Meanwhile....

NPR - Italian police said on Friday that they had recovered paintings stolen from a museum in March. The next day, thieves in Sicily managed to nab four more masterpieces. 

Republican finances

The Hartmann Report - There’s a reason everything is getting so expensive and inflation seems intractable, and it goes way beyond just Trump’s stupid war-of-choice in Iran. It explains why the morbidly rich keep getting richer while the rest of America struggles, and why people are paying absurd interest rates on everything from credit cards to home mortgages to car loans, and it all rolls back to a wild conspiracy Republicans hatched in the late 1970s and Reagan put into place in 1981.

It starts with — thanks to three mind-bogglingly corrupt and illegitimate Republican presidents (Reagan, W. Bush, and Trump) — our national debt rolling past $40 trillion in the next few days, probably before Labor Day. That’s more than our entire nation’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the sum of all goods and services produced in the last year, which came in just a whisker over $32 trillion.

And we’re paying over a trillion dollars a year on that debt that was intentionally run up by those 3 Republican presidents and their buddies in Congress, which is a large part of why we’re the only developed country in the world where families can go bankrupt because somebody got sick and kids graduate from college with debt that will take them decades (if ever) to pay off.

As if to shove it in our faces, last week Trump proposed a new cut in the capital gains tax that is pretty much exclusively paid by rich people … To add insult to injury he just raised taxes on working class people’s wages by an average of $900 this year via the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill that passed without a single Democratic vote.

Todd Blanche

The Guardian -  US attorney general Todd Blanche on Sunday declined to assure that the federal justice department he helms would always act independently of the White House and Donald Trump.  “No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said when asked about the topic by NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker. “And no attorney general should ever pledge that.”

Harry Truman on socialism

Via Colin Fraser 

“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

Polls

Time - Socialism has a +40 net favorability among Democrats, compared to –60 among Republicans, according to a new survey. The split is sharp: 58% of Democrats view socialism positively, while 18% view it negatively, while 74% of Republicans view the ideology negatively, with only 14% viewing it positively.

Trump's communist pal

Alternet -  Although U.S. President Donald Trump is attacking New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Democrats as "communists" (which they aren't—Mamdani identifies as a "democratic socialist"), he often speaks fondly of an actual communist: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Trump is now cutting back on military drills with South Korea while citing his "very good relationship" with Jong Un, and in the process, he is generating a great deal of discussion — some of it quite negative.

On MS NOW, conservative host Joe Scarborough lambasted Trump for his "love letters" to Jong Un — who the former GOP congressman described as the "worst, most repressive tyrant on the face of the earth." Foreign policy expert Richard Haass, on MS NOW, pointed to the South Korea exercises as a troubling example of why many U.S. allies feel like they "can no longer trust the United States."

Chuck Schumer faces opposition

The Hill -  Questions are growing about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) future as an increasing number of Democratic candidates say they will not support his bid for another term as Senate Democratic leader. Progressive critics of the Democratic establishment are calling for a leadership shake-up in Washington as their candidates win Senate Democratic primaries in Illinois, Maine, Michigan and Minnesota.

These candidates have the backing of progressive Democratic senators in Schumer’s caucus. They say the party has become too aligned with corporate interests and is not fighting hard enough to increase taxes on the wealthy and expand the social safety net.

Progressive candidates Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Troy Jackson in Maine, who are all running as Democratic Senate nominees, say they will not vote for Schumer as leader.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said in March she won’t vote for Schumer to serve another term because “voters all across the state of Illinois” are “fed up with what’s happening in Washington.”

Even so, Senate Democratic insiders say Schumer, who is 75, is likely to remain as Democratic leader. Schumer is hailed by these voices as a tireless worker and prodigious fundraiser for his party and colleagues.

Meanwhile. . .

Manhattan median rent set a record $5,295 in June 2026, up 8% in a year.

The Hill - President Trump issued fresh criticism on Friday evening toward the nonprofit organization suing his administration over the White House ballroom project, accusing the National Trust for Historic Preservation of revealing “Top Military Secrets” in their lawsuit

More than 170,000 Canadians want US Ambassador gone

Independent -   More than 170,000 Canadians have signed a petition demanding the removal of U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, after months of boycotting American goods and canceling trips in response to escalating trade disputes and talk of annexing the country.

Submitted on July 21 by a Calgary resident, the parliamentary petition urges the Canadian government to declare Hoekstra persona non grata under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. It also calls for a parliamentary committee to investigate “U.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian domestic affairs.”

Under Canadian parliamentary rules, online petitions require only 500 validated signatures to earn a formal presentation on the floor of the House of Commons.

….The petition follows a decline in relations between the two countries. A Pew survey released in June indicated that 35 percent of Canadians viewed the United States as a reliable partner, down from 82 percent in 2022. Canadian leisure travel to the U.S. has dropped by more than a quarter over the last year, while Canadian consumers have increasingly turned away from American products.

Donald Trump

Newsweek -  President Donald Trump is asking Americans to accept paying higher gas prices as a patriotic trade-off as the country continues its war against Iran, even as a majority of U.S. adults want the conflict to end—and think the nation should have not gotten into it in the first place, according to polling. National gas prices in the U.S. have shot up since the start of the war, as disruptions in production and supply due to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz have caused oil prices to skyrocket.

Public radio listening is growing

Insider Radio - Public radio listening is showing signs of a meaningful rebound, with new analysis from the Radio Research Consortium finding the noncommercial radio audience has grown during the past two years — and the gains cannot simply be chalked up to Nielsen’s measurement changes.  Looking across five major noncommercial formats — news/talk, contemporary Christian, classical, AAA (adult alternative) and jazz — RRC says combined cume across PPM and continuous diary measurement markets is 9.6% higher than it was two years ago at the end of Q1.

Artificial intelligence hits literature

Christian Science Monitor -  This summer, the literary agencies Europa Content and Hodgman Literary shook the publishing world when they withdrew from sale a manuscript for the highly anticipated crime novel “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body.” The book, written by Nigerian author Jerry Falade, had already generated plenty of online buzz. It had secured multimillion-dollar deals from major publishers in both the United States and the United Kingdom and was slated to be released in 2028.

It was also, the literary agencies said, unclear whether the book had been written by Mr. Falade or by an artificial intelligence chatbot.

The controversy is at once new and familiar, reflecting both the dramatic changes that the proliferation of AI has wrought on book publishing and echoing other skirmishes this year in which authors have been accused of using AI. This past spring, Hachette Book Group, a leading American publisher, canceled the publication of “Shy Girl,” an eagerly awaited horror novel by Mia Ballard, after rumors that Ms. Ballard had written the book using AI overtook the internet.

11 Things To Cut When Retirement Money Gets Tight

Naval families hit back at Trump and Hegseth

 The Guardian -  Naval families with loved ones deployed for months on US warships amid the Iran war have reacted with fury to Donald Trump and the defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal of their concerns about the extreme pressures and dire conditions they are enduring.

The Guardian has talked to three naval families who have been following the physical and mental stresses bearing down on their relatives with mounting alarm. The families, with loved ones on board the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli, all spoke anonymously for fear of retribution against their active duty relatives.

They spoke of insufficient nourishment that has led to close relatives losing 20-30lbs in weight since they were sent to the Middle East five months ago, leaving one sailor “emaciated”, according to his mother. They spoke also of low-quality drinking water and scarce mental health counseling and support despite the intense burden of being at sea for months on end without making land.  More

 The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier with more than 5,000 sailors and marines onboard, has been at sea for nearly nine months, having begun its deployment in November. There have been reports of multiple suicide attempts including jumping overboard.

Russia

 Washington Post -  Ever since he launched the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been claiming that his “special military operation,” as the Kremlin propaganda euphemistically calls it, enjoys overwhelming support among Russian citizens — going as far as to say that “the entire nation” is united behind his war.

 This claim has always been dubious. How do you truthfully measure public opinion in a country that imprisons people for expressing opinions — in the case of anti-war speech, for seven, 12 or (as with me) 25 years? Puzzlingly, some commentators in the West, including harsh Putin critics, have accepted the Kremlin narrative at face value, buying into — and repeating — the idea that most Russians support the war.

 But actions speak louder than words. And, as often happens with dictatorships, the most stunning act of self-exposure came from the regime itself. On Monday, after a single day’s hearing, Russia’s Supreme Court annulled the electoral registration of Yabloko — the only party in the country that opposes the war in Ukraine and calls for an immediate ceasefire — barring it from the September parliamentary election.

Growth of old Americans

Trump regime vs. blacks

Alternet America - In May, the Department of Justice claimed that Yale School of Medicine used race in admissions, alleging Black or Hispanic applicants had “a substantially higher likelihood” of admission than white or Asian ones with the same credentials.  To reach that conclusion, the department only looked at GPAs and standardized test scores, ignoring every other part of the application.

Yale is just one of over a dozen more medical schools having their admissions practices investigated. Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have all received similar inquiries since the spring.

The DOJ is building these cases as if the playing field has always been level, but Black students were barred from most U.S. medical schools for over fifty years after the 1910 Flexner Report recommended that Black doctors treat only Black patients and study hygiene instead of surgery.

Middle East

The Hill -  President Trump claimed during remarks on Long Island, N.Y., on Friday that he will make the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory, despite the fact that Oman and Iran share jurisdiction of the waterway.   “Pretty soon, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said during an address highlighting his administration’s efforts to combat crime in the U.S.

The Hill -  Iran on Saturday rejected President Trump’s assertion that he could declare the Strait of Hormuz a “territory of the United States,” saying the opening and closure of the key waterway will remain up to Iran’s control.

In a post on the social platform X, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the U.S. has no authority to claim the strait, which has become a major flashpoint in the nearly six-month conflict.

“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian,” he wrote in a post translated from Persian to English. “This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command.”

He added that as long as the U.S. does “not accept the reality of defeat” and stop indulging in its “delusions,” Iran will continue to enforce its blockade of the crucial waterway carrying one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Trump floated the idea of taking control of the strait during a speech at a police academy in New York on Friday, despite the fact that it is currently under the shared jurisdiction of Iran and Oman. 

The Congressional Insider - President Trump has turned Iran’s own demand for war reparations back on Tehran, pushing a compensation fight that reaches across decades of conflict and could complicate already tense talks over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said Iran should pay compensation for Americans and others harmed in Iran-linked attacks and conflicts. He tied that demand to Tehran’s own push for war reparations in talks over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

….President Trump said he will demand payment from Iran for “all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded,” according to reporting from Reuters and other outlets. He framed the move as a direct answer to Iran’s request for war damages during talks tied to the Strait of Hormuz. The result is a new bargaining fight that mixes wartime blame, money, and diplomacy in one move.

Trump family gaining over a million dollars an hour

Ralph Nader - To House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—Your responses on July 1, 2026 on the reporting of the $2.2 billion profit personally reaped by President Donald Trump, while allegedly a public servant in 2025, was not specific enough.

Jeffries wrote on his social media account: “Donald Trump made more than $2 billion during his first year as President. Republicans are enriching themselves while making your life more expensive. We must crush the culture of corruption.”

Schumer wrote on his: “$2.2 BILLION for the Trump family. Higher costs for the American people.”

You should have described his huge loot as $1.1 million an hour. That’s right, $1.1 million an hour based on a 40-hour work week over one year. (And remember, Trump spends a lot of his time on his vengeance missions, his golf game, and napping—so a 40-hour work week is a generous estimate.)

More Americans go overseas

Axios -  Americans' craving for travel overseas is soaring to new heights, Axios' Avery Lotz writes.  More than 56 million U.S. residents traveled overseas last year, according to estimates from the International Trade Administration. That's up from ... around 32.7 million a decade prior.

•  Where did most people visit? The U.K., Italy or France.
• Portugal and Greece also saw the biggest growth in U.S. visits between 2015 and 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported.

• Older travelers, in the 55-64 age range and above, led the pack, followed by the youngest jet-setters, aged 18-24.

This is all happening as debt delays life milestones, affordability concerns sour sentiment and global perceptions of the U.S. slip.

• Still, people feel the need to hit the road and see the world.

Rich Harrill, the director of the University of South Carolina's International Tourism Research Institute, tells Axios: "Among my students, travel's a must-have. You're not cool unless you go somewhere."

• Explore the data ... Share this story.Axios 

 Americans' craving for travel overseas is soaring to new heights, Axios' Avery Lotz writes.

• Why it matters: Much like the resilient consumer, the American tourist keeps on riding the post-COVID travel wave.

🔢 By the numbers: More than 56 million U.S. residents traveled overseas last year, according to estimates from the International Trade Administration.

• That's up from roughly 53.7 million in 2024 and around 32.7 million a decade prior.

🌍 Nearly 24 million traveled to Europe, a record high, according to Survey of International Air Travelers (SIAT) data going back to 2012.

• 🇬🇧 Where did most people visit? The U.K., Italy or France.
• 🇵🇹 Portugal and Greece also saw the biggest growth in U.S. visits between 2015 and 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported.

🔬 Zoom in: The wealthiest income bracket is driving overseas travel — followed by those with a combined household income of $100,000 to $119,000.

• Older travelers, in the 55-64 age range and above, led the pack, followed by the youngest jet-setters, aged 18-24.

This is all happening as debt delays life milestones, affordability concerns sour sentiment and global perceptions of the U.S. slip.  Still, people feel the need to hit the road and see the world.

Word

Robert Reich- If democracy were working as it should, government officials would make the laws and rules of the “free market” according to what most citizens need. But in our current system, the rules are made mainly by those with the power and wealth to buy the politicians, agency heads, and even the courts and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth concentrate at the top, so does political leverage.

As a result:

— Intellectual property rights — patents, trademarks, and copyrights — have been continuously enlarged and extended. This had created windfalls for pharmaceutical, high tech, biotechnology, and entertainment companies, which can preserve their monopolies longer than ever. It also means higher prices for American consumers, including the highest pharmaceutical costs of any advanced nation.

— Antitrust laws have been relaxed or nullified, resulting in larger profits and bigger political clout for the dominant corporations and higher prices and less leverage for workers.

— Labor laws have been weakened, allowing corporations to fire workers who try to join or form unions, with the only consequence that the corporation may be required to reinstate the workers and give them back pay after long and involved proceedings.

— Financial laws and regulations instituted in the Great Depression decade of the 1930s have been abandoned, allowing the largest Wall Street banks to acquire unprecedented influence over the economy.

— Bankruptcy laws have been loosened for large corporations but tightened for homeowners and graduates laden with student debt. The largest banks and auto manufacturers have been bailed out of a financial crisis, but homeowners — disproportionately low-income minorities — have not.

— Contract laws have been altered to require mandatory arbitration before private judges selected by big corporations.

— Securities laws have been relaxed to allow insider trading of confidential information. CEOs use stock buybacks to boost share prices and cash in their stock options.

— Tax laws have created loopholes for the partners of hedge funds and private-equity funds. They also contain special favors for the oil and gas industry.

— The top marginal income-tax rates have been lowered, corporate taxes have been reduced, and estate taxes on great wealth have been eliminated.

— Regulations that protect health, safety, and the environment have been repealed, rolled back, riddled with exemptions, or simply unenforced. Public health has declined.

— Schools in working-class and poor areas have become dependent for most of their funding on local property taxes, which aren’t enough to provide excellent schools. Hence, the notion of equal opportunity has become a bad joke.

Trump's military invasion of Washington DC

Farrah Tomazin, Daily Beast -   You can learn a lot about a city by its street posters. They appear between polished campaign signs and government notices; an unofficial bulletin board where people say what they really think. And right now, Washington, D.C., appears to have a lot to say. The biggest message plastered across the city is one that perhaps resonates most with residents now living under the authority of Donald Trump and the camouflaged uniforms he has forced on the landscape. “National Guard: I WANT YOU TO GO HOME,” it says, alongside Uncle Sam’s famous conscription image. This week marks one year since Trump sent federal troops into Washington under the guise of a crime “crisis.” But what started as a deployment of 800 members of the National Guard has since increased to 4,300—nearly six times the original deployment. The guards are now scheduled to remain in D.C. until January 20, 2029—the end of Trump’s term—in an extended mission expected to cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion. One year on, the danger isn’t just a more militarized Washington—it’s what the White House plans to do next.

Stolen paintings

1440 - Italian police recover $10M worth of paintings stolen in three-minute heist. The paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse were stolen from a private museum north of Parma, Italy, in March. Authorities yesterday said the works were recovered during searches ordered by prosecutors, but provided no further details. They also released security footage from the heist (watch via X). Meanwhile, police in Brazil this week recovered eight Matisse illustrations stolen in December. (More, w/photos)

ICE

The Hill - Outrage is building among congressional Democrats who are alarmed by new plans from the Trump administration to buy gloves that will allow immigration agents to deliver a painful electric shock as they carry out deportations.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Monday published a notice of its plans to spend as much as $20 million on a product known as G.L.O.V.E, an abbreviation for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter.

….“Senate Republicans had the opportunity to rein in ICE and CBP, they refused. Instead they handed DHS billions more of your tax dollars without any constraint after the shooting and killing individuals in the streets. Now, ICE is looking to purchase electrical shock gloves to continue terrorizing our communities,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on the social platform X.

 

Polls

Pew Research  - Around three-quarters of Americans (73%) say they are uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that do not match their sex at birth. Majorities of both Republicans (91%) and Democrats (55%) express this view, as do majorities across most demographic groups.

Climate change

In These Times -  As climate change intensifies, worsening fires and extreme weather are creating increasingly hostile conditions for workers…. Alongside fighting for healthcare, wages and better treatment, these workers now find themselves fighting for protections from dangerous heat, smoke and storms — the severity of which is only expected to worsen if the status quo continues….

“In Minnesota, every summer, we now experience wildfire smoke in these hot months,” says Scott Wilkie, the president of Teamsters Local 638…

Workers say their uniforms add to the discomfort of the heat. ?“We have to use plastic sleeves covering our entire arms,” a worker tells me. ?  “The plastic sticks to our skin because of sweat, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable. It’s the same thing with the glove. You are sweating and can’t pull up your gloves comfortably because of the sweat.”

“I’m thirsty all the time but can’t leave the line and go get water,” a worker told me. ?“Maybe every hour you have a chance to get a drink.”

Puerto Rico

In These Times -   Nearly nine years after Hurricane Maria tore through the island, a dangerous myth persists: that Puerto Rico’s ongoing humanitarian crisis is a failure of local resilience or an unavoidable consequence of climate change. This is a lie.

What the island is suffering from is not a lack of fortitude, but a manufactured financial chokehold. While Congress has technically allocated over $42.5 billion in disaster relief to the island, the federal government’s bureaucratic neglect — and restrictive conditions — have actively broken the infrastructure meant to sustain human life.

There is a vast gulf between money being promised on a spreadsheet and cash actually hitting the ground in Puerto Rico. According to data from Puerto Rico’s Central Office for Reconstruction, Recovery, and Resiliency, of the $42.6 billion allocated across all recovery programs, only roughly $13.1 billion has actually been disbursed.

…Of the $11.1 billion FEMA obligated to completely overhaul the island’s brittle electrical grid, less than 25% has been distributed. The rest remains trapped thanks to a calculated bureaucratic trap: FEMA requires Puerto Rico to pay for massive infrastructure project costs up front and seek reimbursement later.

Meanwhile. . .

Congressional Insider - Federal prosecutors say a woman splashed red paint and soap at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., and now faces two felony charges tied to the attack on a national shrine. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro named Melissa L. Farris as the suspect and said she is in custody…. Federal law allows years in prison for willfully damaging veterans’ memorials.