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The Evening Blues - 5-20-26

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 05/20/2026 - 3:30pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lucille Bogan

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features 1920's - 30's blues singer that put the explicit into explicit lyrics Lucille Bogan. Enjoy!

^{Lucille Bogan - Sloppy Drunk Blues}

"We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire."

-- George Soros

News and Opinion

Chris Hedges: Trump’s Iranian Nightmare

America’s newest quagmire in the Middle East is like its old quagmires in the Middle East. It is based, as were the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on a gross misreading of our adversaries, a catastrophic failure to understand the limits of imperial power and no discernable strategy. It swells the profits of the war industry, wasting billions of public funds, alienates our allies and erodes the global power and prestige of the United States. Dying empires, governed by the corrupt and the incompetent, are blinded by militarism and hubris. They are unable to read the world around them. They stumble into self-defeating cul-de-sacs — as the U.S. did in Iraq, Afghanistan and earlier in Vietnam — where military adventurism accelerates self-inflicted wounds. The war on Iran is one more chapter in America’s precipitous and ultimately fatal decline.

Tehran’s 10-point temporary ceasefire proposal — brokered by Pakistani mediators and presented to the U.S. 40 days after war against Iran had begun — is tantamount to surrender terms. It demands the end of U.S. and Israeli attacks, including in Lebanon. It calls for the removal of U.S. military bases and installations from the region. It solidifies Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz. It refuses to abandon uranium enrichment. It calls for the end to sanctions and termination of anti-Iranian resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency. It also requires release of frozen assets — estimated at $100 billion — and reparations for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

This is too bitter a humiliation for the U.S. and Israel to accept.

Iran, with its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz, can afford to wait. The longer it maintains its blockade over shipping — roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz — the more global economic pain it inflicts. There is no good outcome for the U.S. The Trump administration’s obstinacy and Israel’s determination to resume attacks on Iran ensures that the global economy will barrel towards a global depression.

Iran is the clear winner of Operation Epic Fury. Trump is the clear loser. The dilemma is that Trump’s penchant for inventing his own reality means he is unlikely to acknowledge his blunder and negotiate a way out of the debacle he created. Trump, without Congressional approval, has already squandered at least $29 billion on the war according to the Pentagon, although analysis by Stephen Semler of Popular Information places the figure closer to $72 billion. Trump is desperate. He spews out expletive-laden threats to Iran on social media, writing “Open the Fuckin’ Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards.” He also posts Artificial Intelligence generated images showing the U.S. military obliterating the Iranian military. He has threatened to bomb Iranians “back to the stone age where they belong,” and lambasts his critics as traitors.

We are in serious trouble. The management of the conflict is far beyond the capabilities of the buffoons within the Trump administration. They prefer global misery and carnage to defeat. By the time they face the inevitable, they will have left mounds of corpses in their wake. The tragedy is not that the empire is dying. The tragedy is that the empire is bringing so many innocents down with it.

Bibi 'DRAMATIC' Plea To Trump To RESTART IRAN WAR

US Senate votes to advance resolution to curb Trump’s Iran war powers

The Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a war powers resolution aimed at forcing Donald Trump to end the war in Iran unless he receives congressional authorization to continue it. Tuesday’s 50-47 vote marks the first time the chamber has advanced the bill, the eighth attempt at doing so since the conflict began in February.

Four Republicans joined all but one of the Senate’s Democrats in voting to pass the bill. This time, Senator Bill Cassidy, fresh from a primary loss in Louisiana in a race where Trump endorsed his opponent, voted to take up the measure.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine also voted to advance the bill, as they did in previous votes. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat to vote against it, while three Republicans did not vote.

Max Blumenthal : US Consumers Paying for Trump’s War

Trump turns to Middle East allies as deal to end Iran war proves elusive

As he seeks an exit from the Iran war, Donald Trump is increasingly outsourcing his policymaking to US allies in the Middle East, while the White House appears unable to find a simple way to end the fighting and reopen global shipping lanes held by Tehran. In Trump’s telling, the “dealmaker-in-chief” has maintained a consistent policy toward Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, leveling threats and incentives to reach a new deal that would also open the strait of Hormuz.

But amid calls with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and contacts with Gulf leaders, the US president has oscillated between preparing to launch a major strike on Iran and then postponing plans for the supposed attack because a deal was “within reach” – despite little indication that Tehran and Washington are any closer to making peace.

To explain the sudden about-face in US policy, Trump said US allies in the Gulf – the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the UAE president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani – requested a pause because “serious negotiations are now taking place, and that, in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America”.

The reaction to Trump’s disclosure of a planned military strike on Iran has been mixed, and there has been considerable skepticism. A headline in the Daily Beast summed that up succinctly, writing: “TACO Trump Calls Off ‘Planned Military Attack’ Nobody Knew About.” (“Taco” stands for “Trump always chickens out” – a jab at the US leader’s tendency to back down on his threats during negotiations.)

Most importantly, none of the Gulf leaders appeared to know about Trump’s plans for an imminent attack. The Wall Street Journal had reported that Gulf leaders were “unaware” of US plans to attack Iran, instead urging more time for talks in order to prevent an escalation of violence that could blow back on energy infrastructure in Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Asked later, Trump kept his options open once again, saying that he had only called for a delay in the attack of several days.

Scott Ritter: Iran RESPONDS to Imminent US-Israeli Strike, GAME OVER for Trump

Trump threatens ‘a big hit’ if Tehran does not make deal soon

Donald Trump has again threatened Iran, saying the US may launch new attacks if Tehran continues to refuse the significant concessions he wants before a deal can be struck to end the Middle East war. The US president said he had called off a fresh wave of strikes, which would have broken the ceasefire in place since early last month. “I was an hour away from making the decision to go today,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The decision apparently followed a further peace proposal submitted by Tehran via Pakistan, which has mediated, and may have been motivated by the reluctance of allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to see hostilities resume. Trump said Iran’s leaders were “begging” to make a deal, but a new US attack would deliver “a big hit” in the coming days if one was not reached. “Well, I mean, I’m saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon,” he said.

Trump has made repeated threats in recent weeks but the continuing failure to follow through has increased the sense that the conflict is deadlocked. Analysts say both sides want to avoid a new round of hostilities but neither are willing to pay the political price of the concessions necessary to secure a peace agreement.“Trumps’ threats have lost all credibility … Both sides are too far apart in terms of what they are willing to accept or work on but neither side want to go back to war. So they are just stuck … and neither side really knows how to get out of this,” said Neil Quilliam of London’s Chatham House.

Iran continues to block most shipping in the strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of the world’s supply of oil and liquid gas before the conflict, while the US has imposed its own naval blockade on Iranian ports. Iranian officials have remained defiant in the face of Trump’s new threats, describing US demands as “excessive”. Iranian state media said Tehran’s latest peace proposal involved ending hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, the withdrawal of US forces from areas close to Iran, and reparations for destruction caused by US-Israeli attacks.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said Tehran also wanted sanctions lifted, frozen funds released, and an end to the US marine blockade, according to IRNA, the state news agency. The terms as described in the Iranian reports appeared little changed from its previous offer, which Trump rejected last week as “garbage”.

CPT. Matt Hoh : Iran Ready if Trump Bombs Again

UN Expert Presents Shocking Allegations of Israeli Torture, Sexual Abuse of Palestinian Detainees

A United Nations expert on Tuesday delivered a report offering evidence of systemic torture, brutality, and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli captivity.

Alice Jill Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said she had gathered substantial evidence of torture and sexual violence committed by Israeli authorities against Arab citizens of Israel as well as Palestinian detainees from Gaza and the West Bank.

After Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, Israel not only launched a military assault on Gaza but also introduced emergency detention measures that Edwards argued “exposed Palestinian detainees to torture, potentially unlawful deaths, incommunicado detention, and degrading conditions.”

Among other things, Edwards’ report documents nine allegations of “rape, attempted rape, and threats of rape”; eleven allegations of “beatings, grabbing, electrocution, or mauling by dogs” of male detainees’ genitals; 23 allegations of “beatings with weapons or other objects, kicking, and punching”; five allegations of electrocution by electric batons or other devices; and four allegations of forced kneeling for periods lasting up to a full day.

The report also notes that 94 Palestinians died in custody from October 2023 through August 2025, although it acknowledges that “a lack of transparency into the cause of these deaths makes it unclear which deaths are attributed to natural causes or unlawful conduct.”

However, the report cites a review of 10 postmortem examinations of detainees who died in Israeli custody which found signs of physical abuse in five cases, and signs of bruising “consistent with beatings and use of restraints” in two cases.

“Findings also included multiple rib fractures, hemorrhages on the skin and near internal organs, and lacerations of intra-abdominal organs,” the report adds. “One case documented intracranial hemorrhage resulting from a head injury apparently sustained during arrest.”

Edwards said that the sheer volume of torture and abuse allegations documented in the report cannot be written off as the work of rogue actors.

“It is my view that the number and cruelty of allegations compiled portray gross disregard by Israel of its duty to treat all detainees humanely and without discrimination,” she said, “and this has encouraged, tolerated, and condoned torture and ill-treatment, at times with support at ministerial and functional levels.”

The descriptions of torture in Edwards’ report echo recent reporting by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote that his interviews with Palestinian detainees revealed “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, woman, and even children—by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.”

‘Aiding and Abetting Genocide’: US Sanctions Peaceful Gaza Flotilla Organizers

Palestine defenders decried Tuesday’s announcement by the Trump administration of US sanctions targeting four nonviolent campaigners involved in the recent humanitarian flotillas that tried to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza.

The US Department of the Treasury said in a statement that its Office of Foreign Assets Control “is taking action against four individuals associated with the pro-Hamas flotilla organized by the US-designated Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA) that is attempting to access Gaza in support of Hamas.”

The sanctioned individuals are Saif Abu Keshek, a Palestinian with Spanish and Swedish citizenship and PCPA leader who helped organize and lead Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) missions; Jordan-based PCPA president Hisham Abdallah Sulayman Abu Mahfuz; Mohammed Khatib, who is based in Belgium and is the European coordinator for Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network; and Jaldia Abubakra Aueda, Samidoun’s coordinator in Madrid.

This latest weaponization of US dominance over global banking and finance and tech monopolies in service of Israel follows the sanctions placed on four leading Palestinian human rights groups and 11 elected officials of the @IntlCrimCourt as well as Francesca Albanese

— Maureen Murphy (@maureenclarem) May 19, 2026

“The pro-terror flotilla attempting to reach Gaza is a ludicrous attempt to undermine President [Donald] Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Tuesday. “Treasury will continue to sever Hamas’ global financial support networks, no matter where in the world they are.”

There is no substantiated evidence that the Gaza flotillas are linked to Hamas. Meanwhile, United Nations experts, numerous national governments, human rights groups, and experts say Israel is perpetrating genocide, apartheid, colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

Samidoun called the sanctions—which freeze any of the targets’ US assets and ban Americans from doing business with them—“the latest manifestation of the ongoing US genocidal war on the Palestinian people” and pointed to Israel’s ongoing violent interception and seizure of GSF vessels on the high seas off the coast of Gaza.

“Today’s sanctions by the US come hand-in-hand with today’s Israeli piracy of the Global Sumud Flotilla and the Freedom Flotilla, and the abduction of hundreds of international activists at sea,” the group said in a statement. “All of these sanctions targeting Palestinian organizations, not only those targeting us, are aiding and abetting genocide.”

Since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, the Biden and Trump administrations have supported Israel with tens of billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover, including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolutions. Total US financial support for Israel since it was founded in 1948—largely via the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs—is approaching $300 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Since returning to office, Trump has cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists, students, organizations, and foreign nationals. Critics—including advocacy groups, academics, and some judges—have condemned what they have called attacks on free speech, association, and academic freedom.

The Trump administration has sanctioned International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and other numerous other ICC jurists after the Hague-based tribunal issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders who were killed by Israeli attacks.

On Tuesday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the ICC is also seeking his arrest, and that he would “fight back” by ordering the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in the illegally occupied West Bank.

The US administration has also sanctioned independent UN Palestine expert Francesca Albanese and her family—a move that was temporarily blocked earlier this month by a federal judge who asserted that the Italian humanitarian “has done nothing more than speak.”

“Every time Palestinians and their supporters organize internationally, Washington reaches for the terrorism label to shut them down,” Isabelle Hayslip, advocacy manager at Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “The net keeps widening. Palestinian diaspora communities now live under constant threat of designation for demanding their rights.”

Vladimir Putin arrives in Beijing for state visit hot on heels of Trump

Vladimir Putin has arrived in Beijing for a state visit, four days after Donald Trump left China. Putin was greeted by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, when he landed on Tuesday evening, with an honour guard alongside Chinese youths waving China and Russia’s national flags in a welcome ceremony on the tarmac.

The Russian leader’s visit to China – his 25th, according to Chinese state media – reflects Beijing’s growing confidence on the world stage as a centre of global diplomatic activity. It also underscores the deep relationship between Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The two men have met more than 40 times, far outstripping Xi’s encounters with any western leaders.

William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “Hosting two of the most powerful leaders in the world in a matter of days shows China’s growing confidence in its place and standing in the world.” He said Xi “likely wants to remind Trump that Beijing has other solid and robust relationships that it can count on, so Washington can’t easily isolate or harm Beijing if it tries to”.

The optics of the visit will be closely scrutinised and contrasted with Trump’s own trip last week. Xi is known for hosting visiting leaders over tea, but the setting and manner of such encounters can be viewed as a signal of the Chinese leader’s regard for his guest.

The Russian leader published a video address to China on the eve of the visit. He said China-Russia relations had reached “an unprecedented level”, pointing to the countries’ soaring bilateral trade, the fact that settlements were conducted nearly entirely in roubles and yuan rather than the US dollar, and mutual visa-free policies for Chinese and Russian travellers. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday: “The friendship between China and Russia will be further deepened and will be more deeply rooted in people’s hearts” by the strategic guidance from Xi and Putin.

Bolivia ERUPTS IN PROTEST as Plan To ARREST Morales Exposed

Why data sleuths are archiving the Jeffrey Epstein files: ‘We want to provide some clarity’

Before the US Department of Justice (DoJ) missed a legally mandated, December 2025 deadline to release unclassified files related to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, the Denmark-based data scientist and bioinformatician Tommy Carstensen was not especially concerned with the case of the accused sex trafficker. “I hadn’t even watched the Netflix documentary,” he said. “It did not interest me because I thought he was ‘just’ another monetarily wealthy pedophile,” he added, noting the only Epstein associates he was aware of were Ghislaine Maxwell and Britain’s then Prince Andrew.

Now Carstensen oversees one of the internet’s most sophisticated archives of material on Epstein, who officials say died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. He has published interactive graphics of the financier’s properties and financial transactions, an analysis of more than 1m documents released by the DoJ that groups them into subject areas, court records, transcripts of audio and video files from the releases and a facial recognition tool that lets anyone upload an image of a face to see if it appears in any images in the files.

Carstensen was motivated to build the archive after lawmakers accused the justice department in December of failing to comply with a law that mandated the declassification and release of files related to Epstein to the maximum extent possible by 19 December 2025. Volunteer sleuths like Carstensen, who also joined online efforts to identify participants in the January 6 insurrection earlier this decade, are not alone. An increasing number of journalists, researchers and activists have applied technical analyses to the Epstein files that draw out information not readily available in the DoJ’s raw dumps of material.

The latest is a searchable database of faces of individuals who appear in original images in the Epstein files, published earlier this month by the non-profit Decoherence Media. The founder, Tristan Lee, said the new database, which also includes a visualization that shows people who appear in the Epstein files, reveals images of more than 100 individuals who are not mentioned in Epstein’s email files and nearly 200 who have not been reported on, among them a Hollywood agent and the head of a large fitness chain.

Lee was motivated to build the database, he said, because “there’s still so much confusion about who Jeffrey Epstein was, who was in his network, and what his crimes were. I’ve seen viral TikTok videos about how Epstein was actually a cannibal, or elaborate conspiracy theories linking unrelated people to him. We wanted to provide some clarity, to help regular people, as well as journalists and policymakers, better understand who is actually part of Epstein’s social circle, and how these elite networks of power and influence actually operate.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson warns US supreme court it risks losing public trust

The US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a rare public rebuke of the nation’s highest court, declaring that it “can and should be better” in the wake of a string of controversial moves by its conservative supermajority. Weeks after writing a solo dissent as the supreme court effectively gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson – its newest member and fiercest liberal voice – delivered a stark warning over the risk of the court being seen as political.

“Courts are apolitical, not supposed to be issuing rulings that are in the political realm,” she said on Monday at a conference hosted by the American Law Institute in Washington DC. “We have to be scrupulous about sticking to the principles and the rules that we apply in every case, and not look as though we’re doing something different in this kind of context.”

The court, on which conservatives have held a 6-3 majority since 2020, has faced questions over a series of brief emergency orders allowing Donald Trump’s policies to temporarily take effect. Warning of the “real world consequences that are occurring” from the court’s rulings, Jackson said: “No one really has a clear sense of why it’s happening or what the court’s reasoning is. So I just think we can and should be better.”

Her conservative counterparts on the bench have repeatedly pushed back at the suggestion that politics plays a role in the court’s decisions. The chief justice, John Roberts, insisted earlier this month that supreme court justices were not “political actors”.

It comes amid criticism of decisions widely viewed as benefiting Trump and his allies, including the overturning of federally protected abortion rights, the granting of presidential immunity for official acts and the court’s latest ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act.

US justice department ‘forever’ bars IRS from auditing Trump’s past tax returns

The justice department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.

The addendum, signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.

The inclusion only adds to mounting scrutiny of the wider agreement reached on Tuesday. The arrangement was announced after Trump said he was dropping a $10bn lawsuit against the IRS and other specious claims against the government in exchange for creating the compensation fund. IRS officials recommended fighting Trump’s lawsuit, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, but the agency decided to settle it anyway, raising further questions about improper interference.

The fund will be run by five people – all subject to be fired at will by the president – and does not have to make public who it awarded money to or its reason for doing so.

New York federal judge bans ICE arrests at Manhattan immigration courts

A federal judge in New York has banned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting immigrants in or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan, where vigorous confrontations have played out since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Under an order issued on Monday by P Kevin Castel, a US district judge, federal agents are no longer allowed to make arrests of immigrants except under exceptional circumstances at the sites where hearings are held before immigration judges.

Castel’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road NY and other groups. Castel said that his ruling applied to immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza and two other Manhattan locations – 201 Varick Street and 290 Broadway. The ruling does not apply nationwide.

In a 15-page order, Castel said that while there was “a strong governmental interest in enforcing immigration laws”, there also was a serious interest in letting individuals attend removal proceedings and pursue asylum claims before a judge “without fear of arrest”. Castel also noted that federal agents still can detain individuals at locations away from immigration courts and also can make arrests at immigration courthouses when there is a serious threat to public safety.

The lower Manhattan federal buildings, including 26 Federal Plaza where ICE maintains an office, have been the site of immigrants’ arrests, related protests and standoffs between agents and demonstrators which have included the detention of local elected officials.

Castel said the boundaries set out in federal policy in April 2021 regarding enforcement actions inside courthouses can remain in effect. He also said that a court case before him was likely to result in a ruling that it was “arbitrary and capricious” for the second Trump administration to withdraw that policy.

Some Democrats think there's a silver lining in AIPAC's purchase of a congressional seat...

My good friend @RepThomasMassie lost tonight.

He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.

He won voters under 45 by 30 points.

Tonight, I say to this voters who feel rejected by Trump. We welcome you. Join our coalition to take on a… pic.twitter.com/tAGJjtct5b

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) May 20, 2026

Thomas Massie LOSES! But It's NOT OVER!

Trump critic Thomas Massie defeated in Kentucky Republican House primary

Donald Trump displayed his supremacy over the Republican party on Tuesday when voters in northern Kentucky rejected the maverick congressman Thomas Massie in favour of the US president’s hand-picked challenger. Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district in what the president’s allies framed as a test of whether dissent could still exist inside today’s Republican party.

Massie, a libertarian-minded conservative, repeatedly broke with the president over military action against Iran, government spending and the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. He spent months insisting that Kentucky Republicans valued independence over obedience. Instead, voters in the deeply conservative fourth congressional district appeared to conclude that loyalty to Trump mattered more.

For months Trump had treated the contest as a personal vendetta. He branded Massie a “moron”, a “nut job” and a “loser”, dispatched top advisers Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio to run a super political action committee against him, and even travelled to Kentucky himself for a rally denouncing the congressman as “disloyal to the United States of America”.

In his remarks, Massie said that Tuesday marked six months since the passage of the Epstein Transparency Act, which forced the justice department to make public millions of documents related to its investigation into the late sex offender. “We’ve taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture – and that was just six months,” Massie said, listing some of the most high-profile resignations that resulted from the release of the files. Smiling, he added: “I’ve got seven months left in Congress.

The Hill website reported that Kentucky’s fourth congressional district became the most expensive House primary battle in history, citing figures from AdImpact that showed spending of $25.6m in television, radio and digital advertising. “It’s not just the most expensive. This thing went on longer than Vietnam,” Massie said. “Why did this race get so expensive? Because they decided to buy the seat.”

Thomas Massie LOSES To Epstein Class! Here’s What We CAN DO NOW!

AIPAC BLOWN OUT In CRUSHING PA Loss

the evening greens

High levels of toxic ‘forever chemicals’ found off coast of southern England

Scientists have found high levels of toxic Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, in soil, water and throughout the marine food chain in the UK’s Solent strait, including at protected environmental sites, according to a new study. In some samples, pollution was 13 times the safe threshold for coastal waters. Others, which were below legal limits for individual chemicals, failed tests for combined toxicity.

The samples were taken from the Solent strait, which runs between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, forming part of the Channel. The chemicals are thought to have entered the environment from wastewater treatment plants, sewage outflows, historic landfills and nearby military sites. Researchers said their findings highlighted the need to monitor chemicals in combination and to make a blanket ban on Pfas part of the government’s water reform agenda.

Prof Alex Ford, a biologist at the University of Portsmouth and one of the study’s authors, said: “If there was an oil spill in the Solent that industry would have to pay for the restoration of those habitats, but that doesn’t happen with sewage. But he added: “This is one thing I don’t necessarily pin on the water companies because they don’t have the capacity to treat these compounds. That’s why they should be banned at source.”

Researchers analysed government data, testing at water utilities, and their own samples from a dozen species of fish, seaweed and invertebrates. They found Pfas were entering the Solent in treated effluent from wastewater plants in Portsmouth and Fareham operated by Southern Water, the utility that provides drinking water and sewerage for Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

The study also mapped 194 combined sewer overflow outfalls and more than 500 nearby historic landfills that researchers believe could also contribute to the pollution.

Thousands under evacuation orders in southern California as wildfire threatens homes

More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.

By Tuesday evening, the fire had consumed about 1,698 acres (683 hectares) and destroyed at least one home, according to the Ventura county fire department.

The flames were initially pushed by gusts that topped 30mph (48km/h), but firefighters were aided by calmer winds overnight, said a department spokesperson, Andrew Dowd.

“We’ve made a lot of progress against this fire with those improved weather conditions,” Dowd said. Crews hoped to make further progress before winds increased again, he said. The fire was 5% contained as of Tuesday evening. The cause is under investigation.