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“President   Trump   said Iranian leaders cleared their plan with the U.S. to fire retaliatory strikes against an American airbase in Qatar, and even requested a specific time to attack. “They said, ’We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine. And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners,” Mr.   Trump   said at a press conference in the Netherlands, where he is attending a NATO summit.” This report is from the notoriously right-wing Washington Times.  How is this OK? Where are the GOP voices protesting this? Crickets. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jun/25/trump-says-iranians-asked-us-time-could-bomb-american-military-base/  

  “ 'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid “IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes.” https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000

According to Tech Viral: “ Tesla has abruptly stopped Cybertruck and Model Y production, triggering a nearly 3% stock drop to $348.29, as shown in the finance card above. “The pause, Tesla’s third Cybertruck halt this year at its Austin Gigafactory, compounds delays in Robotaxi plans and Elon Musk’s controversies.   “As EV competition intensifies, Tesla’s frequent disruptions fuel doubts about its ability to meet bold goals, raising concerns among investors and customers.” Tesla stock has been on an upward slope since January 2023. Its P/E is 178. Tesla continues to defy gravity.  

During my career, I was principal investigator on three NSF grants. I also served on five grant review panels for the NSF.   The NSF always struck me as a tightly run, parsimonious science agency. They are scrupulous about *not* funding biomedical research, so as not to compete with the much bigger National Institutes of Health. They stick to the basic science mission.   “ But out of the blue yesterday, word emerged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking over the NSF’s building, evicting all of its more than 1,800 employees.  . . .  Adding to the wildness, the top floors of the building are, according to the AFGE Local 3403, going to be   retrofitted into a kind of executive mansion for HUD Secretary Turner , including an executive suite, executive dining room, reserved parking for the Secretary’s five cars, exclusive use of an entire elevator, special space for his various assistants and a planned gym for the Secretary and his family. Tu...

About six years ago, I had my genome sequenced at 30-50x coverage by Veritas. It cost me $200. For an additional $100, I purchased my variant call file, which identified all the differences between my genome sequence and the reference human genome sequence. A friend of mine then built a spreadsheet for me so I can easily search any gene that was annotated at the time for my own variants. I’ve since checked several dozen genes for risk variants using the ClinVar database. So far, it seems I’ve won the genetics lotto. Now, it looks like every child born in the UK will get their genome sequenced at birth. “ Babies born in the UK already receive the   newborn blood spot test   (also called the heel prick test), which tests for nine rare conditions. Under the new plan, a blood sample will instead undergo whole genome sequencing, which maps out the entirety of an individual’s DNA and can help to identify genetic diseases, as well as genetic variants that may put someone at an increa...

“ WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Tesla told U.S. regulators that all of its answers to questions on the safety of its robotaxi deployment in Texas are confidential business information and should not be made public, according to a letter released Monday.” Because the safety of Tesla’s stock price will be endangered. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-wants-us-withhold-answers-161117540.html

So far, the only “efficiencies” realized by DOGE have been (1) keeping Elon Musk’s name and image in the news and (2) the systematic destruction of federal programs and the expertise to run them efficiently. Like Elon’s SpaceX rockets, DOGE has mostly failed on the launch. “ On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an  executive order  to establish the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)–which he immediately set loose to cut  billions of dollars  of critical programs without regard for the  devastating   and  chaotic   impact that those sudden cuts may have on Americans’ wellbeing. CREW’s review of some of the programs targeted for cuts by DOGE and the Trump administration found that the elimination or reduction of these government agencies have directly cost over 50,000 people their jobs. DOGE’s cuts at these select agencies and programs could result in a loss of over $10 billion in U.S.-based economic activity and ...

“ (Reuters) -Tesla shares jumped 10% on Monday, lifted by the long-awaited launch of the company's robotaxi service that CEO Elon Musk has for years championed as a key driver of the electric vehicle maker's lofty valuation. “The automaker deployed a small fleet of self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, marking the first time its cars have carried paying passengers without human drivers. The rides were being offered for a flat fee of $4.20 in a limited zone.” *snip* “Many social-media influencers also posted videos of their first rides on X, showing the cars navigating busy city streets by slowing down and making room for incoming traffic. “Still, the tightly controlled trial - with about 10 vehicles and front-seat riders acting as "safety monitors" - is just the first step in what could be a years-long process of scaling up the service, according to some industry experts.” Shares jumped 10% on news of a phony robotaxi launch? Seriously? That’s not investing,...

Trump has been attacking Harvard for weeks for being antisemitic. Meanwhile: “The University of Florida suspended a law student after he wrote on social media that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary,” but only after that same law student won an award from his professor for a paper he wrote arguing the Constitution is meant to only be applied to white people.” So if you’re a public university in a red state, explicit racism is OK, but if you’re a private university in a blue state, any protest on behalf of Palestinians or against the Netanyahu government is racist? Did I get that right? Because I haven’t heard Trump saying he’ll cut federal funds to the University of Florida or block foreign students from matriculating there. Look, I’m a card-carrying ACLU member and a 1 st  amendment absolutist. But I can smell hypocrisy a mile away. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/florida-school-honors-student-controversial-constitution-paper_n_6858139de4b0208df386240b

AI is already transforming medicine. Looks like it will transform beekeeping, and with it, American agriculture. “ The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of die-offs since the mid-2000s as beekeepers have struggled to keep pace with the rise of disease-carrying mites, climate extremes and other stressors that can wipe out colonies. That’s endangering billions of dollars in crops from almonds to avocados that rely on the pollinators. This past year saw the worst colony losses on record. Beewise has raised nearly $170 million, including a $50 million Series D earlier this month, and it has a plan to change the industry.” *snip*   “Ultimately, the fate of humans is tied to that of bees. Roughly 75% of crops require pollinators, with nuts and fruits particularly dependent. While other species of bees and insects can play a role, they can’t replace honeybees. “There would essentially be no crop without the bees,” said Zac Ellis, the senior director of agronomy at OFI, a gl...

Musk’s SpaceX rockets explode, sometimes on the launch pad. Now, Musk’s promise of Tesla robotaxis has also exploded. “ Tesla’s much-anticipated June 22 “no one in the vehicle” “unsupervised” Robotaxi launch in Austin is not ready. Instead, Tesla has announced to its invite-only passengers that it will operate a limited service with Tesla employees on board the vehicle to maintain safety. Tesla will use an approach that was used in 2019 by Russian robotaxi company Yandex, putting the safety driver in the passenger’s seat rather than the driver’s seat. . . .  Having an employee on board, commonly called a safety driver, is the approach that every robocar company has used for testing, including testing of passenger operations. Most companies spend many years (Waymo spent a decade) testing with safety drivers, and once they are ready to take passengers, there are typically some number of years testing in that mode, though the path to removing the safety driver depends primarily on eva...

“ McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Adults fighting kids for clean water, despondent toddlers and a child with swollen feet denied a medical exam — these first-hand accounts from immigrant families at detention centers included in a motion filed by advocates Friday night are offering a glimpse of conditions at Texas facilities.   “Families shared their testimonies with immigrant advocates filing a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from terminating the Flores Settlement Agreement, a ’90s-era policy that requires immigrant children detained in federal custody be held in safe and sanitary conditions.   “The agreement could challenge President Donald Trump’s family detention provisions in his “big, beautiful” bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, which also seeks to make the detention time indefinite and comes as the administration ramps up arrests.   “At a time when Congress is considering funding the indefinite detention of children and families, defending the Flores Settleme...

“Bishop Pham, himself a Vietnamese refugee as a child, said ICE agents were “standing there covered with masks as we walked toward the courtroom. Eventually the … agents kind of scattered and went away.”   https://timesofsandiego.com/life/2025/06/20/ice-agents-scatter-as-sd-bishop-pham-other-clergy-visit-immigration-court/ Probably the best use of a Roman Catholic bishop that has occurred in my lifetime. “A growing group of tow truck drivers in LA are reportedly stalking ICE convoys so they can tow away all the unmarked ICE vans and SUVs that get parked incorrectly the moment the agents get out to start looking for people to abduct and deport.” https://x.com/LBRolsky/status/1936197115492864087  

  Juan Cole is  Richard P. Mitchell   Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is fluent  in   Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and Turkish as well as several European languages . Since he allows reposts of his blog content on social media, I’m going to exceed the fair use limit in quoting him here. To read the rest, the link is at the bottom. “ Top Things You Still Think You Know About Iran that are Not True   “ Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US   “Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.   “Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.   “Reality: Iran’s military budget in recent years has expanded from $10 billio...

We live in parlous times here in the US. Would you hide an undocumented person from ICE? Would you physically intervene in an ICE arrest if you knew the arrestee was a citizen or in the US legally? Would you resist physically if you were unjustly arrested? Do you expect US soldiers to resist an illegal order? “ Whether you have a rebellious personality or not, most people imagine they are better at overcoming pressure to violate their own principles than they really are, finds a new study.  “ Researchers found that most individuals think they would be more likely than the average person to disobey an immoral or unlawful order from an authority figure.    “This phenomenon, called the “better-than-average effect,” reveals that people are fairly resistant to internalizing beliefs that may harm their self-perceptions.   “In extreme cases, ignoring how everyone is subject to social pressure could leave a person vulnerable to the desires of malicious actors.    “...

Before they take my car keys away, I hope somebody figures out robotaxis. That doesn’t look to be Tesla. Musk’s robotaxi debut in Austin ain’t happenin’. I guess Elon paid off some Texas legislators to give him time: “Since last year, Musk has discussed launching the service in Austin this summer. For the last few months, he had indicated that it would happen in June, with the June 22nd date being officially shared last week.   “For Musk to claim his win, Tesla would need to stick to the deadline, which would be a first for Tesla when it comes to its autonomous driving roadmap.   “However, Texas lawmakers have just given Tesla an out.   “A group of seven Austin-based lawmakers in the Texas Senate and House have signed a letter asking Tesla to delay its launch until September” Like Trump, Musk just keeps floating the fantasy and people just keep believing. When do these bubbles pop? When do the marks finally realize they’ve been played? https://electrek.co/2025/06/18/tesla...

I’m reading these religion-based and politically based articles saying Americans need to have more children. WTF? “In an effort to get Americans to have more children,   the Trump administration   has proposed ideas such as a   $5,000   “baby bonus”   or a $1,000   tax-deferred investment account   for children born between 2025 and 2029. It’s as if we’re suddenly in a game of Monopoly: Have a baby, pass go and collect cash! “Their concern is that   declining birth rates   may lead to a smaller workforce amid an aging population, potentially straining economic stability and the social safety net.   But having children can be a swift way into debt. According to the Brookings Institution, a financial think tank, the average middle-income family with two children —   median income $80,610 ―   spends $310,605   on each child by the time they reach 17.” A $5000 bounty against $311,000 net expenses? Seriously? What sort of idiot...

It’s bad enough that Republicans believe poor Americans should be allowed to die without health care. But if you ever need a hospital, whether or not you have insurance, this could kill you, too. “ That’s because each node of the system is interdependent. If the   190 rural hospitals estimated   in a recent Center for American Progress report as collateral damage of the Republican cuts close, all of their patients must find treatment at the remaining health care providers. Many of these new-arrival patients are likely to be uninsured (many thrown off Medicaid or Obamacare by Republicans), crushing hospital finances and potentially adding more closures on top. “This means overcrowded hospitals and overburdened staff, in addition to the serious hardships for patients traveling long distances for care. “The Republican Senate budget accelerates the rural hospital collapse that is under way, like jet fuel on a fire,” said Alex Lawson of Social Security Works, who works directly on ...

  Here’s the headline in the Boston Globe: “ Medicare and Social Security go-broke dates pushed up due to rising health care costs, new SSA law”   Read further and you find this: “ The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.   “Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.”   *snip* “ Once the fund’s reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients’ hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.” So “broke” doesn’t really m...

In its latest attack on Iran, Israel has resorted to bombing and assassination to convince Iran to capitulate on its nuclear program*. What’s the track record of success for bombing and assassination campaigns? Bombing “ Unless an enemy army takes Tehran, as the US military took Baghdad in 2003, this four-branch government cannot be gotten rid of by a foreign power. Bombing the capital won’t do the trick.”   *snip*   “The US bombed Vietnam for a decade and still lost the war, despite having 500,000 troops on the ground. The US bombed Afghanistan for twenty years and still lost the war despite at some points having 100,000 troops on the ground. Air power alone would have produced even less impressive results.   “So even if President Donald J. Trump takes the unwise step of joining Israel in its bombing campaign, it is difficult to see what military victories that might bring.   “Iran is a Shiite country with a strong devotion to martyrs, and martyring Shiites will not...

I’m a frequent user of what passes for AI on Google. I used to just Google key words, but now I’ll Google questions. Google AI answers those questions. Usually, they’re simple questions like “When did ___ happen?” or “How old is ___?” For anything esoteric that I care about, I can follow up with my own search. So far, I’ve only caught Google AI in one mistake. But thanks to internet pollution caused by ChatGPT, that could change: “The rapid rise of ChatGPT — and the cavalcade of competitors' generative models that followed suit — has polluted the internet with so much useless slop that it's already kneecapping the development of future AI models. “As the AI-generated data clouds the human creations that these models are so heavily dependent on amalgamating, it becomes inevitable that a greater share of what these so-called intelligences learn from and imitate is itself an ersatz AI creation.  “Repeat this process enough, and AI development begins to resemble a maximalist game o...

Trump valorizes loyalty over competence. For Trump, flattery is evidence of loyalty: “ Trump’s FAA Nominee Lied About Having a ‘Commercial’ Pilot License “Bryan Bedford, CEO of Republic Airlines, falsely claimed to be licensed to fly commercial aircraft on the company's website for more than a decade.”   Color me unsurprised.   https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-faa-nominee-lied-commercial-pilot-license-1235365087/  

Though it feels weird to say it, RFK Jr and I agree on something: curtailing direct-to-consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals. “ The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.   Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.   “The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to d...

As a businessman, Trump left behind a long list of bankruptcies, failed businesses and legal penalties in his wake. Making a “deal” with Trump is risky, at best. Trump has personalized American trade policy. It’s no long what’s good for America, it’s who Trump does or doesn’t “like.”| “ Trump also seemed to put a greater priority on addressing his grievances with other nations’ trade policies than on collaboration with G7 allies. The U.S. president has imposed 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as 25% tariffs on autos. Trump is also charging a 10% tax on imports from most countries, though he could raise rates on July 9, after the 90-day negotiating period set by him would expire.   “He announced with Starmer that they had signed a trade framework Monday that was previously announced in May, with Trump saying that British trade was “very well protected’ because “I like them, that’s why. That’s their ultimate protection.”   That’s not a president, that’s a dictator. And ...

We already know that Trump has called soldiers who died in service “suckers” and “chumps.” “ Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.    “The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.   “Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.   “Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.” Unsurprisingly, Donald “Cadet Bone Spurs” is poli...

Duncan Black enters the wayback machine. These were the headlines in November 2024. Trump wasn’t even in office yet. Politico: The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out. The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much.   Axios: The Resistance goes quiet   [NYT]: ‘Get Somebody Else to Do It’: Trump Resistance Encounters Fatigue   WaPo Why the resistance went quiet after Trump’s victory   This certainly makes amusing reading after >3.5 million showed up for the 14 June protests, dwarfing the Trump Soviet parade. Looks like media groupthink. https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/06/who-sent-memo.html

When I was growing up in the South in the ‘60s, “states’ rights” was the bleat of the segregationists.   “ As the Senate debates the Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill," a hypocrisy at the heart of the debate is getting little attention. If the bill stays similar to what passed the House, the federal government will coerce states into restricting access to Medicaid, on which over 72 million people rely for health insurance. “Though hypocrisy is hardly a new feature of American politics, this is a notable departure from frequent conservative arguments that many facets of public policy ought to be left to the states, which can respond to more local preferences and needs. This regulatory philosophy has driven arguments across a range of policies including abortion leading up to the fall of  Roe v. Wade , Medicaid expansion, marijuana decriminalization, and the rights of same-sex couples prior to  Obergefell v. Hodges . Now, conservatives seem set to abandon ...

During his great purge, Stalin not only killed most of the loyal Bolsheviks that brought him to power, he killed many of the generals. This left the USSR vulnerable to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR that Hitler   prophesied   in Mein Kampf. Like Stalin, Trump is bent on dismantling US national defense. Not just the CIA, FBI, NSA and DOD, but defense from infectious disease: “ The Trump administration's cancellation of $766 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses is the latest blow to national defense, former health security officials said. They warned that the U.S. could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.   "The administration's actions are gutting our deterrence from biological threats," said Beth Cameron, PhD, a senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center and a former director at the White House National Security Council. "Canceling this investment is a signal...

This sort of viewpoint discrimination is a sign of weakness. Only a feeble nation would interrogate travelers this way. “ An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.   “Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.   “The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.   “Kitchen said officials asked him for his “thoughts about the conflict in a very broad sense”, including about student protesters, what Israel “should have done differently” and “how I would resolve the confli...

The way we show respect for our troops is not by standing up for the pledge or putting out little flags in cemeteries on Memorial Day. It’s by never putting them in harm’s way unless they are defending against an existential threat to America and by never putting them into positions that they haven’t been trained for. You can tell that Donald “Cadet Bone Spurs” Trump has no respect for the military.   “A resource counselor for the GI Rights Hotline says they’ve been receiving more calls than usual.   “We've been getting around 200 calls a month in normal times. I had 50 calls on Sunday,” Steve Woolford told Lolita Lopez at NBC Los Angeles, elaborating that most of the calls are from service members, their family and others following Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to LA.   “These calls to a hotline for GI Rights, which we linked to here previously, come amid confusion about the deployment to Los Angeles, including a federal appeals court ruling late Thursday that...