and other toxic metals from coal plants by two-thirds. According to the EDF, NorthWestern Energy and Talen Energy, which own and operate the Colstrip plant, requested an exemption from the fPM requirement.
The Trump administration gave NorthWestern an exemption from complying with the 2024 updated standards, which the administration went on to repeal in February.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
UN Body: Consider Genocide Charges Against Israeli Leaders
Photo Shows Israeli Soldier Posing in Front of Damaged Lebanese Church
War On Iran: Elections In Israel Increase Chance Of New Conflagration
A Not ‘Very Elegant’ Coup In Poland
Poland’s Attempted Judicial Coup Will Shape the Post-War European Order
Americans warned to prepare for official emergency alert system test
Is The New York Times Helping Trump Steal an Alaska Senate Race?
AI is stealing Indigenous Australian art and churning out ‘Temu slop’, artist says
Former UK Prime Minister Just Admitted Your Vote Doesn’t Matter
A Little Night Music
Big Bill Broonzy - Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad
Big Bill Broonzy - This Train (is Bound for Glory)
Big Bill Broonzy - Midnight Special
Big Bill Broonzy - Get Back
Big Bill Broonzy - The Glory of Love
Big Bill Broonzy - Good Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down
Big Bill Broonzy - Sixteen Tons
Big Bill Broonzy - Banker's Blues
Big Bill Broonzy & Washboard Sam-Diggin' My Potatoes
Big Bill Broonzy - Key To the Highway
Big Bill Broonzy - I Feel So Good
Comments
Good evening
.
That Haley Stevens character is a real piece of work.
I think she is inadvertently helping Abdul by her antics.
She missed her true calling of being a clown and chose politics
instead.
Thanks for the EB's.
Zionism is a social disease
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. Got a real kick out of
the assertion that Israel is younger than Mick Jagger which, after the laughter died down, reminded me that it is younger than both myself and my wife. Then I got to thinking about Ukiestan which is younger than Brittany Spears.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --