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

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.

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.

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Via Tori Atheist

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.

The assessment of the arch’s impact on surrounding historic properties is a key step the administration must complete before the project can receive final approval by the National Capital Planning Commission, which could come as soon as its next meeting on Sept. 3

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.

The difference in cost is largely tied to where the two presidents played. Most of Obama's rounds took place at Joint Base Andrews, near Washington, D.C., allowing him to travel by motorcade. Trump's golf outings have more often involved trips to his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey, requiring longer travel and additional security arrangements.

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

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.

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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

The books that blew 12 scientists’ minds