JB Holston

Hundreds quarantined as South Carolina measles outbreak accelerates A state epidemiologist said the spike in cases came in the wake of Thanksgiving travel and a lack of vaccinations. At least 16 cases were traced to a church.

If only... www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

I know we’ve been talking about the 25th Amendment being invoked for years now, but we should probably be talking about it a lot more and a lot more seriously right now.

PRC MSS head Chen Yixin on the US under Trump: "The unipolar hegemony of a major power is becoming increasingly unsustainable. At home, its democracy is mutating, its economy decaying, and its society fracturing at an accelerated pace; abroad, its credibility is rapidly going bankrupt."

In New York City, Congestion Pricing Leads to Marked Drop in Pollution

Particulate pollution in the air down a whopping 22% in NYC’s congestion pricing zone.

Not only are the streets less congested, but so are our lungs.

e360.yale.edu/digest/new-y...

CONFIRMED: Eileen Higgins, a Democrat, will be the new mayor of Miami.

She'll be the city's first Democratic mayor since the 1990s. She flipped the office from Republicans, and does so easily. She leads the DeSantis-endorsed Emilio González 59/41 right now with most ballots counted.

Congestion pricing improved air quality in NYC and suburbs | Cornell Chronicle Cornell researchers tallied the environmental benefits of New York City’s congestion pricing program and found air pollution dropped by 22% in Manhattan, with additional declines across the city’s fiv...

In addition to all of the other benefits already reported about NYC congestion pricing, "In the first six months of the program, air pollution – in the form of particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller – dropped by 22% in the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ)"

news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

QE May Be Needed If Market Queries New Fed Chair, Man Group Says The Federal Reserve may have to turn to quantitative easing to lower long-term borrowing costs if bond markets start to question the independence of the next chairman, according to Man Group.

Yep.. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Every legal story now is either

Ancient Circuit Judge Delivers Crystal Clear 100 Page Rebuke To Trumpist Overreach

or

In Unsigned Shadow Docket Decision, 6-3 Majority Declares Trump Can Hunt People For Sport

Today's SCOTUS hearing: "Sotomayor: ‘You're asking us to destroy the structure of government’" -- via CNN

Yep; crony, corrupt courtier economy vs. capitalism. Partly why small businesses are getting killed -- they don't have access. (And, of course, they have tariffs....)

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing ...

'Natch www.propublica.org/article/trum...

“Høeg will politicize a science-focused office responsible for America's drug development and pipeline. As a result, the source said, companies might no longer view the FDA as a reliable partner and may choose to develop new products overseas”

Talking With Paul Kedrosky So, about this AI thing ...

"The training models ... assume you're a 37 year-old guy on Reddit...." open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

So let me get this straight - US will sign an agreement with RU recognizing occupied territories as theirs, while signing one with Ukraine on what exactly?

Herewith, RU managed to get US to violate the UN Charter on paper. Brilliant.

US may end support for Ukraine war effort, says Donald Trump Jr Eldest son of Donald Trump makes speculative comments during tirade against Volodymyr Zelenskyy and EU Donald Trump may walk away from the Ukrainian war, the US president’s oldest son has said in comments to a Middle East conference. In a lengthy tirade against the purpose of continued fighting in Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr also said Ukraine’s “corrupt” rich had fled their country leaving “what they believed to be the peasant class” to fight the war. Continue reading...

US may end support for Ukraine war effort, says Donald Trump Jr

The LA Taco daily memo is legit the best approach to covering these widespread, disparate raids, bar none. A simple, three minute roundup that gives you the sense of the scale of the terror attacks every day. Why every news org in a town getting hit *still* hasn't copied this is beyond me.

Excellent:

Brilliant.

Drought-hit Morocco turns to desalination to boost drinking water supplies - TRT Afrika English Droughts have dried up some of Morocco's main water reservoirs and depleted underground resources.

"Morocco, which has endured seven years of drought, plans to supply 60% of its drinking water from treated seawater by 2030"

#Morocco 🇲🇦
#ClimateCrisis

Here’s How Much Eric Trump Is Worth Crypto took the real estate heir’s fortune and supersized it, briefly making the president’s second-oldest son a billionaire in early September.

New: “Eric Trump Has Gotten 10 Times Richer Since Dad’s Election”

@kylekhanmullins.bsky.social for @forbes.com

Looks so similar to Malibu … and Palisades .. fires …

Governor Newsom meets President Trump on the LAX tarmac during Trump's January 2025 visit to survey the damage left by the Los Angeles area firestorms. 11 months later, Trump has yet to actually transmit the formal request to Congress for critical disaster funding to help Southern California communities recover from the Palisades and Eaton fires — despite California's urgent pressure and bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

In January, Donald Trump looked me in the eye on the tarmac, promising Angelenos that he'd help rebuild after the firestorms.

11 months later, he still hasn't delivered.

That's why I'm headed to D.C. to push for a long-overdue federal aid package for survivors.

Trump’s Peace Prize …

RFK Jr.’s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns The CDC's vaccine advisory panel, stocked with anti-vaccine activists and loyalists to RFK Jr., voted Friday to stop recommending a birth dose of vaccine.

Kennedy's zombie ACIP panel just voted to restrict hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. Experts say it will harm children for no reason. www.ms.now/news/rfk-cdc...

ACIP member Dr. Cody Meissner:

"'Do no harm' is a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording. And I vote no."

looking forward to either a 6-3 decision that trump as God Emperor of the United States can change the constitution by fiat or a 5-4 decision that 14th amendment means what it says with a dissent from thomas that actually the constitution recognizes donald j. trump as sovereign

It happened again: The Trump administration has admitted illegally deporting a man to Guatemala despite an immigration judge's order that he was likely to be tortured there.

A judge has ordered the administration to facilitate his return by next week.storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide Trump administration is pausing naturalizations for immigrants from 19 countries.

“She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.”

www.wgbh.org/news/local/2... @gbhnews.bsky.social

Two years on from Supreme Court decision, Black students feel less welcome at UNC-Chapel Hill Two years after the US Supreme Court outlawed race conscious admissions, Carolina's incoming classes have had 25% fewer Black students. After administrators eliminated DEI support programs, students w...

Two years after the US Supreme Court outlawed race conscious admissions, Carolina's incoming classes have had 25% fewer Black students. After administrators eliminated DEI support programs, students who are on campus say they feel unwanted.

www.wunc.org/education/20...

Same Script, Different Target A trans instructor in Oklahoma gave a bad essay the grade it deserved. What happened next follows a formula the right has perfected.

"The family isn’t arguing that this particular grading decision was wrong. They’re celebrating their daughter’s role in a broader campaign to make trans people unemployable. " via @parkermolloy.com open.substack.com/pub/readtpa/...

US Vows Over $1 Billion for Congo Critical Minerals Supply Chain The US is in talks to provide more than $1 billion for two critical minerals and railway projects in central Africa as it seeks to secure supplies deemed crucial for national security.

Perhaps @propublica.org can investigate who will be grifting off this along the way. Imperialism 2.0 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...