Press Herald - Hannaford’s website and mobile app have been temporarily shut down as the supermarket chain’s parent company addresses a cybersecurity issue. Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch company that owns the Scarborough-based grocer, said in a brief news release Monday that it was experiencing an internal network issue and had taken some systems offline to protect them. That includes the Hannaford app and website, both of which carried messages Tuesday morning that they were currently unavailable.m/
October 13, 2026
So Trump can expand a gold course
 |
Bipartisan opposition to the Russian diesel deal
Time - President Donald Trump on Monday defended his plan to import diesel from Russia amid mounting calls from within his own party to reverse course on the controversial deal.
Lawmakers across party lines, however, argue that the deal goes against a 2022 law which banned Russian oil imports and is not in the best interests of the American public.
“Congress was clear: The U.S. should not import oil from Russia until it ends its aggression against Ukraine and ceases threats against our NATO allies,” read a joint bipartisan statement released Sunday by four Republican Senators and three Democrats.
Elsewhere, Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania announced plans to introduce a bipartisan bill intended to stop Trump from lifting sanctions on Russian oil. - Read the full story here.
October 12, 2026
How much will the Supreme Court favor religions?
Washington
Post - Religion is on a winning streak at the Supreme Court — and
faith-based advocates are pushing to extend it in coming months, hoping to
cement a shift in American life that could be one of the current court’s
biggest legacies.
The justices are poised to decide
in their new term whether a Catholic school that does not accept the children
of gay parents can participate in a Colorado prekindergarten program. It is
likely to hear arguments on whether the Ten Commandments can be posted in
public schools. And it may take a case from Amish parents seeking an exemption
from New York’s vaccine mandate for their school-age children.
Over the past five years, the
Supreme Court has ruled in favor of expanding the rights of religious groups in
nearly every case that has come before it, according to a data analysis
conducted for The Washington Post. Since the 2020 term, the court has sided
with those groups in seven of those eight cases.
This term’s cases may test how
far the court is willing to go in remaking the wall between church and state in
America. Recent victories for religious-rights organizations, along with a slew
of earlier decisions by the court led by John G. Roberts Jr., already have
greatly expanded the presence of religion in public life.
Right wing lie of the week
The National Memo - Far-right
media figures circulated a fake story about Texas Senate candidate James
Talarico over the weekend, only to have the enterprise quickly blow up in their
faces. Racist billionaire Elon Musk played a key role in promoting the smear.
Recently, Talarico, who is
running against Republican nominee Ken Paxton, had an extended absence from the
campaign trail due to a bout of flu.
On Sunday, MAGA media figure Nick
Sortor falsely claimed that the flu story was “a BIG FAT LIE” and that “a
hospital employee told @RheinAmacher and I that Talarico had in fact been a
patient at the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes
in around-the-clock mental health treatment.” Sortor then said that Talarico’s
supposed stint at the hospital meant the Democrat was “CLEARLY not suited to
become a US Senator representing over 30 MILLION TEXANS.”
… Lindner Center of Hope added to
the right’s humiliation, noting in a post on X, “Representative James Talarico
has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.” And Talarico
responded, “I’ve never even been to Ohio.”
Meanwhile. . .
Toni
Piotti - Anyone in Desert Pines, Freeport with a landline. You
already know we had a power outage last Friday, 10/9. When the power came back
on our landlines were dead. A number of residents have called Consolidated and
gotten various days of repair. I called today and explained that it is
widespread outage in the hope that they will respond more quickly. Hopefully it
will be taken care of quickly.
A few reasons to get rid of Trump
UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
Article II, Section 4
“The President.. shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
14th Amendment, Section 3
“No person shall […] hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath […] to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
25th Amendment, Section 4
“If the Congress […] determines by two‑thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the President shall [not] resume the powers and duties of his office.”
Federal judge stops mass tree cutting by Trump regime on DC golf course
Washington Post - A federal judge ordered the Trump administration Monday morning to stop cutting down trees at East Potomac Golf Links after preservationists asserted that more than 500 were felled Saturday and “hundreds more” were slated for removal. Utrict Judge Ana C. Reyes halted all tree removal — including work described as routine maintenance — until 7 a.m. Tuesday or until she issues another order. ….
The battle for the Senate
 |
| Data as of Oct. 9. | Source: The Cook Political Report | The New York Times |
ICE
The
Hill - Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), long a target
of President Trump’s ire, had her Washington, D.C., home searched
by federal agents on Monday amid a criminal investigation by the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Homeland Security
Investigations, ICE’s investigative unit, carried out the raid. White House
border czar Tom Homan had previously confirmed a federal
criminal investigation involving
the Minnesota lawmaker.
The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch notes
that the Justice Department does not typically carry out major actions against
political candidates within 60 days of an election. Omar is seeking another
term, and the midterm elections are about three weeks away.
The president has called the
Minnesota Democrat “garbage” and a “scammer.”
He has repeatedly spread a baseless conspiracy theory that she married her
brother to become an American citizen. Some of
Trump’s supporters have
called for Omar, who was born in Somalia, to be deported.
Omar came to the U.S. as a child
with her family as they sought asylum amid the Somali civil war that spurred
widespread displacement. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000.
She is a fierce critic of Trump
and his administration. During the president’s State of the Union address in
February, she heckled
him and called him a liar in response to his comments about Somali
immigrants in Minnesota.
Omar said in a Monday statement to social platform X that she “will not be silenced.”
Time moves on
Sam Smith – Although I’m generally perceived as an alternative urban journalist, my parents bought a Maine farm in 1946 and I worked on it numerous summers as a teen ager and ended up as chairman of its board for several years. Wolfe’s Neck Farm was an early organic farm and is now known as Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment.
Last weekend I attended a memorial event for one of our
board chairs and was shocked to find, in a room with over 100 guests, that I
knew less than a dozen of them. For a guy like me approaching 89 years old in
less than two months, it was another sign that one’s role in humanity is
closing. Such as over 200 friends, relatives and co-workers who have already
passed away.
Despite my urban background, I was both fond of, and deeply
affected by my time on the farm. For example, when I was 13, the farm
director Jimmy Mann had taught me how
to drive a tractor and a six wheel truck. In fact, I claim to be the farm’s
first farmer since before we even had any cows I was daily feeding three pigs.
But now those days are over. And I am reminded regularly that farm life is like show business. It absorbs you and then doesn’t need you any more. And so you go an event to honor the past and hardly recognize anyone there. Fortunately, my wife and I now live in Maine fulltime.
Back when you were one of "The Cruds", one thing I remember were the group's white buck shoes with soles that looked like giant Eberhard Faber Pink Pearl erasers. - rslemay
October 11, 2026
Meanwhile. . .
NBC News - Pope Leo XIV announced that he will undergo surgery to remove an early-stage nodule on his lung….. He said that surgery had already been scheduled “for the coming days,” and thanked onlookers for their support.
Election problems
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
just announced that our military’s cyber forces – the U.S. Cyber Command – will
work with the Department of Homeland Security to defend our elections from any
foreign interference. But Trump has gutted critical election security
infrastructure since he entered the White House – including the U.S.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that was designed to
ensure our elections are free, fair, and safe.
As one expert put it:
“If the administration was serious about assisting state and local election officials, they shouldn’t have dismantled all of the federal government’s election cybersecurity capacity and fired all their experts in early 2025.” - Former DOJ Attorney David Becker |
|
|
|
This is the same administration
that has pushed countless conspiracy theories about our election system – that
Trump won the 2020 election, that our elections are "rigged" against
him and MAGA Republicans, and that there's widespread voter fraud.
So with the midterms approaching,
voters have every right to ask what this announcement is really about – and
whether putting a close Trump ally like Pete Hegseth in charge of
"watching" our elections will protect them or put them at risk.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
just announced that our military’s cyber forces – the U.S. Cyber Command – will
work with the Department of Homeland Security to defend our elections from any
foreign interference.
….This is the same administration
that has pushed countless conspiracy theories about our election system – that
Trump won the 2020 election, that our elections are "rigged" against
him and MAGA Republicans, and that there's widespread voter fraud.
So with the midterms approaching,
voters have every right to ask what this announcement is really about – and
whether putting a close Trump ally like Pete Hegseth in charge of
"watching" our elections will protect them or put them at risk.
The problem Democrats aren't dealing with
Washington
Post - With everything going their way in the final weeks before an
election in which Democrats will almost certainly win control of the House and
possibly the Senate, many are beginning to raise the question: What then?
….In past midterm elections, the
party out of power has felt the need to brand itself with a concrete set of
policy proposals. In 1994, when Republicans regained control of the House for
the first time in four decades, they touted a 10-point plan they dubbed their
“Contract with America.” It included poll-tested measures such as bills
requiring members of Congress to live under laws it applied to the rest of
America, adding a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and imposing
congressional term limits.
When Democrats took that majority
back in 2006, their rallying cry was “Six for 06.″ Their package included
raising the minimum wage and allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug
prices.
Though these promises helped
shape a governing blueprint for the new House majorities, many died in the
Senate.
This year, President Donald
Trump’s unpopularity alone may be enough to carry the day for Democrats.
“Democrats essentially win this election by making it all about Trump,” said
Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow and specialist in Congress at the conservative American
Enterprise Institute.
Donald Trump
Police and venue security escorted disruptive individuals to restore order.
The
Guardian - Donald Trump has said Ukraine needs “a new leader”, a day
after making a deal with Vladimir Putin to buy large quantities of Russian
diesel. The US president suggested
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war with Russia and blamed
him for high diesel prices in the US. “I suggest they get a new leader who can
make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never
does,” Trump said.
Trump made the comments as Russia
launched deadly strikes on civilians in Ukraine, which Zelenskyy said were a
“thanks” to Trump for the diesel deal. The Ukrainian president has expressed
outrage at the agreement announced by Trump on Friday, which the US president
said was needed to reduce diesel prices, and comes ahead of November’s midterm
elections in which fuel costs are a key voter issue.
Save Juneteenth
CBCPAC - Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Opal Lee, “the grandmother of Juneteenth,” in 2024. Donald Trump wanted to cancel Juneteenth celebrations forever. He’s trying to erase Black history. Opal Lee fought for decades to have Juneteenth recognized as a federal holiday — and this week, we celebrated her 100th birthday. ….That's why we've created a Black History Preservation Panel… Right now, Republicans across the country are trying to ban Black history books from libraries and schools, and totally erase Black history from public school curriculum.
Bribes or payments?
The Hill - President Trump is doing everything he can to win favor with a dissatisfied electorate before the midterms — including promising money. Speaking in San Antonio on Wednesday evening, Trump repeated his pledge to send $5,000 to every adult American if the GOP retains its narrow majorities in the House and the Senate.
Skeptics roll their eyes at the
proposal, noting that previous Trump promises about checks purportedly garnered
from tariff revenue and Department of Government Efficiency savings failed to
materialize.
Trump’s promise would also become
moot if Democrats merely win a majority in the House. The consensus among
political insiders in both parties is that they are highly likely to do so.
Nevertheless, voters can “count
on it” that the checks would arrive if the GOP pulled off a double-victory,
Trump promised the crowd in San Antonio.
Democrats don’t see the Trump
tactic as either serious or effective.
“In some places it might matter,
but in most places it won’t,” Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told this
column. “In places where Republicans should do well, they’re being clobbered
right now. It would take a lot of checks for people to change their minds.”
…A plan is already in motion
sending $90 payments to more than 20 million people enrolled in Medicare Part
B. In a separate move, almost 1 million people are receiving $500 checks,
purportedly because they were overcharged under the terms of the Affordable
Care Act (ACA).
….Announcing the $90
Medicare-related payments in a social media post late last week, Trump wrote
that the money was intended “to help pay for [recipients’] Medicare Part B
premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts.”
He added that the money would
come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which he derided as “a pointless
‘Slush Fund.’”
A separate fact sheet from the
White House said the fund “has been given $2 billion by Congress for the
purposes of making improvements to the Medicare fee-for-service program, but
has never before been utilized.”
….The White House has pushed back
against questions about the ethics of these actions, or whether they amount to
electioneering….Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics
lawyer during former President George W. Bush’s administration, asserted that
the taxpayer-funded Trump-centric TV ads “definitely crossed the line. Those
were illegal. Those were propaganda.”
But Painter also characterized the pledge of the $5,000
checks in the event of a GOP midterm victory as “a stupid promise” rather than
an illegal one — even as he doubted that the president could get such a
windfall authorized by Congress.
And he seemed even more relaxed about the Medicare and
ACA-related payments.
Things we get wrong about the "united states"
We’ve
all picked up "facts" about the fifty states somewhere along the way, but not all of them
hold up. Some are half-truths passed around for generations, others
are just plain wrong. So, in an attempt to set the record straight once and for
all, we’ve gathered some fun truths that clear up the biggest mix-ups about ourstates
October 10, 2026
Putin Cons Trump Into Making Massive Oil Deal
New Republic - President Donald Trump announced Friday that the U.S. would lift sanctions on the sale of Russian diesel—a move that will help Russian President Vladimir Putin far more than it’ll help Americans.The Treasury Department announced that the U.S. would waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market until April 2027. In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplace. Russia agreed to supply another 500,000 tons in November and then “1,000,000 tons thereafter,” Trump added.
Ken Paxton
New
Republic - Senate candidate Ken Paxton took nearly 1,000 business trips
during his tenure as Texas Attorney General, costing taxpayers millions of
dollars along the way. Only one in six of them actually had to do with work.
A new report from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows
that Paxton has taken almost 1,000 trips out of state since 2015, accompanied
by Texas police each time at a cost of $3.3 million to his constituents. His
security detail alone cost $24,000 a month, while his predecessor Greg Abbott’s
cost $7,400 a month. Of those 1,000 trips, research only linked 138 of them to
actual business. In fact, Paxton didn’t even record them as such.
Indigenous People's Day
Newsworthy
News - Dozens of colleges are
using government-backed grants to host Indigenous Peoples’ Day events on
October 12, the same date as Columbus Day, a holiday presidents have called an
answer to one of the worst acts of anti-Italian violence in American history.
Columbus Day began in 1892 after
the lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans. White House proclamations
under multiple presidents link the holiday to Italian American heritage and
past discrimination.
Schools like Boston University
and Brown University have renamed or replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous
Peoples’ Day.
College supporters say the switch
honors Native American history rather than targeting Italian Americans. Surveys
show most college students back the change, even as some Italian American
groups push back.
Zelenskyy furious as Trump announces deal to buy Russian diesel
The Guardian - Donald Trump is on a fresh collision course with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies after his stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel upended years of US and western pressure on the Kremlin to end its war against Ukraine.
Zelenskyy reacted furiously to
Trump’s announcement of the deal with Vladimir Putin on Friday, calling it
“absolutely terrible” and “not fair and not honest”.
The Ukrainian president said
“back room deals” with the Russian leader would give Putin more chances on the
battlefield. On Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials reported that a Russian
attack had killed 12 people in the south-east, including three children, and
Moscow claimed its troops were advancing in the east.
Supreme Court
POGO
-A new term for the Supreme Court started on Monday. On the docket for this
term are blockbuster issues: ICE’s mandatory detention policy; the government’s
ability to deport people to countries they are not from; and voting rights. It
is also possible the court will address prediction market regulations.
Donald Trump
The
Hill - President Trump argued Friday that he should have been awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize over this year’s Nobel laureate, former International
Criminal Court (ICC) judge Navi Pillay. The president, who has long coveted the
honor, was gifted the award by last year’s recipient, Venezuelan opposition
leader María Corina Machado.
In a late evening Truth Social post after his rally in Syracuse, N.Y., Trump repeated his exaggerated claim that he has “settled eight Wars,” and said he was “about to settle, or win, two more” in Iran and the war between Russia and Ukraine. “The United States of America, represented by me, as your President, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” he wrote.
Storms
Newsworthy News - Floodwaters have now touched more than 4 million people across 50 Thai provinces, making this the country’s worst disaster in years.
- Bangkok was declared a disaster zone as rain
overwhelmed the city’s drainage system in late September.
- Death tolls climbed through early October, reaching
44 by October 8 as more rain kept falling.
- Officials blame a strengthening low-pressure system
combined with the southwest monsoon for the extreme rainfall.
Public military execution sparks bipartisan backlash
Roll
Call - Lawmakers in both parties are blasting the Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution of the man convicted
of carrying out the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood.
“I absolutely support the
sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America
is better than that,” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a member of the House Armed
Services Committee, posted on
social media Friday morning.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the
ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, similarly said in a statement
that the planned livestream is “disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal
system.”
“We are a democratic country and
should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle,” Smith
said.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon
announced that President Donald Trump had approved the execution by firing
squad of former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted in 2013 and
sentenced to death for the shooting that killed 13 people and injured 32
others.
October 9, 2026
Suppression of pro-Palestine speech
Portside- Columbia, alongside other U.S. universities, systematically suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International USA claim in a Sept. 23 report. The report alleges that Columbia suspended student groups for peaceful protest in an "unlawful" manner that exposed student activists to "excessive force" by calling law enforcement to campus, and was disproportionately harsh in its issuance of suspensions and expulsions against activists.
The analysis used the university's disciplinary responses, concessions made in negotiations with the federal government, and testimony from student protesters and other university affiliates to substantiate its findings.
The 322-page document comes after a two-year investigation that covered 80 universities across the country. Columbia is featured as one of the report's six university case studies.
Health
What healthcare is really costing us
Axios - More than a quarter of
Americans say they or their families were saddled with medical debt in 2025,
including many with health insurance, according to a new Urban Institute study. The findings are an indicator of
just how unaffordable care has become — and how having insurance is no longer a
buffer against expensive medical bills.
Medical debt plagues higher
proportions of the uninsured. But just 7.9% of Americans went without coverage last year.
- A growing number of Americans with workplace coverage
or individual policies are finding they can't afford deductibles, copays
or other out-of-network costs.
Medical debt has taken center
stage in what's turned into a surprisingly competitive Senate race right in the
heart of Trump country.
- Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) filed lawsuits against
more than 700 patients with outstanding medical bills throughout his
career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, the New York Times reported last month….
By the numbers: 26.6%
of Americans reported they or their family members owed medical debt as of
December, the Urban Institute found in a survey of more than 10,000 adults.
- Medical debt was most common among adults 45 to 54,
those who are Black, Hispanic, or in racial groups other than white or
Asian, and those with incomes 100%–200% of the federal poverty level.
- 17.6% of seniors eligible for Medicare coverage
reported that they or a family member owed medical debt.
- More than half of adults with medical debt reported
owing $1,000 or more, and 15.5% owed $5,000 or more.
- More than 4 in 10 adults with disabilities had
medical debt, as did 42% of those who reported being in fair or poor
health….
Affordability challenges are
poised to get worse, not better.
- Republicans' cuts to federal Medicaid spending and
the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax subsidies are expected
to increase the uninsured rate. Other individual market enrollees will
face higher premium costs.
- Meanwhile, employers are staring down yet another
year of high medical cost growth, much of which will likely get passed on
to workers via higher premium or out-of-pocket obligations.
- Concern over medical debt is going viral, with some
social media influencers urging their followers to refuse to pay large
bills, or to ask for itemized versions and whether they qualify for
financial assistance, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Christa Pike
People - Christa Pike is recovering physically after surviving a botched execution in Tennessee, but her attorneys fear she may have suffered permanent cognitive damage. Pike, 50, is now walking with assistance around her hospital room, eating a regular diet and breathing with clear lungs, according to a Thursday, Oct. 8 statement from her attorneys shared with PEOPLE. However, she continues to struggle with memory and concentration, and her attorneys said doctors have warned that it could take months to determine whether she sustained lasting injuries.
“We’re not sure exactly of the long-term effects, but she’s clearly cognitively not quite back to normal and may have a long ways to go,” her attorney Stephen Ferrell told ABC News.
Ferrell said Pike has difficulty maintaining her train of thought during conversations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)