Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Detroit blues singer and guitarist Bo Collins. Enjoy!

"People show you examples of discrimination against Jews and it’s somebody wearing a watermelon pin or saying “from the river to the sea”. People show you examples of discrimination against Arabs and it’s families being burned alive in Palestine and Lebanon with the full backing of the western world."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Democrat genocide supporters on parade

The Smotrich parade scandal really highlighted how many mental contortions liberal Zionists are performing in order to separate Israel and its government; they spent the whole next day in narrative management mode bloviating about how Israel’s finance minister does not represent Israel and had no business being in the Israel Day parade.

Liberal Zionists be like “he’s a fringe figure and doesn’t represent Israel” and it’s the minister of finance or the minister of national security or the prime minister

— Sean Padraig McCarthy (@SeanMcCarthyCom) June 2, 2026

They like to pretend there are fairy fantasyland versions of Israel in other dimensions ruled by magic Jewish elf queens who ride candy unicorns and treat Palestinians as equals, and it is only by some freakish and unforeseeable twist of fate that our dimension’s version of Israel wound up being governed by genocidal racists.

That’s how they maintain their view that it’s legitimate to criticize specific actions of this one specific government sometimes, but it’s antisemitic to oppose Zionism or say Israel shouldn’t exist. They pretend that the genocidal apartheid state we see before us today is some sort of fluke that is only one of the many possible iterations of what Israel could look like, and that any minute now it could agree to a two-state solution and become a virtuous beacon of truth and justice for the entire world.

This is of course ridiculous. Everything that Israel is today is the result of everything it has always been. All this war, genocide, apartheid and abuse is what it looks like when you give Zionists everything they want. This is all the inevitable fruit of the decision to plant a brand new ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization whose inhabitants do not belong to the privileged group.

There is no alternate reality version of Israel. Its government is inseparable from everything it is as a state. Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Netanyahu are the product of everything Israel has been from its very inception, and when they leave power they will be replaced by psychopathic fascists with different names and faces.

Genocidal apartheid states should not exist. To oppose genocide and apartheid is to oppose Zionism, because there is no material manifestation of Zionism put into practice which does not include those things. Saying “anti-Zionism is anti-semitism” is just saying you support genocide and apartheid and want those things to continue.

Some excellent historical and political information in this video:

Alastair Crooke: IRAN’S TRIGGER WARNING: ‘Withdraw from Lebanon… Any Violations and We Strike

Hezbollah rejects opportunity to cede southern Lebanon to Israel:

Hezbollah rejects Israel-Lebanon truce as Trump scrambles to end Iran war

Hezbollah has rejected a US-brokered ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments, throwing the future of a truce in Lebanon and regional peace negotiations into question. The group’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the plan a “roadmap to annihilate part of the Lebanese people” in a statement on Thursday. He demanded a complete ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, and said that as long as Lebanese villages were being bombed, northern Israel would not be safe.

“As long as the occupation exists, the resistance will continue,” he said. “We call upon the officials to put an end to this farce and humiliation called direct negotiations.” The Israeli and the Lebanese governments had agreed a ceasefire to end hostilities on Monday night. The deal called for a complete cessation of fire from Hezbollah, which is aligned with Iran, and the evacuation of all its fighters south of the Litani River.

Despite the agreement between the two governments, the Lebanese army is not a party to the conflict because the fighting has been between Hezbollah and Israel. The Lebanese government has been negotiating with Israel without Hezbollah as part of its effort to reassert control over the country and disarm the group. Hezbollah’s rejection of the ceasefire flies in the face of the Lebanese government’s announcement that it would come into effect in 24 hours, and raises further questions about how the Lebanese government can negotiate a ceasefire with Israel without Hezbollah at the table.

Hezbollah’s rejection of the ceasefire seems to echo demands from Tehran, which said hours after the ceasefire was announced that Israel should withdraw to its prewar positions. The head of the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said: “Supporting the resistance in Lebanon is the duty of all of us, and removing Israel from the region is an attainable goal for Muslims.” Esmail Qaani wrote in a post on a domestic social media platform: “The minimum demand of the resistance is the withdrawal of the usurping regime to the position it held before the start of the 40-day war.”

Tehran has previously said that its own ceasefire with the US and Israel must include a halt to the fighting in Lebanon. It is unclear how Hezbollah’s rejection of a ceasefire in Lebanon will affect Tehran’s negotiations with Washington. Donald Trump said on Wednesday he wanted to separate talks on the conflict in Lebanon and those on the war with Iran, but Tehran insists the two situations are linked and this week threatened to suspend talks with the US in protest against Israel’s offensive in Lebanon.

Seyed M. Marandi: Hormuz Toll, Strike On Kuwait, Israel Decline & Iranian Nuclear Bomb?

Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives

Donald Trump has two things to say about his war with Iran. The first is that it’s already over. And second, a symbolic congressional vote to end it – carried by four members of his own party – is a stab in the back that could derail the peace talks he’s conducting for the war that’s already over.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, told Congress this week that Operation Epic Fury had “concluded”. The Trump administration insists the US is now only conducting “completely defensive” strikes. And yet gas prices are averaging close to $4.24 per gallon nationwide, per AAA, and nearly $6 in California. The strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil normally flows, remains effectively closed, three months after the first strikes on Iran.

The absurdity of calling anyone out for noticing the contradiction as disloyal does not appear to be winning over most Americans. A May Economist/YouGov survey found 59% disapproved of Trump’s handling of Iran, while only 31% approved. About two-thirds of Americans told Reuters/Ipsos that rising gas prices had hurt their household finances, and Moody’s Analytics estimates the conflict has cost US households roughly $100bn in aggregate through higher energy costs.

Now attention turns to the Senate, where four Republicans have already broken rank with the administration to advance a similar war powers measure, and a final vote still looms. And should it pass, it would require Trump’s signature.

Wednesday’s House vote is, as the White House correctly notes, largely symbolic. But symbols have a way of accumulating. In the Senate, the math is moving. The war remains unpopular. The strait of Hormuz is still closed. Trump is insisting the conflict is over and, in the same breath, that talking about it is unpatriotic. For a growing number of Americans, and their representatives on Capitol Hill, this is not a winning message.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Will Israeli Officials Blow Up any US/Iran Peace?

House Dems Join GOP to Help Advance Deeper US-Israeli Military Integration

A US congressional committee on Thursday rejected an amendment to strip a provision from next year’s Pentagon funding bill aimed at deepening integration of the US and Israeli militaries under the guise of reducing aid.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced an amendment to strike Section 224—which would establish a formal “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”—from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. The proposed NDAA authorizes $1.15 trillion in baseline military spending, while the Trump administration’s full defense request seeks an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in armed forces and related funding for the coming fiscal year.

Section 224 would require the US defense secretary to designate a Pentagon executive agent responsible for coordinating and expanding US-Israel defense technology cooperation.

In Thursday’s voice vote, members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) from both parties rejected the amendment to remove Section 224 from the NDAA, with only Khanna and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) backing the measure.

The House voted today on a new measure to fuse elements of the Israeli and US militaries, particularly on the cyberweapons front. Section 224, as its known, is included in the National Defense Authorization Act. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced an amendment to strip it from… https://t.co/xWAiZQ03BC pic.twitter.com/rLUViMeKLv

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 4, 2026

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—has called Section 224 “my plan.”

While proponents of Section 224 contend that the measure would reduce US taxpayer funding for Israel, Khanna argued that the provision amounts to a blank check for a country that most Americans oppose sending more aid to.

“The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do,” the congressman said Thursday while promoting his amendment. “The entire country of Israel has a GDP that is less than a single town in my district, yet somehow Netanyahu thinks he could tell the American people what we should do.”

“I am for Team America,” Khanna added. “I am for the interests of this country, and I believe that’s what [President] Donald Trump ran on. That includes American interests against any foreign country. We should have American sovereignty and make it clear that we strike 224. If we want to give aid to Israel, if we want to sell them weapons, that should be a vote for the entire Congress.”

In a letter to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.)—who is not on the HASC—Netanyahu said he is “heartened” by Section 224’s plan to “develop a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States government” that will reduce “US financial military assistance over the next decade” and replace it with “a new framework of joint defense cooperation, codevelopment, coproduction, and mutual investment.”

The US has provided more than $20 billion in armed aid to Israel during the Biden and Trump administrations since Netanyahu launched the genocidal war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The current 10-year Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel, signed in 2016 during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, provided Israel with $38 billion in US military aid and expires in 2028.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—who has partnered with Khanna on introducing or supporting war powers resolutions aimed at curbing Trump’s ability to wage unconstitutional wars in countries including Yemen, Venezuela, and Iran—said last month that if Section 224 made it out of committee, he would work with Khanna to “offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is urging Americans to contact their members of Congress to tell them to reject Section 224.

U.S. tax dollars have bene funding Israel’s war crimes. Section 224 would make that funding automatic, classified, and permanent.

Demand congress to reject section 224!

TAKE ACTION:
Send a letter to your representative: [https://t.co/R00bzrtYrZ]
Call the House Armed…

— ADC National (@adc) June 4, 2026

“This is not ‘America First.’ It is Israel First,” ADC argues on its website. “The resolution language attached to this proposal gives it away: it expresses support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initiative to transition the US–Israel relationship toward mutual defense cooperation and joint economic investment. This language turns Congress into a vehicle for advancing Netanyahu’s agenda and asks the American people to treat it as their own national security policy.”

“Section 224 would move US support for Israel away from the more transparent foreign aid framework and into a maze of Pentagon procurement, licensing, data-sharing, and backdoor deals that are harder for Congress, taxpayers, and future administrations to monitor, cap, condition, or unwind,” the group continued. “Concerns of undefined ‘network integration’ and ‘data fusion’ should alarm every American who cares about sovereignty, privacy, civil liberties, and democratic oversight.”

“At a time when Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, exporting surveillance technologies used against activists and journalists around the world, marketing military technology tested on Palestinians, and carrying out terrorist attacks as seen in the cell phone [bombings] in Lebanon, Congress should be cutting off military support—not integrating the US military and Israeli defense sector and making accountability harder than ever,” ADC added.

In an opinion piece published this week by Common Dreams, Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote that “lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel’s military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in the region.”

“This unprecedented level of US-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of US military assistance,” Freeman said.

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 5-June

‘The People of Lebanon Can’t Wait,’ Says Tlaib After Dem Leaders Join With GOP to Vote Down War Powers Resolutions

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries helped Republicans tank Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s war powers resolution to limit US military involvement in Lebanon on Thursday, holding up the effort to curb the conflict for at least another several weeks.

Despite Israel’s invasion of Lebanon pushing deeper, with more than 3,500 people killed and 1.2 million displaced since early March, the Michigan Democrat’s resolution was defeated in a 324-92 vote, with a large number in her own party joining Jeffries (D-NY) and the Republican majority against it.

House Democratic Leaders Jeffries, Clark & Aguilar announce they'll vote No against Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib's Lebanon War Powers Resolution during today's 4pm vote series. pic.twitter.com/FHuiTARgGD

— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) June 4, 2026

In a joint statement shortly ahead of the vote on Tlaib’s resolution, House Minority Leader Jeffries of New York, along with Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), said: “We stand with the Lebanese people, the government of Lebanon, and the Lebanese Armed Forces in their efforts to live peacefully and defeat Hezbollah.” The statement included no mention of Israel.

The lawmakers said they’d support a different resolution introduced by Tlaib on Wednesday, which was crafted in tandem with Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

That resolution likewise required President Donald Trump to remove US forces “from any hostilities in Lebanon” within seven days of passage. But it also added the caveat that it could not be construed to “prevent or limit security cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces.”

Our government is supplying Israel with white phosphorus bombs that melt human flesh to the bone. These bombs are targeting civilians, schools, hospitals, and places of worship. The U.S. must end its complicity in these war crimes, and pass the Lebanon War Powers Resolution. pic.twitter.com/HUeBrd8Esl

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) June 4, 2026

Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar said, “There are no US servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon.”

However, supporters of Tlaib’s original measure have noted that

the US military is heavily involved in Israel’s actions in the country without having boots on the ground.

“The US is actively cooperating with Israel on coordinating strikes, intelligence sharing, and planning, including Trump green-lighting major attacks on Lebanon multiple times,” Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher at the Democratizing Foreign Policy Project at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams.

While the resolution’s passage wouldn’t “end US involvement overnight,” she said, “it fundamentally changes the landscape of accountability” by giving opponents of US collaboration a legal mechanism to conduct oversight.

And while the resolution would not cut off US military aid to Israel, Abou-Elias said Israel could continue its occupation “only for a limited period of time” without US assistance.

“Israel would be absorbing losses while also draining its broader manpower and firepower reserves,” she said. “At some point, the cost-benefit of continuing their occupation without US support would shift.”

The people of Lebanon can't wait another month for Congress to act. Every day that we do nothing, 11 more Lebanese children are killed or injured by the Israeli military in this U.S.-supported invasion. Congress must pass today's Lebanon War Powers Resolution. https://t.co/0XuVv3JKDa

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) June 4, 2026

Because war powers resolutions are privileged, they can be forced to a vote even without approval from the Republican majority.

However, committees are given 15 days to act before a resolution is forced onto the floor, followed by three days for a House vote. This means it could take until June 21 for the new version to pass. The Senate would also have to pass it, and it would then take another week to go into effect.

“The people of Lebanon can’t wait another month for Congress to act,” Tlaib said on social media following news that the proposal would be voted down. “Every day that we do nothing, 11 more Lebanese children are killed or injured by the Israeli military in this US-supported invasion. Congress must pass today’s Lebanon war powers resolution.”

Abou-Elias said that despite the setback, Tlaib’s introduction of the measure was not a wasted effort.

“Even if the resolution doesn’t pass today, the vote forces every representative on record on the US participation in the attacks on Lebanon,” she said. “That alone has value.”

Though resolution failed, proponents of the measure championed the 92 lawmakers who did vote in favor.

“Congress’s failure to act has thus far enabled multiple Israeli invasions of Lebanon and war crimes against Lebanese civilians,” said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, in a statement. “Tonight’s vote demonstrated that a growing block of members of Congress are beginning to listen to their constituents. Americans don’t want the US involved in atrocities against Lebanese, Palestinians, Iranians, or anyone. This vote is just the beginning, and we will continue to organize until all of Congress acts to end these atrocities.”

Iran's Missiles HUMILIATE US Navy, IMMINENT Strike on Israel Next | Andrei Martyanov

Microsoft to tighten human rights measures after inquiry into Israel’s use of its tech

Microsoft has said it will tighten human-rights controls when working with national security agencies after an inquiry into how the Israeli military used its cloud technology for the mass surveillance of Palestinians. On Thursday, Microsoft announced the completion of the inquiry and a series of new measures that include changes to how the company oversees employees with security clearances issued by foreign governments.

Microsoft ordered the inquiry last year in response to a Guardian investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealing how the Israeli military used the company’s cloud to store a vast trove of intercepted Palestinian phone calls. Shortly after the inquiry was launched, Microsoft terminated the Israeli military’s access to cloud and AI services used to support the surveillance project after initial findings showed its spy agency, Unit 8200, had violated the company’s terms of service.

In a summary of the inquiry’s outcome, Microsoft said its “factual findings remain the same” and it would adopt a series of recommendations intended to improve the “effectiveness of our human-rights governance”. Described as a “final update” on the situation, the announcement attempts to draw a line under a challenging episode for Microsoft that placed a spotlight on the role played by its technology in the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza and operations in the occupied West Bank.

The Guardian investigation last year found Unit 8200 had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to operate an indiscriminate system that allowed its intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyse the content of millions of Palestinian cellular phone calls every day. The revelations prompted concerns at a senior level within Microsoft that some employees at its Israeli subsidiary had not been fully transparent with headquarters about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used the company’s technology. Sources familiar with the inquiry said it had examined how some of Microsoft’s Tel Aviv-based employees had felt conflicting loyalties between their obligations to the company and their support for the Israeli military after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel.

Putin Uncompromising Tells West MSM Oreshnik Will Strike Kiev Russia Winning; Zelensky Pleads Summit

US imposes new sanctions on Cuban president and Castro family members

The United States has announced fresh economic sanctions on Cuba’s president and some of his immediate family, alongside members of the Castro family, in Washington’s latest ramping up of pressure on its communist-led neighbour. Among those targeted were the son and a grandson of former president Raúl Castro, who no longer holds an official position but remains a key figure on decisions about the future of the island.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, his wife and stepson were also hit by the latest Treasury department sanctions issued on Thursday, as was the ministry of the revolutionary armed forces and several other entities. The US has had an embargo on Cuba for decades, but US President Donald Trump has drastically ramped up pressure on the island in recent months and openly muses about taking it over. A de facto fuel blockade has deepened the island’s energy crisis and hit its already fragile economy.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on X that the US was “targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s subversive and radical operations” because the US would “no longer tolerate radical Marxist regimes” exporting their “poisonous and evil ‘revolution’” to the US and elsewhere.

Top Democrat urges end to secrecy over proposed ICE child detention center

The ranking member on the US Senate’s influential finance committee has demanded transparency over a proposed “first-of-its-kind” ICE family and child detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, citing reporting by the Guardian that first revealed the Trump administration’s plans in March. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has written to the project’s contractors and to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expressing concerns over conflicts of interest, environmental contamination and “the absence of a public process” in the center’s planning.

“A federal facility designed to hold children and families in federal custody cannot be stood up in secrecy,” the letter states. The move comes as documents obtained by the Guardian, including layout designs, draft contracts and email communications, provide further details of the proposed facility’s operations, as the Department of Homeland Security continues to refuse to comment on the project.

According to the documents, released under a public records request, the planned facility, partly based in an old military barracks, will have space for 528 beds and is expected to hold families and unaccompanied minors for around 72 hours before they are deported from a regional airport at the same site. The Alexandria airport is a central node in the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and already houses a separate detention center for men, which is run by the private corrections company Geo Group. An investigation by the Guardian in 2025 revealed an array of due process violations, medical issues, abuse and crowded conditions.

The planned family facility is set to be run by a Texas-based child welfare non-profit named Compass Connections alongside the charitable arm of a private prison group, LaSalle Corrections. Wyden has written directly to Compass Connections expressing concerns that the non-profit’s existing work with the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which is mandated to promote the health and wellbeing of refugees and unaccompanied immigrant children and not to conduct immigration enforcement activities, is evidence of a conflict of interest. The ORR is an agency within the HHS.

The letter states that Compass Connections “has long been one of the nation’s largest providers of care to children in the Unaccompanied Children Program” receiving more than $1.6bn in federal funding for such services in the last three years. “Compass Connections’s simultaneous role at the Alexandria facility raises questions about how the organization is reconciling its anti-trafficking and child-welfare missions with operational involvement in a federal deportation pipeline,” it adds, requesting answers to 14 detailed questions related to the non-profit’s proposed work in Alexandria, its governance structure and operations at other sites.

Senate Republicans narrowly block bid to bar Trump’s $1.8bn fund to pay allies

Senate Republicans on Thursday narrowly scuttled an attempt by Democrats to stop Donald Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies, even as signs emerged that dissent over the proposal was spreading inside the US president’s own party. Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had proposed inserting language barring the payouts into Republican-backed legislation to fund Trump’s mass deportation campaign through the duration of his term.

After a vote that stretched for three hours as groups of senators were spotted huddling on the chamber’s floor, the amendment failed by a 49-50 vote. Three Republican senators, all of whom are seen as vulnerable in November’s midterm elections, broke with their party to join all Democrats in support.

Though Schumer’s amendment failed, the matter is likely to come up again before Congress. The president’s plan for an “anti-weaponization” fund that could issue financial settlements to people connected to the January 6 insurrection has riven Senate Republicans, and complicated their efforts to settle for good a standoff with Democrats over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies the president has tasked with implementing his hardline immigration policies.

Amid the bipartisan outcry, Todd Blanche, acting US attorney general, told lawmakers earlier this week that the administration would not move forward with the fund. But that did not satisfy Schumer, who insisted that Congress should pass a law blocking the money from ever being spent. “Republicans are trusting the word of Todd Blanche, who built a career on lying, the administration will just drop the slush fund,” said Schumer. He noted that just the day prior, Trump had expressed his “love” for the fund, and said it was “so important”.

Susan Collins of Maine, the only Republican senator representing a state won by Kamala Harris in 2024, supported his amendment, along with Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Jon Husted of Ohio. All are top targets of Democrats in the midterms, and on Wednesday, Fox News released a poll showing Husted trailing his Democratic challenger, former senator Sherrod Brown, by eight percentage points.

Republicans urge investigation into two men accused of abuse by Epstein assistant

Republican lawmakers have asked the Department of Justice to investigate sexual assault allegations involving two men made by Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime assistant. In a transcribed closed-door interview in late May, as part of a congressional investigation into Epstein, Sarah Kellen, one of the late sex offender’s former aides, told the House oversight and reform committee she was “sexually and psychologically abused” by him during her employment – but also alleged she was sexually assaulted by the French celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai, and by Philip Levine, the former mayor of Miami Beach, in separate incidents in the early 2000s.

Hundreds of people, including dozens powerful and prominent figures, have been linked to Epstein, and named in files released by the justice department, with no evidence of wrongdoing. James Comer, the Republican who chairs the oversight panel, and four other Republican lawmakers, said Fekkai and Levine are the “first names of alleged criminal conduct” the committee has referred to the department amid the panel’s investigation into Epstein.

The lawmakers announced on Thursday that they sent a letter to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, asking the justice department to “use all available tools, including immunity for certain witnesses, to investigate the allegations against, and any other criminal conduct committed by, Philip Levine and Frédéric Fekkai”.

Neither Fekkai nor Levine have been charged with any crime related to Epstein. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

In the letter to Blanche, lawmakers said Levine’s name appeared “over 600 times” in the Epstein files released by the justice department earlier this year, “including in direct correspondence” with Epstein and his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes. The lawmakers also alleged that Fekkai “was a close friend” of Epstein who “played a role in his grooming schemes by routinely providing salon services to women at Mr Epstein’s instruction”.

Pam Bondi claims Todd Blanche was ‘in charge’ of ‘entire release’ of Epstein files

Former attorney general Pam Bondi told lawmakers that Todd Blanche, the man Donald Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Appearing before the House oversight and reform committee, which is investigating the late financier and convicted sex offender, Bondi also said she was “not certain of the extent” that Trump knew about the crimes of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, before they became public.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, claimed in a statement on Thursday that Trump had been “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein” when contacted for comment on Bondi’s testimony.

Blanche, who served as Bondi’s deputy at the justice department, was responsible for the “entire release of the Epstein files”, Bondi claimed, according to a transcript released by the committee on Thursday. Blanche was appointed as acting attorney general following Bondi’s ouster, and Trump said this week he planned to nominate him for the role permanently.

Last week, Bondi faced questions about the justice department’s handling of the Epstein files during her tenure. Her appearance came as the department continues to face scrutiny over the files and its compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated the release of Epstein-related records held by the department. The department has maintained it acted in accordance with the law. Several lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, as well as survivors of Epstein’s abuse, have criticized some of the department’s actions and raised concerns over certain redactions and the disclosure of sensitive personal information in the files.

In her opening statement and throughout her testimony, Bondi defended the justice department’s handling of the records under her leadership, at the same time working to distance herself from the release and review of the files, saying that she did not “lead every aspect” of the department’s effort, but that it was Blanche who oversaw it. “He was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files,” she told lawmakers on 29 May. In her opening statement, she also said that she did not “conduct that document review myself” and told the panel that she “delegated oversight over this process” to Blanche.

Trump claims Bill Pulte will investigate ‘rigged elections’ in temporary intelligence role

Donald Trump has suggested his controversial ally Bill Pulte will investigate “rigged elections” while serving as the country’s top intelligence official, as the US president continues to make unfounded allegations about voting. But Pulte, whom Trump appointed as acting director of national intelligence earlier this week, will only serve in the role temporarily, the president claimed on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said: “He’s not going to be permanent because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent.” Trump went on to say that Pulte’s “energy” and “high integrity” will “be very good”, adding: “Again, it’s short term, but he may be very effective for a short period.”

Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is a staunch Trump loyalist and does not have national intelligence experience. His appointment as head of national intelligence followed the exit of Tulsi Gabbard. “He’s a very smart guy,” Trump claimed on Thursday, “and you may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc”.

Earlier in the day, in a social media post at 12.48am, Trump alleged without evidence that Democrats were cheating in California’s primaries. He also claimed the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles was investigating. The US attorney’s office said it had no comment.

California Chaos: Republicans Face Shutout As Progressives Surge

Trump uses wartime powers to dole out $700m to ‘clean, beautiful’ coal

Donald Trump is using wartime presidential authority to hand $700m to coal-fired power plants in the US, the latest move by the president to bolster what he called “clean, beautiful coal”, despite it being the dirtiest of fossil fuels. “Today, we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” he said at a press conference on Thursday.

Trump is using the Defense Production Act, a cold war-era statute used to accelerate American industrial output in times of national need, to provide grants to more than a dozen existing coal plants across the US, including facilities capable of exporting coal. “As a result of the $700m investment that I’m announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coalmines, a tremendous number, and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal,” Trump said.

The funds will be used to bring a new coal export terminal online in Oakland, California, and to restart an existing facility in Maryland. They will also keep online plants across 10 states: West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Each of those 10 states voted for Trump, the president boasted on Thursday. “We won them all,” he said. The two new coal plants will be in Alaska and West Virginia.

In the past year, the Trump administration has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to the coal industry, signed orders forcing ratepayers to pay extra for ageing plants to stay open, and dismantled environmental rules that limit toxins from coal leaching into Americans’ shared air and water. The administration’s attempts to provide a cuddly rebranding to coal have even extended to creating a new mascot with giant eyes, called Coalie, and gushing social media posts that include an image of a lump of coal wearing sunglasses as if it were on the TV show Love Island.

“You’re not allowed to say ‘coal’ within the Trump administration unless it’s preceded by the words ‘clean, beautiful’,” Trump said on Thursday. “Complicates our life, but it’s good.” Regardless of such terminology, coal is not clean. It is the most carbon-dense fossil fuel and therefore a leading cause of the climate crisis when burned. Coal also gives off tiny toxic particles that sicken miners and trigger widespread respiratory and heart health problems across the US – research has estimated that as many as 460,000 deaths in the US from 1999 to 2020 were attributable to air pollution from coal plants alone.

California and New York weaken climate rules as red states ramp up green energy

Democratic-led states are eroding their climate policies, as red states are scaling up their clean energy deployment. California on Friday scaled back its cap-and-invest program, offering more than $3bn in free pollution allowances to polluting companies. Earlier the same week, New York weakened its groundbreaking climate law, delaying a plan to regulate carbon from 2024 until 2028 and reducing emissions-slashing targets. Rhode Island’s governor, meanwhile, is attempting to roll back aggressive clean-energy programs.

The moves come as Donald Trump’s administration withdraws clean energy incentives and energy savings programs, and as energy prices spike across the country amid trade disruptions stemming from the US-Israeli war on Iran. Proponents have said the changes are necessary to suppress electricity costs, but climate advocates say that view is short-sighted and misguided.

In contrast to many Democratic-led jurisdictions, red states have tended to dominate renewable energy deployment in recent years. In terms of growth of utility-scale renewables, states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election made up eight of the top 10 in the year to March, according to Energy Information Administration data. Indiana tops the list of states with the most clean energy capacity growth in that timeframe, followed by Kentucky and Utah.

More broadly, though, it is Texas that has emerged as the country’s leading clean energy superpower, despite its strong ties to the oil and gas industry and unsuccessful attempts within the Republican-led legislature to curb the growth of wind and solar. Texas leads the country in wind energy production, followed by fellow red states Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas, and in March overtook California in utility-scale solar, too. The state is the “energy capital of the world”, Greg Abbott, Texas’s governor, has boasted.

‘This is not a hippy thing’: the startup recycling urine to make natural fertiliser

When staff answer the call of nature at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris, their urine is not simply flushed away – it is turned into something much more useful. While urine-diverting toilets are often associated with smelly festival loos, there is nothing bohemian about recycling nutrients from human pee, said David de Chambrier, the chief executive of VunaNexus.

The process isn’t so different from recovering minerals in used electronics. “Urine is a very concentrated resource. This is not a hippy thing to do; we are recycling minerals,” he said. Similarly to batteries, which should not be thrown in the bin to be recycled, “separating the urine at the source makes its treatment way easier”.

Special toilets that look like normal facilities send the separated liquid, without diluting it with water, down a piping system into a small treatment plant in the basement of the building. There, the urine goes through a series of tanks that remove micropollutants, such as antibiotics, and concentrate valuable nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus that are essential for plant growth. The liquid is then pasteurised at 90C, killing any potential viruses and other pathogens. The distilled water is separated and reinjected into the flushing system before a liquid fertiliser called Aurin comes out on the other side.

VunaNexus, the Swiss startup behind the technology, says Aurin is the only mineral fertiliser made entirely of human urine that is certified on the market. It is approved for use on all plants by the Swiss and French authorities and is sold to farmers, for use in gardens and on house plants and is being tested by city authorities in Paris, Lausanne and Zurich. The chokehold on the strait of Hormuz, through which about a third of the global trade in raw materials for fertilisers – and a fifth of shipments of the liquified fossil gas required to make them – passes, has acutely exposed the vulnerability of the fertiliser market and spurred renewed interest in alternatives.

Today, the VunaNexus system is installed in several large commercial and residential buildings including one of Switzerland’s largest private banks in Geneva, recycling about 3m litres of urine a year. The technology is being rolled out across a newly developed eco neighbourhood in Paris, which will be the biggest project of its kind in Europe. “If we were to recycle all the urine of people in Europe, I think we could cover around 30% of the nitrogen need,” said de Chambrier. That’s not enough to transform the fertiliser market but it provides an alternative to increase the resilience of water treatment systems in dense urban areas and reduce fertiliser’s environmental impact, he said.

Also of Interest

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

A Lawless System of Brutality

Trump Tells Aides He May Restart Full-Scale Bombing Against Iran If US Troops Are Killed

Iran War: US Attempts Project Freedom 2.0 as Israel Continues Attacks in Lebanon Despite Alleged Ceasefire; Iran Economy Not Harmed by Sanctions, Performed on a Par to Saudis; Rice Prices Jump in Asia

Can Russia Refrain From Hitting Back?

Russia sees no progress on settlement in Ukraine since Anchorage — Lavrov

Consumer protection agency deletes thousands of pages as Trump administration seeks to dismantle it

Why is Hasan Piker ‘not conducive to the public good’? Because on Gaza, we punish the witness, not the crime

A Little Night Music

Mr. Bo - Early In The Morning

Mr Bo and his Blue Boys - Baby Your Hair Looks Bad

Mr Bo - Heartache & Troubles

Mr. Bo – Detroit, Michigan

Mr. Bo. & His Blues Boys - Let's Go To The Party

Mr. Bo – Fire Down Below

Mr. Bo – The Things You Put Me Through

Mr. Bo - Until The Day I Die

Mr. Bo – Buzz Me