August 5, 2026

Climate

Inside Climate News -   Climate-fueled wildfires could scorch many of the sites that shape America’s cultural identity.  A study published in May found wildfire risk threatens the majority of sites designated by the federal government as historically significant, from centuries-old homes to cherished churches and cemeteries. A separate forward-looking study published last week found worsening climate change could substantially ramp up average potential fire frequency in four of California’s national parks by the end of the century, under a worst-case emissions scenario.

The researchers say this data could help park and site managers better protect these places from flames. However, as experts sound the fire alarms for iconic American sites, the Trump administration is on a mission to remove mentions of climate change from many of these places. 

Newsweek -    Lake Mead has fallen to within inches of its lowest-ever recorded level, highlighting ongoing concerns about drought, extreme heat and long-term strain on the Colorado River, one of the Southwest's most important water sources. As of August 5, the reservoir stood at 1,040.74 feet above sea level, just 0.16 feet (1.9 inches) above its record low of 1,040.58 feet, which was set in July 2022. The lake's elevation has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, leaving the distinctive white "bathtub ring" visible around much of the shoreline.

US only has 43-day emergency buffer of crude oil left

The Mirror-  The U.S. only has about 43 days of an emergency buffer of crude oil left — a 45-year low as President Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran, throwing global markets into chaos

U.S. crude oil supplies have fallen to their lowest level in 45 years as President Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran — with only 43 days of global supply left.

There now exists a thinner cushion against any potential disruptions should the fighting in the Middle East escalate further. According to Bank of America Global Research Data, compiled by Bloomberg, the U.S. has just 43 days of crude oil supply, including that of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, compared with a long-term average of about 65 days. The data shows the measure falling to its lowest level since the 1980s.

Word

Via Tori Atheist

Donald Trump

James Tate  -  On April 25, 1980, the Trump Organization executed an eviction against Mary Filan, a 74-year-old widow who was partially paralyzed from a recent stroke. The eviction occurred at her rent-controlled apartment in Flushing, Queens, where she had lived for over 30 years. The Trump Organization claimed she owed four months of back rent. However, Filan maintained that her rent was fully paid, stating that her last bill was a minor balance of $10.20, which she had already cleared. City marshals and moving crews removed her belongings—including her furniture and jewelry—leaving her sitting on a laundry hamper in the apartment. Due to the trauma and her medical condition, neighbors and city social services arranged for her immediate admission to a local hospital.

NY Times - President Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch would change the skyline of Washington to such an extent that it would intrude on views at dozens of historic sites around the capital, according to an assessment by National Park Service staff.

It would disrupt the symbolic relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstruct sightlines from the Kennedy Gravesite and Robert E. Lee’s home, and alter what official documents call “one of the most magnificent” views in Washington at the National Cathedral four miles away, the Park Service said.

The assessment of the arch’s impact on surrounding historic properties is a key step the administration must complete before the project can receive final approval by the National Capital Planning Commission, which could come as soon as its next meeting on Sept. 3

Obama vs. Trump on the job golf time

Newsweek - Trump's golf habits have long been compared with those of Obama, whom he repeatedly criticized for spending time on the course while in office. 

According to Is Trump Golfing Today?, Obama played 333 rounds of golf during his two terms, or about 11.4 percent of his 2,922 days as president. The tracker estimates Trump has played golf more frequently, visiting his courses on 20.05 percent of his first-term days and 26.4 percent of his second-term days so far.


The difference in cost is largely tied to where the two presidents played. Most of Obama's rounds took place at Joint Base Andrews, near Washington, D.C., allowing him to travel by motorcade. Trump's golf outings have more often involved trips to his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey, requiring longer travel and additional security arrangements.

How states treat children

WalletHub -To highlight where children face the greatest hardships, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 key indicators of child neediness. The analysis examines factors ranging from the share of children living in households below the poverty line to child food insecurity and the share of children who have experienced maltreatment.
 

States with the Most Underprivileged Kids

 

1. Mississippi

 

11. South Dakota

2. West Virginia

 

12. South Carolina

3. Louisiana

 

13. Tennessee

 

4. New Mexico

 

14. Nevada

5. Oklahoma

 

15. Georgia

6. Arkansas

 

16. Ohio

7. Alabama

 

17. Montana

8. Alaska

 

18. North Carolina

9. Kentucky

 

19. Indiana

10. District of Columbia

 

20. Arizona


Key Stats

  • Arkansas and Oklahoma have the highest child food-insecurity rate, which is 1.8 times higher than in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest.
  • Mississippi has the most infant deaths (per 1,000 live births), which is 3.3 times more than in New Hampshire, the state with the fewest.
  • West Virginia has the highest share of children in foster care, which is 13.3 times higher than in New Jersey, the state with the lowest.
  • Texas has the highest share of uninsured children aged 0 to 18, which is 7.5 times higher than in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest. 
  • Maine has the highest share of maltreated children, which is 12.5 times higher than in New Jersey, the state with the lowest.
     
    To view the full report and your state’s rank

Health

NPR - Central Appalachian veteran underground coal miners are experiencing an incurable and fatal lung disease at the highest rates recorded in nearly 50 years, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Miners who have worked underground for at least 25 years in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia suffer the worst rates of coal workers' pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease. The disease's prevalence hit a low point in 1999, after Congress imposed strict limits on exposure to the coal mine dust that causes black lung. But the decline in cases has been reversed, and experts blame toxic silica dust that is now more common in mines.

Elections

Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a GOP-led initiative to phase out the state’s income tax, 80 to 20 percent.


Meanwhile. . .

The Guardian -  A four-ton piece of a discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new lunar crater. The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025…. The impact was predicted to kick up a miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be difficult ?to spot with the naked eye from Earth.

Tariffs

The Guardian - The Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from the tariffs it collected before the US supreme court ruled them illegal, according to reports.  The $100bn figure, which represents 60% of the total $165bn collected from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, was reported by customs officials to the US court of international trade (CIT) on Tuesday, according to the Financial Times

August 4, 2026

Federal appeals court blocks censorship on race and gender issues

ACLU -  The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an order in July that blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop W.O.K.E. Act in the state’s universities.  Florida is one of 24 states that has passed laws restricting instruction on race and gender in higher education since 2020. Taken together, these laws represent a nationwide backlash to progress in racial justice, but this case marks the first time an appellate court has ruled that this type of classroom censorship law is unconstitutional in higher education.

The order came in a lawsuit we filed on behalf of professors who were forced to censor their instruction on specific topics related to race and gender that are central to their academic scholarship and coursework. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act limited training and instruction on eight so-called “divisive concepts” parroted from an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump and rescinded by then-President Joe Biden. After we sued, a federal district court described the law as “positively dystopian” and blocked enforcement of the higher education provisions of the law. Last month, the Eleventh Circuit agreed, holding that the Stop W.O.K.E. Act violated the First Amendment.


Word


Polls

Newsweek -  The RealClear Polling Generic Congressional vote gives Democrats a 6-point edge. Kalshi and Polymarket give the party an 86-84 percent chance of taking the House, but Republicans still hold a 56-54 percent chance of keeping the Senate. Of course, in today’s era of politics, anything can happen, and both parties have reasons to feel confident.



Amazon

Shortlysts - Amazon announced it will distribute roughly $600 million in tariff refunds after court decisions invalidated a number of import tariffs that had previously increased the company’s costs. The refunds stem from duties Amazon paid on imported goods before the tariffs were struck down, allowing the company to recover money it had already remitted to the federal government.

Rather than issuing refunds to every customer, Amazon said it identified purchases where tariff costs had been directly passed on and will automatically reimburse those shoppers. The company said those cases represent only a small share of affected orders because it absorbed most of the tariff costs instead of raising prices across its marketplace. Amazon also said the remaining funds will be used to help keep prices lower on future purchases instead of being distributed as cash refunds.

The announcement comes as businesses continue adjusting to changing U.S. trade policy and ongoing legal challenges surrounding tariffs, with companies weighing whether to absorb higher import costs or pass them on to consumers through higher prices.

Todd Blanche

NY Times -   After much confusion and acrimony, Todd Blanche now appears set to become the nation’s top law enforcement official.  Two Republican senators who had been blocking Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general gave him their blessing yesterday, after Blanche promised — in writing — to scale back a lucrative deal the Justice Department had cut with Trump.

The president’s effort to muscle Blanche, his former lawyer, through the Senate got messy this past week. There were public demands, counterdemands and counter-counterdemands. It’s easy to get so mired in the political minutiae that you forget a couple of things.

First: Blanche already runs the Justice Department, and he’s allowed to keep running it indefinitely in an acting capacity, confirmation notwithstanding. So for Trump, this fight has always been more about rewarding Blanche — and exerting control over Congress — than about imbuing Blanche with any new authority.

Second, and more important: Trump is still getting most of what he wants.

The Justice Department deal that knocked Blanche’s nomination off course had two main components. It established a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which Trump wanted to use to pay allies of his who claimed they had been unfairly prosecuted by previous administrations. And it granted Trump, his family and their businesses sweeping immunity from I.R.S. tax audits.

In documents Blanche released on Sunday night, he said he would rescind the order establishing the fund and narrow the tax immunity to include only Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization.

Meanwhile....

Maine Morning Star - The Trump administration’s demand for states to provide Social Security numbers, immigration status, and other private information on low-income residents who receive cash benefits is improper and unconstitutional, a group of mostly Democratic-led states alleges in a new lawsuit


The books that blew 12 scientists’ minds


Elections

NPR - Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington hold their primary elections today. The spotlight will be on Michigan, where winning an open Senate seat is crucial for Democrats as they vie to regain control of the chamber. Michigan voters will choose between two Democratic candidates who are competing to face Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers in the November midterm elections. Here’s what you should know about the five states holding primaries today.

Congress

Down Ballot - The House Ethics Committee announced on Monday that there was “substantial reason to believe” that Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who faces a difficult bid for reelection, “violated House Rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces” and recommended that the full House censure him.

CNN first reported that Edwards was under investigation for alleged sexual harassment at the end of April. Further details soon emerged, including a report from Axios that the congressman had sent a handwritten letter to a young woman on his staff saying she had “written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading.”

Health

Time - Two people in Michigan have died from cyclosporiasis, state health officials announced on Aug. 3. They are the first reported deaths from a record Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the U.S.

The two people who died had “significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,” according to an update on the Michigan health department’s website. The health department said it wouldn’t provide additional information on the two cases.

The U.S. is experiencing the largest Cyclospora outbreak in its recorded history, with more than 18,000 cases confirmed or suspected across 45 states since May 1, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The U.S. is experiencing the largest Cyclospora outbreak in its recorded history, with more than 18,000 cases confirmed or suspected across 45 states since May 1, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).


August 3, 2026

Housing

Newsweek  - Based on our analysis, these are the top 10 states with the highest housing scores, meaning that homeownership there is the most attainable—and affordable—in the country:

Iowa: 52.0
West Virginia: 51.6
South Dakota: 49.6
Indiana: 48.8
Kansas: 48.7
Michigan: 48.4
Nebraska: 48.0
Missouri: 47.7
Maine: 47.4
Ohio: 47.4

Via John Gear

Kamala Harris

Congessional Insider - Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff bought an $8.15 million, 4,000-square-foot home in Malibu’s exclusive Point Dume neighborhood. The area is described as a star-studded enclave with famous neighbors and is reported as roughly 94% white and near zero Black residents in its census tract.

The deal adds fuel to claims that national leaders preach about racial and economic equity while choosing highly insulated, elite lifestyles. Supporters argue a private home choice does not cancel policy positions, while critics on both left and right see a widening gap between political rhetoric and real life.

….The house has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and sits on about three-quarters of an acre with wide ocean views, a pool, spa, and other high-end features. Lifestyle outlets describe Point Dume as a star-studded enclave with lavish estates and famous residents, including Hollywood figures and tech billionaires, making it one of Malibu’s most exclusive areas.

Consumer arbitration

Elon Musk

Robert Reich -   Elon Musk will be spending $100 million to $120 million in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to The New York Times. Musk’s spending is set to begin next month, targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Musk will also spend in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Most and least pet friendly cities

WalletHub compared the pet-friendliness of the 100 largest cities across 23 key metrics. The data set ranges from veterinarian costs to the number of pet businesses per capita to walkability.
 

Most Pet-Friendly Cities

Least Pet-Friendly Cities

1. Scottsdale, AZ

91. Chula Vista, CA

2. Tampa, FL

92. Anchorage, AK

3. Las Vegas, NV

93. Newark, NJ

4. Orlando, FL

94. Durham, NC

5. Cincinnati, OH

95. Boston, MA

6. St. Petersburg, FL

96. Honolulu, HI

7. Birmingham, AL

97. Buffalo, NY

8. Tulsa, OK

98. Milwaukee, WI

9. Atlanta, GA

99. Chicago, IL

10. Irvine, CA

100. New York, NY

 
Key Stats

  • Columbus, Ohio, has the lowest average veterinary care costs (annual exam), which is 2.5 times lower than in New York, NY, the city with the highest.
  • Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, have the lowest monthly dog-insurance premium, which is 4.1 times lower than in Seattle, Washington, the cities with the highest.  
  • Scottsdale, Arizona, has the most pet businesses (per square root of the population), which is 8.2 times more than in Newark, New Jersey, the city with the fewest.

To view the full report and your city’s rank



Climate change

NBC News -  Fifteen wildfires were burning across Washington state yesterday, consuming 250,000 acres, an official said. In Spokane, more than 600 structures were destroyed and 60,000 people were forced to evacuate. Three blazes, collectively called the Spokane Complex Fire, have burned more than 7,700 acres and are 0% contained, according to a federal incident management team.

The fires are “really the worst natural disaster our region has faced,” Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said yesterday.  Winds and dry conditions were quickly fueling the flames, and temperatures are expected to rise this week.

NPR - The U.S. saw three major heat domes last month. The latest brought extreme temperatures to much of the South and parts of the Midwest at the end of July, and the soaring temperatures shifted toward California and parts of the Four Corners over the weekend. As record-breaking heat domes and prolonged heat waves become more frequent, medical experts warn of heat-related health risks, including heat stroke and sleep loss due to uncomfortable temperatures. Extreme heat increases the risks for millions of people who lack easy access to air conditioning. Here's how to stay safe:

🌡️ Try to stay out of the sun as much as you can and drink plenty of water.
🌡️ If you do go outside, wear light-colored, loose-fitting clothing. 
🌡️ Know the warning signs of heat stroke, which include dizziness, headache, nausea and severe fatigue. 
🌡️ As you wait for an ambulance, help someone experiencing heat stroke by immersing them in cold water


JD Vance

 Thomas B. Edsall, NY Times -  Whenever Vice President JD Vance takes the microphone, he has to decide which combination of his multiple identities to select for the specific audience before him, a choice he sometimes seems to find bewildering.

The range of Vance’s mix-and-match choices includes hillbilly, intellectual, Trump successor, raging MAGA loyalist and high-tech investor, not to mention veteran threatening other countries and veteran no-long-wars guy.

Vance’s difficulty finding well-being, much less genuineness, raises basic questions about his expected presidential campaign.

Is he, for example, a trustworthy heir to the Trump mantle or are his real feelings reflected in his 2016 comment to a friend: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

Vance’s problem is his failure to find comfort in any combination of identities so that he comes across as inauthentic, cross-pressured, forced — even counterfeit.

“Vance may be a standout when it comes to personal reinvention,” Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote by email responding to my query, “perhaps partially because it has happened so rapidly and in the social media era.

Rewriting history

M. Gessen, NY Times - “We live in a country with an unpredictable past.” This was a saying among the intelligentsia in the Soviet Union when I was growing up. We never knew which part of our history would be obliterated next.

Now Americans, too, live in a country with an unpredictable past. Two months into his second term, President Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, in which he directed officials to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and its museums, to cut funding to “programs that degrade shared American values” and to reinstate some monuments removed following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. A very incomplete list of things that have happened since that order was issued: The National Park Service has been removing signs about slavery; the statue of a Confederate general has been reinstalled in Washington; a scathing report by the White House Domestic Policy Council accused the Smithsonian of using history “as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens”; and on July 24, Trump issued a new executive order mandating that signs be installed outside the Smithsonian “warning visitors about the ideological capture at the National Museum of American History.”

Re-evaluating history has the potential to change a people’s future by changing its self-understanding. It can unite people in a genuinely new project. And then there is the rewriting of history, which is crazy-making. The Soviet Union repeatedly forced the whole country to unlearn what was already widely known. In the 1950s, after Joseph Stalin died, the Communist Party denounced his “cult of personality” and some of the extent of his terror. A decade later, it reversed itself, exiling or imprisoning authors who wrote about the crimes of Stalinism. The same process was repeated when the Soviet Union collapsed. Vast amounts of information about Soviet terror emerged; under Vladimir Putin that knowledge has been forced back into oblivion.

Trump wants Americans to unlearn what they have come to know about the history and legacy of enslavement. What his executive orders really promise to restore is a sense of comfort contained in the most reductive and sanitized stories about the United States — the bliss of ignorance. Trump appears to believe that the job of museums and memorials is to instill “pride in the hearts of all Americans,” as one of the executive orders put it. /