August 7, 2026
Federal appeals court rejects Trump's ballroom construction
The
Hill - A federal appeals court panel blocked President Trump’s White
House ballroom in a 2-1 vote on Friday, saying that work must stop except for
below-ground construction, including installations Trump says are needed for
security. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel ruled that
Congress retains control over funding for development at the White House and
had not authorized Trump’s project.
The court paused its order for
two weeks to allow the Trump administration to seek emergency relief from the
Supreme Court. “We are aware of no
instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using
privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House
that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until
now,” the majority wrote.
Immigration
MS
NOW - President Donald Trump signed two key executive orders on
Thursday aimed at limiting the scope of birthright citizenship, a longstanding
priority of his second term.
The first executive order expands
the definition of people the administration says are ineligible for birthright
citizenship to include "alien enemies of the United States, members of
foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and
act on behalf of foreign government."
Trump also signed another
executive order aimed at ending "birth tourism," in which foreign
nationals travel to the U.S. to give birth so their children automatically
receive U.S. citizenship.
According to federal regulations,
it is already illegal for people to obtain tourist visas "for the primary
purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United
States."
Speaking to reporters in the Oval
Office, Trump called birthright citizenship "a disgrace."
Workers
NBC
News - The U.S. economy shed 23,000 jobs in July, a sign that the labor
market had not stabilized after four months of positive growth. The unemployment rate ticked down only
slightly to 4.1%.
….In yet another troubling sign for the labor market, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months by a
combined 103,000. May’s jobs total was cut by 66,000 to 129,000 total jobs
added, while June’s total was lowered by 37,000 to a total gain of 57,000.
…. The change in workers’ average hourly earnings also fell
well short of economists’ expectations. Wage growth was 0.1% from June, or 3.2%
from one year ago. That’s also below inflation, which was 3.5% in its most recent reading.
Economists had been expecting wages to continue pacing at
3.5% from a year ago, but instead wage growth slowed. “The labor market is
stalling again,” wrote Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit
Union, who called the report “bleak.”
In a post on X, Long also pointed to another troubling data
point: The labor force participation rate in July was the lowest since February
2021, a sign that workers are dropping out of the workforce.
Supreme Court
Alternet
- When rationalizing its alarming injection
of politics into legal decision, conservatives on the John Roberts Supreme
Court are dumping years of legal analysis and precedent in favor of historical
arguments. In essence, legal theory appears to be taking back seat to what law
in America used to look like, says Florida International University philosophy
Associate Professor Eric Scarffe.
They’re using history, said
Scarffe, to do what judicial philosophy long has not: remove judgment from
judging.
“Rather than promoting judicial
restraint, … key cases reveal how the ‘history and tradition test’ has been
weaponized to enable one of the most radical revisions to this nation’s
constitutional order since the New Deal,” argued Scarffe. “It has been used not
only to overturn previous decisions and precedent, but also to fundamentally
shift the way the Court engages in judicial review.”
Congressional
Insider - Kamala Harris
publicly urged Democrats to “revisit” expanding the Supreme Court to 13
justices and to rethink the Electoral College and statehood for Washington,
D.C., and Puerto Rico, escalating a live fight over the rules of American
democracy.
Harris said the Supreme Court
should consider expanding to 13 justices. She called for revisiting the
Electoral College and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Republican
leaders denounced the ideas as partisan power grabs.
Video clips show Harris urging
supporters to brainstorm reforms beyond past limits. She listed court
expansion, stronger rules for Supreme Court ethics and testimony, Electoral
College changes, multi-member districts, and new states as options to weigh. Her
message invited debate rather than outlining a detailed bill, but it marked a
clear endorsement of pushing structural reforms when Democrats next have power
to act. The broad menu signals a larger fight over how the system should work
in coming years.
Supporters frame court expansion and related steps as repairs to a system they say has lost balance. They argue a bigger court could reduce outsized power of single seats and reflect a growing nation. They also claim an updated Electoral College or national popular vote would better match voter will. Statehood backers say Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico deserve full representation. These points echo Democratic reform talk that has moved from fringe idea to mainstream discussion in recent years
August 6, 2026
Climate change
The Guardian - The human-driven climate crisis made the conditions that led to blazes roaring across Canada, which have caused toxic smoke to spew throughout the country and into the US, twice as likely to occur, a new analysis has found.
Heightened global temperatures,
caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified the risk of fire-prone weather
in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, scientists found. These provinces
have been racked by fires this summer, causing towns to be evacuated and
unhealthy smoke to unfurl across multiple cities in North America.
There are currently nearly 700
fires ablaze across Canada, with a huge 3.8m hectares of the country, mainly in
its sprawling boreal forests.
Trump's battleships
The
Hill - President Trump’s new class of
battleships, which are envisioned to anchor the U.S. Navy’s “Golden Fleet,” are
expected to cost around $275 billion to build, according to a government report
released Wednesday. The first of 15 ships, the USS Defiant, is projected to
cost around $23.4 billion to construct, with each subsequent vessel costing
about $18 billion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis
said. The first battleship could take eight years or longer to construct.
The new class of battleships,
which Trump unveiled in December, was initially set to be powered by gas
turbine engines, which are on cruisers and destroyers. Later, the president
said the vessels would be propelled with nuclear reactors. “They’ll be the
fastest, the biggest and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship
ever built,” Trump said in December, adding that the vessels would weigh more
than 30,000 tons.
….The president aimed for the new
ships to be built by 2028, a timeline that industry experts said would be
unlikely. “It will take years to design,
cost $9 billion each to build and contravene the Navy’s new concept of
operations, which envisions distributed firepower,” Mark Cancian, the senior
adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Defense and
Security Department, wrote in late December. “A future administration will
cancel the program before the first ship hits the water.”
Trump fired his Navy secretary,
John Phelan, in April in part over not making enough progress in constructing
the battleships.
Data centers
NY
Times - You don’t have to be a technophobe to hate
data centers these days. And you don’t have to have much skin in the game,
either. Even if there’s no blocky, gas-guzzling, million-square-foot behemoth
coming soon to a neighborhood near you … you probably still loathe these bad
boys. More than half of Americans say they’d support a national ban.
Savvy politicians are converting
the pitchforks into votes. In Michigan, where OpenAI is building a very big,
very unpopular data center, a progressive organizer campaigning on a moratorium
walloped two better-funded candidates in a House Democratic primary on Tuesday.
That same day in Kansas, Democrats nominated a candidate for governor who has
made opposing these facilities a core part of her platform.
It makes political sense for
them. Energy prices are high, driven by Trump’s war in Iran, and data centers
make that worse. And the president has pushed A.I. companies to build out
infrastructure faster than ever, arguing that to do otherwise would be to hand
the race for A.I. dominance to China.
Plenty of A.I. wonks agree with him. It takes years, in some cases, to connect data centers to the grid — too slow to meet the technology’s monstrous power demands. But Trump can read the room, and Americans are upset about data centers jacking up their electricity bills. (Nearly four in five say they’re worried about that, recent polling found.
Europe's climate change
NPR
- Europe's heat wave has drawn back the waters of
Serbia's river, revealing Nazi-era German warships that were sunk in 1944
during their retreat.
NewsHill - Human-driven warming has shifted Spain’s
climate so decisively that the kind of hot, dry fire-weather behind its recent
record wildfires has moved from near-exceptional to relatively routine, with
scientists estimating it is now around 20 times more likely than it would have
been without climate change.
A World Weather Attribution
analysis finds that the extreme fire-weather conditions behind central Spain’s
2026 “record-sized inferno” are now at least 20 times more likely because of
human-caused climate change.
In today’s climate, similarly
intense wildfire conditions are expected roughly once every six years in
central Spain, rather than being exceptionally rare events.
Broader research shows extreme
fire-weather days in Southern Europe have more than doubled in recent decades,
and Spain’s 2025 fires burned roughly four times the average area of the
previous 30 years.
Americans aren’t embracing socialism
Hartmann
Report - Americans aren't embracing socialism—they're rejecting 45
years of Reaganomics, billionaire rule, and an economy rigged against the
middle class. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan, declared yesterday morning,
seems to have broken the brains of Republicans and the chattering class.
Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats
notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic
socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to
get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for
everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before
Reaganism
Anthony Fauci
NBC
News - The Republican-led Senate
Homeland Security Committee voted along party lines to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci
in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer lawmakers’ questions during
a fiery hearing last week. Fauci, who
has been a target of the right since he served as a top health official during
the Covid pandemic, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment right during the
hearing, explaining in his opening remarks that he believed Republicans would
try to use his testimony to prosecute him.
Utah's fertility rate plummets
NY
Times - Utah has long been famous for its large families. From the
Osmond singers to “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the picture has been one
of young people marrying and having a lot of babies.
But Utah is now experiencing the
biggest fertility rate drop in its modern history. After a peak in 2007, Utah’s
rate has plummeted by more than 37 percent, the largest decline of any state in
the country. Utah, which was No. 1 in the nation for fertility rates for years,
is now ranked sixth.
Utah is a leading example of a
demographic transformation that is sweeping the United States and other rich
countries, as young women increasingly delay childbearing. As the trend
deepens, the worry is that more women would forgo having children altogether, a
choice that could have serious consequences for the country, economically and
politically. For the first time, about half of all 30-year-old women are
childless.
Elections
The
Guardian - Michigan Democrats
didn’t choose El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly liberal”. Or because he’s a
democratic socialist (in fact, he’s not). Abdul El-Sayed’s win proves change is
possible for Democrats. His next fight may determine their future
They chose him because he’s a
fighter – at a time when America needs fighters willing to stand up to the
worst tyrant who has ever occupied the Oval Office.
Corporate Democrats – such as
Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries –
aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed
them campaign money. They won’t criticize the billionaire class. They refuse to
talk about how big money has corrupted America.
Yet it’s big corporations and the
billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s authoritarianism.
They’ve sucked up to Trump for
corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence
and war contracts.
They’ve given Trump hundreds of
millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his Super Pac. Jamie Dimon and his cronies on Wall Street;
Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter
Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the Ellisons – all have sold their
integrity for huge profits.
Most Americans view rising living costs as biggest barrier to a better life
The
Guardian - Americans may seem increasingly divided on beliefs and
values, but in a new survey of more than 30,000 adults from across the country
spanning generations and economic classes, a majority of Americans agree
there’s a significant barrier to achieving a better life: the rising cost of
living.
When asked to describe what a
better life in three to five years would look like, 60% of Americans said they
wanted greater financial security, according to a survey that was conducted by
the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the WK Kellogg Foundation in
mid-April.
In interviews that accompanied
the survey, respondents often defined financial security as being able to
afford basic necessities without worry.
“A better life for me and my
family would look like being able to buy a home, and being able to afford all
the basic necessities, rent, utilities, car, food, healthcare – as well as
being able to have enough left over to save for the future for retirement and
vacations,” said a 35-year-old respondent from Dearborn Heights, Michigan.
Though it may appear to be a
simple goal, many Americans believe it’s out of reach. Forty per cent of
respondents described themselves as either “getting by but financially
vulnerable” or “struggling to meet basic needs”. Groceries and food costs in
particular are causing financial distress, with 90% of respondents listing it
as their top cost-of-living concern, followed by housing, transportation and
healthcare.
August 5, 2026
Climate
Inside
Climate News - Climate-fueled
wildfires could scorch many of the sites that shape America’s cultural
identity. A study published in May found
wildfire risk threatens the majority of sites designated by the federal
government as historically significant, from centuries-old homes to cherished
churches and cemeteries. A separate forward-looking study published last week
found worsening climate change could substantially ramp up average potential
fire frequency in four of California’s national parks by the end of the
century, under a worst-case emissions scenario.
The researchers say this data could help park and site
managers better protect these places from flames. However, as experts sound the
fire alarms for iconic American sites, the Trump administration is on a mission
to remove mentions of climate change from many of these places.
Newsweek
- Lake
Mead has fallen to within inches of its lowest-ever recorded level,
highlighting ongoing concerns about drought, extreme heat and long-term strain
on the Colorado River, one of the Southwest's most important water sources. As
of August 5, the reservoir stood at 1,040.74 feet above sea level, just 0.16
feet (1.9 inches) above its record low of 1,040.58 feet, which was set in July
2022. The lake's elevation has dropped dramatically over the past two decades,
leaving the distinctive white "bathtub ring" visible around much of
the shoreline.
US only has 43-day emergency buffer of crude oil left
The
Mirror- The U.S. only has about
43 days of an emergency buffer of crude oil left — a 45-year low as President
Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran, throwing global markets into
chaos
U.S. crude oil supplies have
fallen to their lowest level in 45 years as President Donald Trump continues to
wage war against Iran — with only 43 days of global supply left.
There now exists a thinner
cushion against any potential disruptions should the fighting in the Middle
East escalate further. According to Bank of America Global Research Data,
compiled by Bloomberg, the U.S. has just 43 days of crude oil supply, including
that of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, compared with a long-term average of
about 65 days. The data shows the measure falling to its lowest level since the
1980s.
Donald Trump
James Tate
- On April 25, 1980, the Trump Organization
executed an eviction against Mary Filan, a 74-year-old widow who was partially
paralyzed from a recent stroke. The eviction occurred at her rent-controlled
apartment in Flushing, Queens, where she had lived for over 30 years. The Trump
Organization claimed she owed four months of back rent. However, Filan
maintained that her rent was fully paid, stating that her last bill was a minor
balance of $10.20, which she had already cleared. City marshals and moving
crews removed her belongings—including her furniture and jewelry—leaving her
sitting on a laundry hamper in the apartment. Due to the trauma and her medical
condition, neighbors and city social services arranged for her immediate
admission to a local hospital.
NY Times - President Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch would change the skyline of Washington to such an extent that it would intrude on views at dozens of historic sites around the capital, according to an assessment by National Park Service staff.
It would disrupt the symbolic
relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery,
obstruct sightlines from the Kennedy Gravesite and Robert E. Lee’s home, and
alter what official documents call “one of the most magnificent” views in
Washington at the National Cathedral four miles away, the Park Service said.
Obama vs. Trump on the job golf time
|
Newsweek
- Trump's
golf habits have long been compared with those of Obama, whom he
repeatedly criticized for spending time on the course while in office. |
|
According
to Is Trump Golfing Today?, Obama played 333 rounds of golf
during his two terms, or about 11.4 percent of his 2,922 days as president.
The tracker estimates Trump has played golf more frequently, visiting his
courses on 20.05 percent of his first-term days and 26.4 percent of his
second-term days so far. |
|
|
How states treat children
WalletHub -To highlight
where children face the greatest hardships, WalletHub compared the 50 states
and the District of Columbia across 25 key indicators of child neediness. The
analysis examines factors ranging from the share of children living in
households below the poverty line to child food insecurity and the share of
children who have experienced maltreatment.
|
States with the Most Underprivileged Kids |
|
1. Mississippi |
|
11. South Dakota |
|
2. West Virginia |
|
12. South Carolina |
|
3. Louisiana |
|
13. Tennessee |
|
4. New Mexico |
|
14. Nevada |
|
5. Oklahoma |
|
15. Georgia |
|
6. Arkansas |
|
16. Ohio |
|
7. Alabama |
|
17. Montana |
|
8. Alaska |
|
18. North Carolina |
|
9. Kentucky |
|
19. Indiana |
|
10. District of Columbia |
|
20. Arizona |
Key Stats
- Arkansas and Oklahoma have the highest child
food-insecurity rate, which is 1.8 times higher than in Massachusetts,
the state with the lowest.
- Mississippi has the most infant deaths (per
1,000 live births), which is 3.3 times more than in New Hampshire, the
state with the fewest.
- West Virginia has the highest share of
children in foster care, which is 13.3 times higher than in New
Jersey, the state with the lowest.
- Texas has the highest share of uninsured
children aged 0 to 18, which is 7.5 times higher than in
Massachusetts, the state with the lowest.
- Maine has the highest share of maltreated
children, which is 12.5 times higher than in New Jersey, the
state with the lowest.
To view the full report and your state’s rank
Health
NPR - Central Appalachian
veteran underground coal miners are experiencing an incurable and fatal
lung disease at the highest rates recorded in nearly 50 years,
according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Miners
who have worked underground for at least 25 years in Kentucky, Virginia and
West Virginia suffer the worst rates of coal workers' pneumoconiosis, also
known as black lung disease. The disease's prevalence hit a low point in 1999,
after Congress imposed strict limits on exposure to the coal mine dust that
causes black lung. But the decline in cases has been reversed, and experts blame
toxic silica dust that is now more common in mines.
Elections
Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a GOP-led
initiative to phase out the state’s income tax, 80 to 20 percent.
Meanwhile. . .
The
Guardian - A four-ton piece of a
discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is
believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a
collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new
lunar crater. The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon
9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace
toward the moon in January 2025…. The impact was predicted to kick up a
miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be
difficult ?to spot with the naked eye from Earth.
Tariffs
The
Guardian - The
Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from the tariffs it collected
before the US supreme court ruled them illegal, according to reports. The $100bn figure, which represents 60% of
the total $165bn collected from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, was
reported by customs officials to the US court of international trade (CIT) on
Tuesday, according to the Financial Times
August 4, 2026
Federal appeals court blocks censorship on race and gender issues
ACLU
- The Eleventh Circuit Court of
Appeals affirmed an order in July that blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop
W.O.K.E. Act in the state’s universities.
Florida is one of 24 states that has passed laws restricting instruction
on race and gender in higher education since 2020. Taken together, these laws
represent a nationwide backlash to progress in racial justice, but this case
marks the first time an appellate court has ruled that this type of classroom
censorship law is unconstitutional in higher education.
The order came in a lawsuit we
filed on behalf of professors who were forced to censor their instruction on
specific topics related to race and gender that are central to their academic
scholarship and coursework. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act limited training and
instruction on eight so-called “divisive concepts” parroted from an executive
order issued by then-President Donald Trump and rescinded by then-President Joe
Biden. After we sued, a federal district court described the law as “positively
dystopian” and blocked enforcement of the higher education provisions of the
law. Last month, the Eleventh Circuit agreed, holding that the Stop W.O.K.E.
Act violated the First Amendment.
Polls
Newsweek
- The RealClear Polling Generic
Congressional vote gives Democrats a 6-point edge. Kalshi and Polymarket give
the party an 86-84 percent chance of taking the House, but Republicans still
hold a 56-54 percent chance of keeping the Senate. Of course, in today’s era of
politics, anything can happen, and both parties have reasons to feel confident.
Amazon
Shortlysts
- Amazon announced it will distribute roughly $600 million in
tariff refunds after court decisions invalidated a number of import tariffs
that had previously increased the company’s costs. The refunds stem from duties
Amazon paid on imported goods before the tariffs were struck down, allowing the
company to recover money it had already remitted to the federal government.
Rather than issuing refunds to
every customer, Amazon said it identified purchases where tariff costs had been
directly passed on and will automatically reimburse those shoppers. The company
said those cases represent only a small share of affected orders because it
absorbed most of the tariff costs instead of raising prices across its
marketplace. Amazon also said the remaining funds will be used to help keep
prices lower on future purchases instead of being distributed as cash refunds.
The announcement comes as businesses continue adjusting to changing U.S. trade policy and ongoing legal challenges surrounding tariffs, with companies weighing whether to absorb higher import costs or pass them on to consumers through higher prices.
Todd Blanche
NY
Times - After much confusion
and acrimony, Todd Blanche now appears set to become the nation’s top law
enforcement official. Two Republican
senators who had been blocking Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general gave
him their blessing yesterday, after Blanche promised — in writing — to scale
back a lucrative deal the Justice Department had cut with Trump.
The president’s effort to muscle
Blanche, his former lawyer, through the Senate got messy this past week. There
were public demands, counterdemands and counter-counterdemands. It’s easy to
get so mired in the political minutiae that you forget a couple of things.
First: Blanche already runs the
Justice Department, and he’s allowed to keep running it indefinitely in an
acting capacity, confirmation notwithstanding. So for Trump, this fight has
always been more about rewarding Blanche — and exerting control over Congress —
than about imbuing Blanche with any new authority.
Second, and more important: Trump
is still getting most of what he wants.
The Justice Department deal that
knocked Blanche’s nomination off course had two main components. It established
a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which Trump wanted to use to pay
allies of his who claimed they had been unfairly prosecuted by previous
administrations. And it granted Trump, his family and their businesses sweeping
immunity from I.R.S. tax audits.
In documents Blanche released on
Sunday night, he said he would rescind the order establishing the fund and
narrow the tax immunity to include only Trump, two of his sons and the Trump
Organization.
Meanwhile....
Maine
Morning Star - The Trump administration’s demand for states to provide
Social Security numbers, immigration status, and other private information on
low-income residents who receive cash benefits is improper and
unconstitutional, a group of mostly Democratic-led states alleges in a new
lawsuit
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