Word

Obama: “We’ve handed enormous power to a fool who is making U.S. policy friendlier to our adversaries like North Korea and Russia, while turning his back on longtime allies like Canada.”

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Bringing history and humanities together

Sam Smith - I have just  learned that the DC History Center and DC Humanities Council will be creating a new merger between past and present. This attracted my attention because my wife, Kathy, and I both were involved with these groups decades ago, she dealing with history and me the humanities. 

As I wrote in 1979, "I have to confess something. I have strayed from the civic abstinence I promised on these pages a while back. I have once again joined a committee. But it's just a small committee and I think I can handle it. If not, drive me home and I'll never do it again. Promise. The committee is called the DC Community Humanities Council. Fifty states and Puerto Rico have such committees - and the funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities that follow in their wake - but DC, through a combination of federal inertia and local indifference, has been years late to the gate.”

I went on:

So what's a humanities? I can't really give you one answer. But I can give you several. It's asking why before we say yes. It's remembering something someone wrote two centuries ago when we can't remember what we wrote yesterday. It's mistakes we don't have to make because they've already been made and solutions we don't have to dream up because someone has already thought of them. It's how we got where we are and where we might go from here. It's things we can't measure yet know have depth and breadth. It's parts of our culture we might lose like the Indian tribe writing its language down and putting it in a book. It's parts of our culture that we're often slow to recognize as such, like the legislature in Georgia finally making "Georgia on My Mind" the state song and inviting Ray Charles to come down and sing it. It's the moral, philosophical, and historical issues hidden behind the political babble. It's rights and beliefs and their protection. It's preserving the past and the future and not just exploiting today. It's thinking as well as talking, questioning as well as answering. And it's placing human values and culture at the center of our world and making machines and technology and Channel Seven serve us rather than the other way around.

Democrats vs. the Supreme Court

The Hill - Democratic governors are expressing their dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court's Monday decision to lift a lower court's block on the Trump administration's executive order restricting mail-in ballot voting. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill criticized the move as a "terrible decision" in a social media post. 

"States run elections, not Donald Trump," she wrote. "I will do everything I can to protect New Jerseyans' right to vote - by mail and in person."

Twenty-three Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia sued the administration shortly after President Trump directed federal agencies to create "state citizenship lists" of eligible voters and instructed the U.S. Postal Service not to mail ballots on behalf of anyone who did not appear on the list. 

The court's conservative justices found in an emergency opinion that the states sued too early and that the administration could proceed with planning for restrictions on mail-in ballot voting while a lower court weighs the legality of these new guidelines. 

The three justices in the court's liberal minority said they would have kept the lower court's hold in place, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the majority's ruling a "Kafkaesque nightmare."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whose state attorney general's office led the lawsuit against the Trump administration's executive order, slammed the high court's decision.  "The Supreme Court just let the Trump Admin move ahead (for now) with its plan to disenfranchise voters across the country," Newsom wrote on social media. "California will be suing again to block these Orwellian rules from being implemented."

The US-Canadian tariff fight

NPR - The $20 billion in tariffed goods won't significantly impact the U.S. economy, NPR's Stephan Bisaha tells Up First. Canada is likely to feel the strain a little more. But if the trade war continues to intensify and goods like American cars and Canadian oil enter the mix, it would have a bigger effect. Bisaha adds that the $20 million figure is no coincidence; it's also the value of Canadian goods the U.S. will impose tariffs on. Despite the minimal effect on the U.S. economy, the year and a half of fluctuating tariffs has caused considerable uncertainty for U.S. businesses.

The Guardian - Paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25% and 50% on “toilet paper or face tissue stock” from 8 September in retaliation for a 50% hike from Washington DC.

Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time.

The US imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada in 2024, according to the World Bank, making it by far the largest exporter of the product to the US. Retailers including Costco source much of their paper products from the country.

The US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption despite having only 4% of the world’s population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually.

It’s not just paper products that could rise in price. The trade war highlights the deep economic ties shared between the two countries as consumers continue to worry about inflation on both sides of the border.  US tariffs are specifically affecting Canadian liquor, including popular whiskey brands Crown Royal and Canadian Club, which are currently under a 50% tariff.

9 Reasons to Eat More Watermelon This Summer

Bill Gates hits artificial intelliegence

NY Times -  Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, is loudly warning that artificial intelligence poses a grave threat to jobs and human life, and that urgently addressing the risks should be “the world’s top priority.”

In an hourlong interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Gates said the tech industry was knowingly downplaying those threats because there was too much money on the line.

“In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried,” he said. But few tech executives, Mr. Gates said, are willing to publicly admit that. “They’re now saying to each other: ‘Hey, man, don’t say that. It’s bad for us — the next trillion dollars we’re trying to raise.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Gates published a nearly 6,000-word essay on his personal website laying out his concerns about A.I. and offering solutions, such as new taxes and bans. He said he was motivated to speak now because recent improvements in A.I. had far surpassed his expectations and because the industry had ignored technology milestones — like A.I.’s escaping the control of its creators or making recipes for bioweapons — that it once said would warrant more caution.

The Supreme Court

Alternet -   President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are treated very differently by the Supreme Court — and that double standard is hurting the American people, at least according to the editorial board of a prominent newspaper.

“When Mr. Biden was president, the court quickly acted to halt several policies it considered illegal, including his second attempt at student-loan forgiveness,” wrote The New York Times' editorial board on Tuesday. “When faced with blatant defiance of the law from Mr. Trump, however, the court’s Republican-appointed majority sometimes takes its time or demurs. In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s policies do damage.”

Earlier in the article they described how the Supreme Court has already rejected Trump’s tariffs, characterizing them as illegal because they lacked congressional authorization, but that the president has continued to levy them despite not receiving legislative approval on future occasions.

“President Trump’s repeated attempts to impose tariffs have become an encapsulation of his second term,” the Times wrote. “They have hurt the American economy and his own popularity. They also range from legally dubious to blatantly illegal.”

They continued, “With Mr. Trump now engaging in a trade war with Canada — which has decided to stand up to his bullying — we want to step back and explain both the economic and the legal damage from his tariffs. We also urge Congress and the courts to take action and stop this madness. The tariffs offer a signature opportunity for the other two branches of the federal government to insist that Mr. Trump abide by the Constitution and stop punishing American workers and consumers.”

Dolly Parton

Time -  Dolly Parton, the beloved country-music superstar known for writing about the lives of regular people in more than 3,000 songs and, in later years, for giving away more than 300 million books to children around the world, has died in Nashville. She was 80. Parton had recently shared updates about health issues she’d been dealing with since the death of her husband Carl Dean last year, and her representatives told People that her death in Nashville came after a “brief battle with cancer.” Her nephew and bodyguard Bryan Seaver announced her death in an Instagram video posted to her account on Aug. 25, saying, “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens.”

To her fans around the world, she was Saint Dolly—the American godmother who channeled the sorrows of everyday life into song, wrapping ugly truths in pretty packages. Though she was described by music journalist Robert Oermann as “the Mozart of our times,” Parton’s larger-than-life hair, excess in rhinestones, surgical implants, and cosmetic work concealed the iron will through which she confronted the day’s realities with her craft. Most importantly, she wrote and sang with a woman’s voice and heart about topics that uniquely touched her gender. Her songs include stories of stillborn births (“Down From Dover”), suicide (“The Bridge”), shame (“Just Because I’m a Woman”), abuse (“A Gamble Either Way”), adoption (“Doing This for Your Sake”), isolation (“Two Doors Down”), mental institutions (“Daddy Come and Get Me”), and prostitution (“The Bargain Store”).

Parton was a genius from humble origins. Because of them, she remained vulnerable, even relatable, in the public eye. Many wealthy folk prefer to be compassionate from on-high, if at all, never getting their feet wet or hands dirty. Parton rolled in the mud. She claimed she modeled her look on “the town trash whore,” whom she thought was “beautiful.” She dressed in a way that was her idea of glamour: yellow hair piled atop her head, bright red lipstick and nails, high-heeled shoes, and a tight skirt. “I thought [that woman] was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,” she once said on Ellen. “So I grew up to look just like her!” More 

New data shows record number of arrests and deportations of immigrants in the US

The Guardian -  The Trump administration arrested and deported a record number of immigrants in July, according to newly released government data – apprehending an average of 1,500 people and removing 1,100 people daily... Overall, 49,571 people were arrested last month, according to government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project – the highest number since October 2022, and a 15% increase from the previous record set in June of this year.

The Guardian  - All US immigrant visa applications have been paused by the Trump administration as the state department moves to tighten restrictions and limit access to applicants whom they deem could need US assistance. The agency launched the initiative at all embassies and consulates in early August.

Applicants with scheduled interviews were sent emails that their appointments had been canceled. Agency officials claim this will ensure visa applicants will not end up relying on US public benefits. This week the Trump administration also announced plans to revoke visas from asylum seekers who had initially entered the US for tourism or business. Up to 200,000 people seeking asylum could be affected.

Is the move lawful? “The court made clear that immigration laws cannot be used to justify discrimination,” Joanna Cuevas Ingram, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, said. In February, a federal judge overturned the president’s attempt to suspend the US refugee system entirely.

Kennedy-xxxxxx Center in financial trouble

Washington Post  -Ticket sales and fundraising collapsed after President Donald Trump’s name was added to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, even as the center’s leaders publicly touted a financial turnaround, according to confidential documents obtained by The Washington Post…

The hazard of lettuce

Washington Post - Cyclospora, a parasite spread through human feces, is the culprit. And it probably arrived on your table via lettuce. We don’t know all the details of the outbreak, the largest ever tracked in the United States, but “the odds are very high that the now-recalled Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce from Mexico is the source for many of the illnesses,” says journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor in chief of Food Fix, a popular newsletter about food policy.

This isn’t surprising. Leafy greens are responsible for more illnesses than any other food category, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2024 analysis found that lettuce was the source of something like 1.7 million cases of foodborne illnesses per year, and the economic cost was $3.7 billion. Lettuce and other vegetables that are generally eaten raw top the charts here primarily because most pathogens that make us sick don’t survive cooking. It’s certainly possible that your collard greens are contaminated, too, but once you braise them with a smoked ham hock and a little vinegar, you’ll never know.

Aiding and abetting foodborne illness may be lettuce’s biggest offense. But it doesn’t have much else going for it, either, and there’s a reasonably strong case that we would be better off without it.

Polls

Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll

So you're not a socialist

Old Man Lefty - Which socialist policies do you want to give up?

Social Security? Medicare/Medicaid? Libraries? Education? Roads/bridges Police? Fire fighters? Military? Post office Unemployment? Grants? Loans? Public Transportation? National Parks? Food safety?

Middle East

NPR - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent yesterday announced new U.S. economic sanctions on Iran and what he called "its enablers." The Trump administration has referred to the initiative as an "economic D-Day," and Bessent has described the actions as an "economic onslaught" targeting Iran's global financial connections. The Treasury says it has identified networks, facilitators and financial channels that support Iran. The U.S. says it will allow countries time to change their ways before taking action. Here's what this new round of sanctions could mean after nearly six months of war with Iran — and whether this economic war can do what airstrikes and negotiations couldn't.

 The United Arab Emirates was among the first to announce it would cut off commercial trade ties with Iran, but reactions from other Gulf allies have so far been muted, NPR's Aya Batrawy says. She adds that the U.S. will need more countries to align with Trump's measures against Iran, because the president wants to crush — not just cripple — its revenue. China is the most consequential country as it is the largest importer of Iranian oil. China's foreign ministry condemned the latest U.S. measures, calling them "illicit unilateral sanctions without international legal basis." Iran's Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh last night dismissed the U.S. actions, saying that Iran has been preparing for this and has a two-year plan to manage the consequences.

Donald Trump

The Hill - President Trump said Tuesday his administration is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, amid the trade war between the U.S. and Canada.  “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

…. Last year, Trump signed an executive ordering renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. 

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa devolved into an all-out trade war over the weekend after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney removed negotiators from trade talks with the U.S. Carney’s move came before a new set of tariffs from the Trump administration on Canada were set to go into effect. 

NBC News -  The Canadian government said it was raising rates on steel products and adding a swath of new duties on $20 billion worth of U.S. products.  The new duties of between 15% and 50% will take effect on Sept. 8, the government said, and “will focus on sectors such as steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics, that are most impacted by U.S. tariffs.”

State Department plans visa revocations

NBC News  - The State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of business and tourism visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by the Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The move to revoke so-called B1 visas — which are generally used for business trips — and B2 visas — are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care — could affect up to 200,000 foreigners and would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history.  The revocations would not necessarily result in the holders’ immediate deportation, and it would likely face legal challenges.  MORE

Environment

The Guardian -  A new rule proposed by the Trump administration aims to kill public notification for datacenter air pollution, public health advocates warn, and allow emission permits to be issued behind closed doors. The datacenters are often sources of nitrogen oxide, which helps form ozone, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, among other pollutants.

The Clean Air Act requires “minor” air polluters to disclose to the public via state agencies how much pollution their proposed project will release, but the proposed new rule from Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would dismantle that protection for datacenter proposals. Instead, it would make disclosure voluntary at state and some local officials’ discretion.

Trump's ballroom

The Congressional Insider  - Trump has repeatedly promised the ballroom will be funded entirely by private donors, not taxpayers.

A House Democratic report says tens of millions in taxpayer dollars have already gone toward construction.

The project’s price tag has jumped from an early $100 million estimate to as much as $600 million.

Republican Senator Rick Scott has questioned why any taxpayer money would be needed if private funding exists.

A contract shielding donor names from public disclosure was only revealed after a lawsuit.

12 incredible coincidences in American history

Our national parks are 110 today

Democratic Conservation Alliance - Our national parks turn 110 today. On August 25th, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act into law, creating the National Park Service with a bold mission:

“To conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life… and to provide for their enjoyment in such manner… as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

And since then, our parks have been one of our country's greatest treasures. But today, Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans — fueled by Big Oil, extremist beliefs, and corporate greed — are dismantling that promise piece by piece.

They’re slashing park funding, dismantling protections for endangered species, letting fossil fuel giants damage raze forests, and selling off public lands to the highest bidder.  We cannot let them destroy what generations before us fought to protect. Contribution

Prince Harry ‘Never Really Stopped Missing Home'

People - Sources tell People Prince Harry “never really stopped missing home” as he and Meghan Markle prepare for a return that once seemed unthinkable. King Charles hopes the move could bring his sons closer, but major obstacles to a royal reconciliation remain. Meghan is returning to the country where her royal life unraveled — but insiders say this time will be very different

Health

NY Times -  Since the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered:

Just how many N.F.L. players will end up with C.T.E.? New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.

The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.

The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too.

Supreme Court joins Trump against mail-in voting

NPR - The fight over mail-in voting is not over, NPR's Hansi Lo Wang says. The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether Trump's order is legal. The Justices only ruled that a Boston judge acted prematurely in June by concluding that Trump's directives exceeded presidential authority under the Constitution. Trump has said he issued his order to prevent illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, despite numerous studies indicating that such incidents are incredibly rare. Colorado's Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold tells Lo Wang that there's real concern this order could create chaos for the midterms.

The Guardian - The US Supreme Court has sided with Donald Trump in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it is unclear whether or not his administration will be able to take action before the midterm elections in November. The court’s justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction that a judge in Massachusetts had placed in June on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place, and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

Trump has repeatedly likened voting by mail to cheating, despite his own use of it and overwhelming evidence that the system is secure. In March he ordered the government to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters, requiring that mail-in ballots only be delivered to people on that list. He also directed the justice department to prioritise investigations and prosecutions of state and local election officials who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible to vote in federal elections.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, said: “Let this ruling be a reminder that democracy is never, ever guaranteed. We have to fight for it, we have to fight to keep it and we have to protect the rights we do have within it … they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make it difficult for you to vote.”

New Republic - Step back and remember this is all about "voter fraud," right? You should be aware of a recent Heritage Foundation study. The group examined every federal election from 1982 to 2024. That’s 11 presidential elections and 11 midterm elections, in which collectively well over a billion votes were surely cast, maybe closer to two billion (for example, about 90 million votes were cast in 1984; 155 million in 2024; midterm turnout rates have lately been increasing). They found—and remember, this is the Heritage Foundation—a grand total of 1,619 voting fraud convictions.

What California is up to

Gavin Newsom - California is doing what no state has ever done before — making our own prescription drug label to take on Big Pharma and drive down costs.

California will now be the first state to provide all of our 10,000 public and charter schools with free emergency-use asthma inhalers.

A year of pre-school can cost families thousands. In California, we made it free.

Here in California we serve nearly one billion free school meals every year.

We created free college & career savings accounts for millions of kids.

Student achievement is up across every grade and every student group.

Wall Street Journal reports: "California Draws More Startup Investment Than All Other 49 States Combined"…..

Life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths of despair, wages and uninsured rates are all worse off in red states.

Federal judge rejects 75 country visa ban

Washington Post - The Trump administration must resume processing visas for people from 75 countries that the government deemed likely to become a “public charge,” a federal judge in New York ruled Friday, curbing one of the latest efforts to restrict legal immigration pathways to the United States. The halt to visa processing began in January, affecting dozens of countries in every corner of the globe. It was meant to limit visas for people the government said would probably rely on public benefits for their basic needs, long a complaint from President Donald Trump.

Via Willie Ross Jr. Knee Deep

Wildfires

NY Times -  Firefighters continued to make progress Sunday evening as they tried to tame a wildfire that forced thousands of people from their homes as it threatened Reno, Nev. The blaze, known as the Hawk fire, has burned more than 15,000 acres and has not been contained since it began Saturday in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

….About 45,000 people were evacuated and an additional 40,000 were warned that they might need to leave at a moment’s notice. About 10,000 customers remained without power, an improvement after 60,000 had no electricity on Saturday.

Six people, including three firefighters, have been injured. It is unknown how many structures the wildfire burned down or damaged.

Officials said that the fire was caused by a human, but did not say whether they suspected arson.

….Extreme heat, dry conditions and strong winds have helped the Hawk fire expand. It is the second large blaze in the area in the past three weeks.

Arid conditions have propelled an active wildfire season across the American West this summer. In Washington State, hundreds of homes and more than 400,000 acres burned. In Oregon, a record 2.4 million acres have burned in 2026, according to state authorities.