Odds and Ends — 5 August 2025

10 days ago

I went to a movie theater yesterday to see She Rides Shotgun. Really good movie, go see it. And then, read the novel by Jordan Harper that it was based on. Even better.

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:

From Coinbase to Milei and LIBRA: Crypto class-action suits pile up

White House Preps Order to Punish Banks That Discriminate Against Conservatives

Trump Can’t Wave Away Economic Reality

What does Mr. Trump plan to do if next month’s jobs numbers are meh or worse? Order the BLS to change them? Democrats are sure to accuse his administration of suppressing unfavorable economic data in any case. After Ms. McEntarfer’s defenestration, the president’s advisers may be even more reluctant to bear bad economic news lest he say off with their heads too.
Mr. Trump does himself and his party no favors by waving away economic reality. Democrats spent the Biden presidency playing down inflation, and look where it got them.

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Covid cases rising in US as officials plan to restrict booster vaccines

Politics:

‘How much does it cost for fascism?’: Tensions erupt at Nebraska GOP congressman’s town hall

Brazil’s Supreme Court orders house arrest for former President Jair Bolsonaro

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the house arrest for former President Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for allegedly leading a coup attempt after losing the 2022 election.
Prosecutors accuse Bolsonaro of heading a criminal organization that plotted to overturn the election, including plans to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a Supreme Court justice. Monday’s order followed one from the top court last month that ordered Bolsonaro wear an electronic ankle monitor and imposed a curfew on his activities while the proceedings are underway.

The Elite Ramp Up Their Fight Against Mamdani

It has been six weeks since New York City’s Democratic primary remade the political landscape, and that’s one of the many questions hanging over the mayor’s race with just over 90 days left. The answer could make permanent the power shifts in the city’s Democratic politics that worry the established order — and could rewrite the playbooks for candidates.
For now, real estate executives and financiers are forming super PACs to try to defeat Zohran Mamdani, who won the primary with a far less costly campaign than their preferred candidate, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running on a third-party line in the general election.
Said Grace Rauh, the executive director of Citizens Union: “The long-held idea in politics that the candidates with the most money win is no longer an assured position. That is part of the reason why many wealthy donors and interests who are looking at this race, in New York and perhaps beyond, are responding in a bit of a state of panic.”

Behind Trump’s Efforts to Control Information

An old rule in Washington holds that you are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. President Trump seems determined to prove that wrong.
Don’t like an intelligence report that contradicts your view? Go after the analysts. Don’t like cost estimates for your tax plan? Invent your own. Don’t like a predecessor’s climate policies? Scrub government websites of underlying data. Don’t like a museum exhibit that cites your impeachments? Delete any mention of them.
Mr. Trump’s war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy isn’t doing as well as he claims it is. Mr. Trump declared that her numbers were ‘phony.’ His proof? It was ‘my opinion.’ And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact itself.

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1952481910325928158

https://twitter.com/princess_kim_k/status/1952486989510623381

https://twitter.com/PiperK/status/1952301185131807189

https://twitter.com/BlackKnight10k/status/1952514489703641200

———— Gaza ————

Netanyahu reportedly pushing for major expansion of war in Gaza

Trump Links Disaster Aid to Israel Boycott Stance

U.S. states and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal aid for natural disaster preparedness, the Trump administration has announced, tying routine federal funding to its political stance.

———— Theresienstadt in the Everglades ————

Kristi Noem says "Alligator Alcatraz" to be model for ICE state-run detention centers

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Judges Openly Doubt the Federal Government

Justice Department lawyers have long enjoyed a professional benefit when they appear in court. As a general rule, judges tend to take them at their word and assume they are telling the truth.
But in the past several months, as members of President Trump’s Justice Department have repeatedly misled the courts, violated their orders and demonized judges who have ruled against them, some jurists have started to show an angry loss of faith in the people and the institution they once believed in most…
Ultimately, legal experts say, the doubts that judges have begun to express about the department and those who represent it could have a more systemic effect and erode the healthy functioning of the courts.

White House Denies 3,000-a-Day ICE Arrest Target

The Trump administration is backing away from a widely cited immigration enforcement target, telling a federal appeals court there is no formal policy requiring agents to arrest 3,000 people a day.

Well, if Miller and Homan both said 3,000 that sure sounded official. But I wonder if they were also embarrassed by recent reports that the Biden administration actually deported more people in its first six months than were deported in the first six months of Trump’s second term.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1952710614926651401

A Consolidating Dictatorship

We do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge. We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country…
The question is no longer how to prepare for this risk or how to try to avert it, but rather how to fight it now that it is here and in effect.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acting chief of staff tried and failed to oust a senior White House liaison assigned to the Pentagon, detailing an unusual dispute that marks the latest instance of infighting among a staff plagued by disagreement and distrust.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1952520219903037480

———— Mors Imperii ————

The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term

Reading the tea leaves from cryptic Supreme Court orders can be perilous business because the justices are not bound by the questions they ask at oral argument, the offhand comments they make at a judicial conference, or even their monumental ‘shadow docket’ rulings on emergency petitions that have become all too common.
But a technical briefing order in a long pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous. The order was likely intended to obscure that SCOTUS is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2.
Such a monumental ruling, likely not coming until June 2026, would change the nature of congressional, state, and local elections all across the country, and likely stir major civil rights protests as the midterm election season heats up.

Funding Chaos Awaits Congress

When the House and Senate return from their month-long August recess, lawmakers will have just four weeks to avert a government shutdown — and some kind of kick-the-can funding patch is all but guaranteed.
Before the Senate adjourned Saturday evening, the chamber passed the first bipartisan spending package of the year. But on the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans have yet to welcome government funding negotiations with Democrats, after spending the summer stiff-arming them by advancing bills with steep cuts and conservative mandates.
The mood on Capitol Hill already wasn’t ripe for a major bipartisan breakthrough this fall on government funding, given the Republican capitulation to President Donald Trump’s moves to undercut billions of dollars Congress has already approved. Now fiscal conservatives say House GOP leaders promised them no funding will be increased, while dozens of Republicans are demanding earmarks and Democrats are weighing ultimatums like re-upping Obamacare funding as a condition of passing legislation in September to keep federal operations afloat.

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

Abbott’s Options to Force Redistricting Are Limited

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had a message for the dozens of Democratic legislators who fled the state to derail a mega-partisan gerrymander: “This truancy ends now.”
But Abbott’s options to compel those Democrats — whose departure to Illinois and other states is preventing the state Legislature from conducting any business — to return and vote are more constrained and legally uncertain than he let on. And they may take significant time to resolve in court.
Abbott and other Texas Republicans face a hard deadline as they are preparing to adopt maps that could net the GOP five seats in the U.S. House, potentially cementing the party’s majority in Congress. Maps need to be completed before the end of the year so that election officials can prepare for the state’s March 3 primaries.

How the Constant Noise Distracts From the True Peril of Trump’s Misrule