- As president, he earned $100,000 a year. That's about $1 million in today's money. But he didn't keep it. He donated every cent to charity. Some of the money went to the United Negro College Fund. Some went to the Boy Scouts. He gave it all away. He never talked about it much. He just did it. A quiet act of generosity from a man who had more than enough—and chose to share it.
July 12, 2026
Polls
Party identification - Q2 2026
Democrats 49%
Republicans 39%
Highest lead for any party in 6 Years - Gallup
Democrats 49%
Republicans 39%
Highest lead for any party in 6 Years - Gallup
Los Angeles County wildfire
Independent
- A rapidly spreading brush fire has triggered evacuation orders in a
sparsely populated area of Los Angeles County, fueled by scorching temperatures
and exceptionally dry conditions.
The blaze ignited around 1 p.m.
on Friday in a remote high desert region, approximately 45 miles northeast of
Los Angeles.
Temperatures in the area soared
to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the LA County Fire Department.
By Friday evening, the fire had
consumed approximately 2,700 acres, Angeles National Forest officials reported
on X.
Middle East
NY Times - U.S.
Central Command said on Saturday evening that it had launched strikes on Iran
after the Iranian navy attacked a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz,
rejecting a U.S. ultimatum to open the critical waterway to traffic.
Hours earlier, the Iranian
foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had met in Oman with its top diplomat to
discuss safe passage in the Strait of Hormuz, but he made no public
commitments. The prospect of a reopening seemed dimmer than ever after Iran
announced the attack, a warning shot on a container ship, and said it would
close the strait “until the end of U.S. interference in the region.”
The Iranian navy said it had
fired after “several ships attempted to travel along an unapproved route” and
ignored directions to transit through Iran’s territorial waters. It warned that
it would meet any U.S. retaliation to its attack with a “forceful response.”
Federal deficit already passes last year's totla
Headline
USA – Only nine months into
fiscal year 2026, the U.S. government has already borrowed $1.4 trillion,
surpassing the entire federal deficit of the previous fiscal year.
The federal government collected
$4.2 trillion over the past nine months and spent or lost a total of $5.5
trillion, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report.
During the month of June alone,
the nation added $126 billion to the over $39 trillion national debt.
“We will likely borrow $2
trillion or more this fiscal year – an astounding figure given that the economy
keeps growing and unemployment is low,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, stated in response to the report.
Smithsonian responds to Trump regime attack
Washington
Post - Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie
G. Bunch III issued a defense of the National Museum of American History to
staffers on Tuesday, in response to a caustic White House report accusing the
museum of pushing “extreme political activism.”
In an email obtained by The
Washington Post, Bunch wrote to staffers that “we continue to review the report
and its findings carefully” and that “there will always be room for
improvement.”
But the report “is not a fair
characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American
History,” he added. “At the Smithsonian, our work is driven by scholarship,
accuracy, and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s
story.”
The 162-page document, credited
to the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, was released on Saturday. It
largely focused on the American history museum and criticized its leadership as
having “explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the
American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but
as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
Wikipedia under attack
NY Times - Wikipedia is in peril. In a world where trust in truth is crumbling, the grande dame of collective online fact-gathering is under threat on every front. The MAGA right, with Elon Musk at the fore, is slinging accusations of political bias and antisemitism and has even questioned the site’s nonprofit status. Artificial intelligence is raiding the encyclopedia’s resources and draining attention. Repressive governments have hauled its volunteer editors into penal colonies.
In
Wikipedia’s 25-year history, it has never had to fight this hard.
The
organization that supports the site, the Wikimedia Foundation, is increasing
its lobbying budget and advertising in Times Square. It is charging companies
like Google and Meta that gobble up the encyclopedia’s 65 million articles, and
throttling access for certain scrapers. And it is expanding its human rights
team to better protect volunteers against rising harassment, surveillance and
retaliation.
For
an organization that holds neutrality as a cardinal rule, it is a lot of
conflict, requiring Wikimedia to go on the offensive — diplomatically, of
course.
California has $1.4 billion in SNAP errors
Headline
USA - California saw $1.4
billion in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program errors for Fiscal Year
2025. That accounts for $3.8 million every single day. That’s part of a trend
of Southwestern states having to repay the federal government for SNAP
benefits.
A payment error rate refers to
instances of overpayment or underpayment to households. It is not inherently
indicative of fraud, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which
oversees SNAP for the federal government. Rather, according to the department,
it often stems from households providing incomplete information or state data
processing errors.
Because of the high volume of
error, California is subjecting itself to having to repay the federal
government.
States that manage to stay below
a federally mandated threshold of 6% for mistakes are safe. But consecutive
years above the threshold force states into USDA-approved corrective action
plans and financial liabilities. Under federal rules, liabilities can either be
repaid in full, or states can reinvest half of the penalty into improving state
operations to prevent future errors.
Plan for even more Trump power
New
Yorker - Recently, the White House announced plans to codify its
campaign of retribution. The proposal, which would dramatically increase the
President’s power over how federal funds are given out, would hand Trump a “new
cudgel” to “advance his partisan agenda and punish political rivals,” a letter
signed by all the Democrats in the Senate charged. “The stakes could not be
higher” is how the legal website Lexology put it.
The proposal in question comes,
not surprisingly, out of the Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russell
Vought, the architect of Project 2025. Titled, innocuously enough, “Regulation
for Federal Financial Assistance,” it would replace the current guidance for
signing off on government grants, which generally leaves the task to civil
servants and peer-review panels. Instead, the final say would go to political
appointees. All discretionary awards from the federal government would have to
be assessed by senior Administration officials, who could deny them on the
ground that they didn’t fit the President’s agenda. Grants could also be
terminated at any time for the same reason.
European air security program causing long lines, confusion and missed flights
NY
Times - European leaders are standing firm on a security program that
has led to long lines, confusion and missed flights at airports this summer,
despite an urgent plea from the aviation industry to suspend it.
The Entry/Exit System, or
E.E.S., requires members of the 29-country Schengen open-border area to
collect biometrics like face photos and fingerprints from travelers upon
arrival and to confirm their identities upon exit. Since the system took full
effect in April, airports and airlines have reported widespread chaos —
including hourslong security checkpoint lines and confusion over procedures —
and have feared the headaches could worsen as peak travel season begins.
The problems led senior officials
from the European aviation industry last week to ask the European Union to
suspend the E.E.S. requirement this summer. The system is “undermining Europe’s
reputation, European tourism and connectivity,” said the open letter to the president of the European
Commission.
But on Tuesday, European
Commission leaders officially rejected the request in a meeting with industry
stakeholders, saying that the new system’s security advantages outweighed its
inconveniences.
El Nino could jack food prices into 2028
The Guardian - Economists are warning that a “super” El Niño weather cycle this year could cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028.
As the Iran war pushes up world food prices to the highest level in three years, economists said supply chains faced “two shocks at once” stoked by extreme weather linked to global heating.
Scientists have said the 2026-27 El Niño – which forms when changes in wind patterns allow warmer water to spread across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific – has a historically unprecedented chance of developing into a “very strong” event fuelling heatwaves, flooding and stormier weather....
At a time when households around the world are already feeling the pinch from soaring living costs, experts say an extreme El Niño could add further to the pressure. The prospect of a renewed inflation shock is also rattling central banks, adding to concern that interest rates could be kept at elevated levels.
Lindsey Graham dies
The
Guardian - Lindsey Graham, a
longtime US senator and key ally of Donald Trump, has died from a sudden
illness, his office said on Sunday. He had just turned 71.
Graham’s abrupt death will send
shock waves through Washington and the Republican party. He had served in the
Senate since 2003, representing South Carolina, and was running for re-election
in November.
“On the evening of Saturday 11
July, US senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness,”
his office said in a statement. “Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at
this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.”
It gave no further details.
Citing police scanner audio, the Washington Post newspaper reported that
emergency medical services had received a call at about 8.30pm on Saturday
regarding a person suffering chest pains at Graham’s home on Capitol Hill. About
25 minutes later, according to the Post, emergency personnel said CPR was in
progress and a man was suffering cardiac arrest.
Donald Trump
The
Hill - President Trump slammed
New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman after
she questioned his physical and cognitive fitness during an appearance on MS
Now, warning that she will “pay the price” when his multibillion-dollar lawsuit
against the Times reaches court.
In a lengthy Truth Social
post on Saturday, Trump lashed out at Haberman after she questioned
his mental clarity following a series of recent gaffs, including him calling
Iran the “Islamic State of Japan.”
“Maggot Hagerman has covered me
incorrectly for ten years,” he wrote. “She has made a living off her bad
reporting, and will pay the price when our Multi Billion Dollar Lawsuit against
The Failing New York Times gets to Court.”
The president defended his
health, saying he had recently undergone a physical examination at Walter Reed
National Military Medical Center and requested an additional cognitive exam.
“I just finished a perfect
physical at Walter Reed, I do it every six months, and I requested another
Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all,”
he said. “Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her
flunky associate, Jonathan Swan.”
Trump’s outrage came after
Haberman discussed concerns around his cognitive health, following several
high-profile blunders and verbal mishaps.
At the NATO Summit in Ankara,
Turkey, Trump mistakenly called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by
Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s name.
TALES FROM THE ATTIC: Confessions of a Seventh Day Agnostic
Sam Smith, 2017 - Last Sunday I laid aside my
Seventh Day Agnostic status to perform as a navipascua – one who goes to church
mainly on Christmas and Easter. I did this to share the holiday with my wife
but also because I believe that one’s intellectual evaluations should not
interfere excessively with cultural traditions. When someone noted a horseshoe
over Einstein’s door and asked, “You don’t believe in that, do you?” the
scientist responded, “Of course not, but they tell me it works.”
I didn’t luck out as well with my grandfather. He
would be senior warden of his church for 60 years and scolded me after a
service, “Young man, in the old prayer book, it said, ‘And take thy humble
confession, devotedly kneeling ON YOUR KNEES!’” I merely had my butt on the
pew. Now parishioners were taking communion while standing.
July 11, 2026
Weather
Independent
- A widespread and dangerous
heat wave is building across the U.S., with triple-digit highs expected in the
Southwest and Great Plains this weekend before spreading eastward under a dome
of high pressure that meteorologists say could trap oppressive temperatures for
a week or more.
Forecasters are advising people
to stay hydrated and find places to cool off, warning of temperatures 15 to 25
degrees Fahrenheit (8 to 14 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal in many areas,
including at night — especially bad for people's health because their bodies
won't have a chance to recover. The heat dome is expected to affect as much as
two-thirds of the continental United States.
….The National Weather Service
predicts that more than 90 U.S. local temperature records will be tied or
broken through Wednesday — with two-thirds of those being overnight heat
records. Temperatures won’t drop below 80 F (27 C) at night in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida; Miami; Tampa, Florida; Galveston, Texas; and Charleston, South
Carolina, according to the forecast.
Headquarters - The
Trump admin has appointed Matthew M. Wielicki to oversee the National Climate
Assessment. Wielicki is a climate change denier with zero training as a climate
scientist.
Alcohol
NY
Times - A government alcohol study published on Tuesday concluded that
the health risks of alcohol start at a single drink a day. The report was caught
up in controversy after drawing the ire of the alcohol industry.
For people who have one drink a
day on average, the researchers found, there was an increased risk of premature
death from an illness or injury directly attributable to alcohol, though it was
small — one in 1,000 people. But the risk of premature death jumped to one in
25 for those who had two drinks a day, a level long considered safe for men,
according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Studies on
Alcohol and Drugs.
Immigration
Bowers
News Media -Two weeks ago, the Trump administration
announced the
cancellation of its plans to create mass detention centers for
undocumented immigrants by purchasing warehouses around the country. The
warehouses the Department of Homeland Security purchased will be sold, and DHS
will instead rely on existing facilities to house detained immigrants.
Not coincidentally, this comes as courts around the country have continued to
rule against the Trump administration's policy of denying bond hearings to
undocumented immigrants who are in detention and awaiting deportation.
The number of rulings against the Trump administration on this policy are
stunning. According
to Politico, there have been over 15,000 rulings against the Trump
administration on this policy, compared to only 2,200 in favor. Of the 518
district court judges to rule on this policy, 464 have ruled against the
administration, with only 54 ruling in favor. Even a majority of
Trump-appointed judged have ruled against the administration on this blatantly
unconstitutional policy of denying undocumented immigrants who are in detention
and awaiting deportation their day in court.
The change in how we perceive socialism
Jeffrey
Anvari-Clark, The Conversation -
I’m a social work professor who studies how people manage
their money and their well-being….
The way Americans perceive
socialism is apparently undergoing such a transition. Whereas before, socialism
has largely had a negative stigma associated with it, many Democrats and
independent voters are now increasingly viewing socialism as a system with a
strong safety net and a way of bringing harms of the free market under control.
The word is now being viewed more
positively than it used to, according to pollsters – especially among
Democrats. It is associated with being able to afford life’s necessities and
the kind of strong economic rights found in Norway and other Scandinavian
countries.
Given how poorly many Americans
are faring under capitalism, I think that the growing openness to democratic
socialist candidates makes sense.
The number of people who have to
work multiple jobs to make ends meet reached 9.4 million in November 2025, the
highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking that
indicator in 1994. Meanwhile, support for capitalism fell to 54% in 2025, from
60% four years earlier.
Maybe that has something to do
with the fact that U.S. median wages are not rising fast enough to keep up with
the increase in the cost of living; or that Americans are mainly seeing the
promises of capitalism delivered to their nation’s richest people.
Meanwhile, most workers find
themselves on the hook to fund more of their own retirement than their parents
did and to pay more for their healthcare and insurance coverage, hindering
their efforts to save for retirement. Many service sector workers find that
they only get shifts when an algorithm says their labor is required – leaving
their schedules and earnings unpredictable.
For those who have joined the
workforce since the Great Recession, an economic downturn that lasted from late
2007 until mid-2009, financial insecurity has largely defined their economic
experiences. Millions of American families are left needing to pay more and
more to cover their bills, and with less disposable income.
Trump regime issues subpoenas for several NY Times journalists
Philadelphia Inquirer - The Trump administration issued subpoenas Friday to several journalists for the New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Donald Trump's new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The subpoenas - which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in New York on Wednesday - were an extraordinary escalation in Trump's efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters' homes. The Times denounced the administration's actions.
"The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects," David McCraw, the Times' top newsroom lawyer, said in a statement Friday evening.
"Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public's right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used," McCraw wrote. "This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs."
Trump reverses decades of environmental protection of endangered species
CNN
- The Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental
law protecting endangered species on Friday, opening up sensitive habitats of
those protected species to drilling, mining, farming and real estate
development.
The change, finalized by the
Interior and Commerce Departments, redefines what constitutes “harm” to
endangered species and habitats under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The
longstanding law had long prohibited “habitat modification or degradation” because
it could harm or kill endangered animals by impacting their ability to breed
and find food or shelter. That definition of harm was upheld by the US Supreme
Court in a 1995 ruling.
The Trump administration called
the previous definition of harm “outdated” in a statement released Friday,
arguing its move “returns the interpretation of the ESA back to its actual text
and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum
said in a statement that the law’s approach had “turned routine activity into a
regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people’s lives, and expanded
federal authority beyond what Congress intended.”
National Debt
Headline
USA - Only nine months into fiscal year 2026, the
U.S. government has already borrowed $1.4 trillion, surpassing the entire
federal deficit of the previous fiscal year. The federal government collected
$4.2 trillion over the past nine months and spent or lost a total of $5.5
trillion, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report. During the month of June alone, the nation
added $126 billion to the over $39 trillion national debt.
How do Hispanics describe themselves
Pew
Research - Today, Hispanics in the U.S. use a variety of labels to
describe their identity, from pan-ethnic ones such as Hispanic and Latino to
ancestry-based ones like Cuban American or Mexican. Some Hispanics use
“American” on its own. Importantly, many Hispanics have used each of these
terms at least once in their lives to describe themselves, highlighting the
layers of U.S. Hispanic identity. At the same time, some terms are used more
than others, reflecting the ways Hispanics understand and express who they are.
To better understand how
Hispanics use, prioritize and think about identity labels, Pew Research Center
conducted a bilingual survey among 4,923 Hispanic adults in October 2025. We
asked respondents:
Which labels have they used at
least once in their lives to describe themselves? Large
majorities of Hispanic adults say they have ever used a pan-ethnic
term such as Hispanic or Latino (84%) or their country of origin or heritage on
its own – for example, Puerto Rican (80%) – to describe themselves.
Which label do they use most
often to describe themselves? Hispanics do not point to a single dominant
choice. However, the labels
they use most often include their place of origin or heritage, either on
its own (35%) or combined with American (18%) — for example, Salvadoran or
Dominican American.
Which pan-ethnic term –
Hispanic, Latino, Latinx or Latine – do they prefer to describe
people of Hispanic or Latino origin or descent? When labeling the
entire U.S. Hispanic population, a majority say they prefer
the term Hispanic (54%) over Latino (30%). Few say they prefer the terms
Latinx or Latine, while 14% say they have no preference.
In addition, we asked
respondents if they consider themselves “a typical American.” Hispanics
are evenly
divided on this.
Canadian lawyer and author says fascism is live and well in America
Alternet - Canadian lawyer and author Omer Aziz is
warning Americans that fascism has not only arrived, but it's also been alive
and well in the U.S. for some time. The real chore is in ending it before it
goes too far.
In his book Shadow of the
Republic, Aziz explains that it appears the pro-fascist group “is using the
machinery of constitutional government in a partisan way to make it subservient
to the political party and then to turn it against ordinary citizens,
dissidents, free thinkers, journalists."
It's something that horror writer
and anti-fascist activist Stephen King explained, "should be an alarm bell
announcing that the American house is on fire."
Speaking to Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan,
Aziz walked through America's long flirtation with fascism that is too often
glossed over in a history that prizes American exceptionalism above reality.
“By the time the fascists are
building the camps, it’s already too late and we have lost," Hasan read
from the book. It prompted him to ask just how close the U.S. is.
Aziz said that currently, Trump
likes to "cosplay as a fascist," using things like his
"weaponization fund" and "the prosecution of political
enemies" as examples. Republicans dismiss such claims as hyperbolic and
symptoms of the imagined "Trump derangement syndrome" or
"paranoid liberals."
But Aziz said there is
"substance" to the claim.
"I think when you look at
Trump's rhetoric around poisoning the blood of immigrants and some of the
language he has used and his team has used, they're clearly drawing from this
common wellspring of influence and inspiration. At the same time, I would say,
he is an opportunist. I think he likes the idea of himself thinking of himself
as a Mussolini or someone of a strongman character. But in terms of the rabid
ideology, I don't think he has that."
He explained that it's important
to understand that the emergence of fascism is different from every society.
Germany, for example, was very different from Italian fascists and American
fascists are also different. For Trump, his fascism is "particularly
American."
….The more dangerous part of
fascism, he said, isn't the obvious ones waving Nazi flags in the street. Aziz
called the "fascists in suits" far more of a threat to American
ideals, because they are the ones using that machinery of government to subvert
the citizenry, just as Italy and Germany did with journalists and dissidents.
One group he talks about in the
book that Hasan said he found particularly interesting is the younger spectrum
of voters who are growing more attracted to fascism, Nazism and white
supremacy.
Trump sues newspaper for poll that was wrong
Alternet - The
attorney for President Donald Trump argued in court
Friday that while he has no evidence to support a claim that a 2024
pre-election poll constituted fraud, the president’s lawsuit against The Des
Moines Register and its pollster should be allowed to proceed.
The president has claimed in
court that the opinion poll, published just three days before the November 2024
election and showing him trailing his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, by
3 points in Iowa, was fraudulent. He is suing the newspaper and pollster J. Ann
Selzer, alleging consumer fraud and citing the fact that he ultimately beat
Harris in Iowa by more than 13 points.
The Register and Selzer recently
filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that an election poll, regardless
of its results, does not fit the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act’s definition of a
commercial transaction, and that the lawsuit is also barred by the First
Amendment’s protection of free speech.
In written briefs filed with the
court this week, Selzer’s attorney, Robert Corn-Revere, called the legal claims
made by the president and his attorneys “not just wrong — they are ridiculous.”
He asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that even if all of the
president’s factual assertions were deemed true, there’d still be no legal
basis for the lawsuit.
On Friday, a Polk County District
Court judge heard oral arguments on the motions to dismiss.
Middle East
The
Hill - President Trump late
Friday threatened to “decimate and destroy” Iran if it carries out a reported
assassination plot against him, saying he has already directed the U.S.
military to be prepared to respond. “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and
aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately
follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many
corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting
President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump wrote on
Truth Social.
Graham Platner
Financial
Times - “Graham Platner is what
happens when pundits ignore obvious red flags . . . and sell voters an
idealised version of a candidate who does not actually exist,” said Jessica
Mackler, president of Emily’s List, a group that recruits and trains women as
Democratic candidates.
“The lesson here is that we
always have to be looking at these races and primaries through the lens of what
it takes to win a general election, and that is what went horribly wrong in
this situation.”
Under Maine state law, the
Democratic Party now has just over two weeks to find a new candidate to take on
Collins — a five-term incumbent with a record of defeating well-funded
challengers — in November. State party officials have said they intend to pick
Platner’s replacement at a nominating convention to be held later this month.
Your constitutional right to be furious
A New York man wrote an angry
email to former ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons in the days following the
shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Months later, federeral agents
showed up at his house with a warning, accusing him of “criminal activities”
and directing him to “discontinue” his behavior. It’s a chilling attempt to
intimidate a concerned civilian into silence. In this country, we’re allowed to
criticize our government — and they have to hear you when you do. The man is now suing the Department of
Homeland Security. More
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