Trump is mentally unstable and cognitively unfit to carry out the duties of the presidency … and getting worse by the day

SUBJECT: Grooming Standards for Facial Hair Implementation ​This memorandum provides implementing guidance pursuant to the August 20, 2025, directive, "Grooming Standards for Facial Hair," which established uniform grooming standards across the Force. ​In an era of increasingly complex operational demands—including high-tempo deployments, multi-domain warfare, and expanded emergency response roles—strict grooming compliance ensures personnel can safely and effectively employ protective equipment. This is critical not only for defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, but also for firefighting, disaster relief, and other hazardous mission sets where respiratory protection may be required, often on short notice. These standards are essential to maintaining equipment compatibility, operational readiness, and deployable force posture. ​Accession Standards ​All applicants, including re-entry candidates, must meet grooming standards prior to entry. ​Applicants unable to comply will be deferred from accession until standards are met. ​In-Service Compliance ​All personnel must maintain a clean-shaven face. ​Sideburns will be above the ear opening. ​Beards, goatees, and other facial hair are prohibited unless specifically authorized. ​Mustaches are authorized but will be neatly trimmed; not to extend past the mouth corners or into a respirator seal zone. ​Special Operations Forces units may request modified standards via validated mission-essential requirements. However, personnel will be clean-shaven when deployed to environments with a high threat of CBRN attack.

​Medical and Religious Accommodations ​Medical Accommodations ​The Department will revert to pre-2020 standards; only temporary profiles for medical conditions such as pseudofolliculitis barbae will be considered. ​All requests require individualized review for operational impact. ​Approved profiles will be limited to 12 months and must include a treatment plan. ​Permanent conditions will result in evaluation for administrative separation. ​Religious Accommodations ​The Department will revert to pre-2010 standards; facial hair waivers are generally not authorized. ​Individualized review required per Department of War Instruction 1300.17, "Religious Liberty in the Military Services," of September 1, 2020. ​Documentation demonstrating the sincerity of the religious or sincerely held belief will be a central factor in evaluating accommodation requests and must be sufficient to support a good faith determination by the approving authority. ​Approvals will be limited to non-deployable roles with low risk of chemical attack or firefighting requirements. ​Training and Certification ​All personnel will complete annual training to validate mask fit and reinforce grooming compliance. Masks may be a gas mask or firefighting equipment. ​Units will integrate training into annual training cycles and report completion rates. ​Deployment and Personnel Tracking ​Noncompliant personnel—due to refusal, exemption denial, or failed tests—will be flagged as non-deployable in the appropriate Military Service personnel system. ​Repeated noncompliance may result in administrative separation.

Implementation Timeline ​The Secretaries of the Military Departments will provide an implementation plan to the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness (USW(P&R)) within 60 days. ​The implementation plan will include: ​An assessment of the ability to implement training and certification requirements, to include any barriers or proposed exemptions for certain Active Component, Reserve Component, and National Guard units. ​The USW(P&R) has the authority to establish policy, assign responsibilities, provide procedures, and grant exceptions, as necessary, to implement this guidance. ​The Secretaries of the Military Departments will publish implementing directives no later than 30 days following the submission of their implementation plans, incorporating any exceptions to policy granted by the USW(P&R). ​Uniform grooming standards are not about appearance—they are about survivability, interoperability, and mission execution. Consistent enforcement ensures personnel can operate protective equipment, meet deployment requirements, and support combat and emergency operations. These guidelines underscore the Department’s commitment to readiness and force protection.

This memo to senior leadership mandates strict facial hair standards across the military for CBRN readiness & mask fit.
Medical & religious accommodations are severely limited & can result in non-deployable status or separation. Compliance is required for survivability & mission execution
[Alt text)

SUBJECT: Military Fitness Standards ​As I stated in my initial message to the Force, “Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear.” To ensure the lethality and readiness of America’s fighting Force, military leaders at all levels must ensure our Warfighters are prepared to meet the demanding requirements of combat by enforcing standards and leading by example. Our military’s discipline and excellence are what sets it above others across the globe. ​My goal is unmistakable: our core fighting formations must not just meet the standard — they must embody it. We need high, uncompromising, sex-neutral standards rooted in combat effectiveness. Every warfighter must be held to the same rigorous expectations. ​This directive outlines immediate actions to ensure every warfighter meets the physical and professional demands of combat, for which every Service member must be prepared. These requirements are not optional — they are foundational to our lethality and readiness. ​Fitness Testing Requirements ​Active Component Service members will execute two fitness tests annually: ​The existing Service Fitness Test. ​The second will be: ​A Combat Field Test for combat arms personnel (see attached list). ​A Combat Readiness Test for non-combat arms personnel or the Service Fitness Test. ​Service members will perform physical fitness training every duty day. ​National Guard and Reserve Component members will: ​Take personal responsibility to maintain an appropriate physical fitness regimen, regardless of duty status. ​Complete one fitness test annually, aligned to their combat or non-combat arms designation.

​Each Military Department will verify and validate its Combat Field Test within 60 days and submit an execution plan for National Guard and Reserve Component implementation. ​Regardless of Component, failure to meet established standards may be used to withhold favorable personnel actions, to include denied promotions, and administrative separation in accordance with standing regulations. ​Fitness Testing Matrix ​The following matrix outlines the specific fitness test requirements for combat arms and non-combat arms personnel. It is designed to clarify which evaluations apply to each category of Service member and ensure consistent enforcement across the Joint Force. For example, Army Expert Physical Fitness Assessment or Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test ​Body Composition ​Each Military Department will align with medically validated, streamlined approaches — using height and waist circumference method — to promote consistency and fairness across the Joint Force. The Military Departments will ensure that Service members are evaluated twice per year. ​Within 60 days, the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness will publish additional guidance on the height and waist standards that will take effect during the next calendar year. ​High performers on fitness tests may be granted exemptions, but only within defined limits. High performance does not excuse non-compliance with body composition standards.

Members exceeding body composition limits will be placed in remedial programs; those not demonstrating adequate progress will be subject to administrative measures to include processing for administrative separation. ​Leadership and Enforcement ​To uphold these standards across the Force, leadership must be both entrusted to lead and accountable for failure. The following actions are required to ensure consistent enforcement and transparency at every level: ​Standards must be clearly communicated across the Force to set expectations. ​Leaders at all levels are expected and empowered to enforce standards consistently. Standards left unenforced are not truly standards. ​Leaders will be held accountable if physical fitness and body composition standards are not enforced within their units. ​Each Military Service will establish or enhance electronic training records to ensure: ​Performance outcomes, including scores — not just pass/fail — are recorded and reflected in fitness reports and evaluations. ​Individual physical training requirements are documented and visible to each Service member. ​Regular evaluations of the electronic training records are conducted to assess compliance. ​Our Warfighters must always demonstrate the highest standards of physical fitness and combat readiness. Where expectations are not met, we must choose quality over quantity and lethality over complacency. ​Fitness should be regarded with the same seriousness as Professional Military Education. Fitness is not a checkbox — it is a core competency, as vital as Professional Military Education. Every Military Unit and individual Service member must strive to exceed the standard, not settle for it. ​If someone consistently treats the bare minimum as their standard, then they are not a fit for our fighting Force. The American people expect nothing less — and we must deliver.

Attachment: Combat Arms Occupations ​Army ​11A Infantry Officer 11B Infantry Soldier 11C Indirect Fire Infantry Soldier 11Z Senior Infantry Leader 12A Engineer Officer 12B Combat Engineer 12D Army Diver 13A Field Artillery Officer 13F Fire Support Specialist 180A Special Forces Warrant Officer 18A Special Forces Officer 18B Special Forces Weapons Sergeant 18C Special Forces Engineer Sergeant 18D Special Forces Medical Sergeant 18E Special Forces Communications Sergeant 18F Special Forces Assistant Operations and Intelligence Sergeant 18Z Special Forces Team Sergeant 19A Armor Officer 19C Bradley Fighting Vehicle Crewman 19D Cavalry Scout 19K M1 Armor Crewman 19Z Armor Senior Sergeant 89D Explosive Ordnance Disposal Specialist ​Navy ​113X Sea, Air, Land Officer 114X Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer 1190 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Candidate 6480 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Limited Duty Officer 715X Chief Warrant Officer Sea, Air, Land 717X Chief Warrant Officer Special Warfare Combat Crewman 720X Chief Warrant Officer Diving Officer M00A Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Apprentice M02A Basic Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician M03A Senior Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician M04A Master Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician M1DV Diver First Class M2DV Diver Second Class MMDV Master Diver O20A Special Operator Candidate O23X Sea, Air, Land Delivery Vehicle Operator O26X Sea, Air, Land Operator O50A Special Warfare Boat Operator Candidate O52X Special Warfare Combat Crewman/Boat Operator

This MFS mandates high, sex-neutral, combat-focused standards for all members. Active component must pass 2 annual tests (Service Test + Combat Field/Readiness Test). Body composition is measured by height/waist circumference. Leaders must ensure strict enforcement.
Failure can lead to separation.

DC is beautiful.
#FreeDC

The independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is vital. If politicized, it can't be trusted as a source of information. Who did Trump just put in charge of the agency? E.J. Antoni — chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and contributor to Project 2025.

Endless hostage-taking over the dumbest s***. He's not a dictator! Every action in society shouldn't require permission from the president.

Trump says he was surprised that Jerome Powell, the Fed chair he appointed, was appointed The president seemed to forget that he appointed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which was part of an unsettling pattern of cognitive missteps.

www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

What an excellent assessment. I feel much like you do...so does everyone I speak with

Here are the Nazis running the U.S. government.

Stephen Miller (left) is behind ICE’s masked army and concentration camps. Russell Vought (right) is to blame for architecting and executing Project 2025, the GOP’s fascist playbook.

Their goal is the same: form a white Christian nationalist regime.

‘They’re killing us’: Immigrants complain of inhumane conditions inside NYC holding site Immigrants complain of cramped conditions, inadequate food and bathing facilities and sleeping on concrete floors.

More than 60 people crammed in a small room for days at a time. Unable to change clothes or bathe. Insufficient food and water. Inadequate medical care. Forced to sleep sitting up or on the floor. No access to lawyers.

This is the inhumane reality facing the people held at 26 Federal Plaza in NYC.

The Complete List of Jeff Bezos Companies Many of the companies under Bezos were acquired by Amazon, but Bezos himself acquired a handful under his investment arm, Bezos Expeditions. This is the complete list of Bezos and Amazon companies.

Don’t stop at an #AmazonCRIMEday boycott!

Cancel your subscription. Find local alternatives. And don’t just stop at Amazon either. Bezos also owns or invests in Audible, Whole Foods, Kindle, Twitch, Zappos, AirBnB, NextDoor, Uber, Ring, GoodReads, the Washington Post, IMDb, and more.

Federal agents clash with protesters after immigration raid at farm near Camarillo The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information after a man was allegedly seen firing a weapon toward several agents during the clash with protesters.

ICE—armed as soldiers and backed by military vehicles—raided a farm in Ventura County, California yesterday.

They used rubber bullets, smoke canisters, flash bags, and tear gas on the protesters that met them in response.

Each day, there is more proof that ICE is a domestic terrorist organization.

Here’s Homan admitting to racial profiling.

WTF?!? Border Czar Tom Homan claimed that ICE and Border Patrol agents don’t need probable cause to detain people they suspect are undocumented, saying they can do so based on factors like physical appearance. This is straight-up racial profiling, not law enforcement.

The full moon in paintings 🌕 ⋆⭒˚.⋆

Not the America I spent my first seven decades in, will do what I can to help make it a temporary aberration @thirdactorg.bsky.social

North Carolina officials rescued dozens of people after Tropical Depression Chantal dumped up to 10 inches of rain in parts of the state, bringing significant flooding that inundated homes, closed highways, trapped drivers and pushed rivers up to near historic levels. https://trib.al/4BqheAM

Democracies do not use their military to try and intimidate their own citizens with “shows of presence”.

This is fascism.

“How could this happen?” It’s a question many of us are asking with broken hearts as the death toll continues to mount in the wake of the horrific Texas Hill Country flooding. We want to make sense of this tragedy, and we never want to see it happen again. As a Houston-based meteorologist who was born and raised on the outskirts of the Texas Hill Country and witnessed these types of flash floods first hand, I want to lend my voice and meteorological expertise to help answer some of the questions I’ve been receiving on the meteorology side of this tragedy. Catastrophic flash floods have always been a part of life in the Texas Hill Country. These naturally-occurring rainstorms that stall out are infrequent but not unprecedented. This is the birthplace of the phrase “Turn around, don’t drown!” with the nickname “Flash Flood Alley.” Due to the hilly terrain, when high amounts of rain fall in a short period of time, the water flows quickly through the creek and river valleys, sometimes with devastating and deadly consequences like we are witnessing on this July 4th holiday weekend. (See also the Blanco River flood in Wimberley on Memorial Day weekend in 2015, the Canyon Lake flood in July 2002, or the Guadalupe River flood in July 1987 for some of the more recent examples.) Often times these floods strike with little warning in the middle of the night due to the tropical nature of the air and the atmospheric physics at play. So what happened this time? Remnant tropical moisture from what was once Tropical Storm Barry is primarily responsible for this flood event, with an assist from upper level moisture peeled off from what was once Hurricane Flossie in the Pacific. A weak circulation in the mid-levels of the atmosphere developed over central Texas within this super-moist airmass to help organize the storms into a low-pressure complex called a “mesoscale convective vortex.” The steering currents were rather slow around this low with a steady feed of moist air called a “l…

How difficult is it to predict these flash floods? When I was studying meteorology at Texas A&M over 20 years ago, I remember being taught that the most difficult thing to predict was how much rain would fall and where that rain would fall. While we have made tremendous progress in “quantitive precipitation forecasts” over the last two decades, this is largely still true today. No meteorologist could have told you with high confidence more than a few hours in advance that *this* much rain would fall in those *exact* locations. But thanks to a forecasting technique known as “pattern recognition” (which comes with experience and studying past weather patterns) and the guidance offered up by more sophisticated “convection allowing models,” meteorologists already had a sense flash floods were possible on Thursday afternoon (when the National Weather Service issued a Flood Watch), and by Thursday evening they had a sense that something big was potentially brewing. I have attached the “mesoscale precipitation discussion” issued by NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center issued shortly after 6PM CT Thursday to put an extra focus on the dangerous flood ingredients that were coming together over the Hill Country. It is loaded with meteorological jargon, but it’s there for you to read if you so desire. I have also attached the “quantitative precipitation forecasts” (or QPF) from the high resolution “convection allowing models” (or CAMs) that came out Thursday morning. Some of them do show over 10” of rain falling north and west of San Antonio through 7AM on July 4th. Yet even on Thursday evening, no meteorologist could have accurately predicted with high confidence the specific rain amounts that fell in the precise locations where they fell, and the atmosphere exceeded even the worst projections of the computer models both in coverage and amounts of heavy rain, as is often the case with tropical rain events over Texas. Did recent staffing cuts and vacancies within the National Weath…

I have looked back at the timeline of warnings issued by the National Weather Service along with communications in a National Weather Service Slack channel where NWS/NOAA meteorologists, broadcast media, and emergency managers share information during extreme weather events, and I agree with assessments I’ve seen from other meteorologists that the National Weather Service issued timely warnings as the event unfolded in real-time. The first Flash Flood Warning for Kerr County was issued around 1 a.m., and the first Flash Flood Emergency (highest level of flood warning issued in the most extreme, life-threatening situations) was issued around 4AM, which automatically triggers a “Wireless Emergency Alert” to all cell phones within the warned area (unless users have elected to turn off those alerts). I’m also told by houston’s former NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist Dan Reilly that flash flood warnings issued hours earlier also contained a “considerable tag” that would’ve also triggered cell phone alerts in the middle of the night where cell service was available. It certainly didn’t help the situation that the Austin/San Antonio NWS weather forecast office is understaffed by 22% and without a Warning Coordination Meteorologist, but I see no evidence yet that it hurt the situation either with what I know. What I am not privy to are all the communications the NWS had with emergency managers and local officials in the middle of night outside of the Slack Channel we use to communicate and share information. Therefore, I cannot comment on what was done with the information and warnings pushed out by the National Weather Service, nor do I know how many meteorologists were staffed in the office to work this event.

What role did our changing climate have in this flood? The scientific body of evidence indicates that our warmer atmosphere and oceans increase the likelihood of these extreme precipitation events and the amount of rain that falls when they occur. The physics is pretty simple: Warmer oceans release more moisture into the atmosphere, and warmer air also holds more moisture. This enhances rainfall amounts above and beyond what would happen in a cooler world with cooler oceans. What about cloud seeding? (Added at 2PM because of all the genuine questions about it.) Cloud seeding cannot create a storm of this magnitude or size. In fact, cloud seeding cannot even create a single cloud. All it can do is take an existing cloud and enhance the rainfall by up to 20%. Most estimates have the rainfall enhancement in a much lower range. I am unaware of any active cloud seeding operations that occurred on Thursday night, but it is physically impossible for that to have created this weather system. This is a matter of scale. If I blow out a candle with my breath, does that mean I can then go blow out a raging wildfire? It is the same with cloud-seeding. For more, see this excellent report by my ABC colleague Ginger Zee: https://abcnews.go.com/.../ginger-zee-clears-air-cloud... There are many other questions that remain, like what can be done to protect people from future floods, and what can we do to help now? Hopefully there will be changes made and systems put in place to help protect people in the Hill Country from future flash floods that occur in the middle of the night, and as soon as I have a list compiled of ways to help the flood victims and their families, I will share it here. For now on this Day of Prayer in Texas, my prayers remain with the missing, the families of the flood victims, the first responders, and those tasked with leading us through the aftermath. 🙏🏻 🙏🏻🙏🏻

this is an excellent discussion of the July 4th Hill Country floods by @travisabc13.bsky.social, ABC13's chief meteorologist and a graduate of our program, @tamuatmo.bsky.social.

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

NEW TONIGHT: The IRS says that churches can now endorse candidates from the pulpit, carving out an exemption to the decades-old ban on politicking by nonprofits.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

Trump just killed @climate.noaa.gov. This was its next-to-last climate post.

Our final updates have been posted to the Climate.gov website, and this will be our final post to our social media channels.

Posted this last night.

Worth posting again.

It is one thing to read and hear about people being kidnapped, far different to actually see it.

These images must be seen, must be shared.

The world needs to know how real and rampant it is now in America.

An artist’s installation near the US Capitol raps the White House for its greed, grift, and gaud. Whoever created this installation has hit a satirical grand slam in the protest art realm. Story and video of the art prop:
dcmediagroup.us/2025/06/27/a...

An American perspective.

Spot on analysis; Trump has gambled that this will result in a distraction so that he can focus on the fascist agenda at home!
As a student of history, we have seen this many times as a key diversionary tactic used by authoritarian regimes.
He will invoke more emergency powers asap - beware USA!!

SEN. PADILLA: “Saying I lunged is a lie, but that’s par for the course for this administration… I was behind the cameras listening, and at a certain point hearing Noem say they had to rescue LA from the Governor and Mayor was too much to take. So I raise my voice to ask a question.”

Sneak peak at all of America tomorrow for “No Kings Day” 🍊🦅🇺🇸