Middle East

 The Guardian -  Gaza’s ministry of health says that more than 17,000 of the 58,000 Palestinians killed are children. Israel says that it seeks to minimise harm to civilians. The death toll belies that and Israeli intelligence sources told reporters last year that at times they were permitted to kill up to 20 civilians to take out even junior militants – with the preference being to attack targets when they were at home, because it was easier.

Jeffrey Epstein

 A Timeline of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s Relationship

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Via Fernando Oliver, Esq.

 

Catholic church vs. MAGA

 Occupy Democrats -  The Catholic Church enrages MAGA world as the Archdiocese of Miami unequivocally condemns "Alligator Alcatraz" as "unbecoming of public officials" and "corrosive of the common good." The Church has quickly become Donald Trump's greatest enemy... 

"We all want to make America great again, but you're not going to make America great by making America mean," said Archbishop Thomas Wenski. ... Pope Pope Leo XIV is a strong advocate for humane treatment and care of migrants and under his leadership the Church has pushed back forcefully against many of Trump's worst abuses. "To mock these people that are detained here is to forget, that they… have parents, mothers, fathers, children, brothers and sister that are very distressed by people being detained here," the Archbishop said. "What makes it cruel right now is the arbitrariness of this push to deport more people that really have a stake, who've already been here, that put in sweat equity and staying here," he added.

Why Trump is out to kill the Department of Education

John Pavlovitz - The Republican Party is destroying the Department of Education because it needs stupid people. By dismantling the hub of America’s access to education and replacing it with a rogue’s gallery of white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and Bible-thumping cave people, the GOP is waging war on this nation by churning out people who will not know this nation’s history, have no appreciation for diverse cultures or experiences, and have no interest in objective truth. They will be guaranteeing generations of just the kind of slow, dim, parochial, and terrified human beings that they need to remain in power for the rest of this nation’s ever-darkening history. All hatred is rooted in ignorance, and since hatred is the Republican Party’s sole political platform, they must propagate a steady stream of that ignorance.

Americans downsizing their summer vacations

 MSN - Americans are downsizing their summer vacations — taking shorter trips, driving instead of flying, and generally staying closer to home in an uncertain economy. Families appear to be pulling back on travel spending, after years of splurging on vacations and other experiences after the pandemic-era shutdowns. Fewer households are booking airline tickets or hotel rooms now than they were a year ago, Bank of America data shows. And the number of people taking vacation time off work in June dropped to its lowest level since the pandemic, according to Labor Department data.

That pullback follows months of economic warning signs. Americans say they are feeling worse about the economy than they have in years, as new trade and immigration policies take hold. Many are bracing for a spike in prices from new tariffs, while others are worried about losing their jobs in a slowing labor market.

 

Some experiences with ICE

The Guardian - Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.

He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.

From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.

“Nobody is safe from the system if they get pulled into it,” said Thomas, in a recent interview from his home in Ireland, a few months after his release. Thomas asked to be identified by a nickname out of fear of facing further consequences with US immigration authorities.

Despite immediately agreeing to deportation when he was first arrested, Thomas remained in Ice detention after Donald Trump took office and dramatically ramped up immigration arrests. Amid increased overcrowding in detention, Thomas was forced to spend part of his time in custody in a federal prison for criminal defendants, even though he was being held on an immigration violation.

Thomas was sent back to Ireland in March and was told he was banned from entering the US for 10 years.

Salon -  As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

 

 

You may be part Neanderthal

Science Daily  - For centuries, we’ve imagined Neanderthals as distant cousins — a separate species that vanished long ago. But thanks to AI-powered genetic research, scientists have revealed a far more entangled history. Modern humans and Neanderthals didn’t just cross paths; they repeatedly interbred, shared genes, and even merged populations over nearly 250,000 years. These revelations suggest that Neanderthals never truly disappeared — they were absorbed. Their legacy lives on in our DNA, reshaping our understanding of what it means to be human.

 

Flash Flood Disasters Are the ‘Hardest Kind to Prevent’

NY Times  - Officials in Texas are under scrutiny for a string of refusals to fund early warning systems for flash floods in an area where sudden, intense rainfall is frequent. 

Those measures could have included river gauges and warning sirens that could have alerted people that their lives were in imminent danger. The floods that raged down the Guadalupe River eight days ago killed at least 121 people, including at least 36 children.

But global experts in early warning systems said that there are few examples of places around the world that have mastered the choreography of forecasting and communication needed to prevent loss of life in extreme rain events. And in many cases, like in Texas this month, accurate forecasting alone is not enough to prevent calamity.

“Flash floods are the hardest kind of disaster to prevent,” said Erin Coughlan de Perez, who studies disaster risk management at Tufts University. She said that both rich and poor countries have grappled with funding for systems that ultimately either fail or create enough false alarms to erode public confidence.

For instance, in Valencia, Spain, a lack of sufficient warnings contributed to a catastrophe where more than 200 people died in flash floods last year. An alert system was in place, but was not activated until it was already too late.

What to Do When There’s a Flash Flood Warning

 

Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit

 Reuters - The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies - such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University - has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump's election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

 

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump's administration.

 

"Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system," said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump's second term. "How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?"

 

Stupid Trump stuff

 Daily Beast  President Trump has revealed that the champions of the Club World Cup won’t be getting the original trophy, because he’s keeping it.... The intricate prize hoisted aloft by the London club’s captain, Reece James, was a replica because the president of football’s governing body, FIFA, has let Trump use the original as an ornament in the Oval Office. The trophy, crafted in collaboration with Tiffany & Co, features a central disc with three rotating outer rings. It has a 24-carat gold-plated finish and is thought to have cost around $230,000 to make. 

 

Problems in getting students to think

Larry Cuban - According to psychologists, reasoning is an untidy mental and emotional process that requires time for an active interplay between teachers and students to mull over inconsistencies, and time to work through problems without fear of teachers' or peers' cutting remarks. Reasoning also requires teachers creating a classroom climate that promotes students asking questions. In the classroom, then, the necessary conditions for thinking to occur are sufficient time and a classroom atmosphere where both teachers and students are free to display thinking without fear of reprimand or mockery.

Do high school structures promote enough time and classroom climates across academic subjects to support frequent and open use of reasoning skills? Hardly. Take for example, the 4 Ts: Time, Teacher Load, Textbooks, and Tests.

* Time. Teaching 30 students for 50 minutes leaves little time for considering ideas or problems when teachers are expected to cover many textbook chapters. Individual attention to students’ comments evaporates. Moreover, the bell schedule presses both teachers and students to rush through questions and answers. The average teacher waits less than a few seconds for a student to answer a question (see here and here).
* Teacher load. Most high school teachers face five classes daily totaling 125 to 150 students. Not all students in each class get called upon to answer questions.
* Textbooks. A required textbook is the primary source of classroom information. Texts get thicker, not thinner each year. Text-driven homework and quizzes determine what is to be remembered, not what ideas get analyzed.
* Tests. True-false items flourish in teacher-made tests; multiple-choice in standardized tests. Both require one correct answer.  More

Transportation

Data: StreetLight. Chart: Alex Fitzpatrick/Axios

 

AI tools can actually reduce productivity

 Axios - A surprising new study finding that AI tools can reduce programmers' productivity is upending assumptions about the technology's world-changing potential....Software runs our civilization, and AI is already transforming the business of making it. But no one really knows whether AI will decimate programming jobs, or turn every coder into a miracle worker, or both.

The study by METR, a nonprofit independent research outfit, looked at experienced programmers working on large, established open-source projects.

• It found that these developers believed that using AI tools helped them perform 20% faster — but they actually worked 19% slower.
• A key factor was that human developers found AI-generated code unreliable and ended up devoting extra time to reviewing, testing and fixing it.

 

First time home buyers

WalletHub - With a historic low of 24% of home purchases last year made by first-time buyers, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the Best & Worst Cities for First-Time Home Buyers in 2025, as well as expert commentary....

Flint, Michigan, has the most affordable housing (median house price divided by median annual household income), which is 9.7 times cheaper than in Santa Barbara, California, the city with the least affordable housing.

Doctors writing "social prescriptions"

NPR -  Doctors are writing “social prescriptions” to get people engaged with nature, art, exercise and volunteering in the same way they would prescribe pills or therapy. Research has shown it can help with mental health, chronic disease and dementia. .... Julia Hotz, the author of The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging, shares details on the health approach:

Health providers in around 30 countries are practicing social prescribing to address symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, dementia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and more. A growing number of U.S. providers are also embracing the approach.
 

Social prescribing can save money due to a reduction in emergency room visits and repeat visits to primary care physicians. Health care systems have acknowledged that it can be cheaper to cover weeks of Zumba classes than medication over the course of a lifetime. 
 

People interested in social prescribing can visit the map on Social Prescribing USA's website to find a list of organizations and health systems involved in this practice.

Ukraine

 NPR - Trump yesterday threatened to implement heavy tariffs on countries that trade with Moscow if the Kremlin doesn’t reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine by September. The president also promised Ukraine billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made military equipment, which NATO countries in Europe will pay for. 

NPR’s Charles Maynes says the president's change of tone on Russia was quite a shift. A big driver in this shift is Trump’s frustration with and even a sense of betrayal by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The president said he thought he had a peace deal with Putin four separate times, only to see Russian attacks in Ukraine continue. Some in Moscow see the 50-day grace period provided for the ceasefire as a sign that Trump isn’t ready to give up on Russia. 

NYC Mayor's race

 Bloomberg - Andrew Cuomo plans to stay in the race for New York City mayor, brushing off calls to step aside after his stunning loss to upstart Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Incumbent Eric Adams, who raised more than $1 million for his reelection effort in a single night, has blasted Cuomo for potentially splitting the vote against Mamdani. 

Blomberg  -  The European Union has finalized a list of countermeasures targeting US goods worth €72 billion, including Boeing aircraft, cars and bourbon. Brussels called Trump’s plan for higher EU tariffs “effectively prohibitive” to transatlantic trade. The US president said he’s open to talks, including with the EU.

Flash floods in New York

 Bloomberg - Torrential downpours unleashed flash flooding around New York, New Jersey and Connecticut last night. Multiple subway stations were inundated, forcing the MTA to suspend or severely delay service across several lines. Meanwhile, Texas is braced for another round of heavy rain. Read our explainer on why the state is so vulnerable to climate disasters. 

Supreme Court allows mass layoffs at Education Department

NBC News -   The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with plans to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education that were blocked by a federal judge.  The conservative-majority court, without any explanation, granted an emergency application from the administration that blocks the federal judge's ruling. The court's three liberal members objected, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a blistering dissenting opinion.

 

Trump's big bad bill hits women

 New Republic - Trump’s megabill hits women at a time when culture-warring conservatives are more openly pushing to force more women to stay at home with their kids—and arguing that if they’re going to go to school at all, they should do it for their MRS degree. The bill is the latest win for Republicans who are trying to peel away women’s agency at every level by making it harder for women to have economic stability and reproductive freedom. It contains hits to reproductive care funding (though a judge has temporarily blocked this part of the law from going into effect), deep cuts to SNAP benefits and Medicaid that will affect caretakers of all ages, and measures that make it harder for kids to get free school meals.

On top of that, the immigration crackdown funded by the bill is damaging for many immigrant women and their kids. It also poses long-term economic risks to the financial security of women in general. The removal of immigrants will hurt the job market and make the economy worse, economic experts say. If the Trump administration were to actually meet its goal of deporting 4 million immigrants over four years, it would eliminate half a million childcare jobs.

 

Ecology

 These are the most and least polluted national parks in the U.S.

Climate Change Degrades Nutritional Value of Crops

EcoWatch - Climate change is bad for food production in more ways than one. Aside from stress from extreme heat, drought and flooding, climate change is also decreasing the nutrient value in crops, according to a new study.

The preliminary research, presented this week at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Conference Antwerp 2025, has revealed that higher temperatures and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are leading to lower nutritional value for crops, especially for leafy greens. The findings build upon previous studies that have considered how a warming world could impact crop yields.

“Our work looks beyond quantity to the quality of what we eat,” said Jiata Ugwah Ekele, doctorate student at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, as reported by ScienceDaily.

Ekele and her research team grew leafy crops, such as spinach, kale, and arugula, in labs with climate controls to mimic projected warming and greenhouse gas emission scenarios in the UK. 

 

 

How others help us

Sam Smith – As our national engagement with democracy and decency fades thanks in no small part to the action and views of the most distorted presidency in our history, it is worth looking for places where people are still doing things right.

For example, I suspect part of our problem is the result of smaller families than in the past. I grew up in a family of six children and so learned early in life that not everyone agreed with me and that just arguing about things didn’t help much. It was finding what you shared that really mattered.

Lately, it has struck me that another underrated blessing is living in a small town. I now live in one in Maine with a population of 8000 and I am repeatedly reminded of how different it is than what I see on TV about our national leaders and their policies and statements.

I can’t think of anything about my town that has outraged me as have the policies and verbiage of our national leaders. And this is not a new experience.

For over four decades I lived in DC covering both national and local news and it was the local that often really drove my efforts and my appreciation for that of others. In fact, in attempting to come up with the names of national figures who contributed to my energy, direction and values, I could only come up with a handful while the count of those worth admiring in the ‘hoods was substantial.

In fact, one of my earliest publications was the Capitol East Gazette – a local newspaper about the neighborhood near the US  Capitol that not only was a mostly ignored community but back in the 1960s had a substantial black population. 

One of the things I learned in local Washington was that blacks and whites could find things in common. For example, when I was in my twenties, I took part in a one day boycott of DC Transit to protest a fare increase. I drove 77 people to their destination and then wrote a piece about it. Which is how I got involved in civil rights and became friends with another guy in his 20s who had organized the boycott: Marion Barry.

Increasingly, as time went on, I learned the numerous ways that community, rather than just power, produces change. We ordinary citizens can do it without the direction of the powerful.  We have civil rights, labor unions, environmental action and women’s achievements thanks in no small part to the work of the ordinary. And I found, even though I was a rare church goer, that my activist friends included quite a few ministers and others involved in a church.

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Annie

 

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Tony Michaels

 

Tariffs

 
Amy Klobuchar  - This New York Times Sunday headline says it all in just a few words. Businesses and customers in other countries will find new suppliers. They just won't be in our country or employ our workers. Major long term economic shift against U.S.

NPR - EU-U.S. trade is worth around a trillion dollars a year. This could be upended if 30% tariffs go into effect. Retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods were scheduled to take effect today, but have been suspended in hopes of reaching a trade deal by the end of the month...

Trump's war on PBS & NPR

 NY Times -   Congress is expected to vote by the deadline on Friday on a White House proposal, known as a rescission package. It would pull back more than $500 million per year in federal funding that is set to go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the government-backed company that supports public radio and TV stations across the country. Last week, President Trump urged legislators to support the cuts, and threatened to withhold his support for any Republican lawmakers who oppose the proposal.

If the package passes, the federal funding for public media will dry up beginning in October. NPR and PBS would survive — they get a small percentage of their funding from the federal government. But the cuts would force many local stations to sharply reduce their programming and operations. Many public broadcasters receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The cuts could even be a death sentence for some stations, which have survived several attempts to choke off funding over the decades.

Meanwhile. . .

Hear the Beatles first concert in the US  

Independent, UK - Speaking to DAZN reporter Emily Austin on Sunday (13 July) following his appearance on the pitch after Chelsea’s Club World Cup win at the MetLife stadium, the US president discussed the difference between the British and American terms for the popular game.

“They call it football, we call it soccer. I’m not sure if that change can be made very easily,” he said. After Ms Austin asked Mr Trump if he could issue an executive order so only the word football is used, the US president chuckled as he replied: “I think we could do that.”

Kristina Janciova, Quora - During his senior year at L.C. Humes High School in 1953, Elvis [Presley's] history teacher was Mildred Scrivener. She was also his homeroom teacher. One day, Elvis was caught eating an apple in her class. This was against the school rules, which said no eating outside the cafeteria. But Mrs. Scrivener didn’t scold Elvis for eating in class, nor did she stop him from finishing the apple. She knew that Elvis came from a very poor family and probably didn’t have enough money to buy lunch. She couldn’t bring herself to stop him, even though he was breaking the rules.  The next day, Mrs. Scrivener found a bright red apple on her desk. She immediately understood that it was Elvis’ way of saying thank you.

NY Times - Paul Bugas, who directed operations at a secret doomsday bunker, hidden beneath an opulent resort in West Virginia and intended to shelter members of Congress in the event of a Cold War-era nuclear attack, died on July 1 in Richmond, Va. He was 96...The shelter, roughly the size of an average Walmart store, was constructed between the late 1950s and 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis, the 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union over the presence of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida.