May 20, 2026

The real split in our culture

Sam Smith – Lately I’ve come to think of America as no longer  divided politically by liberals and conservatives but as a country split by the powerful and the weak, the fun and the obsessive,  the honest and the deceptive and human and the egotistic. With a father who worked for FDR and my own activism and media work, I have experienced America  in the most recent third of its existence but, right now, it seems so dramatically different than just a while back.

After all, presidents used to represent their party and supporters more than their personal dysfunction.  With Trump we face an unprecedented leader who feels he can start a war that no one asked him for because of his power rather than the  concerns of his constituency. I covered my first Washington story more than six decades ago and have never seen our national politics so badly affected by a distorted mentality.

Trying to figure out what is really happening has led me to realize that the real institutional winner in all this has not been politics but show business. Our culture as well as our politics has been increasingly reflective of the growth of television, movies, and the Internet over communities, civic associations, and values found in neighborhoods, churches  and families.

One of the effects of this change has been the lessening of real human interaction in favor of watching things and a change in the role of citizens based more on what they like and less on who they are.  Part of the cost of the rise of Donald Trump, for example, is that for many he can become a role model above, say, their mother or brother.

I have lived in cultural models of both the present and the past.  Washington DC  was my home for decades until I finally escaped full time to a small town in Maine. I now live where we don’t have Trump like characters defining our lives and values. Instead, I rarely hear a lie and we have five good candidates for governor, an overflow I have never seen before.  

Even Washington had different ways of living depending on whether you were part of its power and prestige. Most of the country never heard about this because their image of the city was dependent on media that did not consider the culturally sound or decent to be worth covering.

In the case of Washington when I lived there, for example, few in the rest of the nation  knew that the city was majority black and had culturally strong communities  even with  elected advisory neighborhood commissions.

I have long viewed important news as far beyond just money and power, in part because as a teenager I took what was then one of only two high school anthropology courses in the country. So influential this was, that I went on to be one of about eight anthropology majors at Harvard. And to this day the habits and values of news figures mean a lot to me.  As well as the cultural effects on their constituencies.

We need to rediscover our role in our communities, our respect for decent others, caring for those in pain, and contempt for those whose only real success has been achievement of status at the expense of others. We need to rediscover our communities, our gatherings, unselfish values, and those who share our interests.

As Donald Trump illustrates, even his selfish goals have not made him happier or more at peace. Like other would-be dictators he is, in the end, his own worst enemy.

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But if Trump... or his kids... or his businesses cheat on their taxes, the law doesn't apply. This is insane & beyond corrupt. DOJ works for the American people, NOT Donald Trump.
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Millions Urged To Stay Out of Sun in 6 States As Temperature Records Broken

Newsweek -   Millions of Americans across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are being urged to limit time outdoors as a powerful early-season heat wave drives record-breaking and near-record temperatures across at least six states.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued widespread Heat Advisories for Wednesday, warning that "hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses," particularly as the region experiences an unusually hot mid-May.

Forecasters say the event is notable not just for the heat itself, but for its timing: Early-season heat waves can be more dangerous because people are not yet acclimated, increasing the risk of heat-related illness.  More on the six states


US commercial and naval shipbuilding not keeping up

Newsworthy-  Government and policy analysts say U.S. naval shipbuilding is behind schedule across major programs, including submarines and surface ships. Commercial shipbuilding has also withered, leaving the United States with a far smaller industrial base than it once had. Long build times and workforce shortages are slowing fleet growth even as threat levels remain high. The Trump administration is facing a defense-industrial problem built over decades, not a quick fix.

In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland

Immigration

The Guardian -   The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown could cause the US to potentially lose up to $479bn in lost tax revenue over the the next 10 years, with enforcement deterring undocumented workers from filing their taxes this year, according to tax experts. Tax advisers say major changes, including proposed data sharing with immigration enforcement, have made filing taxes risky for undocumented immigrants. Tax benefits for immigrant parents have also been removed, further removing incentive to file taxes at all.

How millions could save money in child care

Newsweek -   Millions of American families could save more than $1,300 per month on child care under a long-running proposal championed by Senator Elizabeth Warren ahead of the 2028 presidential race.

Warren is urging Democrats to make universal child care a core campaign promise, arguing the cost burden on families has reached a breaking point and could define the party’s economic message moving forward.


“It would be political malpractice for Democrats not to be talking about child care every chance we get going into the midterms and beyond,” Warren said, per her prepared remarks for a speech at the CAP IDEAS Conference on Tuesday.

A universal system could increase workforce participation and reduce financial stress while boosting overall household income. However, it would also require one of the largest expansions of federal social spending in decades.

In a speech tied to the CAP IDEAS Conference, Warren is calling for universal access to affordable or subsidized child care and legislation ready to pass on day one if Democrats win control in 2028.

“When I look at the upcoming Democratic presidential primary, every 2028 candidate who understands what’s happening in this country, who wants to win, and who will govern effectively to deliver for families, will make universal child care a core piece of their agenda,” Warren wrote.

Harvard faculty votes to limit A grades

Washington Post -   Harvard faculty voted to cap the number of A grades given to undergraduates, taking assertive action to reverse years of grade inflation at a time of intense scrutiny of higher education. The vote, reported Wednesday, is the most prominent symbol of a reckoning at some elite schools concerned by the increasing number of A’s — a widespread issue that some faculty members warn is fundamentally damaging the integrity of education.

“This is a consequential vote,” said Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education. “It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard; it will also, I hope, encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.”

Universities have long been worried about grades creeping up, but have found it difficult to change. Some schools have tried various measures, then backtracked. Discussions about grading are happening at Yale University as well, with a presidential committee on trust at Yale recently recommending a B average, or some other collegewide standard.

Princeton University capped A’s more than 20 years ago but lifted the policy in 2014, after finding it added a lot of stress to students.

At Harvard, the trend is stark: In the 2012-13 academic year, about a third of the grades were A’s — a grade intended to indicate not just full mastery of the subject, according to the student handbook, but work of “extraordinary distinction.” In the 2024-25 academic year, two-thirds were A’s. Almost 85 percent of grades were either a straight A or an A-minus.

Study questions flood safety approach

Yahoo News- In the wake of the Central Texas floods last year, state and federal government agencies were being scrutinized for a range of perceived failures in areas that could have prevented, or greatly reduced, the tragic loss of life. 

These agencies include the National Weather Service, which was accused of underestimating the amount of rain expected in the flooded areas, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which was largely absent from the first three days of rescue efforts. The delay was reportedly due to spending restrictions that require Homeland Security Secretary to personally sign off on any contract or grant with costs exceeding $100,000.

A report from the First Street Foundation, a non-profit climate-risk research group, suggests that FEMA may have been underestimating flood-risk in many parts of the country for a long time. The report, which incorporates FEMA projections, as well as data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the World Climate Research Programme, provides estimates for the number of properties in a given area at substantial flood-risk – or those properties that face a 1% chance of flooding in a given year, and a more than 26% chance of flooding at least once every 30 years.

The report estimates that there may be as many as 14.6 million properties at substantial flood-risk nationwide. This estimate exceeds FEMA’s official flood-risk assessment by approximately 5.9 million properties. In certain states, the number of properties determined by First Street to be at substantial flood-risk is more than double the estimates provided by FEMA.

Using data from the First Street Foundation’s 2020 report, “The First National Flood Risk Assessment,” Climate Crisis 247 identified the states where the government is underestimating exposure to flooding. States are ranked by the relative difference between FEMA and First Street estimates on the number of properties at substantial flood risk. Only states where the properties at substantial flood-risk, as identified by First Street, are more than double the number of properties identified by FEMA, were included in this analysis. The states studied
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Trump smartphone finally shows up

Independent, UK -  After a nine-month delay, the Trump Mobile “T1” smartphone was sent out this week to pre-order customers and some members of the media. There was just a slight problem. The gold-plated $499 phone is no longer marketed as “Made in the USA,” and the American flag design on the back of the handset appears to have 11 stripes instead of 13.

Polls

Newsweek -   Gen Z workers say artificial intelligence has quickly become essential to how they work, but a growing number worry the reliance may be coming at a cost. According to a new global workplace study conducted in partnership with GoTo and Workplace Intelligence, many Gen Z employees report heavy dependence on AI tools and rising concerns that those same tools may be weakening their skills and future job prospects.  While 93 percent of Gen Z respondents said using AI has benefited them, a whopping 40 percent said they feel they can’t function without it.

Controlling corporations political power

The American Prospect - At a time when giant tech companies and other corporate behemoths loom over our economic, social, and political life, the state of Hawaii has just found a way to limit their hold.

Last Thursday, Gov. Josh Green signed into law the first piece of American legislation that curtails corporations’ ability to engage in electoral politics. It doesn’t—because it couldn’t—undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, which holds that corporations have the right to spend their resources on political campaigns. That would require another Court ruling striking down Citizens United, or a constitutional amendment banning such spending.

He cites Samuel Alito’s opinion in the Hobby Lobby case, which asserts that “the objectives that may properly be pursued by the companies in these cases are governed by the laws of the States in which they were incorporated.” He cites the example of Texas, which changed its charter in the 19th century to strip banks of the power to issue bills of credit, and New Jersey, which changed its charter in the 20th century to limit the power and scope of holding companies. And crucially, he cites an 1869 Supreme Court ruling that requires corporations to comport with the corporate charter laws of every state in which they do business. That means a corporation chartered in Delaware, which has long been the state that has chartered most corporations, would have to comport—nationwide, in every state—with Hawaii’s laws on corporate powers if and when it sought to sell its products or engage in any kind of business activity in Hawaii. (Ponder for a moment the effect on corporations if such statutes are enacted in states as populous as California and New York.) For good measure, Moore also references the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which states that powers not listed in the Constitution—such as the power to create corporations—are reserved to the states.

Pro-business courts (which is to say, the great majority of courts throughout American history) have long regarded corporations as people; it’s the courts that have been the creators endowing corporations with presumably unalienable rights. The Supreme Court granted them 14th Amendment protections in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. without even explaining their reasoning.

Polling has made clear that a supermajority of the American people loathe Citizens United.

Moore’s argument compels these courts to grapple with the very substantial body of law that defines corporations and their powers as creations of the states. The Alitos and Thomases will doubtless find a way, however implausible, to wriggle around that, but even if the usual suspects on the federal bench proceed in customary pro-business lockstep, actions like Hawaii’s will fuel in many ways the growing populist and popular revolt against oligarchy and corporatocracy.

Hawaii’s new law will come into effect on July 1, 2027. It gives the state’s attorney general a range of penalties he can impose on corporate violators, ranging from removing tax privileges, to banning the sale of its products to the state government, to suspending its ability to do business in the state, to ordering its dissolution. While it doesn’t repeal the legality of super PACs, corporations’ ability to contribute to such PACs falls under the ban on their electoral activity. Of course, the new law doesn’t and cannot keep individuals from spending on elections. Elon Musk and his ilk, not being the creations of state governments, can continue to make a mockery of American democracy. It would require a high-court reversal of Buckley v. Valeo to free our country from their usurpations of power.

Since Moore’s paper appeared, CAP has seen bills like Hawaii’s introduced in 14 states, while Montanans—who have a heroic history of forbidding corporate campaign spending for a full century until Citizens United negated their law—are working to place an initiative on their 2026 ballot to curtail corporate election spending along the lines that Moore’s proposal and now the new Hawaiian law lay out. Invoking states’ creation and withdrawals of the powers granted corporations is a new concept, and Moore was pleasantly surprised that Hawaii took to it so speedily. It will likely begin to move in other blue states, too, over the next couple of years, as it is one of the lamentably few proposals to address the American people’s completely justified revulsion at corporations’ growing dominion over public and private life.

The $1.8 billion slush fund

Bloomberg  - In what Brandon DeBot, policy director of New York University’s Tax Law Center, called “a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system,” the US Department of Justice sealed a deal with Trump in which the president agreed to drop a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS over a 2019 leak of his tax records.

In exchange, the Justice Department said Trump—who as president has direct authority over the law enforcement agency—will never be subject to an IRS probe of “any and all claims” or demands for damages that have been or could have been filed against him before today’s agreement.

The deal, coming a day after the Justice Department also agreed to what Democrats and ethics experts called a “corrupt” $1.8 billion “slush fund” for Trump allies, was approved by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Blanche said Trump followers who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and assaulted police could get payouts from the fund, which he said is intended to compensate victims of “government weaponization.”

Huffington Post -   Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) thinks President Donald Trump has gone from old school, “brick and mortar corruption” to a type of brazen profiteering that once seemed impossible now that he’s in his second term.

Fresh after news that Trump’s Department of Justice plans to create a $1.7 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to sponsor so-called victims of political “lawfare,” Raskin told The Daily Beast there is nothing more critical than cracking down on the administration’s array of grifts during the site’s Sunday podcast.

“We’ve never seen abuse like the kind of abuse that has taken place under Donald Trump,” he said, accusing the president of using legal loopholes and a “shadow government” to help his “personal wealth skyrocket during the second term.”


MS NOW -   The Trump administration has set aside $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to compensate people it deems victims of government “weaponization,” a figure that echoes the rallying cry of the Jan. 6 rioters who are now eligible to collect from it.

The dollar figure is not coincidental, according to former Justice Department prosecutors, congressional investigators and domestic extremism researchers. It is a direct nod to 1776, the year the U.S. declared independence from Britain. It is also a number that Capitol rioters invoked as they breached the building on Jan. 6, 2021 — in chants, on flags and in Proud Boys planning documents titled “1776 Returns,” which laid out a scheme to seize federal buildings and force a new election. Trump supporters co-opted the patriotic year as a rallying cry for their “1776 moment” to overturn the 2020 election results.

“That number didn’t just appear arbitrarily,” said Michael Fanone, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., who was beaten by rioters while defending the Capitol and lawmakers. “Like everything else, it’s a branding thing. Donald Trump is trying to rebrand January 6th insurrectionists as great American patriots.”

People convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol can apply for “formal apologies” and payments from the fund — including those found guilty of assaulting police officers. 

Pressed by reporters Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance, who previously said violent insurrectionists would not be pardoned, refused to rule anything out.

“We’re going to look at everything case by case,” Vance told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor. “I’m not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche delivered a similar message to lawmakers Tuesday, telling them that eligibility decisions will rest with a new “Truth and Justice Commission.” Every member of that board will be appointed by Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney; only one appointment requires consultation with Congress, and the president “can remove any member,” according to a Justice Department announcement of the fund. MORE


IRS Can’t Audit Trump or His Sons Anymore

Alternet America -   The Department of Justice has released a settlement addendum permanently barring the IRS from ever auditing Donald Trump’s past tax returns, those of his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, or the Trump Organization.

The one-page order, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, states the IRS “releases, waives, acquits” any pending claims and is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing claims tied to returns filed before Monday’s settlement.

The addendum stems from Trump’s now-dismissed $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his confidential tax records during the Biden administration. In exchange for dismissing the suit, the DOJ agreed to establish a new $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” aimed at individuals who allege they were unfairly targeted by prior administrations.

You will recall that Trump spent years declining to release his tax returns, citing ongoing audits. The audits are now gone. Previous reporting found the IRS had been examining deductions and tax strategies that could have exposed Trump to roughly $100 million in liabilities. We’ll never know, because the government just agreed to stop looking.

A 2022 congressional investigation found the IRS had failed to properly audit Trump during his first term. That door is now closed, bolted, and the key has been thrown into the Potomac.

Robert B. Hubbell -   To be clear, Trump is on both sides of the settlement agreement: He is the plaintiff seeking relief, and he is the head of the executive branch granting that relief. Trump essentially gave himself a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for five decades of possible tax fraud by himself, his businesses, and his family members. The Supreme Court granted Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for any actions related to his duties as president. Trump has now extended that grant of immunity to civil claims and criminal prosecution for tax fraud.

Where to find summer jobs

WalletHub - WalletHub compared more than 180 markets in the U.S. across 21 key metrics. The data set ranges from the median income of part-time workers to the availability of summer jobs to the commuter-friendliness of jobs.
 
Top 20 Cities for Summer Jobs  
1. South Burlington, VT 11. Peoria, AZ
2. Scottsdale, AZ 12. Huntington Beach, CA
3. Rapid City, SD 13. St. Louis, MO
4. Columbia, MD 14. Warwick, RI
5. Pearl City, HI 15. Las Vegas, NV
6. Juneau, AK 16. Plano, TX
7. Portland, ME 17. Chandler, AZ
8. Fort Lauderdale, FL 18. Nashua, NH
9. Bismarck, ND 19. Wilmington, DE
10. Orlando, FL 20. Rancho Cucamonga, CA
 
Best vs. Worst
  • Orlando, Florida has the most part-time job openings per 1,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the labor force, which is 16 times higher than in North Las Vegas, the city with the fewest. 
     
  • Scottsdale, Arizona, has the highest median income for part-time workers (adjusted for cost of living), which is than 3.3 times higher than in Garden Grove, California, the city with the lowest.
     
  • South Burlington, Vermont, has the highest labor-force participation rate of people aged 16 to 24, which is 1.8 times higher than in Fremont, California, the city with the lowest.
     
  • Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has the lowest unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24, which is 5.4 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest.
     
  • Pearl, Hawaii, has the lowest share of people aged 16 to 24 living in poverty, which is 10.1 times lower than in Burlington, Vermont, the city with the highest.
 View the full report and your city’s rank

Canada

The Hill -   The Pentagon’s announcement this week that the U.S. is pulling out of a joint military board with Canada marked a new flash point in a simmering feud between President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.  Carney played down the decision Tuesday, but the move elicited an angry response from others in Canada, who widely see it as a warning shot to Ottawa as it looks to diversify its military purchases and scale back its reliance on the U.S.

“I think it’s a symbolic blow from a Canadian sense to have that measure taken by” Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, said David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “But I think it’s maybe also a bit of a wake-up call about how we’ve treated some of these unique forums of cooperation — that can’t just treat them as historical artifacts.”

Artificial Inteligence

Sam Sifton, NY Times -   “The Future of Truth” is the title of a new book about what artificial intelligence is doing to veracity. Steven Rosenbaum, its author, used artificial intelligence to help him research, write and edit. You can probably guess what happened next.

The Times took a close look at the book and found more than a half-dozen misattributed or completely made-up quotes concocted by A.I., including one stemwinder from the tech journalist Kara Swisher. It wasn’t just wrong, Swisher said, but “I also sound like I have a stick up my butt.” Rosenbaum acknowledged the delusions, telling our reporter that if the hallucination “serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.” Times readers are having a field day in the comments:

You can’t trust the machines — not always, not often. Of course, they’re getting better. Yes, they’ll make many things easier. (Yesterday, Google announced that it will overhaul the search bar it has used for the past 25 years to accommodate longer, more complex questions answered by A.I. Say, “Explain the theory of relativity to me as if I were a child.”) But they’re also changing life in uncomfortable ways, altering our relationship with truth and just generally disorientating people: That car on the road next to me has no driver.

That’s one reason graduating students at the University of Arizona last week booed their commencement speaker, the former Google leader Eric Schmidt. He had been talking about the vast promise of A.I. to transform the world through technology. Graduates didn’t want to hear it.

Hydrogen Discovery in Canada Could be New Source of Energy

Shortlysts - Recently, scientists discovered a new source of clean energy, naturally occurring ‘white hydrogen’ trapped within billion-year-old rocks in Canada. The discovery, made in a geological region known as the Canadian Shield, attracted international attention because it suggests hydrogen may be produced naturally underground in much larger quantities than previously believed.

According to Dr. Barbara Lollar of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, ‘The data suggests there are critical untapped opportunities to access a domestic source of cost-effective energy produced from the rocks beneath our feet.’

.Worldwide, the hydrogen economy is valued at over one hundred billion dollars annually. That’s because hydrogen is so versatile and can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, power industrial processes, produce fertilizer, and potentially fuel ships, trucks, and aircraft. Most hydrogen currently used around the world is produced from fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal, which release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere…

How Wall Street wants to get involved in your house value

Bloomberg - Wall Street is taking aim at the $34 trillion tied up in US homeownership, pouring money into contracts that offer homeowners cash upfront in exchange for a share of future appreciation.

  • For investors, home equity investment contracts offer a lucrative way to tap Americans’ vast housing wealth, turning property stakes into a tradable asset to satisfy growing demand for exposure to US real estate.
  • For homeowners, however, the deals can mean giving up a substantial share of future gains that would otherwise build long-term wealth—and in some cases repaying far more than they originally received.
  • The rapid growth in HEIs reflects a rare convergence: years of rising home prices have left owners sitting on record levels of equity, while higher mortgage rates have made it harder to borrow against their properties.

Minnesota bans prediction market sites

NPR - Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state. The Trump administration has initiated a lawsuit in response, preparing for a legal battle over the crackdown on popular platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. This new state law makes it illegal to host or advertise prediction markets, which it defines as systems that allow consumers to wager on future outcomes, including sports events, elections, live entertainment and global affairs. The prohibition would force prediction market platforms to exit the state or face potential felony charges. The law will take effect in August.

Meanwhile. . .

Forward Blue - Senator Chuck Grassley just put a $1 billion line item in the Republican budget for Trump’s White House ballroom....This is in the same bill that spends tens of billions more on ICE and Border Patrol. The same bill that finds no money to lower your healthcare costs. No money to make childcare affordable. No money to bring down gas prices or grocery bills.

Eight takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries

House Speaker Johnson says our rights come from God not from government

Newsworthy News -   Speaker Mike Johnson told viewers that “our rights do not come from the government. They come from God himself,” explicitly anchoring his claim in the Declaration of Independence’s “self-evident” truths and describing the document as America’s “birth certificate”. Johnson presented this not as a novelty but as a civic creed that must be fought for and taught to the next generation so they inherit liberty, opportunity, and security . He connected the theme to Abraham Lincoln’s language about a nation “under God” and government “of the people.”
 
Johnson’s framing taps a long-running American debate about whether rights are pre-political, universal claims that government must respect, or legal guarantees that exist only once constitutionally codified. The Declaration asserts that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” while the Constitution and subsequent amendments set out enforceable structures and protections. Johnson’s emphasis on origins elevates natural-rights philosophy as a guardrail against government overreach.

Senate approves war powers act

MS NOW -   the Senate on Tuesday approved a procedural vote related to a war powers resolution. If adopted, the war powers resolution would severely restrict President Donald Trump’s war powers in Iran.  After seven failed previous attempts, the Senate voted 50-47 to discharge the war powers resolution, with Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining with nearly all Democrats in backing the procedural motion. (Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., once again opposed the vote.)

May 19, 2026

Via Elizabeth Warren

Immigrants

The Guardian -  More than 145,000 US children have probably experienced a parent being detained by immigration authorities since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new report published by a reputed US thinkthank.

The report, released on Monday by the Brookings Institution, estimates that about 146,635 children who are US citizens have had a parent detained during the mass deportation campaign the Trump administration embarked on after he retook office in early January. The study further found that of those children, more than 22,000 experienced the detention of all of their co-resident parents.

Roughly 36% were younger than six years old, underscoring a hardline immigration enforcement strategy that has drawn widespread criticism from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups.

The Brookings Institution’s report also found that the largest share of US citizen children with a detained parent are linked to Mexico, accounting for nearly 54%, while children with parents from Guatemala and Honduras together make up more than 25%.

Washington DC and Texas have had the highest share of American children with an affected parent, with more than five per 1,000 facing parental immigration detention, according to the report.

Millions Urged To Stay Inside In 11 States Over Air Quality

Newsweek -  Millions of Americans across at least 11 states are being urged to stay indoors and limit outdoor activity as dangerous air quality alerts are in place across parts of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southern California.  According to the National Weather Service (NWS), air quality alerts stretch across states including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland—as well as parts of Southern California, where wildfire smoke is worsening conditions.  ...Most alerts remain in effect from Tuesday morning through Tuesday evening.

NAACP calls for boycott of Southern college sports programs over voting rights

Indendent, UK -  The NAACP is calling on Black athletes and fans to boycott the athletic programs of public universities in states that are taking steps that the nation's oldest civil rights group says are restricting Black voting rights.

Launched on Tuesday, the “Out of Bounds” campaign urges prospective Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”

If Black athletes participate in the boycott, it could deplete rosters for powerhouse football and basketball programs across the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference.

FBI reported ready to pay for system that will track drivers without a warrant

Newsweek -   The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly willing to pay up to $36 million to access autehomated license plate reader (ALPR) data nationwide, a purchase that would allow the agency to track vicle movements across the country without a warrant. 

The plan was first reported by independent news company 404 Media, which found out about it through a procurement contract pursued by the FBI. The FBI is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software as a Service (SaaS) and query the collected ALPRs with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information. 

Bad fire in California hits 17,000 residents

Independent, UK -  Over 17,000 people in Southern California are under evacuation orders as the wind-driven Sandy Fire, reported Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, threatens suburban homes 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Simi Valley, situated north-west of Los Angeles, has a population of more than 125,000 people.

By Tuesday morning, the blaze had consumed over two square miles of dry brush and destroyed at least one home, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. While initial gu sts of Santa Anas topped 30 mph, calmer overnight winds aided firefighters and they managed to get the fire 5% contained.