Donald Trump

NY Times -  President Trump said on Sunday that his administration finalized plans to transform East Potomac Golf Links in Washington into a “world class championship golf course,” saying the municipal course would close within four weeks and that its replacement would be playable in about 15 months.

The announcement set up another frantic legal clash over the site. A federal judge ordered the administration in July to present her with any long-term plans for the course and not to carry out a surprise overhaul as the president had with the East Wing of the White House and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The Interior Department appeared to have done just that earlier this month, taking down hundreds of trees over a holiday weekend and giving the court and a group suing to stop ay changes to the course less than a day to react.

In a post on social media on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump appeared to affirm what a historical-preservation group and two Washington residents had warned of in a federal lawsuit: that the administration might move to seize the existing course before they had a real chance to oppose the plan.

Middle East

The Guardian - Israeli settler militants have attacked European diplomats, a French mayor and the archbishop of Cambrai in Taybeh, in the occupied West Bank, injuring three people and damaging a car, in the latest violent attempt to prevent Palestinians from harvesting olives on their own land. Bernard Baudoux, mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was wearing his red, white and blue sash of office and attempting to enter a vehicle with diplomatic plates when he was assaulted and knocked to the ground on Saturday. The masked militant shouted “Vive la France” as he launched the attack, a witness said. Badoux’s wife, and Vincent Dollmann, archbishop of Cambrai, were also threatened by the group of seven men, some armed with clubs….

Settlers first attacked a group working on the lower slopes of hills near Taybeh. As well as stealing olives, they kicked, abused and assaulted a Palestinian woman in her 70s and beat a man so badly he needed six stitches for a head injury.

I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down.

Climate

Should human beings remain in control of planet Earth?

 Bernard Sanders, The Atlantic -  Should human beings remain in control of planet Earth? Or should we be replaced as the dominant species? As absurd as these questions may sound, and as obvious as the answers may seem, the Big Tech oligarchs funding the artificial-intelligence revolution have responded in ways that should alarm all of us.

In Silicon Valley, some of the wealthiest people on Earth believe that they have the power to create a superior species. Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, wrote in 2017 that AI would allow humans to become “the first species ever to design our own descendants.” What this means for humans, however, remains unclear. According to Altman, we will either jump-start digital intelligence “and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” In other words, humans have a choice: face extinction or merge with machines. “I believe the merge has already started,” Altman added, and is “probably our best-case scenario.”

Similarly, Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, has opened up the possibility of rights for AI models. “We don’t know if the models are conscious,” he explained, and added, “But we’re open to the idea that it could be.”

Earlier this month, Elon Musk, the head of SpaceXAI and the richest man on Earth, posted on X, “Propagating super intelligence to the stars is a great success condition for a biological bootloader,” likening humans to the programming that launches a computer’s operating system. Put simply, Musk is saying that humans are merely a step toward digital superintelligence. Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of Palantir and a major AI investor, was asked last year if he would prefer that the human race endure. His response? “Uh … Well, I don’t know. I would—I would … There’s so many questions implicit in this,” he stammered, before reluctantly conceding that humans should survive.

Meanwhile....

Netflix Is Cutting 1000 Jobs As Stock Price, Customer Growth Stumble

Did Frank Sinatra really act as a secret liaison between JFK and the mob?

Flying cars

Are flying cars finally here?

Pope Leo's recovery

The Guardian -   Pope Leo told a crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square on Sunday that he would “gradually resume” his activities, at his first appearance before the faithful since undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung.

The Catholic leader, 71, was greeted with applause as he appeared unaided at the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to deliver his Sunday angelus. It was his first public appearance since making the shock announcement at the previous Sunday’s address that a small nodule had been found on his lung.

Leo was diagnosed with the most common kind of lung cancer – adenocarcinoma – on Tuesday, after doctors removed part of his right lung to extract the tumour.

He thanked those who had prayed for him in recent days, saying that he appreciated the support while adding that the experience had made him feel especially close “to all those who are going through illness or a state of infirmity”.

“Now that this delicate phase has passed … I will gradually resume ​my ​activities, always with ​the help of God and your ​prayers,” he said.

Leo left Gemelli hospital in Rome on Saturday, where doctors deemed him “fit for discharge” after undergoing blood tests and a chest X-ray that morning.

Doctors said on Wednesday that Leo’s recovery from the operation was progressing normally. They said they were waiting for the results of tests to determine whether the cancer had spread and if more treatment would be needed.

French riots

 Axios - Police arrested at least 1,800 people across France after violent groups clashed with officers and looted shops during nationwide demonstrations that drew hundreds of thousands of people who denounced rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. Masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities. In Limoges, in central France, flames engulfed the neo-Renaissance city hall, which was built in the 19th century and survived two world wars. The building's iconic clock tower collapsed.

The changing internet

Axios - The internet is undergoing a foundational shift as websites evolve from human destinations to information hubs for AI agents, Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn write in an Axios Media Trends Executive briefing. Human discretion, a critical safeguard for establishing trust online, is rapidly disappearing. Bad actors are using AI to create new information sources designed to manipulate LLMs. Without a trust layer to vet information that machines retrieve and analyze, the internet risks becoming a breeding ground for content that's useless to humans. Share this story 

Canada

Time -  Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned that the United States is trying to sow discord as he urged Albertans not to vote for separation in a referendum. “The stakes are high. This referendum comes at the worst possible time. The world has become more dangerous and divided,” Carney said at a rally in Calgary ahead of Monday’s vote, which will see residents decide whether the oil-rich province should take a step toward secession. “There are some outside our borders who are working to break us, so they can own us.”

Carney's statement came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump revisited his ambitions to annex Canada, telling the crowd at a rally in Arizona that the country will “end up being the 51st state, because it's the only way it works.” Carney, who was raised in Edmonton, Alberta, framed the vote as an opportunity for Canadians to “recognize that we're all responsible for each other.”

Ukraine

NBC News - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the U.S. formally siding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin would be a “historic mistake,” but said he still sees President Donald Trump as an ally despite a series of moves that have unsettled his country and its friends on Capitol Hill.

“We want to trust him,” Zelenskyy told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” referring to Trump. “I hope that he will change his decisions, because I think that it’s all mistakes, and it will not help us, and it will not help United States.”

Measles

Newsweek - The United States could finish 2026 with as many as 6,500 confirmed measles cases, infectious disease experts told Newsweek, as vaccine skepticism fuels outbreaks in under-vaccinated communities and threatens the country's measles-elimination status.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, predicted that the country would end the year with “roughly 6,000 to 6,500 confirmed cases."

“This is a return of the primitive,” Adalja told Newsweek, “a disease we eliminated a quarter-century ago, back by choice.”

The United States had recorded 4,080 confirmed cases this year as of October 8, already 78 percent more than the 2025 total of 2,289 cases. The highly contagious virus was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000 after the measles vaccine was developed decades earlier.

Measles-associated death counts this year differ between federal and state figures. The CDC has reported two deaths nationally, while Pennsylvania has confirmed five measles-associated deaths, including two infants, an 18-year-old and a 40-year-old woman. A sixth death reported by a county coroner remains under state review.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, agrees that the U.S. is on pace to reach 6,000 to 6,500 cases in 2026.

“That’s a reasonable order of magnitude of what we can expect,” Schaffner told Newsweek.

Russia

NBC News -  President Donald Trump waived sweeping new sanctions against Russia passed by Congress, arguing in an executive order Friday that the move “is in the national interests of the United States.”

Trump had signed the legislation, named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., just last month. The bill took aim at Russia’s largest buyers of oil and gas, allowing the president to impose tariffs on goods from those countries, which may include China and India.

Passed with bipartisan support, the bill was intended to target Russia’s revenue streams as the country continues to wage its war against Ukraine. Suspending the sanctions provides Russia a financial lifeline.

Trump’s decision to put a hold on the sanctions package comes after he announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to release hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel fuel onto the global market as fuel prices soar.

Trump has expressed frustration with Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure and has blamed them for the increase in fuel costs while downplaying the impact of the Iran war on the oil market.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that lifting sanctions was “wrong” and “only helps the Russians.”

NY Times -   The White House has broad authority to issue sanctions exemptions or waivers, and the new law requires Mr. Trump to notify Congress only if he opts against imposing the economic restrictions on Russia. Two days before the law is set to take effect, Mr. Trump exercised that power.

Why is Musk allowed to give so much political money?

Google - Elon Musk is legally permitted to spend massive amounts of money on political campaigns and super PACs because U.S. courts view independent political spending as a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

Key Legal Reasons

• Constitutional Rights: Landmark Supreme Court rulings (such as Citizens United) established that individuals and corporations can spend unlimited amounts on independent political communication, advertising, and support for candidates, as long as they do not coordinate directly with a candidate's official campaign.

• Super PACs: Musk channels much of his money through political action committees (like America PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund), which are legally allowed to raise and spend unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and unions for independent election activities.

• Direct Contributions vs. Independent Spending: While direct contributions given straight to a candidate's campaign are legally capped, spending independently to run ads, back PACs, or support political messaging is uncapped.

More problems with Katie Zacharia

MS NOW -  Setting aside the jokes about the shortness of Katie Zacharia’s tenure as White House press secretary, the controversy over her claim to be a lawyer obscures a more damaging issue. For years, she promoted some of the most heinous and bizarre conspiracy theories bubbling up from the right-wing swamp….

Zacharia’s social media history suggests a worldview colored by baseless thinking, defamatory accusations and sinister fantasies — not exactly a good look for someone tasked with conveying the U.S. president’s policies and actions to the press and public with authority and integrity. The noxiousness of her posts and reposts was apparently evident even to her, since she deleted many of them before her new role was announced.

According to reporting by CNN, the Bulwark and the newsletter Popular Information, Zacharia has repeatedly accused people, particularly Democrats, of sexually molesting children. In April 2022, she reposted and later deleted a Truth Social post from “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander: “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.”

She repeatedly referred to Democratic operative and former White House chief of staff John Podesta as a “pedo,” apparently still connecting him to an outrageous child-abuse conspiracy theory that had been debunked years earlier. She later paid tribute to the late Robert David Steele, a conspiracist who claimed that children were being kidnapped and sent to a colony on Mars: “He was exposing the pedo rings of the elite cabal,” Zacharia wrote. “May he Rest in Peace and the work of his hands not have been in vain.” In another Truth Social post, she noted that “the radical left Hollywood elites are sick pedo cannibals.”

Meanwhile, , ,

NY Times -   Pope Leo XIV was discharged from a Rome hospital on Saturday, four days after surgery to remove a tumor from his right lung. The pope left Gemelli Hospital about 3:30 p.m., roughly three days earlier than the Vatican had originally suggested for when he would return to his residence.

NY Times -  How a Teacher and a Dad Stopped the Slaughter in an Oregon School

Trump swaps half his female cabinet for men

Alternet - Grabby President Donald Trump is no kind of feminist, but he likes to point to his hiring and promotion of women to silence criticism of both his misogynist policies and personal conduct. His White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is actually the first woman to have the job.

But the Guardian points out that during his second term, there is one common characteristic share by most of those he has jettisoned from his administration.

“In the space of just a few months, half of his eight female cabinet officials have either resigned or been fired. All have been replaced by men,” reports the Guardian. “Several other women in his administration have also departed, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.”

The women are fleeing so fast that on Friday, Trump was forced to deny claims that he was even mulling replacing Wiles. “She’s gonna be here for a long time,” he claimed.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that numerous top male officials, including Trump’s goof--prone defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who has endangered soldiers by sharing military developments and plans on Signal chat, and threatening to embarrass the nation by broadcasting the live feed of shooting a paraplegic in a wheelchair, remains in his post, as does the allegedly drunken and mouthy FBI director Kash Patel.

Health

The Hill - Americans are bracing to pay significantly more for health insurance next month, whether they have Affordable Care Act plans or get insurance through work. Premiums for some people could be the highest in decades, while others may pay more in the form of out-of-pocket costs like copays or deductibles.  

People are getting squeezed by rising costs across income brackets, and experts say affordability woes will truly hit home when open enrollment kicks off next month.  

The reasons for the looming spike vary. Higher prices for hospitals and other care are a significant driver of spending by insurers and employers, as is increased utilization of expensive prescription drugs like GLP-1s for weight loss.  

The approximately 19 million adults on Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans, meanwhile, are expected to see another year of double-digit premium increases due to many of the same pressures. But eligible enrollees no longer have enhanced subsidies to blunt the increase after Republicans in Congress let them expire last year.  

Health cost worries have resonated throughout the midterm elections campaign, and Democrats have made those concerns a centerpiece of their messaging. 

A recent poll from health research group KFF found healthcare costs, alongside gas prices, outranked food, housing and utilities as the top economic concern for voters in the midterm elections. 

A Pew Research Center survey earlier this month showed 64 percent of Americans said healthcare was a “very important” issue, ranking it higher than immigration, foreign policy, crime or AI. 

Meanwhile. . .

NBC News  - Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after just five days on the job, a senior administration official, an administration official and a source familiar with the decision said, following a widely panned first press briefing and the revelation that she represented herself as a lawyer but did not pass her bar exam.

Amazon prices up

Business Insider -   The owners of Bed Scrunchie, a company solving the problem of unruly sheets one mattress at a time, say Amazon is pressuring them to raise their prices wherever else they sell online. "Amazon told us basically that if we don’t increase our price elsewhere, that this product will remain [in]visible to buy," co-owner Jack Nehala shares in a new Business Insider video essay. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading a price-fixing case against the Big Tech giant, says this is a common tactic for Amazon — "We have the receipts." 

Stacy Mitchell, a key expert featured in the story, says this is likely "just the tip of the iceberg of a huge price-fixing operation” and argues that online competition cannot lower consumer prices if policymakers let these tactics continue. “Amazon has so much power over suppliers to essentially monitor prices and make sure that other retailers never have lower prices than Amazon," warns Stacy. 

Polls

Medialite -  The latest Fox News poll carried some decisively bad news for President Donald Trump and his administration, which has been plagued by corruption scandals in recent months.

The new poll found that the top issue among voters, with 88% of respondents saying they are “extremely or very concerned” about it, was “corruption in government.”

The poll conducted between October 9th and the 12th, among 1,202 registered voters, found “Inflation and high prices” to be the second most important issue to voters, with 85% “extremely or very concerned” about it.

“Gas prices” came in third, with 83% of respondents being “extremely or very concerned” about it, while “Healthcare” landed in fourth place with 80%.

Liberals backing Puerto Rican independence

The Nation -   Something is changing in the political conversation about Puerto Rico. In recent months, major leaders and organizations on the American left have explicitly signaled their support for the island’s independence.

On September 23, to mark the 158th anniversary of the Grito de Lares freedom revolt, future congressman Chris Rabb joined his Puerto Rican constituents in Philadelphia and declared, “I support Puerto Rican independence. Puerto Rico has the right to be a free, sovereign, and independent nation.”

Rabb, who will almost certainly get elected to the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 3rd district, joined other influential progressives who have come out for Puerto Rico’s freedom. Earlier this year another general election shoo-in, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, called for an inclusive Puerto Rican self-determination process. She added: “I also support independence for the Puerto Rican people. Because after 128 years, it’s the least the people on the island deserve.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also weighed in. In June, on the eve of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, Mamdani gave Puerto Rican independence a poetic shoutout:

“This weekend, the boricuas of our city will don bright colors, sing songs of freedom, and wave a flag that was once made illegal by the United States government. There will be joy…as well as the bittersweet knowledge of an independence that has too long been denied.”

Notably, support for sovereignty is rising among political leaders outside of Puerto Rican bastions like New York and Pennsylvania. Former Missouri representative Cori Bush and fellow Missouri Democratic primary candidate Hartzell Gray came out in support for Puerto Rican sovereignty. So did Julie Gonzales, who gave John Hickenlooper a scare in the Democratic primary for US Senate in Colorado. (Full disclosure: My organization, Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora, which advocates for Puerto Rican independence, endorsed all three of those candidates.)

Elon Musk has poured 369 million into elections

Washington Post -  Elon Musk has become the largest individual political donor in modern American history. The world’s richest man poured $369 million of his own money into this year’s midterm elections, mostly to save the Republican Party’s control in Congress.

The spending alleviates the fears of some Republicans who worried the Tesla CEO would not come to their rescue after a dramatic and public feud with President Donald Trump last year. Musk gave at least $268 million to his super PAC and other Republican-aligned groups in the past three months, according to Federal Election Commission data filed Thursday. The GOP’s main Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, received $158 million of that money. The Senate Leadership fund then immediately transferred an identical sum to a PAC dedicated to backing Republican Ken Paxton in the Senate race in Texas, where Musk lives.

….In total, the top donors in American politics have poured in more than $2.3 billion to influence the midterm elections. They are dominated by Republicans. Republicans are hoping the influx of cash will help them in the final stretch before November by blanketing the airwaves and deploying more canvassers to voters’ doors. Republican-leaning donors gave $1.54 billion, compared with $590 million from Democratic-leaning givers and $259 million from bipartisan and special-interest groups, such as those backing sports betting and cryptocurrency interests.  List of megadonors

Ukraine

The Guardian - Donald Trump has called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace” and criticised Volodymyr ?Zelenskyy after an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine failed to take hold.

Donald Trump

The Guardian -   Donald Trump plans to once more severely restrict the number of refugees admitted to the US, announcing a limit of just 17,500 people in fiscal year 2027 - and that, again, those let in will be "primarily" white South Africans.

Refugee rights groups are alarmed and infuriated at the decision last month by the US president to exclude almost every other demographic.

They claim the decision will continue to leave thousands of refugees stuck in dangerous situations around the globe, many of whom were already vetted and approved for entry, in favor of a very small quota dominated by Afrikaners, an Afrikaans-speaking white ethnic group descended from Dutch and French colonial settlers to South Africa.

Hegseth’s military imposes testosterone testing

MS NOW -   After nearly 250 years of testing its troops’ strength, endurance and marksmanship, the U.S. military is starting to test their testosterone.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says it will give them “the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” brushing off concerns from current and former service members — including an ex-Army surgeon general — that the initiative rests on shaky science.

Some veterans fear the new mandatory screening could threaten troops’ fertility and careers, tying some of them to lifelong injections the Department of Veterans Affairs is not guaranteed to continue covering.

Under a program Hegseth announced in July, service members 30 and older will be screened each year for testosterone deficiency during their routine health assessments. Those found to have low levels will be offered hormone therapy.

Hegseth said treatment would be voluntary, though the Pentagon has not said whether troops who refuse recommended treatment would face consequences.

“We are building a High-T department focused on strength, performance, lethality,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote on X in mid-September, echoing language used in podcasts and other forums with a recent focus on the definition of masculinity.

Trump vs. federal judges

Alternet - President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is getting an earful from federal judges across the nation, with one accusing the administration of concealing its “true motives” as it tries to get its hand on voter data.

A ProPublica investigation published Friday documented showing how judges have rejected the department’s legal arguments in 26 lawsuits seeking states’ unredacted voter rolls, delivering an embarrassing series of defeats to Trump’s effort to obtain election records.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has sued 30 states, including Washington, D.C., in an effort to get confidential information about millions of American voters in unredacted voter rolls since September last year.

A judge, appointed by President Bill Clinton, accused the Trump administration of trampling on Americans’ right to vote, writing:

“The foundation upon which American democracy has been built is the right to vote. … Now it seems the Executive Branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots. … The Court does not take lightly DOJ’s obfuscation of its true motives.”

Personal note

Sam Smith -  My wife and I celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary yesterday. According to one study only about one or two percent of marriages last that long, in our case thanks in no small part to my partner, Kathy. I met Kathy when she was working for Senator Gaylord Nelson. She had graduated from the University of Wisconsin magna cum laude and nonetheless married a guy who had graduated from Harvard magna cum probation. And we have been happy ever since.