Don’t Miss These
(1) “Your baby could qualify for $1,000 with a Trump Account. Here’s what to know.” • Terms and conditions apply.
(2) “Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not socialist’.” • And the funders?
(3) “US Military: Who’s Pulling the Strings? / Lt Col Daniel Davis” • Trump? Bibi? I say oligarchs.
Birdsong of the Day
Moar mimidae:
South Fork Valley; E. Kern County, Kern, California, United States (1951) • Ten minutes!
Politics
Trump Administration
“Your baby could qualify for $1,000 with a Trump Account. Here’s what to know” [Associated Press]. “A provision of Trump’s tax legislation, Trump Accounts are meant to give $1,000 to every newborn, so long as their parents open an account. That money is then invested in the stock market by private firms, and the child can access the money when they turn 18…. The investments will put money ‘in the hands of young Americans who otherwise have really started out with nothing,’ Trump said. He also called on employers across the country to make matching Trump Accounts contributions for employee benefits, as some companies have already pledged to do so.” Terms and conditions apply: “To qualify for the $1,000 seed money, a baby must be a U.S. citizen, have a Social Security number and be born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. Any parent can open an account for a qualifying child, regardless of the parent’s immigration status.” But: “Critics point out the accounts do little to help children in their early years, when they’re most vulnerable and most likely to be in poverty. The accounts, they say, also fail to offset cuts the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have made to other programs that benefit young people and their families, including food assistance and Medicaid. Republicans created the accounts in the same Trump tax bill that reduced spending for some of those programs. And even with the contribution from the government, critics say the Trump Accounts will widen the wealth gap. Affluent families that can afford to make the maximum pretax contribution to the accounts will realize the greatest benefits. Poor families who can’t afford to set aside money for the accounts will benefit the least. Assuming a 7% return, the $1,000 in seed money would grow to roughly $3,570 over 18 years.” • Hilariously, Trump hijacked Darity and Hamilton’s “baby bonds” concept, and put his branding on it. Sounds to me like a scheme to treat the stock market like the public good it most definitely is not.
* * * “Mullin Says DHS Would Obey Courts If They Were Not ‘Politicized’ ” [Truthout]. • What’s Mullin got against the Federalist Society?
“USPS axing its regulator is on the table, as it looks for ways to avoid running out of cash” [Federal News Network]. “The Postal Service, on the verge of running out of cash early next year, is pricing out a wide range of possible reforms that, if passed by Congress, could address the agency’s long-term financial problems. Postmaster General David Steiner told House lawmakers in March that USPS is set to run out of cash in early 2027 and that lawmakers need to act soon to keep the agency running.” And: “Roughly 60% of post offices lose money. According to the internal document, USPS is looking for the authority to close post offices ‘if service can be adequately provided through other means.’ USPS estimates it spends about $744 million annually on small post offices, mostly in rural or remote areas.” • So effing what they lose money. The Post Office is a public service.
Cancer patients, including those in active treatment, could be forced to work the same number of hours as a healthy person“Lawmakers promised cancer patients would be protected from Medicaid cuts. Now CMS says otherwise” [STAT]. “In May 2025, I joined more than 160 blood cancer advocates on Capitol Hill. At the time, Congress was considering changes to Medicaid…. One of those concerning policies was work reporting requirements for people covered by Medicaid…. But undergoing cancer treatment is already a full-time job; many patients are unable to work because of their condition. Our meetings with congressional staff and lawmakers were tense. Many lawmakers were surprised to hear our concerns, given that the legislation they were considering included an exemption for people with serious conditions like cancer. When we shared that exemptions previously failed to protect patients, many lawmakers told us we were misinformed or being lied to. Lawmakers were clear that the legislation’s protections were rock solid: No one with cancer would lose their coverage.” To nobody’s surprise: “A few weeks later, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — and Medicaid work reporting requirements — became law. On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued its interim final rule on work reporting requirements. It breaks lawmakers’ promises to patients. The rule is catastrophic for cancer patients and forces states to go far beyond what Congress included in its legislative text. It narrows the “medical frailty exemption,” a mechanism that allows patients with cancer and other serious health conditions to be exempt from work reporting requirements. In effect, it means that cancer patients, including those in active treatment, could be forced to work the same number of hours as a healthy person — regardless of whether that’s physically possible, just to keep the health insurance coverage that they rely on to stay alive.” • Rule #2.
Election 2026
“Gavin Newsom’s rosy painting of California’s economy leaves out its darker undertones” [CalMatters]. “As Gavin Newsom makes his increasingly frequent appearances outside the state — seemingly preparing for a 2028 presidential campaign — one of his stock messages is that California’s economy is soaring. ‘We dominate in every category,’ Newsom bragged during a recent presentation to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. ‘We are the center of the universe (and) America’s coming attraction.’ He cited the state’s $4-trillion-plus economic output that, were it a nation, would rank 4th or 5th largest in the world, and mentioned the ranks of Nobel Prize winners and vigorous venture capital investment in the state.” More: “Yes, California has world-class economic output, but it is due largely to a very narrow sector, Silicon Valley’s high-tech industry, which has hugely benefited its entrepreneurs and capital investors. However the industry is undergoing a shakeout due to the artificial intelligence phenomenon and it’s shedding thousands of jobs, thus concentrating wealth even more. Meanwhile the state’s other world-famous sector, Southern California’s movie and TV industry, is hurting badly as production migrates to other states and nations — so badly that the state is offering subsidies in an effort to slow the hemorrhage.” Most importantly: “California now has the highest unemployment rate of all fifty states in the Union, stubbornly hovering at 5.5%, and its job market appears to be going in the wrong direction. The total number of jobs in California actually shrank by 0.6% since the beginning of this year, making it the 17th worst-performing state in the nation in terms of job creation. One result of these contradictory data is one of the nation’s highest levels of income disparity, as a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California points out. Only eight other states have wider gaps.” • So, the rest of the country should look like California?
* * * “Graham Platner says allegations of physical abuse of former partner ‘are simply not true’ – as it happened” [Guardian]. “The Maine Senate candidate made the denial to Chris Hayes after the host read him the published allegations from Lyndsey Fifield, who claimed that, during one argument, he ‘twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side’. On another occasion, she told the paper, he ‘yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument’. Platner said that neither of those incidents took place and suggested that Fifield, a Republican political operative, was lying to damage his campaign.” • Given that Fifield is a Republican operative, I’m sure Democrats are doing everything they can to amplify her message. We’ll have to see how this story plays out — Evidence? Anything contemporaneous? — but for now I think that whoever’s doing this oppo hasn’t dug up a Democrat girlfriend speaks well of Platner. The Sabbath Day gasbags should be full of it!
“Democrats are furious after latest Platner revelations” [Politico]. • Nonsense. Nobody loves clutching their pearls more than a Democrat. They’ve loving it.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not socialist’ ” [WaPo]. Not paywalled, interestingly. “Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California) said they will unveil the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left conference WelcomeFest, and hope to get candidates up and down the ballot to join them in signing it. As Democrats wrestle with their identity heading into the midterms and 2028 presidential race, the effort marks moderates’ latest bid to assert themselves.” Holy Lord, the centrists have an enormous network of dark money funded by squillionaires, and they’re worried about asserting themselves? Somebody call a wh-a-a-a-m-b-u-lance! And: “The pledge originated with a newly formed centrist group called Promise to America. Felix Frisch, the 20-year-old director, worked on the campaigns of his father, Adam Frisch, a Democrat who came close to unseating Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) in a red-leaning district in 2022.” Gosh. I wonder who could be funding them.
“A surging liberal gives Democrats anxiety over Senate chances” [WaPo]. Also not paywalled. “Democrats focused on taking back the Senate in November are growing increasingly worried that a surging liberal candidate in Michigan’s contentious Democratic Senate primary could imperil their slim shot at being in the majority next year. Polls consistently find Abdul El-Sayed, a former local health official who lost a previous gubernatorial bid, at or near the top of the three-person August primary race. He has outflanked Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow from the left, boosted by a populist agenda and endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and liberal lawmakers. His strength in primary polls has triggered backlash and anxiety among some Democrats, who view El-Sayed as a general election liability, too far left for a state that backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. They cite El-Sayed’s labeling of Israel’s actions in Gaza as a ‘genocide’…. El-Sayed’s outsider campaign promotes progressive policies, while the Democratic Party leadership is making a concerted bid to hew to the political center. He pitches Medicare-for-all, heavily taxing billionaires and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He is betting that his economic populist agenda and stance against the war in Gaza will shift the race’s general election dynamics in his favor in a state that is home to the country’s largest concentration of Arabs and Muslims. Those Michigan communities deserted Democrats in the 2024 election, helping boost Trump’s return to the White House.” • The Democrats really haven’t learned anything, have they? Not even “not to do it again.” In 2024, Muslims deserted the Democrats because of Biden’s genocide Gaza!
Realignment and Legitimacy
“China fueling U.S. data center resistance, AI groups claim” [Axios]. Pro-AI groups say they’ve been tracking a barrage of what they believe are bot-driven social media messages, which they argue is being driven by China, its proxies and other countries in its sphere of influence.” More: “A Gallup survey in May had 71% of Americans opposing construction of data centers in their communities.” • Wow, those Chinese influencers sure are effective! Are these “groups” run by Democrats? Because it sounds whoever just ripped a page from the RussiaGate playbook.
“When and why did complying with the Voting Rights Act become unconstitutional?” [SCOTUSblog]. “Ultimately, there is a deep tension in this court’s racial equal protection jurisprudence: On the one hand, the court applies strict scrutiny to eviscerate the VRA based on the premise that race is a social classification meriting heightened sensitivity in our society. This is only justified if race is today a salient vector of social and political difference, significant enough to apply the highest level of scrutiny. On the other hand, the court reasons that because of ‘progress’ and ‘current political conditions,’ there is no need for a statute that guarantees a minimal measure of racial political opportunity. But if that is true, there is no need for the court to interpose its judgment about when Congress or states can or can’t act for racial reasons because, by the court’s own reasoning, race is no longer any more sensitive or deserving of special scrutiny than partisanship. The court cannot have it both ways. Either today’s ‘progress’ means that these questions – from affirmative action to race-conscious redistricting – returns to the political process, or the very reasons that race is still subject to strict scrutiny demands that statutes like the VRA be given their full sweep.” • Contradictory premises allow you to reach arbitrary conclusions. Hence, if the court wants to have it both ways, that’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
“Messy versus Tidy” [Dublin Review of Books]. Well worth a read. “The process of state-building was messy enough, so maybe mess is a feature of his account, not a bug. He wants us to take on board that state collapse was a common aspect of societies throughout history and even prehistory. That’s doubtless a corrective to readers who think there is something pre-ordained about the present, in which people nearing retirement in Western Europe and North America will have lived an entire lifetime without war, sustained economic decline or even a plague worse than Covid-19. That was emphatically not the norm in previous ages, not even in Periclean Athens or Renaissance Florence. It is certainly salutary to be reminded that complex societies are not automatically self-stabilising. Sometimes they can really collapse. And collapse is multifaceted: it’s one thing for an elite to be guillotined and replaced by a rival elite. It’s quite another to trigger a society-wide calamity in which ordinary people face starvation or massacre. This happened to millions in the Taiping Rebellion, although the Qing dynasty just about survived for another half-century. Kemp reminds us of a third pattern: the earliest instances of state collapse simply involved populations deciding they’d had enough of being taxed, and heading off into the archeologically undocumented hinterland.” • No hinterlands now!
Geopolitics
“U.S. Navy Removes All Three Top Officers at its Japan Shipyard” [The Maritime Executive]. “The U.S. Navy has fired the entire top leadership of its largest overseas ship maintenance and modernization facility, which is critical to naval operations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.” More: “In line with its tradition when dismissing senior officers, the Navy did not provide details, only stating that the three were relieved of their duties ‘due to a loss of confidence in their ability to command.’” And: “The latest leadership shakeup at SRF-JRMC is raising questions about what could be happening at the critical facility, considering it comes just 20 months after a similar fate befell the previous commander and executive officer, Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela and Cmdr. Art Palalay, respectively, in October 2024.” • Well, it can’t possibly be corruption. That was dealt with when “Fat Leonard” was jailed, back in 2024.
“Exclusive: Video reveals damage from fire on US aircraft carrier after sources say fire control system failed” [CNN]. USS Gerald R. Ford: “The ship’s fire-suppression system failed to work, leaving the sailors scrambling to put out the blaze, according to the sailor and a senior US official familiar with the incident….. It took the Ford’s crew about 30 hours to put out the fire, clean it up and prevent it from reigniting… ‘Big fires are always a challenge, and this was significant — laundry and dryer-based fire,’ [Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle] told CNN after the Ford returned to its home port in Virginia.” What were they laundering? And: “The fire wasn’t the only issue during the deployment. The ship’s toilets were repeatedly clogged. Another video from aboard the Ford obtained by CNN shows human waste filled to the brim of toilet after toilet. ‘If you were in the forward section of the ship, you’d have to walk all the way to the aft section, just to find a toilet that worked,’ the sailor said.” • The clogged toilets — mopheads and t-shirts — still look like a job action, to me. I don’t know about the laundry fire, but in the house, a dryer catches fire when lint builds up. The USS Ford cost $13.3 billion to build ($18 billion including R&D), so you’d they could have installed a supersonic dryer vent. Or maybe this was a management problem?
“US Military: Who’s Pulling the Strings? / Lt Col Daniel Davis” [Daniel Davis / Deep Dive (video)]. • Worth a listen. Davis poses a dichotomy: Trump, or Bibi, and argues Bibi (and makes a good case). However, I would urge that if The Enemy Above MR SUBLIMINAL A synecdoche. Rather, whatever fraction of the oligarchy has won the struggle for dominance on this particular issue yanked Trump’s choke chain and told him “knock it off,” he would, tomorrow. This is, of course, unlikely, since they profit greatly from endless war. Trump indeed profits from volatility, but he doesn’t need war for that; he is a one-man volatility machine.
Business Sentiment
“Dollar General says customers are buying less food because driving is too expensive” [MarketWatch]. “As the Iran war drives up gas prices, retailers like Walmart have said consumers are buying less gas per trip to the pump. Now, signs are emerging that lower-income and rural shoppers are buying less food— in part because long drives are getting too expensive. Discount chain Dollar General, which draws a lot of lower-income consumers who have been hit harder by the past several years of inflation, said Tuesday that as average gas prices have climbed above $4 a gallon, more of its core shoppers are pulling back.” •
“The Regional Side of the Story: K‑Shaped Pattern in Region, Wider Gap in Gas Spending” [Federal Reserve Bank of New York]. “We find similar K‑shaped patterns in both retail and gas spending in our region as we do in the nation, with the K‑shaped pattern in gasoline in response to the recent gas price shock being more pronounced in the region.” More: “In every month, cumulative spending growth since 2023 for high-income households exceeds that for middle-income households, while in almost every month, cumulative spending growth for middle-income households exceeds cumulative spending growth for low-income households.” More: In the last three months, “[h]igh-income households in the region barely decreased real gas spending (0.5 percent between February and April 2026), while low-income households decreased their gas spending by 9.4 percent, with middle-income households in between. In contrast, low-income households in the nation decreased real gas spending by only 3.2 percent, while high-income households marginally increased real gas spending (by 0.4 percent). It is notable that the K-shaped pattern is actually even more extreme in the region than it is in the nation, a nearly 9 percentage point difference in real spending changes between high- and low-income households in the region, when such differences in the nation are closer to 4 percentage points. The extreme K-shaped dynamics in the Second District may partially be explained by the greater presence of public transportation, enabling commuters to more easily substitute between driving and taking public transit to work.” • Because public transportation is for proles.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 55 Greed (previous close: 54 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 59 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). • Still gradually deflating….
Book Nook
“Jeffrey Epstein assistant, Sarah Kellen, planning tell-all book — but fears giving away ‘get out of jail free’ card” [Page Six]. “Sarah Kellen began working as the late pedophile’s assistant in 2001 and worked for him for about 15 years. She also worked closely with his girlfriend, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell….. ‘One day she will write a tell-all book or produce a documentary for a Netflix type or give a tell-all to a TV show. But the info she has is her ‘get out of jail free’ card. It’s more valuable for her to hold onto the information should she need it to stay free.’” • I wonder how many other Epstein associates are making this exact same calculation. For that matter, I wonder how many people who service the oligarchs are making it. At a guess, more than a few. Many.
Class Warfare
“Bessent flips script on Dem senator with reminder about his son’s past ties to Epstein” [FOX]. “Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., suddenly found himself on the defensive at a budget hearing on Wednesday when, amid levying accusations of the Trump administration’s “corrupt” dealings, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent fired back by bringing Wyden’s son’s investments into the exchange. ‘We would like to hear what Adam Wyden and Jeffrey Epstein talked about,’ Bessent said, referring to unearthed emails drawing a connection between the senator’s son and the disgraced financier. ‘Did your son and Jeffrey Epstein talk about pole dancing as he begged him for money?’” • Just a reminder that “The Epstein Class” — and I need to think about that phrase — is not a partisan matter. It’s all about “The Enemy Above”: How they think, what they feel, what they do (and to whom).
“Mayor Caught on Camera Saying the Only Voters Who Oppose Data Centers Are Disgusting Poor People” [Futurism]. An important interchange, and not for the moralizing jouissance, either:
In a video seemingly recorded without his knowledge, [Shelbyville, Indiana mayor and aspiring aristocrat Scott Furgeson] fumes against the ‘No Data Centers’ signs popping up across town, before making a cartoonishly villainous observation about his own constituents.
“I’ve seen a lot of these all over the town, but I only see them in sh*tty houses,” the mayor sneered.
A woman interjects to correct him.
“Working class,” she emphasized, after yelping in disbelief.
Imagine that. A member of the working class identifying as “working class,” in conflict with a Mayor, no less. And none of that namby-pamby “working families” bushwa. Most encouraging news I’ve had in some time. More:
“You see them at working class houses.”
“Most of them are rentals, so,” Furgeson continued, as if it strengthened his case.
“Exactly. Working class, man,” the woman replied.
“It doesn’t matter whether they’re rentals or not, they’re still human beings,” another woman offers.
“Yeah, I know,” Furgeson said, before defaulting back to the supercilious demeanor of an out of touch nobility. “They’re unkempt. Unkempt properties.”
More like this, please. (On the off chance, I searched on “Shelby, Indiana strike.” Lo and behond, the Teamsters organized the local casino, owned by Caesars, which is of course delaying certification, leading to an NLRB hearing and a demonstration. So if Teamster organizing helped those two women, good for them.
“My Patchwork Career: Lessons from a Life of Work” [Confined Space]. “I’ve been thinking lately about all the jobs I’ve had and how each one has shaped me and provided important lessons. Babysitter, meat wrapper in a grocery store, cashier, factory worker (winding wire around some gadget), housekeeper in a hospital, cafeteria worker, cocktail waitress, lecturer, academic…and finally culminating as the Executive Director of a non-governmental organization – the Union of Concerned Scientists. Some taught me discipline. Showing up on time. Working even when no one was watching. Learning that “good enough” often wasn’t. Some taught me patience — mostly with difficult people, but occasionally with myself. Some jobs introduced me to coworkers I still remember decades later, people whose names might never appear in history books but who carried entire workplaces on their backs with competence, humor and grit…. Looking back, I’m struck by how many jobs depended on invisible skills no one talks about enough: calming angry customers, covering for a coworker having a rough day, keeping morale alive during hard times, making small talk at exactly the right moment, figuring things out without training, absorbing stress without passing it on. A lot of work in this country runs on people quietly holding things together. While we celebrate innovation and disruption, most workplaces survive because ordinary people show up every day and do what needs to be done.” • And when the oligarchs use AI to take all that away? (To be clear, I think the oligarchs will fail. But they will try, are trying, and it won’t be pretty. After all, an AI is a slave (hence the sycophancy). Who wants workers when you can have as many slaves as you can buy?
“Capturing Adults’ Familiarity With Financial Fraud” [RAND]. “sing RAND’s American Life Panel, 1,509 respondents (ages 21–90) listed up to five fraud schemes and tactics. We explore respondents’ conceptualizations of fraud types through the freelisting technique and categorize the answers into five groups: threat-, opportunity-, consumer-, imposter-, and ID-based frauds.” • That’s odd. No mention of accounting control fraud….
“Stevphen Shukaitis and Joanna Figiel: ‘The Wages of Dreamwork’ – Review” [MR Online]. “The argument is not simply that artists and cultural workers are poorly paid or precarious, though they often are. Rather, the book demonstrates how the ‘psychic wages’ attached to creative labour become mechanisms for intensifying exploitation. Workers are encouraged to identify entirely with their labour, to understand work as self-realization, and therefore to accept conditions that would otherwise be intolerable. In this respect, the book extends one of the key insights of feminist social reproduction theory: capitalism depends not only upon labour-power, but upon the reproduction of subjectivities willing to submit themselves to labour under particular moral and affective conditions.” • One key function of the PMC being to “reproduce those subjectivities.”
News of the Wired
I am not feeling wired today.
Plantidote of the Day
Via GF:
GF writes:
Your Jackpot Blog is looking good.
[lambert blushes modestly]
Attached is a possible Plantidote taken in May in the central highlands of Arizona. This poppy is a wildflower/weed (depending on one’s perspective) with sharp needles at the tips of the leaves. Bees love them. I love the “wrinkled papery” look of the flower petals.
I didn’t know the name of the plant so I looked it up at https://www.picturethisai.com/identify. This is the first time I used this plant finder and it appears there may be a cost involved if I continue to use it. Do you have a recommended fre plant locator that won’t hallucinate a fake name if it doesn’t know what the flower is?
I cannot personally recommend one, but alert reader TH uses Pl@ntNet. Readers, are there AI-free alternatives? (Also, I’ve tried to photograph poppies, and its not easy, because the flowers catch the breeze so easily. But your shot is tack-sharp!
Kind readers, I am running short! Send your plantidotes as attachments to lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [AT] protonmail [DOT] com. And if you put “Plant” or “Plantidote” in the subject line, I’ll be less likely to lose it. Gardens are fine. Gardening season approaches, at least in the Northeast! Fungi are honorary plants.