A look at this week’s news feed
A look at some of the stories, videos that grabbed my attention this week
There are a few stories from this week that I’ve been reading and processing that I think are worth highlighting and discussing. So this week, I’ll do a sort of this-and-that mix of headlines.
Jeffery Epstein - There seems to be no bigger story this week in my algorithm than the massive flip-flop and cover-up from the Trump administration on the infamous Jeffery Epstein files. During the campaign, the president promised to release the files so everyone could learn exactly what happened on “Babe Island” and who travelled there aboard Epstien’s jet, named “The Lolita Express.” But now, the president’s Attorney General, who once said she had the files sitting on her desk revealed that there was absolutely nothing to see at all in the files, and that Epstein definitely killed himself in jail and that there’s nothing suspicious at all about the video footage that doesn’t show what happened at the moment of his death. It’s always interesting when I find myself on the same side of an issue as Tucker Carlson. A couple of other suggestions for reading on this topic: Epstein prosecutor Maurene Comey fired by AG for no reason; and this great story from 2020 - I called everyone in Jeffery Epstein’s little black book. There’s a lot of good information in the 2020 story, some I had forgotten. But my favorite passage is this: “The truth is that the elite world that Epstein ascended into, the one I tapped into by way of the black book, is populated with hordes of loathsome, boring, untalented people living their bumbling, idiotic lives while just so happening to wield some share of the preposterous global bounty that he and the rest were after. For all the mystery surrounding Epstein’s fortune, its existence is hardly more inscrutable than the wealth of any of his other billionaire peers. He earned it the same way they all did, which is to say precisely not at all.”
Federal tampering of voting machines - Despite right wing claims of voter fraud and stolen elections, it’s actually quite difficult to pull off in the United States, thanks to a system that is decentralized across states and counties. That means for any large scale theft to occur, every county clerk and election official in the country would have to in on the fix. Or at least enough of them to change an outcome - and they would all have to keep it quiet. But that system is under threat thanks to an over reaching federal government that is trying to insert itself into state business by requesting voter date and access to voting machines in several key states. An excerpt: “The Post said "the most unusual activity" was taking place in Colorado, where it said a consultant who was working with the White House had asked county clerks whether they would let federal officials or a third party examine voting machines.” Combine that with a quietly developing lawsuit in New York about potentially insidious remote updates to voting machines, and there’s a concerning recipe developing about the true nature of election interference. An excerpt: “Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review. These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.” As with the Epstein boondoggle, we will soon have an opportunity to see if extreme partisans have enough intellectual or moral integrity left to put principles above the good of the party.
News about the flooding in Texas that killed more than 100 people is starting to fade to the background, but it remains one of the more heartbreaking tragedies of the year. Some of the stories coming out of Kerr County are nearly unbearable to read.
Trump administration fires immigration judges, while also poised to infuse upwards of $170 billion - BILLION - dollars into ICE in an effort to further the administration’s mass deportation efforts. Already, the administration has helped erect a massive concentration camp in the Florida swamps, and is set to hire more agents to interact with more people. This is another area where there’s a lack of consistency from the right. The One Big Beautiful Bill includes funding to completely bloat ICE and grow a division of government. There’s $45 billion for detention, most of which will find its way to private companies like CoreCivic. Under this recently passed and signed legislation, ICE swells to become the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. If that doesn’t say big government, I don’t know what does.
CBS is cancelling next year the top rated late night show, Late Night with Stephen Colbert. And it, according to executives, has nothing at all to do with its planned merger with SkyDance - which needs approval from the Trump administration. Currently, CBS is owned by Paramount, which agreed to a financial settlement with Trump after he sued the network over a 60 Minutes broadcast he didn’t like. Colbert called it a Big Fat Bribe on the air, and made fun of the company for caving in to Trump’s demands.
The U.S. government seems to be less a government for and by the people, and more of a government for and by the wealthiest people in the world. The tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill mainly go to the richest folks in the country, while cutting programs for the rest of us. Trump properties are making millions, as people who wish to curry favor with the president book gatherings at his resorts and hotels. The president has abandoned the rules of divestiture that every other president has followed, and he’s publicly hawking everything from Bibles to Cryptocurrency.
I’m getting a lot of ads for the new Superman movie, and I think it looks really good. I’m planning to watch it soon, so I’d like to hear your thoughts if you’ve watched it.
I have long argued that our economic models are largely built on lies, created by the people who benefit from them and fed to every generation so that things will stay exactly the way they are. Oh, how many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s who still believe they’re just one lucky break away from making their millions. The system is rigged. It always has been, and the people in power, the people who make all that money from your effort, hope that it will stay rigged. So I’m always thrilled when I stumble upon something that reassures me that my sense of the world isn’t wrong. It’s a lonely place sometimes to live inside a system that I view as inherently bad and corrupt, but it seems to also be a place I find myself in quite often. I hope you’ll enjoy this little clip as much as I did. But mostly, I hope it makes as much sense to you as it did to me.
I hope you all have a good weekend, enjoying all of the things that bring joy to your life.
