This must be the second most heavily defended waterway in the world…after the Strait of Hormuz. I’m back with some sad news from the Lincoln Reflecting Pool…
Scientists in Atlanta were stopped from criticizing the Trump admin at a scientific conference, so let me do it here:
Trump is destroying biomedical research in America, and it will take decades to get back on track.
Spread the word. Stand up for science.
This is not a normal statement from a normal cabinet member of a major nation.
This statement from Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir is the statement of a war criminal.
The racist, extremist Israeli government does not deserve one nickel of U.S. support.
Susan Collins is lying through her teeth. Roe v. Wade was not overturned 6-3. That is a lie. It was 5-4. Roberts specifically said he did not support overturning Roe.
Brett Kavanaugh was the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And Susan Collins was the deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.
BREAKING: A federal judge has blocked the use of a federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters. https://t.co/SEXwxtny7t
All the records broken by Lionel Messi today:
Most FIFA World Cup finals goals by a football (soccer) player - 18
Most FIFA World Cup matches played in by an individual - 28
Most matches won by a player at the football (soccer) FIFA World Cup - 18
Most minutes played in the football (soccer) FIFA World Cup - 2,489
We are witnessing history.
The Pentagon is the only place in America where you can fail 8 audits in a row, admit you’ll fail the next few & still get handed more money than you asked for.
But let a family need help buying groceries and suddenly it’s a lecture about hard work, responsibility & bootstraps.
“They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was.
They knew the bright orange house in Mansouri, south Lebanon. They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon's southern coast; a sanctuary dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles and preserving life.”
Marwa Osman writes about Israel’s deliberate targeting of a prominent environmental activist in Lebanon. ⬇️
The Lessons I Learned from My Dad
I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.
Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.
I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.
I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.
I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.
Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.
That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.
Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went.
The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.
Michelle and I loved reading to this bright group of kids today!
We hope this new Chicago Public Library branch at the Obama Presidential Center will be a place where folks come to read, check out books, and connect with one another for years to come.
“You only care about violence against women and girls when it’s committed by a brown person”
I’m living for Thangam Debbonaire losing her shit after being incessantly interrupted by Sarah Pochin and then utterly bodying her.
No notes.
Ah, there it is.
The cash-grab gossip books. The “exclusive” interviews. The fake journalism. The same media parasites who spent years pretending they were saving democracy are now cashing in on the circus they helped bring back.
Biden was boring. Stable. Competent. Bad for ratings.
Trump is chaos, clicks, book deals, panel hits, and nonstop content.
They wanted the show back.
Now they get paid while the country burns.
That’s not journalism. That’s a business model.
Spin is one thing, but it is worth noting that virtually everything Vance says about the JCPOA in this clip is wildly misleading or outright false:
1. "The Gulf Coast Coalition loves this deal." (The "Gulf Coast" is in the southern US along the Gulf of Mexico but he is presumably referring here to the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC.) GCC states don't "love this deal" but support it to end the war that Trump started that led to thousands of attacks on their countries and shut off their exports.
2. "The Obama deal allowed enrichment, ours will not." The Obama deal allowed enrichment that was strictly limited in level, amount, location and types of centrifuges, and carefully monitored by the IAEA. The Trump MOU says nothing about enrichment except that Iran "agreed to discuss the issue...related to Iran's nuclear needs."
3. "The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiles of weapons-grade material, ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched material." ??? The Obama deal did not allow the accumulation of any enriched uranium, let alone "weapons-grade material." In fact, the JCPOA required Iran to ship out 98% of all its enriched uranium, leaving it with no more than 300kg of LEU. It was only after Trump tore up that deal that Iran was free to expand that stockpile to thousands of kg, and to start accumulating 60% highly enriched uranium, 400kg of which is still in Iran. All the MOU says about that is that the US and Iran "have agreed to resolve" its disposition and that this will be done "on-site" (not in the US as Trump promised) and does not say to what level.
4. "The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money." Once again simply false. The JCPOA unfroze some of Iran's own assets and suspended oil sanctions in exchange for comprehensive and nuclear commitments, and did so only after the IAEA had verified their implementation. The Trump MOU gives Iran "immediate" waivers for exports not just of oil but of derivatives and associated services, commits to making frozen assets available without restrictions, and pledges to develop a $300 bn fund for reconstruction and development in Iran. It also undertakes, in any final nuclear deal, to terminate "all types of sanctions" against Iran, which include sanctions for human rights abuses, ballistic missile production, and sponsorship of terrorism.
It's one thing to try to sell an agreement that even your own supporters consider astonishingly weak. It's quite another to try to mislead the American people with blatant distortion of the facts.