Two-star major general irony. Today’s Age cartoon.

Columbia Grapples With Federal Scrutiny After Trump Deal Begins On the last Friday of summer, nearly 200 Columbia University professors joined a packed lecture hall and video call where speakers blasted the Ivy League school’s $221 million settlement with the Trump administration and threatened work stoppages.

Classes are in session, but Columbia is still struggling to recover from its showdown with the Trump administration.

Trump Sends California Guard Troops to Portland, Ore., Newsom Says The move follows a judge’s order on Saturday that blocked the Oregon National Guard from deploying there. California’s governor said the state would sue.

The Trump administration sent 300 federalized members of the California National Guard to Oregon early Sunday, after being blocked by a federal court from deploying the Oregon National Guard in that state, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom denounced the move and said California would sue.

Sotomayor rebukes calls to ‘criminalize free speech’ in apparent swipe at Pam Bondi The justice, in public remarks, didn’t name the attorney general, who has come under fire for comments to target people over “hate speech.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to rebuke calls to target “hate speech” in an apparent swipe at Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” said Sotomayor.

I laughed when I saw this, yet unfortunately, it is true.

Florida surgeon general denies need for study ahead of end to vaccine mandates in the state Joseph Ladapo insisted that his position was a principled defense of parents' rights.

The Florida Surgeon General said that his team did not need to do any studies on the effects of removing state vaccine mandates before making his public appeal.

decrepit draft dodger declares war on Chicago Donny’s gonna make an apocalypse ... in his pants

thanks to @karin829.bsky.social, I've changed the cover artwork on today's post, "decrepit draft dodger declares war on Chicago" — Donny’s gonna make an apocalypse ... in his pants.
thanks, Karin!
folks, please check out my updated post here: bit.ly/485u7Qd

because nothing says 'I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize' more than renaming your Department of Defense to the Department of War

No, JD, belonging in America does not depend on how many generations of your family have lived here. The values of this country matter - deeply - to who we are and what it means to be American.

Silent Coup: How Trump’s Allies Are Gaming Algorithms To Seize Your Feed New research unravels the secret tactics behind Stop the Steal and other right-wing disinformation campaigns.

This is exactly why Dems get their ass handed to them by Trump's world. They have no clue how to leverage social media algos to their advantage.

open.substack.com/pub/weaponiz...

Gabbard overrode CIA officials’ concerns in push to release classified Russia report CIA officials worried the release of the House Intelligence Committee report on 2016 Russian election interference could reveal top-secret spying techniques and sources. Tulsi Gabbard overrode their c...

Exclusive: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a minimally redacted version of a highly classified document on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election after an intense behind-the-scenes struggle over secrecy with the CIA.

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Adam Douglas Thompson. #NewYorkerCartoons

the issue of drug prices is solved. Dear Leader has already lowered them by a millionty-thousand percent. it’s true! here’s Donny on the tarmac last evening, coming from from his weekend spent cheating at golf at his New Jersey ex-wife cemetery. “one of the things we’re going to be talking about pretty soon are the uhhh tremendous drop in drug prices. you know, we’ve cut drug prices by twelve hundred, thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred percent. I don’t mean fifty percent. I mean fourteen, fifteen hundred percent.” oh dear, President Yap Yap is sundowning again. we talked about this at length yesterday, how Demented Donny’s nonsensical insistence that he’s going to cut drug prices by “fifteen hundred percent” is a mathematical impossibility. if you reduce the price of something by one hundred percent, you’ve made it free. you cannot reduce the price of anything by a number larger than one hundred percent, unless you’re suggesting that the vendor pay the customer to take the product off their hands. but did you notice in the clip above, Donny is no longer talking about how he’s going to lower drug prices. now, he’s already done it — “you know, we’ve cut drug prices.” magically, and overnight. you’re welcome. America’s Mad King has completely broken with reality and can no longer distinguish between fact and fantasy. words and numbers have completely lost their meaning. how fucking amazing would it be if some brave reporter stood up and said, ‘Mister President, I have a prescription that costs $100. how much will that be after you lower it by fifteen hundred percent?’ I would pay good money to watch Donny try to calculate the result in his big dumb pumpkin head. I don’t know what his answer to the reporter would be, but I’m sure it would include the words ‘nasty’ and ‘fake news.’

from today's post, wherein America's Imbecile King now claims that he has ALREADY lowered the price of prescription drugs by FIFTEEN HUNDRED percent..
please read the whole thing, thanks!
link is here: bit.ly/4orQHbJ
(and as always, there's a longer excerpt in the alt text)

Good morning 🌞

Larry Summers: "This is way beyond anything Nixon ever did ... this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers, launching assaults on universities, launching assaults on law firms. This is really scary stuff."

Comer says he will postpone Ghislaine Maxwell testimony The House Oversight chair also rejected an immunity request from the Jeffrey Epstein associate.

The scheduled congressional deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell is indefinitely postponed.

Sixty years ago today, Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law - securing health care for millions and saving countless lives. As GOP politicians try to tear them down, it's up to us to protect and expand these programs for Americans who rely on them today and for future generations.

📌 Hope this soul follows him

everywhere . A true hero 🐥

This bird has more IQ then most humans…
Can it solve the puzzle… 🧩
🐦‍⬛

Texas native reveals: ‘Why I’ll be terrified to practice in Texas as an OB-GYN’ ‘By my second year in medical school, the effects of SB8 were getting more and more real. One night in the emergency room, the consequences just became so obvious in a real life way.’

"I’d be terrified to go back to Texas to practice as an OB-GYN after I finish my residency. I’d be absolutely terrified," writes a resident physician for COURIER's Courier Texas.

Opinion | I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here.

The most recent U.S. ambassador to Orban’s Hungary writes:
“After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse, I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence”

Congressmember @maxwellfrost.bsky.social visited the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz" immigration jail in the Everglades. He says the Trump administration is “trying to ethnically cleanse the country of Latinos, of Haitians" and notes he didn’t see “Europeans who've overstayed their visa.”

NOAA was developing a way to predict extreme rainfall — until Trump officials stopped it The tool would have projected how climate change could affect rainfall frequency and intensity in communities across the nation.

Exclusive: Trump officials have indefinitely suspended work on a crucial tool to predict extreme rainfall frequency, a move that experts said will make the country more vulnerable to storms supercharged by climate change.

Stealth Stake Sales Helped UnitedHealth Beat Wall Street Targets The health giant included gains from asset sales in its adjusted earnings — a move that’s permissible but now has some analysts looking more closely at profits.

Exclusive: For 15 years, UnitedHealth beat earnings estimates. That streak might have ended sooner if not for some stealth dealmaking

No one.