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Abdul El-Sayed and his wife Sarah Jukaku at campaign event
Further

Two Different America's (Sic)

Hoo boy. With the approach of what bleakly promises to be "the super-Islamophobic midterms," the Bigot-In-Chief is letting his racist freak flag fly by attacking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, whose smarts, strength, hotness, accomplished wife and Michigan win clearly terrify him. Cue charges of "communist," "man of hate," and, probs soon, AI slop featuring suicide vests. Meanwhile, El-Sayed, a far sharper tool in the shed, has embraced the charge they represent "(two) America’s": The ads write themselves.

Planet MAGA, of course, is already so delusional Trump just boasted of his "Great Poll Numbers," which now sit at rock-bottom lows of 38% to 33%. For a bunch of hacks led by a fragile narcissist who's never seen a scapegoat he didn't relish, the fantastical goes hand-in-stubby-hand with the fear-mongering: vandals in the Reflecting Pool, domestic terrorists at No Kings, migrant caravans, lunatic Bolsheviks, weird names or just brown-or-black skinned success, more terrifying to many of these losers than any threat of extremism. Enter, in peril, the high-achieving epidemiologist, health official, author and "Muslim boogeyman" El-Sayed. “Expect them to throw the whole bigoted kitchen sink at El-Sayed," says Mehdi Hasan. "This will be the anti-Zohran Mamdani campaign on anti-Muslim steroids."

Unsurprisingly, it began in earnest the minute the good doctor won Michigan's against-the-odds primary against establishment Dem Haley Stevens. He'll face off against GOP Rep. and racist ijiot Mike Rogers, who of course has rushed to call the U.S.-born-and-bred El-Sayed "anti-American" and - pulling the same juvenile "Barack Hussein Obama" crap to undermine his legitimacy - to use his full, scary, def-not-in-Kansas-anymore name Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. But Abdulrahman, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has brutally pushed back. "With a name like mine, I never thought running for office would be possible," he said at a campaign event. But if "Mike" wants to focus on his 11-letter (a lot!) first name, he just wanted to remind him, "If you don’t know how to say it, keep the name out of your damn mouth.”

In moronic lockstep, MAGA's bigots, brown shirts and zealots have followed suit with "cartoonishly Islamophobic attacks." They use his full name and say he's a "socialist," which they can't define but anyway he isn't. Anti-trans goon Nancy Mace charges, “Every single Muslim holding public office (is) a Trojan Horse and a threat to national security and our republic," and woe is us when "our granddaughters are wearing burkas to school." Vapid scumbag JD calls him a "crazy" guy who doesn't want Trump's rip-off, oligarch-run "prosperous economy" and flings "personal insults" at Vance's family, though hours later Trump attacked El-Sayed's wife, who is U.S.-born and thus not an alleged Einstein Visa immigrant third wife who somehow after 30 years here can still barely speak English. Maybe it was an Epstein Visa?

As usual, Trump has eagerly led the racist, vulgar charge. Along with a communist man of hate, he's also called El-Sayed a "jihadist" from a rigged, "strictly Third World" state who's "full of shit." It turns out El-Sayed is also "the absolute best at casually burning Trump to the fucking ground": Asked about the barb, El-Sayed snapped back, “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office." And as with another smart, quick, non-white guy who's way above his pay grade and lives rent-free in his wee puerile mind, he likes to sneeringly recite, often stumbling, the full, scary name of a guy who this time actually would be the first Muslim U.S. senator. Presumably, the ketchup really hit the White House walls last weekend when El-Sayed said he'd had "a really good conversation" with Obama about "what we need to do to win."

Above all, the bigot for all seasons pivots to the trope of anyone Arabic - El-Sayed's parents immigrated from Egypt - being anti-Semitic. "He doesn't love Jewish people," babbles Trump. "He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart." In fact, El-Sayed has plainly, repeatedly said he opposes not Jews but Israel's genocidal policies, AIPAC and the dark U.S. money that abets both: "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for all people." That call for equality under the law has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, notes Peter Beinart; cognizant of history. he also warns that a political party or ideology willing to be "nakedly bigoted" toward any group of people, in this case Muslims, in order to maintain power would, if the politics were to shift, "do the same thing to Jews in a heartbeat."

Obviously, such subtlety is beyond the dim-witted likes of Trump and his MAGA zombies, who alone could look at Dr. El-Sayed and his (one) wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist whose parents emigrated here from India, and see a threat. Both are U.S.-born-and- raised doctors with undergrad degrees from University of Michigan, where they met, and advanced degrees from Columbia and Oxford. In his book Healing Politics, El-Sayed offers a rigorous framework for understanding systemic medical and political failure, and building conditions for lasting healing. He also calls Jukaku his “rock" and praises the "quiet confidence" that led her to work with people confronting pain. "I struggled to learn who I was,” he wrote of their earlier selves. “Sarah did not. She danced with her emotions. I wrestled with mine." The couple has two daughters.

No wonder, then, a needy, hollow rapist, con-man, bully and aspiring tinpot dictator, routinely raking in billions while kids go hungry and stuffed into a cheap tux for his fellow billionaire felons, posted a photo of himself with his tacky, mail-order, call-girl wife in a tight dress with "redacted Epstein files written all over it" - both smirking, "We're richer and be better than you and just ignore our vile name appearing in those pedo files thousands of times" - alongside the other couple, warmly smiling after a pancake breakfast in a diner, El Sayed in a t-shirt, Jukaku in a hijab so she must be a terrorist (though Trump, suspect, is wearing a cat.) The caption for the side-by-side pics, which only the spectacularly tone-deaf Trump could remotely imagine as a mic-drop: "Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s (sic).” Umm. Sure.

Kudos to El-Sayed, prince among men, who didn't even stoop to pick the low-hanging fruit of Trump's "grammatical shitbaggery" - one comment: "What a maroon" - emblematic of a proudly semi-literate GOP somehow come to power in our debased America without understanding how apostrophes work. Instead, El-Sayed went for the meat of the matter. "Yeah, he's right," he told CNN. Swiftly, he embraced the campaign-ready concept of two Americas: "Trump's vision, the one you're living in right now (in) which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you...Or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, and want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that family is going to have the good things."

Those "good things" - health care, good jobs, clean air and water, a relatively level playing field to replace gross inequality, a country where people can live peaceably together "with their sisters and brothers" - are what he and his wife want for their kids, and he wisely gauges most of the rest of us do too. And no, he says, rebutting GOP charges, it's not "radical" to believe people should be able to afford groceries, have health care, partake in free elections. Also, he and his wife actually "like each other," he adds; as to the couple in the "very different" America, "From what I've heard, it's a bit of a rocky road." As mid-terms loom. “They are going to try to paint me as a certain thing, (but) America is a lot bigger than (these) very small people make it out to be," he says. "They all think we won't step up and fight...We fight for each other."

@abdulelsayed

They all think we won't step up and fight... They think they're the biggest, baddest bully on the playground... That they're going to show up and we're going to run away...

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A researcher analyses ocean temperatures and oxygen levels
News

'It Is a Warning': Super El Niño Pushed Ocean Temps to Hottest on Record for July

Last month's average global ocean surface temperature was the hottest ever recorded in the month of July, fueled in part by uniquely intense, fossil fuel-driven El Niño conditions that have wreaked deadly havoc around the world this summer.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said Monday that last month—which ranked as the second warmest July on record—"saw exceptionally high temperatures for the month across a large portion of the tropical Pacific, an area where El Niño conditions are present and forecast to further strengthen in the coming months." Average global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were 20.96°C last month, surpassing the July 2023 record of 20.89°C.

"Around Europe, SSTs reached record highs for July along the Atlantic coast and western Mediterranean, associated with widespread strong or severe marine heatwave conditions," C3S said.

Brian O'Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said the latest Copernicus data "is more than another climate milestone; it is a warning that the natural systems we depend on are being pushed closer to their limits."

"Governments have become very good at documenting these records. Now they need to become much better at safeguarding the forests, wetlands, and oceans that help regulate the climate and protect communities from the impacts of warming world," said O'Donnell. "With land and ocean temperatures across Europe breaching records, governments should be investing far more and delivering on their global commitment to protect at least 30% of land and ocean by 2030."

The new analysis was released as western Europe and other regions faced deadly heat, wildfires, drought, and other extreme weather as the international community, including the US and other leading polluters, fails to rein in fossil fuel use—and as oil and gas giants reap record profits.

“Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño," Anne Jellema, executive director of the environmental group 350.org, said Monday. "We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil’s earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront—before even more damage is done.”

Scientists have characterized this year's El Niño, which officially began on June 11, as historically strong and dangerous, earning it the informal "Super El Niño" label.

The Washington Post reported Monday that the 2026 El Niño is "on track to become the strongest ever recorded, with cascading effects on global climate peaking late this year and into next."

"El Niño’s effects have already been felt around the planet," the Post observed. "The higher frequency of heat domes worldwide, the nonstop temperature records in Peru and deadly storms in Chile can all be linked to this pattern. As can the destructive typhoons in the western Pacific Ocean and the relative calm of the Atlantic hurricane season so far."

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned in remarks to reporters last month that El Niño is no longer just "on our doorstep."

"It is inside the house—and turning up the heat," said Guterres. "We have already endured a summer of extremes—record-shattering heat domes, apocalyptic wildfires raging in Spain, France, and far beyond. Thousands of lives lost in the scorching conditions.”

“But according to the latest science," he added, "this is only a warm-up act."

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Trump's TSA Sued Over 'Insane Proposal' to Privatize Airport Screening
News

Trump's TSA Sued Over 'Insane Proposal' to Privatize Airport Screening

The nation's largest public employees union filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Trump administration accusing it of trying to conceal a scheme aimed at privatizing the federally controlled airport screening process.

In its complaint, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) asked a federal court to force the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for TSA Gold+, which the union described as a "secretive push to expand the privatization of airport security screening functions."

The union originally filed its FOIA request in May, but has since received none of the records requested, although the TSA last month did acknowledge the program's existence and said that there are plans to launch it at three airports next year.

AFGE's complaint alleges that the program "would jeopardize the employment conditions of tens of thousands of TSA employees and the safety of the traveling public," while noting that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year tried to "eliminate the collective bargaining rights of approximately 47,000 employees" before being enjoined by a court order.

AFGE also pointed to a proposal contained in the Heritage Foundation's notorious Project 2025 blueprint to "privatize the screening function" at US airports.

The union said it was demanding more information from the TSA because "of its interest in the TSA GoldPlus program, the lack of public information about the program, and the potential threat to its membership."

Everett Kelley, national president of AFGE, said that the administration appeared to be headed back toward the kind of system used before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in which airports relied on private contractors with less stringent standards for screening passengers.

"TSA has been keeping everyone in the dark about its privatization plans–TSA employees, members of Congress, airport authorities, and the flying public,” said Kelley. "Changes of this magnitude must not be made in the dark."

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said in an interview with The American Prospect published Monday that "nobody should be surprised" by the administration's efforts given how they were foreshadowed by Project 2025.

"This is about dismantling government everywhere, dismantling worker rights everywhere," said Nelson, who described the privatization initiative as "an insane proposal" by the Trump administration.

Chris Finlay, a TSA worker in Tampa and president of AFGE local 556, told The Guardian in an interview published Wednesday that having for-profit firms in charge of security would inevitably lead to a decay in safety standards.

"As a business, their primary goal is to be profitable," said Finlay, "and staffing is the most expensive part of that contract, so if they can reduce how much they have to pay staff, they’re going to... They’re selling the safety of the traveling public for corporate greed. That’s what is happening."

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Senators Accuse Trump of Taking 'Cartoonish Bribe': A 321-Diamond Ring From Belgium
News

Senators Accuse Trump of Taking 'Cartoonish Bribe': A 321-Diamond Ring From Belgium

A pair of Democratic US senators has some questions for Belgium's diamond industry after it gave President Donald Trump what they said appears to be a "cartoonish bribe."

On Monday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter inquiring about a "watch-sized, 18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones" that the president had been gifted in late June by the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC), a lobbying group for Belgian diamondmakers.

The custom ring, emblazoned with a gem-encrusted presidential seal, diamond emblems with the initial "T," and an interior engraving that reads "Crafted in Antwerp for Donald John Trump," is estimated to be worth $25,000-35,000.

“A very special thank you to my friends from Antwerp for the magnificent Freedom 250 ring,” Trump said in a video message during an event in Brussels upon receiving the gift at an event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Just weeks later, the administration announced it was exempting European diamonds from Trump's sweeping tariff regime, which he was attempting to reinstate after the US Supreme Court had struck it down earlier this year.

After the diamond tariffs had been lifted, a press release from AWDC celebrated the decision, calling it a “significant boost” for Antwerp's diamond industry and “its international competitive position.”

According to the company, Antwerp exports about $2 billion worth of diamonds to the US each year. At 10%, that means importers would avoid paying about $200 million in tariffs annually under the exemption.

The senators noted that Isidore Mörsel, the president of the World Diamond Center, "explicitly linked the gift to trade issues" when presenting it to the US Ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, for delivery to Trump.

Mörsel said that AWDC commissioned the ring to "celebrate that enduring relationship" with the Antwerp diamond sector’s "most important trading partner for generations."

The senators said AWDC's public-private partnership with the Belgian government meant that Trump might be required to give up the ring under the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which forbids federal officers from receiving gifts from foreign states without Congress' consent.

However, they said "presenting a gift of this magnitude could still play directly into President Trump’s well-established affinity for shiny gifts."

White House spokesperson Kush Desai has denied that the gift had any influence over Trump's decision, telling MS NOW that the administration "agreed to provide preferential tariff treatment for diamonds as part of our historic trade deal with the European Union that was signed last summer."

He added that “the only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

But the senators said the gift to Trump "fit seamlessly into [the] pattern" of executives appearing to use gifts and flattery to obtain lucrative tariff exemptions.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration committee, appeared to leverage his “very good relationship” with the President and a well-timed “24-karat” gold gift to secure exemptions from tariffs for various Apple products imported from China.

After Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang purchased a seat at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago table for $1 million, the administration reversed course on implementing rules that would have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China.

And the administration slashed tariffs on Swiss imports from 39% to 15% just days after Swiss executives—including Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour—presented President Trump with a personalized gold bar worth more than $130,000 and a luxury Rolex desk clock.

The senators said Antwerp's gift "raise[d] serious legal questions" under federal bribery law. They asked Mörsel and the jeweler who made the ring, David Gotlib, to provide details about the gift, including who funded it. They also requested information about any contact between the diamond lobbyists and White or other administration officials.

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Expert Explains the Real Danger Behind Trump's Midterm ‘National Emergency’ Threat
News

Expert Explains the Real Danger Behind Trump's Midterm ‘National Emergency’ Threat

President Donald Trump raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he didn't rule out declaring a "national security emergency for elections" ahead of the 2026 midterms that would let him restrict the use of mail-in ballots and require voters to provide proof of citizenship.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA and an expert in election law, told The New Republic in an interview published Wednesday that simply declaring a national emergency related to election security wouldn't override states' voting laws.

"The United States Constitution does not give the president power over elections," Hasen explained. "We have a decentralized election system. Most of our election rules come from states, from state legislatures passing statutes."

Even though Trump cannot legally seize control of the country's elections systems, Hasen said, his "national emergency" declaration could be used as a tool to discredit Democratic victories in the midterms and also to more generally intimidate Democratic voters.

"He’s trying to scare people into thinking he has more power than he has," Hasen said. "That itself makes him powerful, because people are deterred by him. And maybe it deters people from showing up to vote in elections... We should not be complacent at all, even if Trump doesn’t have the power to actually do some of the stuff he’s threatened."

Hasen also speculated that Trump's executive order instructing the United States Postal Service to not deliver mail-in ballots to states that have not shared their voter data with the White House was also part of an intimidation operation.

"So everybody’s confidence in the elections goes down," Hasen said. "And it’s like, 'Why mail back my ballot if the post office isn’t going to deliver it? Why show up at the polling place if there’s going to be armed security there?' All of these things are, I think, scare tactics. And we shouldn’t give Trump the power—we shouldn’t give Trump room in our heads to panic over whether or not we're going to have free and fair elections."

In an analysis published Wednesday, progressive commentator Thom Hartmann described Trump as a "cornered rat" who will attempt any trick to maintain Republican majorities in Congress.

"It's going to be up to us and the individual states to make sure our voices are heard and our votes are properly counted," Hartmann wrote. "We should be thinking of this as an election continuity exercise that may not be necessary but, like wearing a seatbelt, could be essential if Trump tries to repeat 2020 in some way."

Hartmann also listed a number of recommendations for Democrats to combat Trump's election subversion attempts, including educating voters on the constitutional limits of the president's powers, being prepared to arrest any federal immigration enforcement officers who appear at polling locations, and encouraging early voting.

"For over a decade now, close races immediately produce Republican claims of fraud," Hartmann added. "Lawyers, election officials, and communications systems must be fully prepared to deal with lies and propaganda long before November."

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Forest fires sweep through the outskirts of the southern village of Kfar Shouba as a result of Israeli shelling that targeted the area
News

'Ecocide': Israel Accused of Deliberately Starting Wildfires in Lebanon

Environmental and rights advocates are condemning what one academic called "the latest in a neverending series of international crimes" by the Israel Defense Forces as firefighters and residents in southern Lebanon report that the IDF has purposely started destructive wildfires by continuing to bomb the region.

The blazes are an attempt, one town mayor said Wednesday, to make it appear "as though nobody had ever lived here.”

Israel renewed attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon in March, as the US-Israeli war on Iran widened across the Middle East. Following a "ceasefire" agreement in June, Israeli forces have continued occupying about 20% of Lebanese territory after forcibly displacing over 1 million people from the southern part of the country.

Israeli officials have said they aim to apply the "Gaza model" to Lebanon, deploying the kinds of attacks that have destroyed 90% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza since the IDF began attacking the exclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz recently boasted that the IDF had destroyed 24 villages “that had existed for hundreds of years."

Now, Hafez Ghasham, mayor of the southern town of Yaroun, told The Guardian, “they are trying to make the land uninhabitable."

“They had already bulldozed the whole village. Then they set fire to the trees. What remained in this particular area were the olive trees—large groves, with very old olive trees," Ghasham told the newspaper. “Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents. They have enormous sentimental value. The trees were also an important source of income for the people of the village."

Residents who had been forced out of Yaroun said they learned from people in nearby Christian towns that their olive and fruit groves as well as many homes had been set on fire by Israeli soldiers.

The head of Civil Defense in the Nabatieh region said about 30-40% of the land in the area had been affected by the fires, and firefighters have been forced to withdraw as they've tried to extinguish the flames as the IDF has launched drone strikes after the initial attacks that sparked the fires.

"There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned," Hussein Fakih told The Guardian.

Kelley B. Vlahos, editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that "while the rest of the world is trying to put out forest fires this summer, Israel reportedly started them as a military tactic," even following the Lebanon ceasefire.

Last Friday, large wildfires were caused by Israeli munitions and drones that struck woodlands in Kfarchouba and in the area between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.

The Israeli military has accused Hezbollah of using woodland areas as cover for its military outposts and tunnels. The IDF has similarly defended extensive bombing of Gaza's schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure by claiming Hamas operates in tunnels beneath the buildings.

In a statement, Hezbollah's media relations officials said the fires represent "a continuation of urban destruction, the bulldozing of infrastructure, and the theft of ancient olive trees."

"The party called on the government, the Ministry of Environment, and all relevant authorities to speak out and act immediately to halt Israeli savagery against the environment, human life, and infrastructure," reported Al Mayadeen.

Hisham Younes, the founder of Lebanese conservation group Green Southerners, told The Guardian that Israel's bombing of forested areas amounts to "ecocide."

“These are long-established woodlands," said Younes. "They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds."

“It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate, and sustain life," Younes added. "When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”

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