October 8, 2026

Anton Troianovski & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: “The Trump administration argues that its proposed multibillion-dollar Russian oil deal would advance American foreign policy interests and lower energy prices. But most of the ownership in the deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to key U.S. officials involved in the negotiations, according to people familiar with the talks.... The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front.... The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake. But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.” The link is a gift link.

So yesterday, Trump said he refrained from doing "very, very bad things" to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden & Barack Obama out of respect for the presidency. Translation: so nobody should do very, very bad things to me, your president*. (Trump still seems to think that Hillary was once president, too. It's the second time he has publicly made that mistake recently; a short while back he said he could have impeached her -- an absolute impossibility. When Clinton was secretary of state [the only government job she held from which she could have been impeached], Trump had not held any government office, much less a Congressional seat that is the only office that would have allowed him to propose articles of impeachment.) But I digress. Trump's warped understanding of his presidential* powers -- "I can do whatever I want if I want" -- notwithstanding, former staff are fair game: ~~~

~~~ Alex Griffing of Mediaite: “Punchbowl News’s Laura Weiss reported on Thursday that ... Donald Trump’s Justice Department is actively working toward a criminal indictment for former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.... The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported last Friday that both Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel’s jobs are at risk if they do not provide Trump with indictments of those he has long viewed as his political enemies — including Hutchinson. 'The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines,' one former official told Fitzpatrick, adding that Trump wants results 'no matter how thin' the fact[s].... Trump has repeatedly called for Hutchinson to be prosecuted, including in a March 2024 Truth Social screed in which he wrote, 'Our great Secret Service has totally CRUSHED Cassidy Hutchinson’s (who I barely knew) made up (FAKE!) stories about me roughing up Secret Service Agents from the back seat of the Beast (Limo).'”

Erik Wemple of the New York Times: “A federal judge on Thursday temporarily extended his block on ... [Donald] Trump’s effort to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and said he would decide by next week whether to extend it for a longer stretch. Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said at a hearing the extension would give him time to evaluate the arguments in the case.” The link is a gift link.

Erica Green of the New York Times: “Vice President JD Vance announced on Thursday that Microsoft would be suspended from using a visa program that allowed foreign workers to permanently reside in the United States after an investigation found that the tech giant had 'abused' the system. Mr. Vance made the announcement in a news conference where he and other Trump administration officials made a slew of allegations that American companies and universities were committing visa fraud. Microsoft, they announced, is just the largest of several technology companies to face such a suspension, and schools including Harvard and Yale are now under investigation.... The Trump administration has sought to overhaul the [H-1B] program, including imposing fees for the visas, claiming that it has unfairly allowed companies to sideline Americans and hire foreign workers.” The link is a gift link.

Marie: One reason Old Man Trump seems to addled and out-of-touch is that a lot of his own staff tell him big fat lies all the time. Like this guy: ~~~

~~~ Natan Odenheimer & Adam Rasgon of the New York Times: “Since taking up his post in April 2025, [David] Milstein, 36, [a top aide to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee,] has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein[.] As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for 'cracking down' on the attacks. When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts to gain information.... Several officials ... said they were ... concern[ed] that officials in Washington were getting a distorted view of Israeli actions through core diplomatic channels.” The link is a gift link.

Ariana Baio of the Guardian: “A Trump donor accused Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece and Trump family ally, of engaging in a 'quid pro quo' by asking him to pay off her $100,000 debt in exchange for access to administration officials. Eric Deters, a former congressional candidate and lawyer, told MS Now on Thursday that Guilfoyle had 'ambushed' him last year with an offer to provide access to government officials if he paid her American Express credit card bill, before her US Senate confirmation hearing as ambassador to Greece. 'It absolutely was a quid pro quo,' Deters told the network in response to a Wall Street Journal report that she had pushed him for the money. 'Kimberly Guilfoyle is a grifter,' he added.” ~~~

~~~ It's worth watching a bit of this. Pick your bit:

Jasmine Garsd of NPR: A Department of Homeland Security "plan to convert warehouses into detention centers faced fierce backlash and legal challenges.... It was largely abandoned, and in several sites, including Roxbury[, New Jersey,] the government is legally forbidden by a court order from converting them to a detention facility, pending environmental assessments. But an NPR investigation has found signs that the New Jersey facility is being used.... NPR spoke to an official at a government contractor whose company was approached to convert several of the warehouses into ICE facilities. 'No one that we spoke to at DHS was for this idea whatsoever.... Everybody knew warehouses are horrible places to put people,' he says. At a meeting with a deputy director at DHS, he says, his company proposed a ... FEMA-style camps in Texas that would be more humane. He says that idea was swiftly shot down.... The contractor says his understanding ... was that '[Stephen] Miller did not want the facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane. We were told point-blank that that was not what the administration wanted.'" As RAS noted in linking this report, "Cruelty is the point."

~~~ What's Wrong with This Picture? Stuart Thompson of the New York Times analyzes an AI-generated photo, and finds a lot of things wrong with it. The link is a gift link. MB: I picked up on only a couple of the mistakes, including one Thompson didn't get, either. You'll have to look at the blown-up picture in the linked article to catch most of the mistakes (tho someone sharper than I am can pick up on one of them even in the photo above); the small photo here is too hard to see. And if you're trying to find the AI mistakes from a phone or small laptop, even one with high resolution quality, well, good luck.

Alex Marshall of the New York Times: “The Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday by the Swedish Academy, which cited 'her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.' She is the third Canadian-born writer to receive the honor, after Alice Munro in 2013 and Saul Bellow in 1976. Upon learning of the prize, Carson said 'Yikes,' according to her agent, Nicole Aragi.” The link is a gift link. MB: Yeah, I guess “Yikes” is “bold and inventive and playful within the classical tradition.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A number of today's stories are about or involve death. Two stories mention the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Well, one of them is about the Presidential* Medal of Freedom. The juxtaposition of the two stories does underscore the difference between the Presidential* Medal and the real Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow (Adolph Northen, 1828-1876)

~~~

ABC Australia (December 2012): "It went down in history as a military disaster which fatally weakened Napoleon's grip on Europe - but a manuscript auctioned in France overnight reveals the then-emperor argued his 1812 invasion of Russia was actually a victory." ~~~

... the Iranians are likely to internalize a dangerous lesson — that by demonstrating the ability to get close to U.S. military bases far beyond the Middle East, Trump can be pushed around. -- Dana Stroul, Washington Institute for Near East Policy ~~~

~~~ David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: “To hear ... [Donald] Trump and his aides describe it, the rush to withdraw 12 B-1 bombers from an air base in Britain over the weekend ... was no big deal.... But to anyone watching the deployment of American power around the globe in the seven months since Mr. Trump decided to attack Iran, it was another glaring example of how, time after time, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have been forced into retreat, pulling back military forces that had been deployed to the Middle East and Britain as a deterrent. Over the past several months, as the conflict has dragged on, the Iran war has come to reveal enormous new American vulnerabilities, forcing changes that the Pentagon was not contemplating a year ago. But it has also proved a bitter lesson in the unintended consequences that have flowed from Mr. Trump’s war of choice.” The link is a gift link.

Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times Wants to Know: “The shuttered John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a deadly place. Just ask ... [Donald] Trump. This week he said it was 'a great danger to anyone who walks inside.' Last month he said that a security guard had narrowly avoided 'certain death' after a storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster, injuring no one. The center, he said, is in a 'virtual state of collapse.' And yet on most weekday mornings, 100-odd members of the National Symphony Orchestra arrive for rehearsals in the shell of their former home. This week they are rehearsing in the center’s main concert hall for upcoming performances in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 ('La Reine') and Stravinsky’s Scènes de Ballet. The theme, as advertised on their website, is 'music that finds hope and vitality in the face of adversity.'” MB: Clever. The link is a gift link. (Also linked yesterday.)

Marie: Oh, look! Trump does have principles! Wait. No. Two guys made Trump look bad on the front page of the New York Times, so he at least pretends he will make them pay for it.~~~

~~~ Kathianne Boniello of Mediaite: ;“... Donald Trump vowed to fire any of his outside consultants who may have conflicts, after a scathing report in The New York Times revealed two of the president’s top advisors were working for a regional pro-Russian government in the Balkans. Chris LaCivita, who served as a senior advisor on Trump’s 2024 campaign, and longtime GOP political consultant James Blair were paid a hefty sum to travel to the tiny region of Bosnia and Herzegovina known as Republika Srpska, according to The Times[.]... The Tuesday report noted Republika Srpska had aligned itself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and had 'spent heavily' to woo Trump and those aligned with him.” ~~~

     ~~~ Ha Ha. Only Kidding. Ariana Baio of the Guardian: “LaCivita and Blair are meanwhile working with Maga Inc, the Trump-backed SuperPac assisting Republican candidates in November’s US midterm elections.... Trump’s statement distancing himself from the two advisers comes as Maga Inc prepares to ramp up efforts to assist Republican candidates in next month’s elections.... A spokesperson for Maga Inc told the New York Times that Blair and LaCivita remained engaged with midterm efforts while traveling, saying the two 'hosted a team call with race captains on Saturday morning to go over recent survey data'.”MB: MAGA Inc. is the same superPAC Trump said he would direct to fund the Trump-the-Magnificent ads we're still paying for. (His directing MAGA Inc decisions, BTW, also is illegal. But Trump, you know, can do whatever he wants.) ~~~

~~~ Nevertheless, the Article II Wunderkind maintains he is a remarkably honorable fellow: ~~~

~~~ Kelby Vera of the Huffington Post: “... Donald Trump said he easily could have targeted to his political rivals if he wanted to when asked about the possibility of Democrats moving to impeach him if they end up retaking Congress in November.... During an Oval Office event on Wednesday, he said, 'I could have done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could have done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could have done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama.... I thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect.'... Trump went on..., ominously adding, 'I can do whatever I want if I want.'... While Trump did not weaponize the government against Clinton, Biden or Obama, he and his Justice Department have set their sights on an array of other perceived political enemies.”

Texas Senate Race. Never Mind. This Is About Trump. Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times: Donald “Trump held a rally in San Antonio, Texas, Wednesday night to help out the Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, whose race has gone wobbly with less than a month to go before the midterm elections. Mr. Trump was in fighting form, tossing out red meat reminders to Texans about why they voted for him in 2024. He was interrupted nearly a dozen times by protesters, several of whom were led out in handcuffs. He talked a lot about the border, and Democrats, and himself. What he didn’t talk a lot about was Ken Paxton.... Mr. Trump wasn’t trying to get people excited about Ken Paxton so much as he was trying to get them excited about Donald Trump.... This was Mr. Trump’s third trip to Texas in a month, which is a strong indicator of just how concerned the party is about what could happen here in November. The stakes of this race are especially high for the president, as he endorsed this especially flawed candidate, and cast out Mr. Paxton’s opponent in the primaries, Senator John Cornyn. This is what the MAGA base wanted.” The link is a gift link. Here's an Independent story.

Belatedly, Trump Tries to Clean Up His Act. Natasha Korecki, et al., of NBC News: “After having faced fierce backlash..., Donald Trump on Wednesday sought to clean up incendiary comments he made earlier this week, when he said Iran could 'take out' Los Angeles or San Diego.... He recast those remarks Wednesday night at a rally in San Antonio as he tried to explain the Iran war, saying he had “no choice” if the U.S. were to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. '... And I said it the other day: Let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. Let them hit. You want to see a horror show? You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles if you want to see some bad things happen. You want to see a country that would be in free fall?' This time, however, he added: 'We’re not going to let that happen. We protect our cities. We protect our country. We’re not letting that happen.'” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Read on. There's more about the San Antonio rally. And we learn that Roger Clemens is still a dick. Trump is planning to give him the Presidential* Medal of Freedom for it.

CEOs to Get Science & Tech Awards. Sarah Davis of the Hill: Donald “Trump will award the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk and other prominent tech executives Thursday.... Musk, the head of SpaceX and Tesla, will receive this high honor at the White House’s 'Science: A New Golden Age' summit. Three other tech leaders will be presented this award, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su. The president will also award two people with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement. Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, and Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, are both set to receive this recognition Thursday.”

Dan Diamond, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump on Wednesday said that U.S. officials did not believe that a Russian lab worker’s reported death, which has attracted global scrutiny, was linked to a bioweapon. 'We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.... 'I just met with our people. We have brilliant experts,' Trump said. 'They know everything about what’s going on. And, all of that information is going through them.'... WHO officials said they still do not know what pathogen caused the first worker’s fatal illness, which pathogens Russian laboratories tested for or why authorities placed roughly 200 contacts under quarantine or medical observation. Without those answers, officials said, they cannot fully assess the public health risk.”

John Ismay of the New York Times: “Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, for fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009 at the same base, the Army said in a statement on Wednesday. The rampage was the deadliest mass shooting on an American military installation.... [Donald] Trump approved the execution earlier this week. The execution could still be derailed, but if it is carried out, Major Hasan will be the first person to be executed through the military justice system since a soldier was hanged in 1961. The last U.S. service member executed by firing squad, however, was Pvt. Edward Donald Slovik, who was convicted of twice deserting his unit in combat and was put to death in France on Jan. 31, 1945.” The link is a gift link.

Here's One Way Trump uses taxpayer money as a campaign funding tool. This one is more damaging than most: ~~~

~~~ Gabriela Angueira of the AP, published by ABC News: "... Donald Trump has turned emergency relief into a campaign talking point in the final sprint to the midterm elections, approving disaster declarations in consequential states and coupling endorsements with funding announcements. As the country braces for a major hurricane barreling toward the U.S. Gulf Coast, the moves have revived questions about whether the administration is politicizing disaster recovery. The latest example came Wednesday, when Trump voiced support for Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s governor race while pledging millions to help with recent storms. In addition, the president recently joked that he would cut off money to North Carolina, which is still healing from Hurricane Helene two years ago, if Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley lost. And the day before an Ohio campaign rally with Sen. Jon Husted last Saturday, Trump approved a disaster declaration for the state while leaving 15 other requests pending. Disaster survivor advocates say they want elected officials to prioritize their recovery — not wield it as a political tool." ~~~

~~~ BUT Trump has thought up an even costlier way -- in terms of life and treasure -- to misuse taxpayer funds in pursuit of his campaign goals, perhaps -- as akaWendy speculated yesterday -- even to the point of cancelling the election altogether??? ~~~

~~~ Nancy Youssef & Jonathan Lemire of the Atlantic: "The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials. The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us.... Those in favor believe that further action after months of uneasy peace could allow Trump to demonstrate strength and potentially declare some sort of victory, giving Republicans much-needed momentum heading into the election.... Any strike campaign would put the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the region, as well as Gulf allies, at risk of Iranian retaliation, and further deplete America’s munitions stockpiles." Thanks to akaWendy for this gift link.~~~

     ~~~ Barak Ravid of Axios backs up the Atlantic's reporting.

Tom Schaller in Public Notice: "Trump is bleeding political capital across the board: among independents, non-MAGA Republicans, even among some of his most devout, red hat-wearing followers. A small but growing contingent of Republican politicians have also begun to openly criticize and even vote against Trump before the midterm results. Should November 3 be the disaster for Republicans that analysts are predicting, Trump will morph overnight into something less than a lame duck president with a ticking, two-year expiration clock: he will become politically bankrupt in ways all-too-familiar to him as a businessman."

Jalen Beckford of Politico: “The Democratic National Committee is suing ... Donald Trump and his administration to block taxpayer-funded ads promoting the president, accusing the White House of illegally using public funds to help Republicans ahead of the midterms, per court documents.... In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, the DNC alleges the administration continued airing the ads at government expense even after Trump vowed Monday to use his super PAC, MAGA Inc., to pay for the ads moving forward.” MB: I could not figure out what group might have the standing (to satisfy confederate on the Supreme Court) to sue Trump over these taxpayer-funded ads, even though all of us have suffered damages. Now I see that the DNC should suffice. ~~~

~~~ Yunior Rivas of Democracy Docket: "The Trump administration was hit with a second lawsuit Wednesday over its use of taxpayer money to air campaign-style television ads promoting ... Donald Trump just weeks before the midterm elections. Common Cause, a Democratic state legislative candidate and two SEIU groups* sued the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Management and Budget and senior administration officials in federal court in New York, alleging the government illegally diverted public money to produce what the plaintiffs call partisan political propaganda.... According to the filing, OMB increased by $20 million a pool of Customs and Border Protection funding designated for commemorative events related to border security. The next day, DHS signed a $20 million advertising contract. Congress had described the commemorative funding as covering events such as memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, agency anniversaries and ceremonies honoring crime victims." ~~~

     ~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "The thing about this is that Trump has dark money coming out of his ass — there’s absolutely no reason his Riefenstahl-for-even-bigger-morons ads couldn’t have been self-funded. The looting of the public fisc was an end in itself. But it’s not a great idea to remind people of your endless corrupt self-dealing during the football game while it costs $110 to fill up their truck." ~~~

~~~ Avery Lotz of Axios: "Nearly nine in 10 voters say using taxpayer money to pay for election-related ads featuring the president or Cabinet members is inappropriate, including 80% of Republicans, according to a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll.... The bottom line: As an election approaches where cost-of-living concerns are paramount, Americans have strong feelings about how their taxpayer dollars are spent."

Edith Olmsted of the New Republic, republished by Yahoo! News: "Kash Patel's FBI slammed Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in a wildly partisan, and likely illegal, propaganda video Tuesday. In a two-minute video posted on social media, the supposedly nonpartisan agency decried 'democratic socialist leaders' for calling to defund the police. The video included footage of multiple Democrats calling to defund the police, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, current and former Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar, and, of course, El-Sayed, who is running for office in November's midterm elections.... Federal law clearly prohibits the use of government funds for campaign purposes, partisan political messaging, and propaganda. A wildly inaccurate attack ad against a Democratic candidate would more than count under all three of these categories."

As the Revolving Door Spins. Samantha Schmidt, et al., of the Washington Post: “As the long-moribund energy sector in Venezuela, now largely under U.S. control, prepares for a potential gold rush, experience in Washington has become a new currency for those seeking advantage, according to investors, former U.S. officials and others in Venezuela’s business community. Companies and investors are eager to hire those with recent access to the White House, knowledge of the administration’s Venezuela policy or contacts, these people say. And lobbyists, consultants and former government officials from both major U.S. political parties are descending on Caracas on behalf of new clients or businesses.... The transformation of the South American nation into a virtual U.S. protectorate has created an unusual opportunity for those with experience working on Venezuela within the U.S. government.”

Aisha Down & Jennifer Rankin of the Guardian: “The Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU’s diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands. The conference, #Disinfo2026, taking place Wednesday and Thursday, is the annual meetup of Europe’s counter-disinformation community and has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is run by an independent Brussels non-profit, EU Disinfo Lab.... The [U.S.] state department was explicitly focused on [a] panel ... [that] explored how Europe’s disinformation community could rebuild resilience without Washington, and is the first time the conference appears to have entertained the idea that the US could be a disinformation actor in Europe.... [the panel] included three American speakers, among them a former CIA officer.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Millions and millions of people already know who the Disinfo King of the World is. Shutting up a few conference-goers in Vilnius is not going to change that. These earnest journalists & researchers are not the ones who need shutting up. And as we know, not much can stop the Shots from the Lying Piehold Heard 'Round the World.

Michael Luciano of Mediaite: “Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, pleaded with a Republican donor to send her $100,000 to pay off credit card debt, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The request came as Guilfoyle, the ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., was gearing up for her Senate confirmation hearing last year. 'It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,' she wrote on Signal to Eric Deters, a donor to ... Donald Trump. 'Please.' The Journal, which reviewed the Signal correspondence, said Guilfoyle and Deters had communicated for months as Deters sought help from the Trump administration on some tax and legal problems. Deters had promised Guilfoyle as much as $1 million if she was able to use her connections to the president to help him. The outlet reported that Guilfoyle relayed Deters messages she had sent to the Internal Revenue Service on his behalf. Guilfoyle also told Deters she was lobbying the Department of Justice for him.” Deters did not wire the money.

Julia Conley of Common Dreams: “A lawyer for Ahmed Soliman, a 31-year-old Phoenix man who has been arbitrarily detained in Equatorial Guinea since April, when US immigration agents forced him onto a plane under the Trump administration’s third-country deportation policy, expressed cautious optimism and relief on Wednesday after a federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security must return Soliman to the United States.... District Judge John C. Hinderaker, who was appointed by ... Donald Trump, ordered DHS to 'take all reasonable steps within their control' to facilitate Soliman’s return to the US. Soliman’s removal to Equatorial Guinea violated his due process rights under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, said Hinderaker, who said the man has faced 'irreparable harm' after being 'unlawfully' deported.... 'The unrebutted record shows that, since his removal, [Soliman] has been confined under armed guard, assaulted, held at gunpoint, and, most recently, arrested, hooded, beaten, and held incommunicado, reportedly without food or water,' Hinderaker wrote in his order.”

The crazy never stops, but it does take many paths. ~~~

~~~ Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned the safety of vaccines, is planning a broad federal effort to address vaccine injuries, including a new research clinic at the National Institutes of Health and a new billing code to reimburse doctors for filing reports of serious vaccine side effects, according to multiple people familiar with the initiative. Mr. Kennedy talked about the initiative when he and other top health officials made an unannounced visit to the N.I.H. in Bethesda, Md., earlier this week — his first trip there as secretary — to meet with patients who believe they have been injured by vaccines.... Like all drugs, vaccines cause side effects, but public health experts say the benefits far outweigh the risks for most people. The World Health Organization estimated in 2024 that global immunization efforts have saved 154 million lives over the past half-century.” The link is a gift link. ~~~

~~~ Paige Cunningham & Christa Dutton of the Washington Sun: "Consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unleashed. Muzzled earlier this year by White House officials uneasy with the health secretary’s fringier views, the Trump administration is now trying to leverage Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.... Control over Kennedy’s messaging has loosened in recent months as part of a concerted effort to put the health secretary out front, which sources in the administration say is being driven by ... Donald Trump himself.... Trump is cheering Kennedy’s unorthodox views. ... Better known and better liked by American voters than other members of Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy is being deployed to election hot spots more than others in Trump’s orbit. He has visited Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Texas and other states where Republicans are clinging to House and Senate seats." MB: The Sun has been blocking me for several weeks because it now is subscriber-firewalled, but they let me through on this one. Obviously, I have not figured out their policy yet.

Vimal Patel of the New York Times: “Leon Botstein, the former president of Bard College who had come under scrutiny for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, resigned from all of his positions affiliated with the college on Wednesday. The announcement came the same day that the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Bard leaders saying that while Dr. Botstein was president, he 'likely enabled and possibly even participated in' Mr. Epstein’s abuse. The letter also raised concerns about how Bard under Dr. Botstein handled sexual-misconduct complaints on campus. Dr. Botstein announced in the spring that he would retire from the presidency, a position he had held for half a century, but had stayed on in a variety of roles at the college until Wednesday.” The link is a gift link.

Here's a good lesson for us snobs unwilling to dedicate any portion of our short lives to reading (or watching) science fiction. Those of us who cannot see the future are condemned to live it: ~~~

~~~⭐Alan Sepinwall in a New York Times op-ed: Rod “Serling and his collaborators repeatedly and stealthily tackled such subjects as prejudice, creeping authoritarianism, the dangers of humans being replaced by technology and the peril of conformity as a societal ideal in ways that still resonate. Many episodes, when rewatched now, feel like they could have been written five minutes ago.... The show hit on social questions we have yet to adequately answer. Serling, a Jewish American who enlisted in the Army to fight Nazis during World War II, wrote often with his collaborators about the dangers of fascism and how easily people can succumb to its allure.... Serling’s influence is evident all over modern culture.” The link is a gift link.

To the Moon, Margaret. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: “Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.... In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Ms. Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Its citation reads that her work for NASA 'set the foundation for modern, ultrareliable software design and engineering.' In 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Google trained more than 100,000 mirrors at its Ivanpah solar power farm in the Mojave Desert to create a nighttime portrait in reflected moonlight of Ms. Hamilton, bigger than Central Park.” The link is a gift link. ~~~

     ~~~ Here is Hamilton's MIT News obituary.

~~~~~~~~~~

Arizona. Reis Thebault of the New York Times: “Bernadette Greene-Placentia, a Democratic candidate for Congress, said on Wednesday that she was repairing a damaged campaign sign in her district northwest of Phoenix this summer when two men attacked her. The assailants sneaked up behind her in a parking lot, struck her on the head and raped her, according to a police report she filed with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. She lost consciousness, she said, and woke up with one of the men on top of her. Ms. Greene-Placentia said her memory of the episode was spotty, but she recalled kicking her attackers until they fled. She said the assault took place in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 14 in Sun City, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix.

“After the attack, she said, she withdrew from her staff and family.... 'When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody,' she said in an interview on Wednesday. She initially resolved to not report the rape to the police or to discuss it publicly. 'I was embarrassed that I couldn’t defend myself,' she said. But back on the campaign trail, she said, her promises to fight for Arizonans if elected to Congress began to feel hollow.... 'It just flashed in my head, like, “Well, you’re not standing up for everyone, are you?’” Ms. Greene-Placentia said.... On Aug. 31, about two weeks after the assault, she reported it to the police. She then shared her account with the Phoenix New Times, the city’s alternative newspaper, which published it on Wednesday.” The link is a gift link.

California. Laurel Rosenthall of the New York Times: “Gov. Gavin Newsom, a possible presidential candidate, is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 prisoners on death row in California as one of his final acts in office.... Mr. Newsom ramped up conversations with top advisers last week after a botched execution in Tennessee, though he had been deliberating the move for several months. He discussed his options in a flurry of phone calls, meetings and Zoom conversations.... California has not executed a prisoner in 20 years, and the leading candidate to succeed Mr. Newsom has committed to maintaining a moratorium on capital punishment. A mass commutation, however, would reduce all current death sentences to life in prison without parole, regardless of who runs the state in the future. The governor, a Democrat, has received conflicting advice from his closest advisers.... Some have urged him to take a bold step that reflects his moral opposition to capital punishment before he leaves office in January. Others have warned that he could face political attacks if he were to show mercy to convicted killers.” The link is a gift link. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: IOW, politics may once again trump moral rectitude.

Florida. David Ovalle of the New York Times: “A Florida appeals court panel on Wednesday ordered the full expungement of a grand jury report that found Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration had 'misappropriated' $10 million in taxpayer money by diverting it to a charity tied to the governor’s wife. The unanimous decision found that the grand jury, empaneled last year by prosecutors in Tallahassee, exceeded its authority by accusing people of a 'sophisticated scheme' to 'misappropriate funds,' but issuing no indictments. The grand jury report, which was never publicly released but was leaked to a Miami news station and published in August, wrongfully 'impugned' private individuals involved in the transfer of $10 million to political committees, wrote Judge Lance E. Neff of the state’s First District Court of Appeal. 'A grand jury is not an autonomous agency with unlimited power,' wrote Judge Neff, whom Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, appointed to the bench this year. The judge used to work as a lawyer for the state’s prison system and attorney general’s office.” The link is a gift link. MB: Gosh, it does sound as if the fix was in.

Michigan. And Elsewhere. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: “... the Democrats’ dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on ... [Donald] Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow. Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote.... The idea of the red undertow was introduced last month by the political analyst Charlie Cook, who argued that the Democratic brand was still underwater, but that this election was not about a rising Democratic tide. It was about a drowning Trump brand.... In nearly three dozen interviews in Western Michigan, a sense of fatigue was constant, and that feeling goes beyond that region.” The link is a gift link.

New York. Liam Stack, et al., of the New York Times: “It seemed inevitable that the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks would touch off tensions for Zohran Mamdani, a longtime critic of Israel and the first Muslim mayor of a city that is 12 percent Jewish. But Wednesday erupted with such anger and emotion that it seemed to overwhelm any efforts to solemnly mark the deadliest day in Israeli history. Mr. Mamdani began the day shortly before 9 a.m. by issuing a statement that was meant to acknowledge the Oct. 7 anniversary but almost immediately caused an uproar among some Jewish leaders, who said it minimized Israeli suffering in the Hamas-led attacks. It took a turn roughly 12 hours later at a vigil organized by Israeli peace activists in Union Square in Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted the event to jeer the mayor. He appeared ashen and upset as he left, without addressing the crowd, flanked by his security detail as he walked to a waiting S.U.V. at 8:50 p.m.” The link is a gift link. Politico's story is here.

Texas. Jesus Jiménez of the New York Times: “A Texas man was executed on Wednesday for fatally shooting a convenience store clerk in 2000, making him the first person executed in the United States since a botched attempt last week in Tennessee. The man, Jamaal Howard, 46, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2001 in the killing of Vickie Swartout, 42. Mr. Howard was 20 when he shot Ms. Swartout, who was working at a convenience store in southeast Texas, and stole $114 from the cash register and a carton of cigarettes. Mr. Howard was pronounced dead on Wednesday at 8:03 p.m. Central time after he received a fatal dose of pentobarbital in prison in Huntsville, Texas. His death came after requests by his lawyers to stay the execution were denied on Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.” The link is a gift link.