Author: Ophelia Benson

Trump is tightening the screws on voting rights.

President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell this morning, canceling plans to sign a bipartisan landmark housing affordability bill until he gets action on his controversial elections overhaul legislation. He’s expected to press senators at a GOP lunch today to pass the “SAVE America Act” by any means necessary.

So Trump. To hell with making housing affordable for the non-billionaires, first ya gotta suppress the vote.

The Brennan Center:

For months, we have warned of a drive by President Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent — and over the past week, the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape, starting on the floor of the House this week as it once again considers the SAVE Act.

Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.

Today, the House Rules Committee is voting to send the measure to the full House for a vote. Effectively, the bill would require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register and thus to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example. and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote.

Always put the burden on women. It’s only fair.

The measure likely will pass the House, as it did in an earlier form last year. Once again, it will be up to senators to block it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival.” But this time around, a mobilized outside drive is pushing lawmakers to restrict voting. “It must be done or democracy is dead,” instructed Elon Musk. The SAVE Act will not expire quietly, surrounded by loved ones. It’s on all of us to stand up and speak out, once again.

And now we see how it fits into the broader strategy.

In recent days, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Republicans “nationalize” the elections on behalf of his political party. Each time his aides try to clean up his remarks, he doubles down. “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” he wrongly insisted.

Constitutionally, that’s upside-down land. The Constitution is unambiguous: States run elections. Presidents have no role. 

Unless/until they are Donald Trump. That’s in the fine print.

Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who served prison time for defying a congressional subpoena, declared on Tuesday, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.” When we see how politicized and aggressive immigration forces have become, that threat becomes more than a podcaster’s bombast.

Here, the law is clear: That would be a federal crime. My colleague Sean Morales-Doyle explains: “Can the president send troops or ICE agents to polling places? No — both federal and state laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from carrying out these implied threats.” It’s a federal crime to intimidate voters, too.

But can we enforce it?

The future is now.

Western Europe was in the grip of a heatwave on Wednesday that claimed ​dozens of lives, disrupted power supplies, shut schools and cultural landmarks, as forecasters warned the extreme temperatures could persist until the end of the week.

Smashing previous records, Britain logged its ‌highest temperature for June, reaching 35.8 degrees Celsius (96.26 degrees Fahrenheit) in southern England as a heat dome hovered over much of Western Europe.

The death count is rising.

Scorching temperatures killed hundreds of thousands of birds at poultry farms in Brittany and the Pays de la Loire, agricultural groups said.

Can you say “famine”?

London Climate Action Week was disrupted, with organisers cancelling an event on extreme heat because ​of the heat itself.

There’s always air conditioning…but of course that itself contributes to the warming.

Still, at the Vatican, tourists waited patiently in the blazing sun ​to visit museums on Wednesday. Some held umbrellas or fans and many gathered for refills of water from fountains or cafes for other refreshments.

“We want a beer, a beer for the heat,” said Father Israel from the Dominican Republic as he held up a ​large pint of lager in his hand.

Oh ffs. No you don’t. Alcohol is the worst thing for severe heat. You want water for the heat, you godbothering chump.

When all else fails – throw a tarp over it!

Update: The tarp is a joke. So far.

So even Pete Hegseth can figure it out, eventually.

A flu outbreak at the Air Force’s basic training hub in San Antonio is worsening, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

As of Tuesday, at least 222 recruits at Lackland Air Force Base, part of Joint Base San Antonio, had been diagnosed with the flu and four had been hospitalized, the two people familiar with the matter told ABC News. 

This marks a sharp increase from the 159 cases and two hospitalizations reported last week. The death of one recruit remains under investigation, though it is not yet clear whether it is tied to the outbreak, the sources said.

The outbreak is unfolding just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the annual flu shot optional for troops, scrapping the military’s requirement for it, which dates to 1945, a move breaking with longstanding public health directives.

And sanity.

…the services have already been given exceptions to Hegseth’s policy according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement provided to ABC News. As part of those exceptions to the policy, the Army, Navy and Air Force are once again requiring flu shots for basic trainees, according to officials.

In the Air Force, only about 40% of its new trainees at Joint Base San Antonio had a flu vaccination when the outbreak started in early June, according to the two sources.   

But with the new exception to policy, the Air Force has the goal of vaccinating all of the recruits in this recruit class and will vaccinate all new recruits arriving at the base according to one of the sources.

Moreover, the Army is preparing in the coming weeks to broaden that requirement to troops deploying overseas, first responders, child care workers, health care personnel, prison staff and soldiers taking part in certain large-scale training exercises, according to a service spokesperson. 

Shorter: Hegseth is a damn fool.

Brian wants us to know that he did the work.

None of this anti-trans nonsense affects my daily life in any way I can perceive. Literally never misgendered, literally no weird looks. I did the work, I got the surgery, I learned the behavior, I updated my documents.

There is literally no reason to make my life worse advocating moderate public policy.

I thought I could help, instead I’m stuck between two insane political projects screaming into the void.

He “got the surgery”. What surgery? There is no surgery that makes a man a woman. He learned the behavior. What behavior? Simpering, batting the eyelashes, giggling, squealing, making dinner and cleaning up afterward?

He’s confusing acting with being. Yes, sure, actors can imitate people of the opposite sex, and fiddling with voice and gestures and reactions can help with that, but it doesn’t make a man a woman. An actor who plays Hamlet doesn’t update his documents such that his driving license says he is Hamlet. Most actors, in fact, prefer to stay very clear about which is the part and which is the performer.

If Wu could grasp that he might be able to stop screaming into the void.

The UN has a Facebook group. It’s called United Nations Free & Equal.

UN Free & Equal is a global campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer equality led by the United Nations Human Rights Office.

I wonder what queer equality is.

I wonder a lot of things.

It has such a sweet poster. It’s on TwitX as well as Facebook.

Ah. Well yes, those are stylized images of women, but that doesn’t mean that trans women, aka men, are women. Cartoons of Snoopy don’t mean that dogs can think in English. Badly drawn maps won’t transport you to the purported sites. Corporate Memphis priddy gurlz don’t establish that men are women.

Also note what the UN was apparently too stupid to notice. The women are all very young and very pretty. Does the UN think all women are very young and very pretty? Does it think women all die before they turn 30? Does it think being pretty is the only thing women do? Does it think youth and prettiness define womanhood? Does it think women are pleased and touched and flattered by this kind of thing, so flattered that it will make us agree that huge aggressive angry self-involved men are women if they say they are?

The UN can go take a long walk off a short pier.

What does that mean?

What are authentic selves?

Why? Everybody deserves to be protected in the sense of shielded from violence and exploitation, but nobody “deserves” to be celebrated. That’s a silly claim, or slogan – it’s a slogan rather than a claim but it’s in the form of a claim, which makes it both pernicious and ridiculous. We might as well run around saying [insert random set of people here] deserve immortality, or a car, or a lifetime ticket to Disneyland, or a slap-up meal at Taco Bell.

Sane progressive campaigns have sane goals. Feminist campaigns, labor campaigns, anti-racism campaigns all focused on genuine, specific rights and reasonable, achievable goals. They did not demand pampering and flattery and ass-kissing.

These campaigns sound more like Trump than like the SPLC or the Feminist Majority Foundation.

The mirrorish pool saga goes on and on.

Speaking to reporters on Monday during an event that was supposed to have been about quantum computing, Mr. Trump said the enormous blooms of green algae and the peeling polyurethane had nothing to do with the rushed $16.4 million makeover he had ordered. Instead, he laid out in vague terms a series of events that he claimed were responsible for the highly embarrassing breakdown of a Washington landmark.

To hear Mr. Trump tell it, the renovation was going perfectly until vandals armed with knives and fertilizer set their sights on the century-old pool, which stretches between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

I hope there will be a biopic. “Armed With Knives and Fertilizer” – with a title like that it can’t fail.

“They put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water,” Mr. Trump said. “If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae.”

Good old somebody. Where would Trump be without Somebody? He needs his Somebody to explain all the Somethings that keep happening right where Trump is standing. Somebody did Something; news at 7.

Europe is feeling the pinch.

Relentless, deadly heat is tightening its grip on Europe, with temperature records expected to not just fall but be obliterated this week. Scientists warn this extreme heat is a huge problem for Europe and a wake up call to a new reality.

Europe is the planet’s fastest-warming continent, heating at around two to three times the global average, yet it’s woefully underprepared. Its infrastructure was not built for extreme heat; when temperatures spike, rail tracks buckle, power cables break, homes turn into heat traps, and thousands die.

This week is yet another brutal reminder that European heat is becoming both more severe and more frequent. It marks the second record-breaking heat wave in two straight months, with the potential for national all-time temperature records to be broken before Europe even reaches July, typically its hottest month.

…

In the United Kingdom, temperatures are set to soar into the triple digits this week, with the UK Met Office issuing an very rare red warning for extreme heat, indicating a risk to life.

Hundreds of schools are closing or moving to half days, people have been told to avoid train journeys, and the Met Office has warned of severe impacts on energy and water. London is “cooking,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres, addressing an audience at London Climate week Tuesday.

…

The heat dome is not unusual for Europe in summer, “but the temperatures are,” said Richard Allan, a climate science professor at the University of Reading. These are being supercharged by climate change, driven by humans burning oil, coal and gas, which raises the background temperature, making every heat wave more intense.

And we can’t possibly stop burning all that oil, coal and gas, so we’re doomed. Oh well.

Scientists say that even without El Niño, climate change is the driving force of extreme heat. “There’s a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me trotting out the same quotes year after year,” said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London. “Yes it’s climate change, yes it’s us, no it’s not El Niño.”

It’s because we can’t possibly stop, you see.

They did tell us.

Is Europe heating up more rapidly than predicted?

In short, no — what’s happening now is what scientists have long warned. The increasing severity and extent of European heatwaves “is broadly consistent with what is expected from computer simulations and physical theory,” the University of Reading’s Allan said.

They told us, but we are helpless.

The temperatures Europe is enduring right now might not sound that extreme to some, but heat hits differently in countries where air conditioning is very rare — only found in around 20% of European homes.

Air conditioning itself contributes to warming, of course.

Europe’s May and June heat waves could just be the start of an extreme summer in Europe. “There is huge agreement that the next three months will be abnormally warm,” Thorne said.

Europe — in common with much of the rest of the world — has not reckoned with the fact the climate has shifted, he warned.

“Nowhere is truly prepared for what climate change will bring. We have developed everything — and I mean everything — to a stable climate we are rapidly waving goodbye to,” Thorne said. “We are definitively entering the find out phase here having done two centuries of mucking about by burning fossil fuels — and its not going to be pretty.”

If you get depressed about it, try going for a nice ride in the car.

Malala Yousafzai:

The EU has invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss a migration deal — and today I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this.

This is the same Taliban that banned girls from secondary schools and forced them into marriage. The same Taliban that, earlier this month, arrested dozens of women in Herat for how they were dressed. The same Taliban that detains, beats and executes women who dare to speak out or break their rules.

Through its system of gender apartheid, the Taliban have erased women and girls from public life. Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world.

Any engagement with the Taliban must begin and end with the rights of Afghan women and girls.

Crazier by the hour.

Hmmmm. Really? Have we?

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “this administration values the judicial branch.”

“The American people have always valued President Trump’s ability to freely speak his mind and share his thoughts directly with them,” Jackson said. “It’s one of the many reasons why the President was resoundingly re-elected. He will unapologetically share his opinions about the Court’s rulings, as is his right.”

Is that true? Have we all always valued Trump’s rude ignorant trashy attacks on anyone and everyone who disagrees with him? Do we all love his noisy vulgarity and aggression?

I beg to differ.

How do people manage to be this blind or indifferent?

The class-action lawsuit brought against the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) demanding to house all trans-identified male inmates in women’s prisons was brought by a pedophile, a rapist, and a domestic abuser who murdered his girlfriend, Reduxx can reveal. At the end of April, a federal judge ordered the ODOC to reassess its policies and house trans-identified males on the basis of their “gender identity” in a sweeping injunction.

How does a judge manage to think it’s fair to put violent men in women’s prisons so that the violent men will be safer and the women will be vastly more in danger? The violent men don’t want to be at the mercy of violent men, so hey, here’s the solution, put the subgroup of violent men with the women. Shift the danger to women! Problem solved!

I will never understand this, or forgive it.

Oh gosh, that’s worrying.

…Since declaring a Transfemicide State of Emergency, our administration has strengthened the City’s capacity to support LGBTQ+ Chicagoans. This framework builds on that work by centering the voices and lived experiences of trans Chicagoans to chart a path toward a safer, more connected city.

So what are the numbers? Please to quantify the transfemicide. Google AI obliges with:

Advocacy organizations and media investigations identified at least 15 transgender and gender non-conforming people—predominantly Black and Latinx trans women—violently killed in Chicago since 2015.

Oh. At least one per year.

Women?

In Chicago, approximately 50 to 80 women are killed per year. Women make up about 10% to 15% of the city’s overall homicide victims, with Black women disproportionately affected.

I wonder if Chicago has ever declared a femicide state of emergency.

If you type “chicago femicide state of emergency” into Google you get links to transfemicide. No links to femicide. None.

Hmm.

Is it funny at least?

You know it’s not. And what’s more, it’s ugly! What could be better than an unfunny ugly cartoon series?

As we cook ourselves…

France has banned alcohol at some events at massive national music festival as a heatwave pushes temperatures towards record levels.

The annual Fête de la Musique celebrations draw millions to the streets but with the most serious heatwave warnings being issued for 35 of France’s departments, the government has banned alcohol consumption in public places under the red alerts.

Good plan. The hotter it is, the worse idea it is to gulp down the gin.

Temperatures have been forecast to peak on Monday, and authorities have warned they could match historic highs.

The government has called for limits on alcohol consumption “to preserve emergency and healthcare services and allow medical staff to focus on caring for the most vulnerable”.

The heatwave has been going for days and has disrupted the country, forcing the cancellation of dozens of trains and the suspension of classes.

We were warned.

Tragedy of the commons much?

Evil Kennedy going for the gold.

NPR goes into more detail on the comic opera of The Trump National Pretty Blue Algae Pool.

Trump has claimed that United States Park Police have made several arrests in connection with what he described as deliberate sabotage of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., which underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation earlier this year.

“The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday evening. “These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”

In a second post on Saturday, Trump described the alleged damage in greater detail, saying more arrests had followed. He provided no evidence for any of his claims about the nature of the damage, and neither the Park Police nor any other law enforcement agency had publicly confirmed any arrests as of the time of publication.

On Friday, Maryland resident and former Olympian David Hearn was arrested and charged with destroying government property. Hearn says he merely reached into the pool to touch one of the already dislodged blue pieces, and denies the charge.

Only Trump could manage to have one (1) person arrested and have that person turn out to be a former Olympian.

Trump said that the pool would be drained and repaired quickly, and framed the alleged vandalism as an affront to American history. “We met with contractors today, will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs,” he wrote. “What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly”.

Those are the two he’s heard of. Jefferson? Adams? Other Adams? Roosevelt? Other Roosevelt? Hoo R they?

Trump described what he said was physical destruction to the pool’s newly renovated lining. “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” he wrote Saturday. “They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”

Yuh huh and they installed invisible witches and they stole all the diamonds and they made Trump look like a clown.

The president connected the alleged vandalism to the recent green color of the pool — again, without evidence. The pool turned green last week after being refilled following its renovation, in which its floor was repainted in a shade Trump calls “American flag blue.”

Aquatic ecologists and pool specialists told NPR the discoloration was caused by a natural bloom of algae from the genus Desmodesmus — a process scientists say is common in shallow, sun-exposed bodies of water, and one that may have been accelerated by the renovation disturbing the nutrient balance of the water.

Oh no no no that can’t possibly be right, it’s pure coincidence.

Listen all the way to the end – or skip ahead to the end. Allahu aqbar.

The Green Party apparently thinks Islamist theocracy is leftwing aka progressive. Protip: it’s not.

From Atheists Against Pseudoscientific Nonsense on Facebook:

This has been one of the most succulent ironies I’ve seen in a long time. The administration that denies climate change has created a scale model of how it happens at their door because of their ignorant decisions and impositive orders.

They have a miniature anthropocene right there.

Disturbed by what he deemed a “filthy” aesthetic, Trump bypassed seasoned engineers and civil specialists, awarding a $14.2 million no-bid contract to a company that had previously coated a swimming pool at one of his private golf clubs.

The mandate was simple, superficial, and unburdened by expertise: paint the bottom of the historic, 2,000-foot-long basin a specific, patriotic hue dubbed “American flag blue”.

​What followed is a masterclass in the unintended consequences of weaponized ignorance. By applying a dark, industrial epoxy coating across an expanse larger than six soccer fields, the builders unwittingly created a perfect, enclosed macro-experiment in anthropogenic climate change.

And I want to state the following: executive orders cannot override the basic laws of physics.

When solar radiation hits a body of water, the color of the basin’s floor dictates how that energy is managed:

​The light, untreated stone bottom reflected a significant portion of solar energy back out of the shallow water, keeping temperatures relatively stable.

​The dark “American flag blue” epoxy acted as a giant solar heat sink. Dark colors absorb a drastically higher percentage of the light spectrum, transferring that energy directly into the stagnant water as heat.

As a heatwave rolled through Washington D.C., the water temperature spiked. In biology, an increase in temperature accelerates metabolic rates. Combined with the untreated, nutrient-rich water pumped from the Tidal Basin, Trump’s dark blue floor transformed the national monument into a high-capacity biological incubator. Within days of completion, the pristine “azure expanse” underwent an ecological shift, blooming into a chartreuse, mossy green soup.

Read on.