Monday, September 1, 2025

Something to Know - 1 September

1 September is usually a festive occasion that acknowledges the working.    Trouble is, we are being jerked around, and our country is going very sour, very fast.   No use in detailing the complaints;  too numerous and upsetting.   It's unbelievable how thick the crud is up there sloshing around in the Ofal Orifice.   

Weekend at Donny's: A Labor Day of Sewage, Scandals, and Silence

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Mary Geddry from Geddry's Newsletter marygeddry@substack.com 
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Weekend at Donny's: A Labor Day of Sewage, Scandals, and Silence

Beaches closed by fecal contamination, unions fighting for survival, diseases creeping north, the CDC gutted, Pam Bondi running a family-and-friends DOJ, and a president trying to prove he's alive

Sep 1
 
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Good morning! Labor Day in America, 2025. A holiday meant to honor the working class, and what better way to do that than by shutting down the beaches because the water's literally full of crap. From Maine to Florida, from Michigan's lakes to San Diego's surf, the advice was the same: don't swim unless you want E. coli in your gut, rashes on your skin, or worse. Silver Strand, Coronado, Santa Monica, Hermosa, all closed. It turns out you can't keep sewage, animal waste, or cyanobacteria out of the water when the nation's infrastructure is rotting alongside its politics. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 57 million Americans get sick each year from swimming in contaminated water. Consider it the true national pastime: spending Labor Day weekend with your head in the toilet.

But while Americans are told to stay out of the water, Xi Jinping is busy hosting a literal hand-holding ceremony in Tianjin. He clasped paws with Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, calling for an "orderly multipolar world" while Trump sulks in Washington. China pledged another billion in loans, floated a development bank, and staged the optics of chumminess that Trump could never buy with tariffs. The summit wasn't about substance so much as optics: leaders from Russia, Iran, India, and beyond standing together, smiling, while America's global influence fades like sunscreen in sewage surf. It's the sort of soft-power judo move Beijing loves, no great deal signed, just a perfectly staged photo op that says: we're united, America's a mess.

Back home, Labor Day for workers was less celebration and more funeral procession. Unions in California gathered under helicopters and ICE raids, remembering colleagues killed while fleeing federal agents. SEIU's David Huerta was injured and detained while documenting a raid, a vivid reminder that even labor leaders are fair game. Trump's administration, never one to miss a chance at cruelty, gutted collective bargaining for federal unions, gutted the National Labor Relations Board, and celebrated a "Big Beautiful Bill" that strips healthcare from millions while growing ICE. Caregivers who spent decades tending to veterans and the disabled now face layoffs and benefit cuts, while major hospitals slash staff and services under the weight of Trump's budget knife. As one labor historian put it, the movement is fighting for survival. Labor Day isn't a picnic; it's a wake.

A new old threat creeps closer. Chagas disease, once written off as a tropical affliction of "somewhere else," is now quietly endemic across 30 U.S. states, with California leading the way. The parasite spreads via the kissing bug, which doesn't discriminate between poor farmworkers and wealthy Hollywood Hills homeowners. Between 70,000 and 100,000 Californians are already infected, most unaware until their first "symptom" is a heart attack. Dogs get it, raccoons get it, wood rats and skunks get it, and yes, people get it, often discovered only when they try to donate blood. But because it's not a reportable disease in most states, there's no system, no surveillance, no plan. America can't even keep sewage out of the surf, let alone track a parasite silently spreading through its own suburbs.

And then there's the CDC, once the crown jewel of American public health, now reduced to a political husk. Last week, its top scientists resigned en masse in protest after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation's top conspiracy theorist turned HHS Secretary, turned the agency into a prop for Trump's political theater. The chief medical officer, the heads of immunization and emerging diseases, the directors of surveillance and statistics, all gone. They walked out to cheers from their colleagues, but the applause was a requiem. Without their recommendations, vaccines no longer carry automatic insurance coverage, turning basic immunization into a luxury item. Measles outbreaks are back, flu spikes go underreported, COVID still simmers. Wealthy families will pay out of pocket; poor families will get sick. The diseases of poverty are poverty itself. As doctors Ida Brown and Sonia Sloan said: this isn't philosophical, lives are on the line. And while the agency collapses, Trump brags about "making America healthy again" through the sheer force of RFK Jr.'s vibes.

And because no American holiday is complete without a fresh scandal, enter Pam Bondi, Trump's handpicked attorney general and longtime grifter-in-chief. Bondi, you'll remember, once dropped Florida out of the Trump University fraud suit after pocketing donations from Trump and Ivanka. Now, as head of the Department of Justice, she's apparently turned the place into a family discount outlet.

Two of her brother Brad Bondi's clients, a Missouri developer accused of wire fraud and a Florida woman charged with COVID relief theft, had their indictments mysteriously dropped by DOJ prosecutors. No new exculpatory evidence, no legal breakthroughs, just… dismissed. In Missouri, the defendant simply paid back the taxes he had cheated the government out of, and poof, case closed. It was the kind of sweetheart deal no ordinary defendant could dream of. Meanwhile, Trevor Milton, another of Brad Bondi's clients, convicted of securities fraud, received a Trump pardon in March. If you're keeping score: steal millions, hire Pam's brother, get your charges wiped away or a presidential pardon.

It's a system only a Bondi could love: one law for insiders, another for everyone else. And the supposed nation's top law enforcement officer hasn't even bothered to put guardrails in place to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, let alone the reality. For career DOJ attorneys still trying to do their jobs, it's demoralizing. For the rest of us, it's proof, as if we needed more, that under Trump, justice really is for sale, and the family discount applies.

And what of the man himself? On Labor Day, Trump's public schedule was a blank page, a fitting metaphor for his presidency. Over the weekend he tried to prove he was alive with a series of awkward posts: a photo in "the Beast," another on the golf course, and one with disgraced ex-NFL coach John Gruden. But the Gruden photo turned out to be a rerun from August 23rd, with Gruden in the same outfit he'd already posted. The handshake looked AI-scrubbed. MAGA influencers circulated months-old clips as "breaking news." It was less a presidency than a poorly managed Instagram account.

Trump's posts grew weirder: an email about how he "came millimeters from death" and "wants to get to heaven," a boast about $15 trillion in imaginary foreign investment (not a penny to show for it), and a claim that prices are "way down" while Americans pay more than ever at the store. He even declared DC a "crime-free zone," which will come as news to the Secret Service still cleaning up broken windows. For good measure, he posted a painting of himself engulfed in flames with the caption "America is hot." Proof of life? More like a funeral pyre selfie.


So here we are: a Labor Day defined by sewage beaches, dying unions, neglected diseases, a collapsing CDC, and a president trying to convince the country he's still breathing with recycled golf photos and bad Photoshop. If this isn't the metaphor for America in 2025, what is? The water's unsafe, the health system's leaderless, the working class is under siege, and the commander-in-chief is either hiding, hallucinating, or both. Happy Labor Day, America. Don't forget your hazmat suit.




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Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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Sunday, August 31, 2025

Something to Know - 31 August

On a brighter note.   

Robert Reich 
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1:04 AM (11 hours ago)
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Friends,

The neofascist takeover of America — of our cities, universities, media, law firms, museums, civil service, and public prosecutors who tried to hold Trump and Trump's vigilantes accountable to the law — worsens by the day.

As I've traveled across the country peddling my book, trying to explain how this catastrophe happened and what we can do about it, I've found many Americans in shock and outrage.

"How could it have happened so fast?" they ask. I explain that it actually occurred slowly and incrementally over many years until our entire political-economic system became so fragile that a sociopathic demagogue could bring much of it down.

Some people I speak with are still in denial and disbelief. "It's not as bad as the press makes it out to be," they say. I tell them that it is — even worse.

Others are in despair — heartbroken and immobilized. "Nothing can be done," they say. I tell them that hopelessness plays into the hands of Trump and his lackeys who want us to think that the game is over and they've won. But we can't let them. The stakes are too high. Hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Rest assured. The seeds of Trump's destruction have already been sown. He will overreach. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of birthright citizenship, for example, and Trump announces he's not bound by the Supreme Court, the uproar will be deafening.

Or the economy will bite him in the butt. As prices continue to rise and job growth continues to slow — due to Trump's bonkers import taxes (tariffs), his attempt to take over the Fed, and his attacks on immigrants — America will fall into the dread trap of "stagflation": stagnation and inflation. After months of this, his base is likely to turn on him — remember, many voted for him because he promised to bring prices down — and he and his Republican lackeys in Congress will be toast in the 2026 midterms.

Or his brazen corruption will do him in (he's personally raking in hundreds of millions from crypto, for example). Or Putin will do him in (if Ukraine falls to Russia or an emboldened Russia strikes Lithuania). Or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

He no longer has any truth-tellers to advise him — he has purged all of them. And a president who's flying blind, without anyone around him to tell him he's about to crash, will inevitably crash. Many innocent people will likely suffer "collateral" damage. But at least the nation will see him for who he is and consign him to the dustbin of history.

None of this argues for complacency. We must continue to fight — demonstrate, phone your representatives and senators, boycott corporations and organizations that are caving in to tyranny, protect the vulnerable, make good trouble.

But please do not fall into denial or despair, and don't let anyone else.




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****
Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Something to Know - 27 August

Trump boiled his political campaign into a nutshell yesterday.    He claims that the United States is crime-ridden, and "people are saying" that we need a dictator, and that he is the dictator - or words to that effect.   When Trump says "people are saying" or "they say", it is his way of trying to convince without any evidence.   So, he is basically saying that Democracy is a failure , and that he, as your dictator, will fix all the problems.   He is the only one who can fix things.   This will be an interesting thing to watch as we push back.  Governor Pritzker will have plenty of evidence to present the contrary viewpoint.


Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American heathercoxrichardson@substack.com 
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Aug 26, 2025, 10:44 PM (7 hours ago)
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Today, for the second time in as many days, President Donald J. Trump suggested that Americans want a dictator. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room that lasted more than three hours, during which he listened to the fulsome praise of his cabinet officers and kept his hands below the table, seemingly to hide the bad bruising on his right hand, Trump said: "The line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, 'You know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.'"

With Trump underwater on all his key issues and his job approval rating dismal, the administration appears to be trying to create support for Trump by insisting that the U.S. is mired in crime and he alone can solve the problem. The administration's solution is not to fund violence prevention programs and local law enforcement—two methods proven to work—but instead to use the power of the government to terrorize communities.

There is a frantic feel to that effort, as if they feel they must convince Americans to fear crime more than they fear rising grocery prices or having to take their children past police checkpoints on their way to school.

Last night, speaking with personality Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, widely believed to be the person behind the draconian immigration raids in the country, seemed to be angry that Washingtonians weren't sufficiently grateful for Trump's takeover of the streets. But Miller indicated that the administration is really focused on splitting Republicans and Democrats who disapprove of the administration's policies, demonizing the Democrats.

Miller asserted to Hannity that the "Democrat Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization…. The Democrat Party, Sean, that exists today," he said, "it disgusts me."

Now, with Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker taking a stand against the deployment of troops in Chicago, Trump appears to be nervous about sending troops on his own hook and instead trying to pressure Pritzker to ask for them. In the Oval Office today, he complained that Pritzker wasn't asking for troops, and on social media tonight he called Pritzker "an incompetent Governor who should call me for HELP."

And yet, for all their talk of dispatching soldiers to combat crime, National Guard troops today were picking up trash in Washington, D.C., and working on dozens of "beautification and restoration" projects.

The administration's focus on crime to win back support for the president is going to have to overcome increasing uneasiness with Trump's attempt to take control of the nation's monetary policy.

In a letter posted to social media last night at 8:02 Eastern Time, President Donald J. Trump announced that he was removing Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook from her position "for cause." That cause, he claimed, was the allegation from Trump loyalist William Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, that Cook had made false statements on a mortgage years ago. With Pulte's help, the administration has gone after a number of Democrats with such allegations. Cook has not been charged with any crime. Historically, "for cause" has meant corruption or dereliction of duty.

Trump has been at war with the Federal Reserve for months. The Fed is an independent institution that oversees the nation's economy and manages the nation's monetary policy, which means the Federal Reserve sets interest rates for the country. Trump wants it to lower interest rates to make it easier to borrow money. Cheaper money will goose the economy, but it is also likely to spur inflation, which is already on the rise thanks to Trump's tariff war and massive deportations of migrant workers. Trump has been pressuring Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates or, failing that, to resign.

Trump has mused about taking control of the Fed himself, but the politicization of the nation's monetary policy so it responds to the whims of Trump rather than actual economic conditions makes economists and most elected officials recoil. Today in his newsletter, economist Paul Krugman wrote that if Trump's illegal firing of Cook is allowed to stand, "the implications will be profound and disastrous. The United States will be well on its way to becoming Turkey, where an authoritarian ruler imposed his crackpot economics on the central bank, sending inflation soaring to 80 percent. And," he added, "the damage will be felt far beyond the Fed. This will mark the destruction of professionalism and independent thinking throughout the federal government."

In May the Supreme Court suggested it would overturn an almost century-old precedent saying that the president cannot remove the heads of independent agencies created by Congress. But even then, it protected the independence of the Fed, writing: "The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States."

Trump administration officials appear to be trying to find a way around that ruling by going after Cook on trumped-up charges. After serving as a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University and on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Cook has been on the board of governors since 2022. She is the first Black woman to sit on the board and might have drawn Trump's ire as well when she noted publicly that the jobs report earlier this month could signal an economic turning point.

Cook responded to Trump's letter in a statement saying: "President Trump purported to fire me 'for cause' when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022."

The administration's apparent persecution of undocumented immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it unlawfully deported to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March and then refused to return despite court orders to do so, is a more immediate illustration of the lawlessness of authoritarian rule.

The government finally returned Abrego to the U.S., only to announce that it had secured an indictment against him in Tennessee for allegedly conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants for financial gain, charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop for which Abrego was not charged with anything. He was jailed in Tennessee, and a judge ordered that he remain in jail to protect him from the government, which threatened to deport him again if he were released. He was finally released on August 22 and went home to his family in Maryland, but when he attended a mandatory check-in at the ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland, on Monday, August 25, he was arrested.

Members of the administration routinely describe Abrego, who has no criminal convictions, as a gang member, a human trafficker, a domestic abuser, and child predator who is terrorizing the United States. Trump referred to him yesterday as "an animal."

Now, as Jeremy Roebuck, Maria Sacchetti, and Dana Munro of the Washington Post explained yesterday, Abrego's lawyers say the government is trying to coerce him into pleading guilty of human trafficking, offering to send him to the Spanish-speaking Latin American country of Costa Rica if he does, but threatening to deport him to Uganda if he does not. As legal analyst Harry Litman notes, deportation would enable the government to avoid "having to show their hand on what seems to be a very threadbare case."

The official social media account of the Department of Homeland Security—a cabinet-level department of the United States government—trolled Abrego, whom the media often identifies as a "Maryland man," by posting: "Uganda Man."

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, whose order to return Abrego to the U.S. the government ignored for months, indicated she had no faith that the government would obey the law. She temporarily barred the administration from deporting Abrego until she can make sure the government follows the law, making Department of Justice lawyer confirm he understood that "[y]our clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States."

Tonight, Democrat Catelin Drey won a special election for the Iowa state senate, breaking a Republican supermajority and flipping a seat in a district Trump won by 11.5 points in 2024. Drey won the seat by 10.4%, showing a swing of more than 2o points to the Democrats. And in a seven-way race in Georgia for the state Senate in a deep red district, the lone Democrat, Debra Shigley, came in first with 40% of the vote. Since no candidate won 50% of the vote, Shigley will face whichever Republican candidate comes out on top—the top two are currently hovering around 17%—in a runoff on September 23.

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****
Juan Matute
The Harold Wilke House 
Claremont, California

Humpty Trumpty Shat on His Wall



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