Chuck Darwin

RE: @cdarwin@c.im

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters Monday the chamber will vote Tuesday to take up a House-passed elections bill known as the
"SAVE America Act".

The Wyoming Republican, whose job it is to help round up Republican support, said he is “doing everything I can to make sure we get on this bill tomorrow.”

Republicans will need a simple majority to begin debate on the partisan legislation;

They can lose three members and still let Vice President JD Vance break a tie.

So far, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has said he’s a “no,”
while Republicans are also watching GOP Sens.
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The Trump administration has unleashed a multifaceted pressure campaign against news organizations
It increasingly bristles at media coverage of the Middle East military operation that many Americans oppose.

Official Pentagon briefings now include attacks on outlets like CNN -- with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nit-picking headlines.
Trump is turning to Truth Social to accuse “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES” about the war and musing about
👉 “Charges for TREASON.”

The goal seems to be pressuring journalists to back off critical coverage of the war effort,
And encouraging the public to second-guess reporting that runs counter to the administration’s preferred narrative.

The effort has gone well beyond words.
Trump’s top media regulator, Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, issued an explicit warning to broadcast television networks on social media, writing that
“hoaxes and news distortions”
could lead to 🔥 revocation of licenses for local stations,
a threat that Trump said he was “so thrilled to see.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/business/media/trump-iran-media-coverage.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The King Charles III England Coast Path will provide a right of access around the entire coastline for the first time.

About 80 per cent of the path is now open after a 16-year project.

It be officially inaugurated this week, and nearly all the remaining work will be completed this summer. 

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/king-charles-england-coast-path-dqwmvxp2j

When Joseph Stalin took the stage, applause wasn’t just standard. It meant your freedom. 

As the crowd thundered with cheers, no one dared to break first.

Not after two minutes. Not after four. Not after six.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago,” “It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who adored Stalin.” 

Finally, after 11 minutes, one man
— the director of a paper factory
— broke the spell.

And with that one act of independence, he sealed his fate.

The director was arrested that evening. 

On his interrogation document, an important lesson was inked into the pages:
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

Now, Donald Trump’s men are learning the same lesson — the humiliating way.

Although this time, the question is different:
“Who will be the first to take off their shoes?”

Across Washington, D.C., a new fashion trend has taken hold of those in Trump’s circle:
-- embarrassingly oversized clown shoes.

More specifically,
a pair of $145 Florsheim oxfords.

Trump is apparently obsessed with the shoes, and it’s getting weird.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the president has taken to handing them out to Cabinet members, advisors and White House VIPs.

He even makes it a game:
guessing people’s shoe size,
placing an order and then
signing the box.

Forget policy and matters of government.
-- At Cabinet meetings, Trump jumps in to ask, “Did you get the shoes?”

As one female staffer noted, “All the boys have them.”

But this isn’t the type of gift horse you can safely look in the mouth.

Another female White House staffer joked,
“It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.”

Like Stalin, Trump is paying attention to see who stops clapping first.

Trump’s shoe test borders on humiliation ritual.

They appear much too big on most of the recipients,
and with their pants hemmed to match the president’s absurdly short length, it’s comical.

One might assume that Trump purchases the incorrect sizes on purpose.

As Trump quipped to an (unnamed) politician who wears a size 7,
“You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”

So far, confirmed shoe victims include
J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Howard Lutnick, Sean Hannity and Lindsey Graham.

There are surely more who are suffering in silence.

Trump’s clown shoe antics are somehow beyond “insufferably silly.”

It is so blatantly on the nose that if this were a novel, I would be required to suspend my disbelief.

And this isn’t just about an ill-fitting shoe.

The president’s strange side-quest perfectly captures the psychology of MAGA.

In this circus we call a government,
the clowns are the men surrounding Trump,
and he is their idiotic ringmaster.

As he styles them to his liking, they are too afraid to disobey.

If they take off the shoes, will he cast them out of his inner circle?
Will he tarnish them on Truth Social?
Will he send them to the gulag?

That last one isn’t a joke,
nor is it an exaggeration.

In an era of baseless political prosecutions,
you are one wrong shoe away from facing an indictment.
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/who-will-be-the-first-to-take-off-their-shoes/

When we move forward from this terrible era,
I think Judge James Boasberg should get every award and medal we have in the U.S. awards and medals cupboard.

He is holding back the tide of tyranny.

https://bsky.app/profile/elizabethjacobs.bsky.social/post/3mgzxtnt4ss2f

We’ve been saying this for years now, and we’re going to keep saying it until the message finally sinks in: mandatory age verification creates massive, centralized honeypots of sensitive biometric data that will inevitably be breached. Every single time. And every single time it happens, the politicians who mandated these systems and the companies that built them act shocked—shocked! —that collecting enormous databases of government IDs, facial scans, and biometric data from millions of people turns out to be a security nightmare https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/25/hackers-expose-the-massive-surveillance-stack-hiding-inside-your-age-verification-check/

AI might disrupt all those pesky highly-educated female voters who keep casting a ballot for Democrats.

To be clear: that assessment isn’t coming from me
Rather, it’s coming from one of the key architects of our glorious AI-driven economy: Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of tech firm Palantir.

On Thursday Karp sat down with CNBC to chat about Palantir’s AI-driven Maven Smart System,
which the US military is using to visualize potential targets and “nominate” them to be bombed.

As well as talking about how America’s “lethal capabilities” make it very special, Karp stressed the extent to which AI is going to shift the political landscape.

“The one thing that I think that even now is underestimated by all actors in industry … is how disruptive these technologies are,” Karp said.
“If you are going to disrupt the economic and therefore political power significantly of one party’s base
– highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat,
and military and working-class people who do not feel supported
– and you believe that that’s going to work out politically, you’re in an insane asylum.”

He added: “Like … this technology disrupts humanities-trained – largely Democratic – voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters.
These disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society.”

Got that everyone? Disruption, disruption, disruption.
And in case you didn’t catch it: disruption.

Once you get beyond all the disruptive disruptions, it seems that what Karp is saying is that AI is eventually going to hurt the economic position of Democrats in general,
and highly educated female voters in particular
– and that will have knock-on effects politically.

Meanwhile working-class male voters will emerge as the winners of our reshaped economy.
The extent to which this is accurate is debatable;
-- blue-collar jobs may be less vulnerable to AI in the short-term,
but technology is coming for those occupations too.

However, I think the really interesting question here is this:
was Karp’s assessment a warning
or was it a sales pitch?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/14/palantir-ai-marco-rubio-afghanistan-katy-perry?CMP=bsky_gu#Echobox=1773512849

The corruption of the Trump Administration remains so massive
while also being so obvious
that people just don’t know what to do.

If Kushner was merely shaking someone down for $5,000 using his government role, there’d be an outcry.

But do it for $5,000,000,000 and mostly there’s 🤷‍♂️

#TrumpCorruptionWatch

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/jared-kushner-affinity-mideast-funds.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

As Andy Craig noted,
this is a personalist regime
built on a man who is not merely ignorant and malign
but genuinely non compos mentis.

Pretending he’s capable of holding public office and giving orders at all
is a kind of mass delusion
https://newrepublic.com/article/207666/trump-iran-blunders-suddenly-look-darker-damning-new-leaks-hit

As of a month ago, half of xAI’s founding team of 12 individuals had resigned.
As of today, that number has grown to nine, meaning that a mere three are left, as Bloomberg points out.
In the face of it all, Musk is admitting that the company is in deep trouble
— and in need of a deep overhaul
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-screwed-up-xai-rebuilding

“There are several stages to the escalation trap,” said Robert Pape,
a US historian who has studied the limitation of air power and has advised a number of US administrations.

“What we saw with the initial attack was tactically almost 100% success,” he said.
“The problem is that when that doesn’t lead to strategic success … you get to second stage of the trap.

“The attacker still has escalation dominance, so there is a doubling down,
which then moves up the escalation ladder and that still does not lead to strategic success.
Then you reach stage three,
which is the real crisis,
where you are contemplating far riskier options.
I would say we are stage two, and on on the cusp of stage three.”

He said the Trump administration had become mesmerised by the initial attack
and had an “illusion of control” based on the accuracy of its weapons.
All of this has pushed Tehran towards its own model of escalation,
one with a far wider global economic and political impact, Pape and other critics say.

By targeting the Gulf states and shipping in the strait of Hormuz,
Iran has demonstrated it can escalate the costs of the war for Washington far beyond its military capabilities to meaningfully counter the US-Israeli attack directly.
Iran’ strikes “are designed to create wedges between the US and the Gulf states by in turn creating wedges between the Gulf states and their societies,” Pape said.

“They are forcing the publics in the Gulf to ask:
‘Why are we paying the price of a war that appears driven by expansionist Israeli policies?’”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/14/how-iran-war-escalate-vietnam-trump-netanyahu-us-israel?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Trump’s brutal ICE detention facilitieshave been blasted as “concentration camps.”

This is a freighted term
— summoning more than a century of deplorable history.

But experts in the field have no hesitation in using these words to describe the network of facilities that the federal government is using to literally warehouse tens of thousands of immigrants
— men, women, and even children
— snatched out of their communities by masked federal agents.

The activist group 50501 recently hosted a video call on this topic.

It featured Andrea Pizer, the author of "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps",
as well as journalist Frank Abe,
co-editor of "The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration"
and a longtime activist in pursuing redress for the abuses of America’s World War II camps.

In his introductory remarks, Abe insisted that Trump’s new ICE warehouses
“are nothing but 21st Century American concentration camps.”

He added that the subject was personal to him:
“I’m a third-generation Japanese American,
and I know a concentration camp when I see one.”

The words “concentration camp,” for many, evoke the horrors of Hitler and of facilities like Auschwitz,
where more than 1 million people were murdered by the Nazis.

But Pitzer drew a firm distinction (as do other experts) between
“extermination centers”
and concentration camps.

The latter are not synonymous with “death camps” — although people held in concentration camps often die by disease, deprivation, or indifference.

Concentration camps have been around since the 1890s and documented on six continents.

Pitzer, who has traced that history, offered the audience her own general definition:
“A concentration camp is a mass detention of civilians on the basis of identity
— something you are, rather than what you’ve done,” she said.

“It is generally used without due process. And it is done to entrench and expand political power for an authoritarian-style government"

⚠️ A key indicator that Trump’s ICE camps fit the definition, for Pitzer, is the lawless way the administration is filling them.

“You have masked secret police that don’t identify themselves on the streets,
kidnapping people,”
she described,
“and taking them quickly from a local detention to a transit camp
— so attorneys can’t find them to give them legal rights.”

And then there is the “dismal” reality of ICE camps themselves
— where detention conditions are a threat to human health
and so noxious that many detainees agree to deportation rather than pursuing their rights to due process. “

People in feces [from overflowing toilets].

People without clean water to drink.

People without adequate food,” Pitzer said,
reeling off a litany.

“They’re denied medical care.

They’re denied their own medicine,
even if they brought them in.

There have been multiple deaths — with one of them even declared a homicide.”
https://www.contrariannews.org/p/is-trump-building-concentration-camps

The "America Last" Trump administration is prepared to
waive the Jones Act to loosen shipping rules as the Iran war continues,
the White House said Thursday. 

The 100-year-old statute requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be carried on ships that are
U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed,
and it limits the number of tankers domestic shippers can use.

"In the interest of national defense, the White House is considering waiving the Jones Act for a limited period of time to ensure vital energy products and agricultural necessities are flowing freely to U.S. ports,"
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CBS News.
"This action has not been finalized."
Waiving the rule would allow foreign ships to move fuel between U.S. ports.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jones-act-waiver-trump-oil-prices/

The Montana Plan uses the States authority to define what powers corporations get
-- and stops giving them the power to spend in our politics.

Montana can do it,
and your state can too!

Learn how!

https://montanaplan.org/

The hardest thing for the media to wrap its hands around over the last year is that
⭐️Donald Trump has no plan
— for anything, ever.

Time and again, national pundits and the White House press corps invent a logical Donald Trump who sets, announces, and later “changes” real “policies” or “plans,”

failing to convey what is clear to anyone who is actually following events closely:

⚠️In each public appearance and social media post, the Mad King Donald Trump spouts a string of words,
devoid of meaning or purpose,
that may or may not represent anything at all.

🔥Every single thing he says may, at any given time, be taken as an official hard-line policy of the US government,
the opening gambit to a long flexible negotiation,
-- or a random pronouncement that will be never be mentioned again.

It’s impossible to know in real-time which is which — especially so if you’re actually in the US government and in charge of translating his words into actions and plans

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-surprised-to-find-he-s-at-war-in-iran

In a sensational turn of events in the fight against Chat Control,
a majority in the European Parliament voted today to end the untargeted mass scanning of private communications.

In doing so, the Parliament firmly rejected the error-prone and unconstitutional surveillance practices of recent years.

Pressure is now mounting on EU governments to respect the MEPs’ vote and bury untargeted mass surveillance in Europe once and for all.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/historic-chat-control-vote-in-the-eu-parliament-meps-vote-to-end-untargeted-mass-scanning-of-private-chats/

"Killers of Roe" is a new book by the reproductive rights journalist Amy Littlefield
on what she describes as the death of abortion rights in the United States.

The book is framed as a murder mystery, examining a
“twisted alliance of believers and opportunists” in the years and decades before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“It started out as a murder mystery because it was a way to entice myself to tell a really difficult story about women dying preventable deaths as a result of anti-abortion policy,”
says Littlefield.

http://www.democracynow.org/2026/3/11/amy_littlefield_abortion_killers_roe_nation

DHS Ousts CBP Privacy Officers Who Questioned ‘Illegal’ Orders Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release, WIRED has learned https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-privacy-threshold-analysis-foia/

Coming face to face with a probable psychopath was enough to make Dr Leanne ten Brinke rethink her career choices.

Early in her 20s, while studying forensic psychology in Halifax, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia,
Ten Brinke was volunteering at a parole office, which would hold weekly group meetings for released sex offenders.

“Most of the men showed contrition,” says Ten Brinke.
“They really seemed to recognise the damage that they had done.”

Except for one.
The treatment programme seemed “like a game to him”, she says.

One week, in a discussion about the impact their crimes had on victims,
this rapist stared at Ten Brinke and, smiling slightly, started to say how much his victim looked like her,
“and how I was ‘his type’.

Clearly he was trying to scare me,
and he did.”

It put her off a career working with convicted criminals, but she remained fascinated with “dark personalities”
– psychopathy, mainly, but also narcissism, machiavellianism
(manipulating and exploiting others)
and sadism.
From politics to business to the media, it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of people to study.

There were selfish, callous, impulsive and manipulative people everywhere,
often presenting as gregarious and charming.

“It started to occur to me that these traits aren’t just confined to an underworld.

These traits appear in all aspects of our lives,” she says
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/10/how-to-recognise-handle-psychopath?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

With oil hovering above $100 a barrel for much of Monday
and Middle Eastern allies fearing a further tumble into regional conflict,
Trump appeared in Doral, Florida with the mission of
calming global markets and reassuring skittish allies that he has a clear vision for how to end the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the Iraq war.
If there is one, it was not delivered in this press conference.

In a 35-minute appearance, the US president eschewed the specifics
to hammer home how thoroughly the US has destroyed Iran’s military
and to bolster suspicions that there has been little planning for what comes next.

After floating remarks that the war was “very complete, pretty much” to a CBS News reporter in a phone call,
he then evaded a reporter’s question about whether that meant the war could wrap up this week.
“No but soon. I think soon. Very soon.”

Reporters tried again.
“You said the war is ‘very complete’.
But your defense secretary says ‘this is just the beginning.’
So which is it?”
“I think you could say both,” Trump replied.
Straight away he added: “It’s the beginning of building a new country”.
Never mind that Trump and his top advisers had ruled out managing an effort at nation-building in Iran;
hours have passed and indeed Trump’s own vision for Iran seems to change with every telephone call he has taken from a reporter in the last 10 days
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/10/trump-iran-war-over-pretty-quickly?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Sunny Naqvi, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen, is now back at home
after her family says she spent about 43 hours in Department of Homeland Security custody.
Customs and Border Patrol officials are now disputing her relatives' claims.
Naqvi was born in Evanston and raised in the Chicago suburbs.
A few weeks ago, she was set to travel overseas on a work trip with five other people. That group included three U.S. citizens and three green card holders, all in the U.S. legally.
The work trip fell through at the last minute, but the group went continued traveling.
On Thursday, Naqvi and her colleagues arrived back in Chicago, where DHS allegedly detained her for what her attorney says was a "curious travel history."
Naqvi's family says she was detained for 30 hours at Chicago O'Hare International Airport before being sent to Broadview.
At some point, the family said, they lost Naqvi's location which was being shared from her phone.
Relatives said federal agents told them that Naqvi was not in custody,
despite her location previously showing her at the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
"The cops were lying to our faces," said Sarah Afzal, Naqvi's sister.
"We were asking them, 'Hey, her location is here. We were in contact with her,'
and they kept being like, 'I don't know what to tell you.'"
ABC7 saw a large crowd join elected officials on Sunday in front of the Broadview facility, saying this was an unlawful detainment.
"They asked for Sunny's phone number so they could search the facility for her phone.
About 10 minutes later, the phone was opened, text messages were read and the phone was turned off, and we lost her location,"
said Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison.
The family said Naqvi was later sent to a facility in Dodge County, Wisconsin, where she was later released early Saturday morning.
They said her phone was dead, so she had to hitch hike with a person driving nearby to a hotel, where her family was able to pick her up.
"It was just really scary to me, and I think it's really scary to know that this can happen to someone born here," Afzal said.
"This whole morning was about just kind of getting it together. She doesn't want this to be about her. This is about everyone that is illegally detained
https://abc7chicago.com/post/sunny-naqvi-us-citizen-detained-dhs-chicago-ohare-airport-sent-broadview-ice-facility-dodge-county-wi-released/18693499/

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was ready to go to jail.

She had been prepared to spend six months in the custody of the Shasta county sheriff’s office.

One of the top prosecutors in this part of far northern California had presented the evidence against her in a weeklong trial,
and a jury had delivered a guilty verdict.

A judge offered probation, but O’Connell-Nowain did not agree to the terms.

Her crime?

Sitting on the floor in front of the dais of the board of supervisors with a sign, silently protesting an official who had criticized the county elections office.

The case of a former preschool teacher with no criminal history
tried and convicted for a peaceful demonstration was shocking even for Shasta county,
which has drawn international attention for its rowdy and radical brand of conservative politics.

But what happened to O’Connell-Nowain is not just the story of one county’s crackdown on free speech
and the forces that have sown division in the community;

it is emblematic of the political turmoil that has become commonplace in this part of California
and the US more broadly.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/09/fighting-extremism-redding-california?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Planting trees in the sea could act as a huge carbon sink and save millions of dollars in storm damage every year.
What is stopping us from doing it?
A new study reveals restoring mangroves could save $800 million in storm damage,
protect 140,000 people from flooding,
and remove almost triple the amount of CO2 produced by cars in the U.S. every year
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/planting-trees-in-the-sea-could-act-as-a-huge-carbon-sink-and-save-millions-of-dollars-in-storm-damage-every-year-what-is-stopping-us-from-doing-it

https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/emergency-responders-roadside-assistance-waymo

Groundwater contamination was top of mind when Medcalf heard about a new draft bill crafted by the House of Representatives in January.

The bill would amend large portions of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act
— a series of EPA regulations meant to police the manufacturing, processing and use of chemical substances,
including such contaminants as those found at Jones Road.

In 2016, Congress reformed the act, commonly referred to as #TSCA,
with bipartisan support to give more authority to the EPA to review and regulate chemical substances.

Now, a decade later, House conservatives are proposing to walk back many of the 2016 reforms,
citing issues in efficiency, predictability and competitiviness,
while promising that the changes will modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act.

EPA No Longer Considering Lives Saved in Pollution Rules, Only Cost to Business

Health and environmental experts,
advocates and residents like Medcalf
have expressed alarm at the proposed changes,
pointing to the implications the bill would have for local Texas communities and petrochemical workers due to the weakening of EPA’s authority to regulate existing and new hazardous chemicals.

The draft bill is just one of the many rollbacks in regulating chemicals since Donald Trump launched his second term in office last January.

Since the 2016 reforms, the EPA has reevaluated and published more stringent rulings on highly hazardous chemicals,
but in the past year, the federal agency has changed direction
and is reconsidering many of these rulings amid legal pressure from the chemical industry.

The chemicals include such substances as perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride
— all of which are known health hazards and used in chemical manufacturing at Texas facilities.

For environmental advocates like Medcalf, learning about the proposed EPA changes and reconsiderations came to her like whiplash.

She grew up near the petrochemical industry and understands the implications of unregulated chemicals.
https://capitalandmain.com/after-years-of-gains-gop-pushes-to-roll-back-chemical-regulations

The war that would make Iran look mild

The Taiwan Strait remains the main highway moving technology and consumer goods from the factories of Northeast Asia to the stores of America.

Some 20 percent of all global maritime trade passes through the Taiwan Strait.

A blockade by China could cause a $10.6 trillion hit to the world’s economies in a year,
about 9.6 percent of global economic activity, according to one reliable estimate.

Xi hasn’t ruled out taking Taiwan with force.

It’s in the world’s interest for America to deter such a conflict,
which is why the Trump administration announced an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan in December.

The new weapons would include sophisticated rocket systems

But this package has been delayed,
reportedly because Trump is concerned about upsetting Xi before their talks.

He appears to be prioritizing getting a trade deal with China over assisting with Taiwan’s defense,
but the best way to promote stability is to make China believe an invasion wouldn’t succeed.

Maintaining stable relations with China is important.

But so is defending free trade, navigation and open supply chains in the Pacific.

Sending more weapons to Taiwan will raise Beijing’s ire,
but delaying is a costly mistake that could encourage more aggression down the road.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/07/taiwan-strait-china-iran-war-hormuz/

There are now just two days until the special election in Georgia to fill the seat vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

20 Republicans are running.
One Democrat is running.
I'm that Democrat.

This is how we win.

This is how we take back the House and put a check on Trump's rampage against our Democracy.

I'm Shawn Harris. I'm a Democrat, Husband, Father, Retired Brigadier General, Farmer, and I'm running to represent Northwest Georgia with the seriousness, steadiness, and leadership it's been missing for years.

If you're in a position to support this campaign, I need you now more than ever.
I'm asking because it's critically important.
With three days left, please consider pitching in now to help me restore honor, integrity, and dignity to the U.S. Congress:
https://shawn-4ga.com/actblue_secure_2026-02_V-G4_S-A1

Ben Stiller voiced his anger at the White House‘s use of a clip from Tropic Thunder to support its war initiative on Friday. “Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip,” he wrote on social media. “We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. -- War is not a movie.” The White House’s X account on Thursday published a montage of scenes from movies and TV shows including Tropic Thunder, Braveheart, Top Gun: Maverick, and Better Call Saul, among others, with the caption, “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY,” followed by U.S. flag and fire emojis. The clip ends with the voiceover from Mortal Kombat saying, “Flawless victory.” The final title card simply says, “The White House: President Donald J. Trump.” The clip from Tropic Thunder showed Tom Cruise as movie exec Les Grossman dancing. Stiller directed, starred in, and co-wrote the screenplay for Tropic Thunder, which came out in 2008. The comedy, a box office success that features Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. starring alongside Stiller, followed a group of hapless actors thinking they’re in a war movie actually unwittingly becoming soldiers. Downey was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category. The White House shared the supercut as the United States and Israel continue to bombard Iran in an offensive that has already resulted in the death of several American service members. The campaign has no end in sight, and Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have warned Americans that more are likely to die. The administration hasn’t been able to clearly articulate the objectives for the war which. The primary aim at this point, as the video indicates, seems to be to inflict as much devastation as possible and then gloat about it https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ben-stiller-white-house-tropic-thunder-clip-1235526279/

Advertising Surveillance Enables Government Surveillance

We've all had the unsettling experience of seeing an ad online that reveals just how much advertisers know about our lives.

You're right to be disturbed.

Those very same online ad systems have been used by the government to warrantlessly track peoples' locations, new reporting has confirmed.

A new report gives us direct evidence that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has used location data taken from the internet advertising ecosystem to track phones.

In a document uncovered by 404 Media, CBP admits what we’ve been saying for years:

🔥The technical systems powering creepy targeted ads also allow federal agencies to track your location.

The document acknowledges that a program by the agency to use "commercially available marketing location data" for surveillance drew from the process used to select the targeted ads shown to you on nearly every website and app you visit.

In this blog post, we'll tell you what this process is,
how it can and is being used for state surveillance,
and what can be done about it
—by individuals,
by lawmakers, and
by the tech companies that enable these abuses.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/targeted-advertising-gives-your-location-government-just-ask-cbp

Elon Musk’s new AI data center has turned a formerly quiet Mississippi town into a noisy nightmare.
The $20 billion facility, run by Musk’s AI firm xAI, is powered by ⚠️27 methane gas turbines that run day and night,
belching fumes and emitting a constant noise like jet engines, NBC News reports.
The turbines were trucked in because Southaven, the unsuspecting rural community that Musk chose to build the data center in, can’t provide the electricity the facility needs. 
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/musks-ai-power-plant-generates-sound-fury-mississippi-rcna258594

The DHS shooting of a third U.S. citizen went unnoticed for months 
No state or federal agency disclosed that a Homeland Security Investigations agent had killed Ruben Ray Martinez until it was revealed in a public records request https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/03/05/texas-dhs-shooting-citizen-killed/

Democrats may not be able to prevent Mullin's confirmation at DHS,

but they can certainly turn his track record of offense and stupidity into two days of televised humiliation
so spectacular that he is wounded in Trump's eyes from day 1.

That is the job.

https://bsky.app/profile/wsuares.bsky.social/post/3mgdllbxgu22b

Twenty-one states funneled nearly a half-billion dollars, or $491 million, of taxpayer money
to anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy center" organizations between fiscal years 2022 and 2025.

That figure does not include millions some states diverted from federal programs like "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families",
and it does not include multimillion-dollar tax credit programs launched after federal protections for abortion rights were overturned. 

Nearly $1.3 billion in local, state or federal government grants were awarded to 1,259 crisis pregnancy centers in total between 2019 and 2024,
according to States Newsroom’s analysis of tax records.
The actual figure may be higher, as digital records are not comprehensive or entirely up to date.
https://arkansasadvocate.com/2026/03/05/repub/taxpayer-dollars-flood-pregnancy-centers-oversight-hasnt-followed/

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that
⚠️ the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was
💥“anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night,
👉more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department.

https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for

U.S. app uninstalls of ChatGPT’s mobile app jumped 295% day-over-day on Saturday, February 28, as consumers responded to the news of OpenAI’s deal with the Department of Defense(DoD)

Meanwhile, U.S. downloads for OpenAI competitor Anthropic’s Claude jumped up by 37% day-over-day on Friday, February 27, and 51% as of Saturday, February 28,
after the company announced that it would not partner with the U.S. defense department.

Anthropic said it was not able to agree on the deal terms over concerns that AI would be used to surveil Americans and be used in fully autonomous weaponry, which AI is not yet ready to do safely.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/chatgpt-uninstalls-surged-by-295-after-dod-deal/

‘Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame’ appears steps away from the White House
The display consists of stickers
(mocked up in the style of the celebrated Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles)
which name powerful friends of Epstein
and carry QR codes linking to specific entries about them in the files recently released by the Department of Justice
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/epstein-walk-of-shame-white-house-b2930382.html

What kind of sick scam is this?

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How to Submit Comments on Satellite Applications to the FCC

Any member of the public can provide input to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as it considers satellite applications.

The AAS believes that its individual members (in addition to the Society as a whole) should be able to voice concerns about any proposed satellite system that might be harmful to astronomy and the night sky.

This process is also open to those outside the United States who may be impacted by a proposed system.

In this step-by-step guide, we'll walk you through how to submit comments on applications. 

https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2026/02/how-submit-comments-satellite-applications-fcc

A cancer diagnosis can push people to crime

Even generous welfare states are not immune to a “Breaking Bad” effect

The television show’s plot is less outlandish than it seems.

Researchers in Denmark and the Netherlands find that the likelihood of a cancer patient committing a crime is 14% higher in the decade following their diagnosis than the baseline rate among people yet to develop the disease.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/03/01/a-cancer-diagnosis-can-push-people-to-crime

I can’t stop thinking about Nurul Shah Alam, the disabled refugee who died after Border Patrol left him outside in the cold with no way to contact friends or family. It took five days for him to die. He was blind and didn’t speak English. They took the pole he was using as a cane. This man survived an actual genocide only to be killed by the incompetence and cruelty of the Trump regime. Five days of wandering around lost, sick and disoriented. It was all preventable. They could have taken him home. They could have called his family. They could have refused to leave him for dead. Say his name. Don’t ever forget what they did. https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2026/02/shah-alam-buffalo-rohingya-blind-man-border-patrol/ https://zeroes.ca/@broadwaybabyto/116144619166553375

Rising carbon dioxide levels are being detected within the human body,
with new research warning a key blood marker for the gas could near its healthy limit within decades if current trends continue.

The findings are especially relevant for children and adolescents, whose developing bodies will experience the longest cumulative exposure to rising atmospheric CO₂

Bicarbonate plays a central role in maintaining the body's acid–base balance.

When CO₂ levels rise, the body retains more bicarbonate to stabilize blood pH.

Over time, however, sustained compensation may carry physiological consequences.

"If current trends continue, modeling indicates average bicarbonate levels could approach the upper limit of today's accepted healthy range within 50 years," Prof Larcombe said.

"Calcium and phosphorus levels could also reach the lower end of their healthy ranges later this century."

Humans evolved in an atmosphere containing roughly 280–300 ppm of CO₂.

The average annual increase over the past decade has been about 2.6 ppm per year, with 2024 recording a 3.5 ppm rise.

Fellow Author Dr. Phil Bierwirth, a retired environmental geoscientist who is affiliated with the ANU Emeritus Faculty,
said while the study does not prove direct causation,
the consistent, population-wide trends are difficult to ignore.

"I actually think that what we are seeing is because our bodies are not adapting," Dr. Bierwirth said.

"It appears we are adapted to a range of CO2 in the air that may now have been surpassed"
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-carbon-dioxide-human-blood.html

It’s not just that Donald Trump cannot explain why he has started a war with Iran
-- the worst part is that he is not even trying.

Trump has hardly said a word about Iran over the past week, even in his State of the Union address.

Congress is a bystander.
There are no hearings, no debate, no public support.
Yet, whether America plunges into a dangerous, unpredictable major war appears to rest on the whims of one man.

Even King George needed the approval of the British Parliament before he could wage war against the rebellious American colonies.
Trump has remained mum as he orders the largest military buildup in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The 2003 buildup was accompanied by months of public campaigning by President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and, famously, Secretary of State Colin Powell,
who tried to convince the American public and the United Nations that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks and possessed massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that posed an imminent threat to the United States and the region.
Not a word of it was true, but the lies cowed Congress and convinced the majority of Americans that we had to invade.

There is none of that now.
Neither the U.N. Security Council nor our global or regional allies support this war.
European and Arab nations have refused to allow Trump to use their bases for his war.

There is one exception.
As in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is cheerleading for war,
hoping to realize his decades-long dream of overthrowing the Iranian government, while bracing Israel for the expected missile attacks in response.
Trump officials, though, are largely quiet,
proffering scattered arguments about the repressive nature of the regime, the weakness of the regime, the danger of Iran’s medium-range missiles somehow reaching America and, surprisingly, the nuclear threat
https://newrepublic.com/article/207162/trump-iran-war-democracies-dictators?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Threads

Rare Disease Day 2026 highlights global inequities and amplifies youth voices in call for lasting change

On 28 February 2026, Rare Disease Day will once again bring together millions of people worldwide to spotlight the realities faced by those living with rare diseases
and to call for more equitable healthcare, research and social inclusion.
There are more than 6,000 identified rare diseases,
together impacting an estimated 300 million people worldwide
– between 3.5 and 5.9% of the global population.

Seventy-two per cent of rare diseases are genetic,
and around 70% present in childhood.
Many are chronic, progressive and life-limiting.
One in five cancers is classified as rare.
Despite this scale, people living with rare diseases frequently experience years of delayed diagnosis,
limited or no treatment options, fragmented care,
and significant social and economic barriers.
Rare Disease Day exists to address these inequities.
Since its launch in 2008, when events were held in just 18 countries,
the campaign has grown into a global movement now observed in more than 100 countries.
Coordinated by national alliances and patient organisations across 77 countries,
it creates a shared moment each year to make visible challenges that often remain overlooked in health and social care systems, and policy debates.

https://rarerevolutionmagazine.com/rare-disease-day-2026-highlights-global-inequities-and-amplifies-youth-voices-in-call-for-lasting-change/

FDA Rare Disease Day 2026
February 23 @ 9:00 am - 4:00 pm EST

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hosted Rare Disease Day,
a virtual public meeting, on Monday, February 23, 2026 in global observance of Rare Disease Week.

The theme is:
“Moving Forward. Looking Ahead. An Event for Patients.”

The goal of this year’s Rare Disease Day is to explore ways to engage and collaborate with patients and their communities to support and accelerate the development of medical products for rare diseases. If you have any questions, please email FDARareDiseaseDay@fda.hhs.gov.

https://rarediseases.org/event/fda-rare-disease-day-2026/

In a big win for protesters’ rights,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to sweeping warrants to search a protester’s devices and digital data and a nonprofit’s social media data.
The case, "Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs", arose after a housing protest in 2021,
during which Colorado Springs police arrested protesters for obstructing a roadway.
After the demonstration, police also obtained warrants to seize and search through the devices and data of Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, who they claimed threw a bike at them during the protest.
The warrants included a search through all of her photos, videos, emails, text messages, and location data over a two-month period,
as well as a time-unlimited search for 26 keywords, including words as broad as “bike,” “assault,” “celebration,” and “right,” that allowed police to comb through years of Armendariz’s private and sensitive data
—all supposedly to look for evidence related to the alleged simple assault.
Police further obtained a warrant to search the Facebook page of the Chinook Center, the organization that spearheaded the protest, despite the Chinook Center never having been accused of a crime.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/victory-tenth-circuit-finds-fourth-amendment-doesnt-support-broad-search-0

Across the country, people are organizing Solidarity Events to march, rally, gather, and raise their voices on February 28, 2026.
These local actions make the movement impossible to ignore, underscoring the fact that democracy belongs to all of us, not just those who can travel to Washington, D.C.
If there isn’t an event in your area, you can create one through Mobilize, our national organizing platform.
Hosting is simple: choose a location, set a time, describe your event, and Mobilize handles the RSVPs and visibility.
Your event will appear on the map below once published and approved.
https://march4democracy.org/march/solidarity-events/

A company owned by the President's family, is seeking approvals from a federal agency over which the President has total control
— including to hire & fire the people granting approvals.

The company, the deal, the entire process is corrupt to the core.

https://bsky.app/profile/vanhollen.senate.gov/post/3mfupmbcaw22u

Scouting America will alter several policies at the urging of the Pentagon,
including one targeting transgender children,
the defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday as he pushes a campaign against military support for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Some of the changes mirror what the organization suggested to the defense department in January,
which included discontinuing its citizenship in society merit badge and introducing a military service merit badge as well as waiving registration fees for the children of military personnel.

Under Hegseth, the Pentagon has taken aim at the military’s partnership with Scouting America,
decrying its historic rebrand in 2024 from the Boy Scouts and other changes in recent years that he sees as part of “woke culture” efforts that he wants to root out.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/scouting-america-transgender-ban-pentagon?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon,
as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon.
The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency’s recently confirmed administrator, Jared Isaacman.
Announcing the changes on Friday, he said that Nasa would introduce
⚠️at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century, in 2028.
The new, more incremental approach would give the Nasa team a chance to test flight and refine its technology.
⭐️As part of the changes, the Artemis II mission to fly humans around the moon this year, without landing, would also be pushed back from its latest scheduled launch on 6 March
to 👉1 April at the earliest.
The revised course came as Nasa has been wrestling with a number of delays and technical problems.
Earlier this week, the independent body that reviews space safety issued a blunt report sharply criticising the space agency’s current plans as too risky.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/27/nasa-changes-delays-moon-missions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal).

The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"
"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

This is basically impossible for California to enforce"
says CatoDomine on the Linuxmint subreddit.

"Even if Linux Mint decides to add some kind of age verification, to comply with CA law,
there's no reason anyone would choose that version."

"It's more likely they will put a disclaimer on their website: "not for use in California"
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/operating-systems/a-new-california-law-says-all-operating-systems-including-linux-need-to-have-some-form-of-age-verification-at-account-setup/