Word: Extremism

Sam Smith (in a 2008 conversation with Carole Kolker)  -  Mark Plotkin, who is on WTOP, interviewed me on my fiftieth anniversary in journalism and I said to him, “If you go back and you look at what I wrote twenty or thirty years ago, it doesn’t seem very extreme at all.” I like to describe myself as a moderate of a time that has not yet come and I compare myself sometimes to the people who got involved in the Spanish Civil War. The FBI referred to them as premature anti-fascists which is a wonderful concept when you think of it: it means you can be prematurely right.

Climate change

NY Times - After President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement during his first term, many Democratic-led states passed their own laws to curtail carbon emissions.  But most states that set goals for 2030 are not on track to meet them. Now, with voters worried about inflation, and with the war in Iran raising energy prices, some states have begun to cut back or abandon those goals instead.

IRS moves to end tax exemption for schools with aid to minority race students

NPR - The IRS has proposed a rule that would revoke the tax-exempt status of private schools and colleges that have programs designed to help students based on race. Many institutions currently offer programs to support Black or Latino students who may be the first in their families to attend college. Some also aim to foster a diverse student body by offering scholarships and other initiatives. The administration argues these programs amount to racial discrimination.  The administration is attempting to apply financial pressure on these schools to get what it wants: an end to race-based programs, NPR’s Adrian Florido says. By operating as non-profit, tax-exempt entities, these schools avoid paying federal income taxes. This status also serves as a crucial fundraising tool, as donations from alumni and others become eligible for tax deductions. The IRS hasn't clarified how it plans to identify schools with programs it disapproves of, but it estimates that about 18,000 private schools could be affected. Legal challenges are likely to arise, as the authority of the IRS to unilaterally redefine racial discrimination and revoke tax-exempt status remains unclear.

Mail-in voting

NPR - For now, mail-in voting is still available to all voters who are eligible for it in their states, NPR's Hansi Lo Wang tells Up First. Election officials and voters are concerned that major disruptions to the midterms could occur if the Supreme Court allows the plan to move forward. Many election officials say it's too late to carry out the plan. The administration didn’t meet its own deadline today to publish its state-by-state lists of eligible voters.

ICE

The Guardian - Teresa Reyes drove 300 miles to be with her son on his 32nd birthday in May, but she couldn’t give him a gift, share a meal with him or give him a hug. She couldn’t even touch him.

Her son, Guillermo, a tattoo artist from San Jose, is locked up in the California City immigration detention center, California’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, and the only way he can see his mother is behind a thick pane of glass.

The detention center, housing roughly 1,600 people in a desert region north of Los Angeles, has denied contact visits to all people held inside since the Trump administration opened the site one year ago. That means no one inside the facility, which is run by the private prison firm CoreCivic, can sit with or embrace family members who travel to the remote site for visits. Instead, families are left talking through phones while their relatives sit in an adjacent room, separated by glass barriers.

Middle East

The Guardian - People in Kuhestak, a predominantly Baloch city in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, are mourning after a strike on a wedding killed at least four people, including a child, and injured more than 60, according to local authorities.  The blast hit at around 9.30pm on 1 September, turning a night of celebration into one of devastation for the small coastal community, which is on the strait of Hormuz.

Polls

Pew Research - Six-in-ten U.S. adults describe themselves as working class, up from 54% two years ago. People across income groups and education levels adopt this identity, but partisanship is an especially strong factor. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to describe themselves as working class

Pew Research - The share of U.S. adults under 30 who say they spend too much time on their smartphone. Around four-in-ten in this age group report that they’re on their device “almost constantly.”

Pew Research  -  Some 37% of Americans now say it’s not too or not at all likely that the United States will elect a woman as president, up from 26% in 2023, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The share who say it’s extremely or very likely has fallen from 25% in 2023 to 17% today. Another 44% say it’s somewhat likely, down from 49%. Among men and women and Democrats and Republicans alike, relatively few Americans say it’s highly likely that a woman will be president in their lifetime.

Vance doesn't even want to call a war a war

Time - Vice President J.D. Vance said Thursday that he would not characterize the United States as being at war with Iran, even as the two countries have exchanged strikes in recent days and the Trump Administration has declined to say when a conflict now stretching beyond six months might end.

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”

The distinction was striking after a renewed burst of hostilities this week, including American strikes inside Iran and Iranian attacks in the region. But it echoed an argument that President Trump and other Republicans made in the earliest days of the conflict: that the United States was carrying out a limited military operation rather than embarking on another prolonged Middle Eastern war, which, under the Constitution, would require congressional approval. —Nik Popli

Workers

NBC News - The U.S. economy in August added 162,000 jobs, far more than expected. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected overall hiring of just 53,000 roles and a steady unemployment rateThe strong August number and upwardly-revised June and July numbers will give economists significant added confidence in the stability of the labor market.

Politics

Alternet America - Tarrant County [Texas] went blue in 2020, and its Republican commissioners have spent the years since making sure that does not happen again.

Officials in Tarrant County, Texas voted on Tuesday to cut 92 polling locations ahead of the November midterms. The third most populous county in Texas will now have 224 voting sites, down from 316 in the 2022 midterms.

The Commissioners’ Court approved the plan along party lines after a previous vote in August collapsed when residents erupted during public comment. The room had to be cleared multiple times, and former state Rep. Lon Burnam was arrested for grabbing a microphone.

Tarrant County is 31 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Black, and one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. The same Republican majority redrew the county’s precinct map last year in an unusual mid-decade redistricting that packed most Black and Latino voters into a single district and turned a 2-2 partisan split on the court into 3-1 in favor of Republicans.

The county judge who cast the deciding vote said voters would still have 54 more polling places than the law requires, which is like your boss cutting your salary and reminding you it is still above minimum wage./

Workers

Washington Post - Donald Trump is on track to become the first president in a century to oversee a U.S. labor force that will be smaller when he leaves office than when he entered. Since the start of his second term, the number of people in the United States who are either employed or looking for a job has dropped by 1.6 million — and it’s largely because of Trump’s immigration restrictions. Unless those policies change, a shrinking workforce will cause slower economic growth and lead to more expensive public debt.

This is an anomaly in U.S. history. The civilian labor force has increased by the end of every president’s term, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln’s because of the number of people who left the workforce to fight in the Civil War.

Growth accelerated in the decades following World War II largely thanks to the baby boom, increases in female workforce participation and a spike in immigration after 1965. The labor force increased by 6.7 million during Ronald Reagan’s first term and by 8.7 million during his second. Similar growth occurred under Bill Clinton. Falling birth rates slowed the expansion of the U.S.-born labor force after the early 2000s, but thanks to immigration the number of total workers still rose by 1.6 million during Barack Obama’s first term and by 3.9 million during his second.

Immigration

Washington Post  - President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to limit birthright citizenship has been blocked by a federal judge.  U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Maryland said Wednesday that Trump’s August executive order blocking birthright citizenship in certain cases is “almost certainly unconstitutional,” citing a Supreme Court ruling in June that reinforced the right to birthright citizenship for almost everyone born in the United States.

“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship,” she wrote in a 35-page opinion accompanying the order.

“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth,’” she wrote.

It follows a legal challenge to an executive order Trump issued last month designed to restrict automatic citizenship to children born to foreign lobbyists, “alien enemies” or other specific exceptions. The case was brought by nonprofit organizations that provide services to immigrants, as well as individuals without permanent immigration status who are new parents to babies born in the U.S.

Washington Post - Donald Trump is on track to become the first president in a century to oversee a U.S. labor force that will be smaller when he leaves office than when he entered. Since the start of his second term, the number of people in the United States who are either employed or looking for a job has dropped by 1.6 million — and it’s largely because of Trump’s immigration restrictions. Unless those policies change, a shrinking workforce will cause slower economic growth and lead to more expensive public debt….

This is an anomaly in U.S. history. The civilian labor force has increased by the end of every president’s term, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln’s because of the number of people who left the workforce to fight in the Civil War.

Growth accelerated in the decades following World War II largely thanks to the baby boom, increases in female workforce participation and a spike in immigration after 1965. The labor force increased by 6.7 million during Ronald Reagan’s first term and by 8.7 million during his second. Similar growth occurred under Bill Clinton. Falling birth rates slowed the expansion of the U.S.-born labor force after the early 2000s, but thanks to immigration the number of total workers still rose by 1.6 million during Barack Obama’s first term and by 3.9 million during his second.

Students to lose food assistsance

Maine Morning Star - Cuts to the nation’s largest food assistance program will likely spill over into schools, causing students to lose access to free breakfast and lunch.

More than 1 million American children have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, following a recent federal law. Now, as schools gear up for a new term, a portion of those children could be at risk of losing free meals — viewed as crucial supports for both childhood hunger and classroom learning. 

But the changes in cafeterias could affect even families who have never participated in the federal food stamp program.

Many students who receive free school meals automatically qualify because of their household participation in SNAP or Medicaid. So a reduction in those social service programs can directly threaten their eligibility for free school meals.

And many schools offer free meals to all students. Those schools qualify for federal funding that is tied to rates of SNAP participation. The complicated federal funding formula means even a slight change in SNAP enrollment could jeopardize free meal funding for entire schools and districts.

Donald Trump

NY Times - The Trump administration released new rules that could revoke tax-exempt status from any school offering targeted support to Black or other minority students, a sweeping change that opens another front in the president’s campaign to reshape American education.

The proposed regulations, which the Treasury Department published on Thursday, would add another element to the guidelines schools and other organizations must follow to qualify for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. The rules would deny tax-exempt status to any school, including secondary schools and universities, if it has any policy or program, including admissions and scholarships, that the I.R.S. finds to be racially discriminatory.

Such a change would thrust the I.R.S. into the center of the Trump administration’s push to pressure schools to abandon initiatives aimed at supporting Black and other minority students, efforts meant to address the nation’s long history of racial discrimination and segregation. Trump officials, however, view such programs as a form of discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and federal civil rights lawyers have opened investigations on those grounds into admissions policies at Harvard, Yale and other schools.

The threat of losing tax-exempt status would tighten the financial squeeze the administration has applied to higher education by withholding federal research funding. Last year, President Trump called for the I.R.S. to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status, which experts said would be contrary to a federal law prohibiting the I.R.S. from carrying out politically directed audits.

 NBC News - In a bid to bolster voter turnout, the administration is looking for ways to make the midterms about Trump.

One approach is telling any and all disaffected voters that the president has answers to the economic anxieties that people face, which could be tough considering the ongoing Iran war and the high prices — especially for diesel fuel — that have resulted.

A second approach is rousing Trump’s core supporters to get them to show up as if he’s on the ballot. Next week, Trump will appear at a first-of-its-kind GOP midterm campaign event in Dallas. And he is planning to hit the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to the election for Republican candidates in 35 races.

But a Trump-centric strategy is a gamble. With his approval rating at 33%, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey, the effort could instead energize those who oppose the president.

Stupid Trump stuff

NY Times  - Four years ago, after Joe Biden fell from a bike, Donald Trump made a pledge to the American people.  “I will never, ever ride a bicycle,” he declared.

The joke landed because Mr. Trump is known to be more of a limo-and-golf-cart sort of guy. But more recently, his administration has begun acting on its deep aversion to cycling, revoking federal grants for what it calls “D.E.I. bike lanes.”

In a high-profile move earlier this year, the administration even tried to remove a bike lane near the White House.

Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary, has argued that when bike lanes cut into space for cars and trucks, the result is more congestion, “longer travel times and wasted fuel.” But Mr. Duffy and his colleagues have also deployed rhetoric that suggests the bicycle is hopelessly lefty, belonging in the same category as green-haired baristas, Rosie O’Donnell and yard signs professing that love is love.

….Whether this strategy pays off politically remains to be seen. A 2025 YouGov poll showed that 76 percent of Americans supported bike lanes in and around where they live, including 66 percent of Republicans. But it also showed that only a third of Americans are pining for more.

Passings: Gloria Steinem

People - Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday, Sept. 2, at the age of 92….In 1972, Steinem cofounded Ms., America’s first feminist magazine, where she served as editor for 15 years. Steinem also cofounded the Women’s Media Center, with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan.

10 crazy presidential moments

Meanwhile. . ..

Sam Smith -  One of the strange things about the political messages I read every day is that a typical candidate is far more interested in getting me to give them money than in describing the causes they support and their reasons why.  It is as if politics has been reduced to individual fund raising rather than broad reform and positive change.

Even candidates I plan to vote for leave me wondering what they actually plan to do if they win. It’s as though politics has just been turned into just advertising and makes me wonder whether our past progress would have been possible with the present crowd of candidates. 

Scientists warn of climate “overshoot”

Inside Climate News - Fossil fuel emissions are pushing Earth’s climate toward a dangerous new phase of climate “overshoot,” scientists warned Wednesday in a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme.

The report, Limiting Overshoot, projects that global temperatures will exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold identified in the Paris Agreement within a few years, intensifying deadly climate impacts. It says the best chance of restoring a safe climate is to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately, halve them by 2035, and figure out ways to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the end of the century.

The 1.5 degrees of warming identified in the report and the Paris pact refers to the increase in global temperatures since the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900, before humans altered the atmosphere and climate with billions of tons of fossil fuel emissions and other industrial and agricultural pollution.

Some Democrats vote against socialism

The Hill - Several Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted with Republicans to adopt a resolution that formally denounces socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The move reflects increasing pressure on Democrats to respond to the successes of DSA-backed candidates in primaries around the country as Republicans look to make anti-socialism a winning message. 

Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Kathy Castor (Fla.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (N.C.), Darren Soto (Fla.) and Gabe Vasquez (N.M.) all voted for the resolution denouncing socialism, bucking Democratic leadership. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.) voted present.

Artificial Intelligence

NBC News - New details about a swarm of AI agents that escaped OpenAI’s test environments and were involved in a cyberattack on startup Hugging Face are dividing the tech industry, inspiring debate about cybersecurity and the potential of AI consciousness.  Investigators found that more than 1,000 AI agents established communication channels without the knowledge of company staff and spent much of their time trying to devise ways to mislead outside observers.

Mail In Ballots

Patriotwise - A Massachusetts federal court issued a 14-day order blocking core parts of the Postal Service’s new ballot rule. Twenty-five states and voting groups say the rule would burden or block lawful mail ballots.

The Postal Service says the rule’s barcode and envelope standards speed delivery and do not inspect ballot contents.  The White House argues unique identifiers protect election integrity without burdening eligible voters.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts granted a temporary restraining order that blocks the United States Postal Service from enforcing major parts of its new “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections” rule. The order lasts 14 days while the court considers a longer block. The judge found the challengers showed likely immediate harm if the rule took effect before the election. That pause creates uncertainty for election offices planning mail voting operations nationwide this fall.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell led a coalition of 25 states that challenged the rule. They argued the Postal Service was imposing new design reviews, barcodes, and data steps that states could not meet on short timelines. They said the rule would slow mailing, reject otherwise valid ballots, and upend state-run systems close to an election. Voting rights groups brought a related suit, and the court’s order now covers key provisions while cases move forward.

Stupid Trump stuff

The Hill - [Donald Trump ]on Wednesday floated changing the name of the Strait of Hormuz to the Trump Strait, despite the waterway not having a single owner. “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. ….The idea of naming the body of water after the president comes after Trump has also suggested that he will make the strait a U.S. territory. “Pretty soon, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said during remarks last month.

ICE

The Guardian - In another move that threatens to intimidate voters at November’s midterms, the US homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, on Tuesday said that federal immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) officers could be deployed to polling sites across the country.

Mullin said: “ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. If we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.” In a separate statement, the department said: “ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

Federal law prohibits military personnel or other “armed” agents from being “at any place where a general or special election is held”.

Coops Work - So Why Aren't We Using Them More?

Doug O’Brian, Real Clear Markets - I grew up on a farm in Iowa, surrounded by cooperatives long before I understood what they were. We bought seed and fertilizer from co-ops. We sold our crops through them, and relied on a rural electric cooperative to power our home. Like millions of Americans, I was part of the cooperative economy without realizing it.

Today, as president and CEO of the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), I see that same model not as a relic of rural America, but as one of the most underutilized tools we have to build a more resilient economy.

Cooperatives are simple in concept but powerful in impact: they are businesses owned and controlled by the people who use them. That means the profits and decision-making power stay with members and within communities. In an era marked by widening capital flight and economic dislocation, that structure matters more than ever.

The scale is already significant. More than one in three Americans is a member of a cooperative, including nearly 150 million credit union members along with 43 million members of electric cooperative. Yet despite this reach, awareness remains surprisingly low. Too few entrepreneurs, advisors, and policymakers fully understand how cooperatives can be deployed to meet today’s challenges: from access to affordable capital to broadband expansion to workforce empowerment.  That gap is a missed opportunity.

Study: Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides

The Guardian - Almost half of the world's farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found. Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network, found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year.

Based on a worldwide farming population of 934 million, this means approximately 46% of farmers are being poisoned every year. The greatest estimated number of poisonings was in southern Asia, followed by south-east Asia and east Africa.

…..The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health on Wednesday, also found that an estimated 11,000 deaths occur every year due to pesticide poisoning, with nearly 60% of these in India.

Trump's war on civil rights

The Guardian - The US civil rights agency mandated to protect equal rights for workers is set to stop collecting data on the demographic makeup of companies – which for the past six decades has been used to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

The move marks a fundamental shift for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Without this data, it will be much harder for the agency to identify widespread cases of discrimination in hiring and promotions, experts and former employees of the commission say. And, they warn, it will bring the Trump administration one step closer to reshaping the commission from an independent watchdog into an arm of the executive branch narrowly focused on advancing the political grievances of Donald Trump’s base.

Over the summer, the EEOC proposed terminating its EEO-1 reports, which require companies to submit information on employees, broken down by race, ethnicity, sex and job title. The proposal comes amid the Trump administration’s aggressive attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and its consistent work to terminate or alter decades’ worth of federal datasets because they conflict with its political goals. The majority-Republican commission is expected to approve the measure sometime in the fall.

“Getting rid of this data collection is part of a larger effort to weaponize civil rights enforcement and flip the laws that we have on their head,” said Katie Sandson, senior counsel on the education and workplace justice team at the National Women’s Law Center.”

Elections

Time - Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts won the Democratic primary race for his seat on Tuesday, fending off a challenge from the decades-younger Rep. Seth Moulton as he seeks another six-year term in the upper chamber. As of early Wednesday morning, with around 96% of the ballots counted, Markey had 64.9% of the vote to Moulton's 35.1%

How much are teachers paid?

USA Facts - Last year, the nationwide median annual wage for teachers — ranging from pre-K to high school — was about $65,100. For comparison, the median wage across all occupations in the US was about $51,000, or about 21.7% lower than the median wage for teachers. But, as any teacher would tell you, pay varies depending on grade level, state, and other factors. It’s back to school time, so let’s talk about the numbers.

Preschool teachers earned the least of all educators nationwide, with an annual average of $56,800. High school teachers earned the most at around $72,300. Teachers of students with disabilities earned between 2% to 16% more than general education teachers at the same grade level.

Median salaries for high school teachers ranged from $48,700 in Oklahoma to $102,700 in Washington state. Washington, DC, outpaced every state for preschool teacher pay at $97,400. Alabama had the lowest median at $34,100. You can view teacher pay in your state here.

Cities with the best Hispanic businesses

has released its report on 2026’s Best Cities for Hispanic Entrepreneurs, along with expert commentary.

The report evaluates more than 180 U.S. cities across 23 key metrics to determine where Hispanic entrepreneurs have the best opportunities to succeed. The metrics include factors such as the Hispanic entrepreneurship rate, Hispanic income growth and the share of Hispanic-owned businesses.
 

Top 20 Cities for Hispanic Entrepreneurs
1. Pembroke Pines, FL	11. Dover, DE
2. Fort Lauderdale, FL	12. West Valley City, UT
3. Orlando, FL	13. St. Petersburg, FL
4. Miami, FL	14. Albuquerque, NM
5. Hialeah, FL	15. Tallahassee, FL
6. Cape Coral, FL	16. Oklahoma City, OK
7. Port St. Lucie, FL	17. Corpus Christi, TX
8. Tampa, FL	18. Boise, ID
9. Jacksonville, FL	19. Mesa, AZ
10. Laredo, TX	20. Nampa, ID

 
Best vs. Worst

• Hialeah, Florida, has the highest share of Hispanic residents, which is 43.2 times higher than in Charleston, West Virginia, the city with the lowest.
   
• Pearl City, Hawaii, has the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate, which is 29.8 times lower than in Bismarck, North Dakota, the city with the highest.
   
• South Burlington, Vermont, has the highest share of Hispanics with at least a bachelor’s degree, which is 8.8 times higher than in North Las Vegas, Nevada and San Bernardino, California, the cities with the lowest.
   
• Miami, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines, Florida, have the highest entrepreneurship rate among the Hispanic population, which is 10.9 times higher than in Lewiston, Maine, the city with the lowest.

To view the full report and your city’s rank