Sea level rise force island dwellers to leave

Inside Climate Change-   Terry Parks stood in the rear of a boat passing the western shore of Tangier Island.  A native of this Chesapeake Bay island, he pointed to an area of bulky rocks with withered and wispy green grasses under the sun. A blue water tower stood in the distance. 

“That’s grandma’s house,” Parks said, pointing to the gray peaked roofs of homes. “When I was a kid, about a hundred or so yards off the bank is where I used to play. Now there’s about five feet of water there.” 

Under the blue sky, wind gusts pushed choppy seas into the vessel, causing people to sway as sea water sprayed onto the deck. Crab traps deep below the surface are marked by buoys. Stilted shanties line the channel that cuts through the middle of the archipelago the island is part of.

Locally, some members of the community leave the fate of the island to God and blame natural erosion, the loss of land because of waves crashing into it, knocking sand and dirt free into the sea. In 2017, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge debated former Vice President Al Gore, claiming that sea level rise is not responsible for what’s happening to the island. The coverage prompted President Donald Trump to call and pledge support to Eskridge. But even the mayor now acknowledges that the climate is changing, from differing wind patterns to extreme low and high tides, though he stopped short of saying fossil fuel emissions are what’s putting his people at risk.

But science shows the culprit is sea level rise driven by climate change. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent to buy more time for the 1.2 square-mile island, which was first settled by Europeans in the 18th century....

.... Southeast of Washington D.C., Tangier Island is about a 50-minute boat ride heading west from the Delmarva Peninsula. ...“Eventually it’s going to affect a lot more people than it already affects. People don’t really pay much attention to it until it really affects them,” said Eskridge, of the flooding. “The climate is definitely changing and changing fast … you’re going to need to adapt. If you’re unable to adapt you are in trouble.”

... Research from BayLand, an engineering and consulting firm working with Tangier Island, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, show that parts of the island have experienced a rate of 32 feet of land loss a year. 

Trump regime

Headline USA  -   The Pentagon has told Congress that it needs $80 billion to pay for the Iran war and other non-war-related costs, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

The Pentagon had previously claimed that the war cost $29 billion as of mid-May, a number that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, as an analysis from Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute found that the war had cost about $72 billion in just the first 60 days, an estimate that doesn’t factor in indirect costs.

The costs have continued to add up despite the ceasefire, and the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, as the US is maintaining its military posture in the Middle East, which includes major naval armadas that were enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports.

Shotlysts -   The Trump administration is preparing major changes to the student visa system that could make it more difficult for foreign students to remain in the United States for extended periods through a combination of education and work programs. The proposal would affect both F-1 student visas and J-1 exchange visitor visas, programs used by hundreds of thousands of international students each year.

There is a concerted effort to move away from the current ‘Duration of Status’ system, which allows students to stay in the country as long as they remain enrolled and maintain academic progress. Under the proposed rules, students would instead receive a fixed period of admission.

Those whose studies extend beyond that period would need approval from U.S. immigration authorities to remain in the country. These changes would be notable for international students who move from undergraduate programs into master’s or doctoral programs, transfer schools, or use programs such as Optional Practical Training (OPT) to work in the United States after graduation.

The Epstein files

New Republic -   The Department of Justice claims that it’s released every document that’s required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But the agency previously said it collected more than six million pages of material during its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and it only released around three million. So what’s in the rest of the Epstein files?

The DOJ claims that the other three million pages are either duplicates, unrelated to Epstein, or protected by legal privilege. But because of the administration’s lack of transparency in regard to Epstein, many are concerned that something is still being hidden.

CBS News analyzed the available files to try to figure out which documents appeared to be missing, and found a number of notable omissions: questionable redactions, missing emails from older accounts, lack of massage scheduling records after 2009, missing prison surveillance footage, and more.

Notably, most of the emails in the released files were from an email account created in 2008, around the time Epstein went to jail...

But Epstein had other, older email addresses that were mentioned in only a few, highly redacted publicly released files. One missing account, littlestjeff@yahoo.com, was from the early 2000s—the time when Epstein was most in touch with Donald Trump.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is innocent of all charges when it comes to his connection with Epstein. But, as this analysis by CBS reveals, we may still be missing major pieces of the puzzle.

Middle East

If our coverage of the Iran crisis seems a bit weak, it's because both sides in the conflict are currently  involved in negotiations and their descriptions of the status is highly unreliable. 

Donald Trump

The Hill -   President Trump’s relationship with key Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is crumbling after repeated clashes over strategy on an array of issues. The two sides are splitting further apart as the midterm election nears and GOP lawmakers fear the potential loss of both chambers of Congress.

GOP senators say there has been a major loss of trust between the president and many members of their conference as the White House has repeatedly blindsided Thune and other Republican leaders.

...The president undercut GOP leaders last week when he suddenly ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, to not show up at his Senate confirmation hearing. The reversal of the plan left Thune and other Republicans dumbfounded.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost his Senate Republican primary runoff by 27 points after Trump blasted him as “very disloyal” and endorsed his opponent, said Republican colleagues are feeling betrayed by what some of them view as the president’s lack of respect for them as senators and, in most cases, loyal Republicans.

How clinical psychologist Dr Mary Trump views her uncle

Alternet -   President Donald Trump's niece, Dr. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist by profession, is sounding the alarm that her elderly uncle is spiraling.  In a conversation with reporter Steven Beschloss for her Sunday newsletter, Dr. Trump explained, “He may still have moments when he appears more coherent, but psychically he’s in a downward spiral. He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation.”

Beschloss questioned whether she felt that the 80-year-old president looked “unusually diminished” as of late. Dr. Trump cautioned, “I think this is simply the direction things are heading.”

"He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation," she continued. "The problem for him is that nobody humiliates Donald more effectively than Donald humiliates himself. The G7 came immediately after the sixty-million-dollar taxpayer-funded spectacle at the People’s House. Everything he’s doing now exists in service of protecting his fragile ego and trying to fill what I’ve long described as the black hole of need within him."

Building a working class political party

Redneck Gone Green -   Tune in today, Monday, June 22nd starting at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern when Shane and I will be in conversation with Les Lopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute and author of The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own. As always, the video broadcast will be on the Democracy@Work Youtube channel.

Les Leopold has long occupied a distinctive position within American labor intellectual life. Les is part educator, part movement historian, and part strategic diagnostician of working-class decline. As co-founder and executive director of the Labor Institute, he has spent nearly five decades translating the abstractions of political economy into concrete, understandable, and usable tools for union educators and rank-and-file organizers. His work—from Wall Street’s War on Workers to Runaway Inequality—has consistently argued that the central conflict in American politics is not primarily cultural or partisan, but structural: the systematic transfer of wealth and power upward.

The new book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own, extends this argument into explicitly electoral terrain. His wager is that working-class Americans already hold broadly shared economic preferences across racial, regional, and partisan lines, but lack an organizational form capable of expressing them independently of the two-party system.

His career emerged in the aftermath of deindustrialization, union decline, and the consolidation of finance capital. Unlike many academic political economists, he has consistently prioritized pedagogy over theory-building: workshops, training manuals, and popular education materials designed to make systemic critique legible to workers themselves.

This orientation matters because The Billionaires Have Two Parties is not written as a theoretical intervention but as a strategic manual. Its empirical backbone is a multi-state poll of working-class voters in the industrial Midwest, which finds broad support for policies such as price controls on pharmaceuticals, limits on corporate layoffs, and expanded public employment. The implication is clear: ideological polarization is far less entrenched at the level of material interest than electoral behavior suggests. 

Polls

The Guardian -   If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters. But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections.

In 2024, Trump won 66% of white voters without a college degree, but a new CBS News poll found that 54% of that demographic disapprove of his performance. That was up from 45% disapproval in February (before Trump began bombing Iran) and up sharply from 32% in February 2025.

This shows severe cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base, a group that candidate Trump wooed by promising to crack down on immigration, to reduce prices on day one, to bring back manufacturing jobs and to not start new foreign wars. Many blue-collar voters see that Trump has failed to deliver on any of these promises except for his massive crackdown on immigrants.

UK

The Guardian -   Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, paving the way for Andy Burnham to take over at Downing Street.  Less than two years after a historic election victory, Starmer had faced calls from his MPs, including privately from cabinet ministers, to set out a timeline for his departure, with many of them unnerved by the threat from Nigel Farage’s party before the next general election.

Starmer’s decision to announce his departure kickstarted the process to become the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.

Burnham confirmed he would run for the Labour leadership, saying an “orderly and responsible” transition of power would ensure “stability, seriousness and a continued focus” on the issues that mattered most to the country.

Within minutes of Burnham’s statement, Wes Streeting – the politician most likely to have run against the former mayor of Greater Manchester – announced he was instead throwing his weight behind Burnham, making a coronation highly likely despite the misgivings of some MPs.

Burnham, who was travelling down to Westminster from Manchester on Monday, is likely to have just over three weeks to prepare for government, including confirming his policy priorities and picking his cabinet, with his choice of chancellor eagerly anticipated.

NPR -  Part of Starmer’s challenge was his failure to connect with people and to deliver the real change he promised after 14 years of austerity under the previous Conservative rule, NPR’s Lauren Frayer tells Up First. In recent weeks, Starmer's own Labour lawmakers and parliamentary party began to turn against him. Burnham is viewed as more folksy and could be more relatable with voters in a way Starmer was not. He is also likely slightly to the left of Starmer and more inclined to robustly defend the welfare state. Burnham will face the same challenges that Starmer did, including rising global energy prices and strained public finances. Frayer says this shift represents more of a change in personality rather than policy, given that they belong to the same party.

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Vivian Creekmore

Polls

Futurism -   In a sweeping new poll conducted by Pew Research, only 16 percent of respondents said they believed AI will have a positive impact on society — a number as dismal as the perception of the tech. 

Meanwhile, 49 percent of adults say they use AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which remains the most popular by a considerable margin, with a quarter saying they use the tools daily. That proportion is considerably higher than the 33 percent of American adults who said they used AI chatbots in 2024.

In other words, the tech’s widespread adoption isn’t helping its perception. A full 40 percent of respondents said they anticipate AI will have a negative impact on society, and 31 percent said it will impact them personally in a negative way, too.

92% of Israelis believe Iran has won the war

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Via Robert Hubbell

How do people in the US describe customer service

The Guardian -  Guardian readers from across the US wrote in to tell us about their battles with big companies, and the time, expense and emotional toll exacted by businesses they say are prioritizing the bottom line over all else.  The top takeaway: people really, really don’t like AI customer service.

Readers’ main complaint is not that it is impersonal, it’s that it doesn’t work for anything but the most basic customer service tasks, like checking balances, changing addresses or making payments, things most customers are doing online anyway.

About one in 10 of the reader responses we have received so far called out automated chatbots as endless doom loops, a massive time suck, and steep hurdle to resolving product problems and fraud claims.

“It’s the bots. Daily battle with stupid, useless, brain-dead bots on the phone, trying to reach a human being to learn or explore or resolve some damn thing,” wrote a communications professor from a university near Boston. “Infuriating, exhausting, debilitating, depressing, enraging. Ugh.”

Six camping essentials

Erin Neil,  NY Times -  I like the idea of camping more than I like camping itself. But even if I were a fan of spending a weekend entirely outdoors, I’m dissuaded by having to figure out what I’d do with the equipment for the 51 other weekends not spent sleeping under the stars. After all, my boyfriend and I share a small apartment with only one closet between us.

However, my outdoorsy (or outdoorsy-ish) colleagues recently shared a whole bunch of ways they use their camping and hiking gear, even when they’re not actually camping or hiking. I found it inspiring enough to add a couple items to my cart. (I’ll figure out where to put them later.)

Hiking shoes are unsurprisingly exceptional walking-around-anywhere shoes. Writer Caroline Mullen wore her Salomons gallivanting around Japan for two weeks. “They’re the most comfortable and easy-to-slip-on sneakers I own,” she says. And head of newsletters Sofia Sokolove lives by the “wrong shoe theory,” styling her gorp-y hiking sandals with super girly tops and dresses in the summer.

Headlamps received a resounding endorsement from quite a few people. Deputy editor Annemarie Conte says she uses them “for all sorts of annoying DIY tasks that require peering in dark corners,” like when her husband needed to peek inside a particularly finnicky doorknob. Pets expert Mel Plaut recommends it as a hands-free way to light up nighttime dog walks. And writer Evan Dent reminds us of another way it can come in handy, “Two words: Night. Grilling.”

Mel also told us that their multitool — which is specifically built for the wilderness — never actually sees the outdoors. “It lives in the center console of my Kia,” they admit, “and is very useful right where it is, cutting random stuff and screwing random screws.”

Carabiners aren’t just for mountaineers. Editor Rory Evans says, “My entire life is pretty much held together with a long chain of carabiners and hook thingamabobbers.” As a gift, she recently received a real-deal version that can hold up to 350 pounds. And editor Katie Okamoto uses a sleek mini carabiner to hang her keys. (And, for the record, so do I.)

We’re also big fans of keeping packable camping chairs nearby at all times — even if we’re never leaving the city. Social media editor Hali Potters loves that her tiny, lightweight seat breaks down small enough to fit inside a standard tote. “Having a tiny chair on me at any given time changed my life,” she says.

Book Stores

Arts Journal -  Bookstores are booming even as literacy declines (Lit Hub), summer box office has surged (Deadline), and the Book of the Month Club is somehow cool again (Publishers Weekly). Against that, the machinery of choosing is consolidating fast. Penske Media swallowed what was left of Vox to become the world’s largest digital publisher (TheWrap), Fox spent $22 billion on Roku (Hollywood Reporter), and the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger approval drags on (MSN). Consolidation everywhere.

Motor oil

NPR - The cost of lubricants like motor oil is rising rapidly, and even a tentative agreement to end the war in Iran will not alleviate the issue. Motor oil is essential for protecting your car's engine from wear and tear. The oil used in synthetic motor oil, in particular, is not produced in large quantities in the U.S. In addition, the U.S. has the largest trade deficit in the world for this form of oil. The current shortage could lead to significantly higher costs for your next oil change. Since the war began, the industry has been relying on inventories — stockpiles of base oil — that have helped mitigate the impact on retail customers. However, these stockpiles are now depleting. While full-price hikes have not yet affected drivers, mechanics are starting to feel it.

Housing

NPR  The United States is currently experiencing a renter's market, but there is one significant caveat: location matters. According to Zillow, the typical asking price for rent nationwide is rising more slowly than wages and inflation, up by 1.9% year-over-year. Approximately 40% of rentals listed on Zillow are offering move-in deals, such as a month of free rent, due to a construction boom that has led to a surplus of apartments in certain areas of the U.S. 

Health

The Hill -   The COVID-19 vaccine lowered the risk of cardiovascular issues associated with the virus by around 40 percent, according to new research. The study, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday, studied the incidence of medical events like strokes and heart attacks in veterans immunized for COVID-19.   

The study found that the vaccine decreased the risk of cardiovascular death associated with the virus by nearly 60 percent, the risk of heart attack by around 40 percent and the risk of stroke by just more than 30 percent. Additionally, it decreased the risk of hospitalization for heart failure by around 40 percent, according to the study.

The researchers found that people over the age of 75 had the greatest reduction in risk for these health issues, as well as those with preexisting health conditions.  Other research supports these new findings.

Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity

Polls

Pew Research - About eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics (78%) have a favorable view of Pope Leo XIV, down slightly from last year, according to a survey conducted after a public clash between Leo and President Donald Trump. While 19% of Catholics say Leo has been too critical of the Trump administration, 51% say the president has been too critical of the pope.

Oil Prices

Data on oil prices come from Trading Economics

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Middle East

NBC News -   Iran said Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, according to Iranian state media, citing ceasefire violations after Israel continued deadly strikes in southern Lebanon overnight.

Iran’s top joint military command said that the Strait of Hormuz, which was reopening as part of the U.S.-Iran deal signed this week, would remain closed for commercial vessels, the semiofficial Mehr news agency said.

It said the closure was the “first step” in response to what were described as breaches of commitments by the U.S. and Israel.

In a statement on X that did not acknowledge the apparent closure, U.S. Central Command said that 55 merchant ships transited on Saturday, “moving large amounts of cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets.”

U.S. forces “remain present and vigilant to ensure all aspects of the agreement with Iran are adhered to, obeyed, and in full force and effect,” the statement said.

Early Saturday, Israeli strikes killed at least 16 people, including two children, according to Lebanese civil defense and media, one day after the U.S. said Israel and Hezbollah had implemented a fresh ceasefire at President Donald Trump’s request.

Israel hit a series of towns across Lebanon’s south early Saturday, Lebanese news agency NNA reported. An airstrike on the town of Arabsalim reportedly killed three people, the agency reported, and a drone strike on the town of Deir al-Zahrani reportedly killed one person. At least seven people remain trapped under the rubble, it said. Lebanon’s army said a soldier was killed between Kfar Rumman and Nabatieh in southern Lebanon.

Time -  The reported contents of the agreement have drawn fire from multiple directions simultaneously. In Washington, Iran hawks have read it as a lopsided arrangement, more generous to Tehran than even the 2015 nuclear deal. In Israel, the agreement is seen across the political spectrum as a bad bargain struck by the U.S. while deliberately keeping the Israeli government outside the room and away from the text.

Inside Iran, skepticism about the agreement runs deeper than the rhetoric of the Stability Front, an ultra-hardline faction influential within parts of the state and society, and reflects a broader, pragmatic unease rooted in profound distrust of the U.S.—a feeling sharpened by the trauma of two American-Israeli wars against Iran within a year, both launched while negotiations were underway.

Alernet America -   For years, the Republican Party had one unshakable foreign policy consensus: no deals with Iran...

Now Trump has signed his own memorandum of understanding with Tehran, and the backlash isn’t just coming from Democrats. The call is coming from inside the house.

The 14-point MOU, signed electronically on Sunday by Trump, JD Vance, and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, commits both sides to an immediate end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. pledged to terminate all sanctions against Iran.

The centerpiece drew the most fire: a commitment to develop a plan providing $300 billion for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development...

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana didn’t mince words. He called the MOU “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades” and said Ronald Reagan was rolling over in his grave. His core complaint was blunt: Iran’s nuclear ambitions weren’t curbed, and Tehran just learned that threatening a critical shipping lane works, creating every incentive to do it again.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, another Republican who lost a Trump-backed primary, pointed out that the $300 billion reconstruction figure is five times what Congress spends annually on American roads and bridges.

But it’s not just the exiled critics. Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he couldn’t imagine supporting $300 billion in funding for Iran. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said the deal falls short given what the conflict actually cost: 13 American service members killed and more than $100 billion spent on a war that lasted over 100 days.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the party’s top leader, told reporters he still hadn’t seen the final text and had “a bunch of things” he’d have questions about. Even Lindsey Graham, typically one of Trump’s most reliable defenders, offered only conditional support, saying the deal sounded good “if the Iranians will agree to it.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence broke with Trump publicly, arguing the U.S. should have demanded Iran dismantle its nuclear program, end its missile development, and cut ties with proxy forces. John Bolton, Trump’s own former national security adviser, called it a “big defeat for the United States” and said the whole negotiation was driven by fear of high gas prices.

Alternet - Zeteo writers Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker say Trump is so desperate to finally be rid of the war he unilaterally began in February that he is wandering around the White House, bawling in panic that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is scheming to drag him back in.

“He’s swearing a lot about it,” one close Trump adviser told Zeteo. Another Trump administration official said: “[R]ight now, he’s definitely madder at the Israelis than the Iranians.”

The sources who’ve spoken to Trump over the past several days say Israel’s “continued attacks in Lebanon and Israeli leaders’ efforts to pressure the Americans into abandoning the memorandum of understanding with Iran have, in fact, further driven Trump in the opposite direction,” according to Zeteo, adding that “the president keeps venting to advisers how angry he is at Netanyahu and other political and media figures – in the U.S. and in Israel – for transparently trying to drag him back into war, or for suggesting that Trump is surrendering to Iran.”

But Trump is surrendering wholly to Iran, according to critics on both the Republican and Democratic side of the political spectrum.

Americans down on data centers

Time -   Recent polls have strongly reflected many Americans’ dislike of data centers. A Gallup poll from May found that 71% of Americans would oppose a data center in their area. Voters have sent early warning shots that they are willing to choose their local leaders based on the issue. In the small town of Festus, Missouri, residents ousted half their city council after those members approved a $6 billion data center development.

.Activists are trying to capitalize on the threat of the election to strong-arm politicians into supporting anti-data center measures. In Arizona, following intense lobbying from both sides, Governor Katie Hobbs just signed a state budget that includes a three-year moratorium on data centers receiving tax breaks. The measure represents a major victory for a raucous anti-data center movement across the state, which had previously included protests in Chandler and Ahwatukee.

Writing

Monica Heisey -   i have never felt very comfortable with the stance, held by some writers, that writing as an undertaking is both very difficult and emotionally intolerable. While I understand there is plenty about being alone with your thoughts, sharing your ideas in public, and attempting to take something from inside your mind and bring it into the physical realm that is uncomfortable, it is not difficult like digging a ditch. it is not intolerable like having your heart broken, or even like having a sunburn. when people say things like “writing is torture,” i often think, if you really feel this way, why not do something else?

I encountered this line of thinking so frequently in the early days of my career that it occasionally caused me to doubt myself. I loved writing. I couldn’t believe I got to do it for a living, and found it, often, actively fun. Did this mean I was doing it wrong, somehow? Was there a more arduous and therefore more correct method that would lead me to create stronger work? If suffering for one’s art provided no special benefit, why were writers I admired constantly tweeting or appearing on panels to say their working life was hellish and exhausting?

Introuducing law to the Trump regime

Thom Hartmann -   The head of the Justice Department cannot bring himself to tell a federal judge the truth in writing. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — formerly Trump’s personal criminal-defense lawyer — is refusing to commit on paper to Judge Leonie Brinkema that Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund is actually dead, preferring the slippery passive-voice dodge that it’s merely “not moving forward.” Analyst Scott MacFarlane summed up the lawyering on MS NOW as “all kinds of sus”: language built to leave wiggle room. Now even Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (who, unlike our Acting AG, manages to keep his story straight from one sentence to the next) says he’s got a slush-fund problem with Blanche heading into the confirmation fight. A man who treats candor as strictly optional is exactly the man you’d want running the Department of Justice if your actual goal was to weaponize it and use it against American democracy.

MS NOW -  The department’s statements about serious penalties regarding Blanche’s testimony are somewhat misleading. One potential penalty is a criminal statute that punishes false statements made to Congress. That statute can only be enforced by the DOJ itself.  

The other penalties the DOJ mentions in the filing are rules governing lawyers’ conduct in federal courts, which do not extend to criminal contempt or contemplate much beyond monetary sanctions.

The declaration — which was supposed to be signed under penalty of perjury by both Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — was expected to come in response to a deadline set by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who had requested written confirmation by Friday that the administration was not moving forward with the fund.

Brinkema indicated she would likely dismiss the pending legal challenge to the fund if the administration submitted the cancellation in writing. If the DOJ did not submit a declaration, Brinkema indicated she would move forward with the legal challenge. 

Brinkema’s request came at the end of a hearing in Virginia last week, when she indefinitely extended her block on the DOJ’s proposed compensation fund for individuals who believe they were the victims of unfair prosecution by the  federal government. Trump’s DOJ established the fund as part of a settlement agreement stemming from the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over a leak of his tax returns. The taxpayer-funded pot of money would establish a “lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization” to “seek redress,” according to Blanche. 

But the fund quickly became a political liability. Opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill forced the administration’s retreat. “We’re not moving forward with the fund — period,” Blanche announced at a congressional hearing on June 2. 

That public statement did little to persuade opponents of the fund to back off legal challenges. The coalition that brought the Virginia case pressed on, arguing that Blanche’s verbal assurances were not legally binding. 

A separate watchdog group that brought a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., made similar arguments, pointing to Trump’s public defense of the fund even after Blanche’s comments. The judge overseeing that case, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, was not swayed enough to deny a preliminary bid to block the fund, and found that the case appeared to be moot, given the DOJ’s statements denying it would come to pass. But Leon issued a stern warning to the administration: “Don’t play possum with this court.”

At last week’s hearing in Virginia, Brinkema expressed similar misgivings about Trump’s comments and Blanche’s reluctance to put a pledge not to create the fund in writing. These misgivings will likely continue to bubble now that the DOJ has declined to submit the declaration and the litigation will likely continue. 

Obama tells the Democrats how to become alive again

Greg Sargent, New Republic -   The forty-fourth president delivered an emotional speech at the Obama Presidential Center’s opening ceremony on Thursday. It offered a blistering indictment of the forty-fifth and forty-seventh president, all without mentioning the words “Donald Trump,” while offering his own ambitious rendering of the American story.

Yet in so doing, the speech also sent an implicit message to Democrats: Defeating Trumpism, MAGA, and the right-wing nationalist vision of America that animates them requires something more than small-bore politics and slogans about “affordability.” It requires a bigger and better story, a positive and aspirational vision, a full-throated declaration of what we liberals think the United States is—and should be—instead.

Obama has long been a spokesperson for the idea of creedal nationalism, which holds that American identity is defined by our founding ideals, versus a nationalism rooted in heritage or ethnicity or race. And so, Obama declared that the “story of America at its best” rests on “shared values that make democracy possible.” They include:

a belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection, a belief in checks and balances in our government … a belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party, but to the people and our Constitution.

Let’s be blunt: It’s a defining fact of this moment that Trump and his movement simply do not accept any of those things. And it’s important that Obama used this moment to say so. Obama also lionized “the peaceful transfer of power” and called for a reaffirmation of “character, honesty, integrity” and “a sense of duty and honor” in public life. 

Polls

Newsweek -  President Donald Trump's standing in Pennsylvania has deteriorated sharply, according to a new statewide poll, with approval falling 10 points in just three months in a battleground state that helped return him to the White House. The June Franklin & Marshall College survey found only 29 percent of voters rate Trump's performance positively, down from 39 percent in March, as concerns about inflation and personal finances continue to weigh on voters.

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Weather

Congressional Insider -   A so-called “weak” first storm of the season is lining up to dump life-threatening floodwaters on the Gulf Coast while many communities are still battling high prices and aging flood defenses.  Tropical Storm Arthur, the first Atlantic storm of 2026, is set to unleash dangerous flooding from Texas to the Florida Panhandle.

National Hurricane Center forecasters warn of 5–10 inches of rain, with isolated pockets near 20 inches across the Gulf states.

Millions of Americans are under tropical storm warnings and flood watches as already-strained local systems prepare for more federal involvement.

For Gulf Coast families, Arthur is another reminder that personal readiness and strong local control matter more than distant bureaucracies.