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Young patriot helps keep wildfire smoke away from pristine U.S.
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And Brush Therein: The Losingest Loser At Work or Play

In "almost Shakespearean grotesquery," our cringe Buffoon-In-Chief just thrust himself into the World Cup final only to be unceremoniously booed, snubbed and cropped out of team photos. Then he again assailed Canada for smoke from their wildfires, though ours are much worse and they've often helped us with them. Still, our ever-gracious northern neighbor launched a new initiative to dutifully sweep the Rockies, vacuum the forests, hand-rake pine needles. Its acronym: F.U.C.K.O.F.F.

The headlines for Trump's Sunday gatecrash of another major sports event that really, really didn't want him there tells the vainglorious and mortifying tale: "Most Universally Hated President In History Mercilessly Booed," "Crowd Boos, Player Snub and Failed Photobomb: Trump's Big World Cup Day Out," and "Confused Old Fuckwit Imagines He's Won the World Cup." The Guardian also wins a Snark of the Year Award for the caption to its photo of FIFA's Infantino deep in conversation with a clueless Trump, both men standing under a blizzard of confetti, after he literally had to drag him off-stage: "Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump he is not part of the Spanish team."

Some of the over 82,000 fans at New Jersey's Met-Life Stadium, where Spain trounced a listless, chaotic, often-thuggish Argentina 1-0, had earlier made their feelings clear when video briefly showed Trump ensconced in his glass-encased VIP digs and scattered boos rang out. By the time he finally lumbered and waddled stoop-shouldered onto the field at the end, it sounded like all 82,000-plus had reconsidered and joined in to jeer. Trailing behind him, looking like hostages trying to keep a safe distance to not catch any cooties, were Mexico's and Canada's leaders, the tournament's purported, far-less-despised hosts. Implausibly given....everything, but thanks to Infantino's long gross obsequiousness, Trump got to hand out awards.

And he did, though not without some drama: Several players hesitated, recoiled or refused to shake his hand. Then it was time to hand out the (seductively gold) World Cup. Little needy Donnie, a malignant narcissistic lump, swooped in to awkwardly “help” Infantino carry it like a five-year-old hungry for the feckin' ice-cream cone his dad is holding, “a lonely, grasping figure refusing to release a trophy he didn’t win.” Once they handed it to Spain’s captain Rodri, Trump, “malice wrapped in vanity,” painfully lingered in the limelight - camera! also person, woman, man TV - as Infantino struggled to yank him away for the iconic team hoist photo: "OK, grandpa, time to get back to your chocolate pudding." In the end, a patient Rodri gently nudged him out of the shot, but cringingly not off the stage, where he stood dazed and wobbling, our national farce and tragedy.

Steve Schmidt noted the clumsy resulting image's era-defining power, its display of the "breathtaking psychological fragility" of a "President Norma Desmond...incapable of understanding that the greatest office in the world confers responsibility, not ownership." "The character has been devoured by the caricature," he wrote of "self-parody made flesh," the small man so consumed by the need for adulation that, "Every trophy is his trophy. Every triumph is his triumph. Every stage is his stage." Later, in photos released both by FIFA and the Spanish team, Trump had mercifully, miraculously disappeared from both shots, because this is why God and Al Gore invented photoshop.

The awkward bit of theater with Spain came, lest we forget, in the wake of Trump's weeks of vilifying the nation and their prime minister Pedro Sánchez - first, for their refusal to allow the U.S. military to use Spanish bases to help illegally bomb Iran, then for the alleged failure of "bad" and "hopeless" Spanish people to pay enough for NATO defense spending. Despite Trump's ugly threats to "cut off all trade" with a longtime ally unforgivably following the law, it all suddenly vanished before the cameras, where Trump congratulated "a great team," even though they speak Spanish, and claimed there was "no tension" with the country’s leadership. Actually, he smirked, "I have no tension with anybody."

Tell it to Canada, which Trump has been moronically berating for "Willful Negligence," aka inexplicably allowing smoke from over 800 wildfires raging across some of Canada's 347 million acres to drift over our pristine shores. A few days earlier, joined by equally stupid MAGA lackeys, he raged the U.S. "is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air" at an "incalculable" (a big word he probs didn't write) cost, and "maybe they should pay us some damages" or billions more in tariffs, and he'd call Carney "to find out what they are going to do about it." "We are holding Canada responsible," he thundered, "for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein."

Like his long-ago claim during California wildfires that Finland's president told him they rake their forests and have no such problems - Finland when asked: "WTF" - this is an idiot's fever dream. Facts owe: This year, America has seen over 40,000 fires burn roughly 3.9 million acres, 157% its ten-year average. There are now over 70 uncontained U.S. fires being fought by nearly 18,000 people, with much of the Northwest - Colorado, Oregon, Washington - at National Preparedness Level 5, the highest, and up to 58 new fires a day. Air quality alerts affecting a million Americans are due to those fires, to blazes across 70,000-plus acres in Minnesota, and to 3,600 fires across 1.8 million acres, below the five-year average, in Canada.

In the face of politely unnamed U.S. pols mindlessly "chirping away," notes Ontario Premier Doug Ford, he has already asked for firefighters or "anything they can send" to help fight nearly 200 fires, some of which have crossed into Canada from Minnesota, that have forced entire First Nations to evacuate and many residents to sleep in their cars. Rather than complain maybe send help, he adds, "because we have done the same thing for our American friends," again and again. Even as Canadian officials issue air quality warnings from U.S. fires drifting north, a 56-year-old Canadian helicopter pilot from B.C. just died in a crash battling a fire in Colorado, the fourth firefighter death there this summer.

Meanwhile, a mindless, science-denying MAGA has ended support for dozens of climate initiatives, dismantled our largest climate research center and pushed for more fossil fuel carnage. On Sunday, with much of his country visibly on fire, Trump attacked the National Academy of Sciences - chartered by Abe Lincoln mid-Civil War "because even a nation shooting at itself understood it needed scientists" - because it's "run by Radical Left Dumocrats” who published costly, "fraudulent," “totally discredited” climate change manuals, which he ordered "Suspension and Debarment" officials to review. Also - cue dumbest timeline ever - Repubs jumped in to decry DEI-loving advocates who (gasp) may have tried to stop blessed oil and gas projects.

Still, Canada is a tolerant, peace-loving nation that tries to accommodate all comers, even a malevolent asshole who's never gotten any closer to a "forest" than Central Park, if even there. It also values its natural resources, including a 270-million-acre boreal forest, much of it roadless, whose vast ecosystem serves as a global carbon sink to purify air and water, regulate climate and offer a safe breeding ground to billions of birds. And if some random asshole neighbor to the north chides its inadequate forest management, Canada seeks to rise to the occasion - to, as it were, Be Better. Thus was born a bold new initiative from its Department of Forest Tidiness, which is now "pleased to confirm the message has been received loud and clear."

Canada's Forest Undergrowth Clearing & Kindling Operation for Foreign Friends, aka F.U.C.K.O.F.F., renders every able-bodied person ages 16 to 65 responsible for removing leaves, twigs, moss, bark, sticks, branches, pine needles, deadfall and shrubs deemed "insufficiently tidy by Congressional observers." After receiving government-issued rakes, gloves and safety vests, they must arrange all debris "into neat bilingual piles," to be painstakingly inspected by forestry officials. Further actions may include sweeping the Rocky Mountains, power-washing the Canadian Shield, vacuuming deserts, raking California, installing smoke-detectors across the Yukon and mandating that all fires contain and respect clearly marked provincial borders.

In Ontario, workers will be assigned 6.7 acres (40 NHL hockey rinks) of dense untracked country and a 26-hour work week; elsewhere, shifts surge to a hefty 18.3 acres (110 rinks) and 70 hours a week. Morning commutes start with a three-day canoe trip and 15-km hike through swamp; on-site, workers will hand-groom 300 billion trees, hand-rake an infinity of pine needles, make local beavers submit environmental impact reports and dodge grizzlies as needed. Finally, it notes, "Canada thanks Congress for sharing their extensive knowledge of forestry, wildfire behavior, climate science, geography and upkeep of a country containing 9% of the world's forests, and looks forward to receiving further practical advice from Washington."

Online, many Americans, after reportedly snorting their coffee through their noses, thanked Canada "for being great neighbors and allies," and apologized for - hands held hopelessly wide - "all this." "We are so, so sorry," said one. Another: "We're so incredibly sorry." Canadians joined in: "I'm in Alberta - I'll send water," "In B.C., have to get my mountaineering gear first. Sorry. eh?" and a generous offer to add a new organization, Canadian Undergrowth, Nature, and Tree Services: "I believe that with your cooperation, F.U.C.K.O.F.F plus C.U.N.T.S could really show Americans we take their health and well-being seriously." Organizers estimate their work will be completed "somewhere between Thursday afternoon and the collapse of human civilization," which should be any day now.

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'Another Shitty Situation': Trump Attack on CDC Monitoring Blamed in 'Explosive Diarrhea' Outbreak
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'Another Shitty Situation': Trump Attack on CDC Monitoring Blamed in 'Explosive Diarrhea' Outbreak

The Trump administration is coming under fire for its response to the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea and has so far been documented in more than two dozen states.

Public health officials still have not identified the source of the outbreak, which typically spreads via contaminated produce.

In an interview with Axios published Saturday, David Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggested that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not been on top of tracking the outbreak the same way it has been in the past.

"Right now it's individual state health departments that are having to speak up," remarked Freedman, "because the CDC is really not following it on a day-to-day basis."

Omer Awan, vice chair and associate program director for the diagnostic radiology residency at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told PBS in an interview published Monday that infections will likely only grow if the government doesn't track down the source of the outbreak quickly.

"Because we haven't pinned it down, that means that these cases are likely to disseminate," said Awan. "People are still eating the contaminated food that's leading to so many cases."

Awan added that mass firings at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the leadership of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were hindering CDC's ability to track the disease.

"The HHS and the federal government laid off a lot of CDC employees," said Awan. "Many of them were the very employees that would track these particular outbreaks. And the other is that, from July of 2025 last year, the CDC has no longer required reporting cyclosporiasis. It's become optional to report this to the CDC's Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network."

Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, pointed to the CDC decision to stop monitoring the cyclospora parasite as an example of the Trump administration putting Americans "in another shitty situation after laying waste to our public health infrastructure and gutting emergency preparedness."

"Because RFK Jr.’s CDC turned a blind eye to dangerous foodborne pathogens," Woodhouse added, "this outbreak spread quickly and states are now scrambling to do their own detective work on what’s causing it. The catastrophic cuts Trump and RFK Jr. made to disease surveillance and research keep coming back to haunt us, yet they want to cut even deeper to make up for their tax breaks for billionaires."

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that both federal and state officials have launched an investigation into whether fast food chain Taco Bell "played a role" in the cyclosporiasis outbreak.

According to the Post's sources, some people who got sick from the disease said they had eaten at Taco Bell shortly becoming symptomatic, although others who were infected by the parasite said they had not eaten at the fast food chain before growing ill.

"Public health officials have said this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in more than 30 states," reported the Post, "means more information and more patients to help identify shared foods, shopping habits and restaurant visits among those sickened to help determine the source."

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‘Frankly Sickening’: Reports Highlight Brutal Impact of Trump-GOP Cuts to Food Aid
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‘Frankly Sickening’: Reports Highlight Brutal Impact of Trump-GOP Cuts to Food Aid

Several reports published this week highlight the brutal impact cuts made to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Republicans' 2025 budget law are having on Americans' access to food.

A lengthy Tuesday report in The New York Times zeroed in on the bill's impact in Arizona, where roughly 440,000 people have been dropped from the program even though many of them are still eligible to receive assistance.

The GOP-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act established severe penalties for states that have high error rates when awarding SNAP benefits, and Arizona has responded by vastly increasing the paperwork applicants must file to qualify for the program in order to avoid making mistakes that could result in the loss of federal funding.

According to the Times, this has created "bureaucratic chaos" that has caused many otherwise eligible people to lose aid.

"It can take months to reach besieged caseworkers, and offices have gone as far as asking people with panhandling income for verification from strangers dropping cash in their jar," reported the Times. "Arizonans losing SNAP say they are skipping meals, quarreling over food, and missing rent payments to restock pantry shelves."

One former SNAP beneficiary featured in the Times story was Dee McDonald, a 65-year-old cancer survivor who reported skipping meals to ensure that the three grandsons she's raising have enough to eat.

According to the Times, McDonald has been scrambling from one local food pantry to another to ensure there is enough food in the house for the whole family, a process she told the paper has left her "exhausted."

“I go to sleep thinking about what are we going to have,” McDonald said.

Michael Wisehart, director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, told the Times that it's "frankly sickening to me the number of individuals" who are suffering due to the bureaucratic hurdles the state is enacting.

However, Wisehart said that if Arizona doesn't add these bureaucratic layers, it could risk seeing its SNAP program completely destroyed.

“It’s an existential threat,” he explained. “States are absolutely contemplating a world in which SNAP isn’t available."

Another state facing this dilemma is Arkansas, which the local news station KATV reported on Monday is scrambling to lower its SNAP error rate that, under new rules, could cost the state $55 million per year.

Keesa Smith-Brantley, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and former deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, told KATV that the financial penalties imposed on the state could create a downward spiral in which state officials have fewer resources to effectively lower the SNAP error rate.

"It is very concerning that we may not have a SNAP program in years to come if the state can't come up with the funding," said Smith-Brantley.

A Tuesday report in Axios examined how the GOP's SNAP cuts have impacted Virginia, where 100,000 fewer residents are now enrolled in the program compared to a year ago.

Aaron McClung, chief development officer at Feed More, an umbrella organization for food banks in the central part of the state, told Axios that visits to food pantries have increased by more than 20% since the passage of the GOP budget law last year.

While food banks have tried to fill the gap, McClung said, they are no substitute for SNAP, which he described as "the nation's most effective, dignified, and scalable tool for reducing food insecurity."

Jacqueline Mott, Virginia state manager for the Save the Children Action Network, expressed a similar sentiment, telling Axios that "charitable food assistance was never designed to replace SNAP."

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Warning of Partisan Takeover, Senate Democrat Demands Freeze on Trump Postal Board Nominees
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Warning of Partisan Takeover, Senate Democrat Demands Freeze on Trump Postal Board Nominees

Sen. Gary Peters on Wednesday warned that the independence of the United States Postal Service Board of Governors is at risk thanks to President Donald Trump.

Peters (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called for a pause on efforts to confirm two Trump USPS nominees until the president puts forth a Democratic nominee to maintain partisan balance on the board.

In a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the committee, Peters said it appeared as though Trump was trying to stack the deck of the board by only nominating Republicans to serve.

"Congress designed the Board of Governors to represent the public interest, and enacted specific requirements regarding governors’ qualifications and political affiliations," wrote Peters. "The statute authorizing the board dictates that no more than five of the nine Senate-confirmed governors be members of the same political party."

Peters said that, if Trump kept refusing to make any Democratic nominations, it would eventually result in Republicans having a five-to-one advantage on the board.

"This imbalance in representation would be unprecedented," said Peters, "and would undermine public confidence in the board’s ability to serve the public interest above any partisan political aims."

The Save the Post Office Coalition on Tuesday sent a letter to senators urging them to reject Jeffrey Brodsky and William Gallo, Trump's two nominees to the board, whom they argued "do not have a record of public service" and "do not reflect the public interest in protecting the public service mission of the Postal Service."

"Mr. Brodsky and Mr. Gallo are wealthy businessmen with close ties to President Trump who both come from corporate insider backgrounds," the coalition emphasized. "They lack the qualifications needed to lead the nation’s oldest and most cherished public institution."

Control of the USPS Board of Governors has taken on particular importance given Trump's efforts to use the Postal Service as a weapon against mail-in voting.

In March, the president signed an executive order that instructed the USPS to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists. A federal court earlier this month blocked implementation of the Trump order, which is being challenged legally by congressional Democrats and all 23 Democratic state attorneys general.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that a coalition of eight nonprofit groups involved in voter education and advocacy have valid constitutional and statutory claims in their lawsuit against the Trump mail-in voting executive order.

Specifically, the court found that some of the groups' members may be directly harmed by the Trump order "because those members include individuals who must rely on mail voting as they live overseas, reside out of state, have disabilities, or are unable to travel to the polls and vote in person."

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ICE agents and immigration activists face off outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey
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'Fox Is Guarding the Hen House': ICE Agents Told FBI Will No Longer Investigate Confrontations

New guidance distributed to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country in recent days said that the FBI will no longer investigate confrontations that officers have with protesters or people who are subjected to immigration enforcement—leaving the agency to investigate its own violent encounters with the public following at least two recent killings by ICE agents.

The guidance pertained to claims of assault against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers, but FBI investigations have gathered evidence that implicated agents themselves after they claimed to have been attacked.

According to the message sent to ICE officers, Homeland Security Investigations, which operates under ICE, would begin examining incidents in which an agent claimed they were assaulted.

HSI does not have jurisdiction to investigate allegations of civil rights allegations, so in cases in which a confrontation escalates to a use of force by an officer, the unit would be unlikely to investigate whether the agent violated the victim's rights, The New York Times reported.

"The fox is guarding the hen house," said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the reported change.

Despite the guidance that was circulated to agents, the US Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, released a joint statement with DHS denying that the change would take place.

“The relationship between DHS and DOJ in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

According to a New York Times investigation, the Trump administration filed charges against more than 550 people who it said assaulted federal immigration officers. More than 400 of the cases had been resolved, and in nearly half of them, charges of assault had been thrown out or withdrawn, or the defendants had been acquitted.

As it's filed such charges, the Trump administration has frequently repeated its assertion that federal agents are regularly facing violent attacks from the public—including in cases in which agents have killed US citizens and immigrants, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and earlier this month, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

The reported change was also made public less than a week after an ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.

Journalist Sam Stein said the guidance that was given to federal agents could grant "pure impunity for ICE to do horrible things."

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Hegseth Is Demanding US Households Pay $5,000 More Per Year to Fund the Pentagon, Economist Says
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Hegseth Is Demanding US Households Pay $5,000 More Per Year to Fund the Pentagon, Economist Says

Critics lit into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he demanded on Tuesday that Congress pass President Donald Trump's plan for a $1.5 trillion military budget.

While testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hegseth once again made a pitch for the president's massive defense spending proposal, going so far as to say that "not funding [the US Department of Defense] at $1.5 trillion is the greatest threat that our nation faces."

In a social media post, economist Dean Baker put Trump's proposed budget into context by noting that the additional requested defense spending "is a bit less than $5,000 per household."

Baker also pointed out that the US already has a massive defense budget, writing that "before Bozo the president came in, we did fine on $860 billion," a total that is larger than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, Germany, India, and the UK.

Some Democratic lawmakers signaled their opposition to the $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request, which would represent an increase of more than 50% of what the US spent on its military in 2025.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) slammed Hegseth to his face during the hearing and pointed out that the unprecedented defense spending request was coming at a time when many Americans are struggling to afford gasoline and groceries.

"Secretary Hegseth, you are asking for unlimited money for bombs," Gillibrand said, "when people can't feed their families."

In an interview with MeidasTouch chief Washington correspondent Scott MacFarlane, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) predicted that Democrats’ response to Hegseth's demand for tens of billions of dollars in supplemental funding for the Iran war on top of the sprawling NDAA “is going to be a ‘hell no.’”

"How many times have we been told this war is over?" Ansari asked. "How many times have we been told that it's not a war?... I'm not giving another dollar to this."

Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) announced his opposition to the Hegseth budget in a social media post.

"Trump and Hegseth forced us into a disastrous, illegal war in Iran and now they want $1.5 trillion to keep it going," wrote Carbajal. "The American people want to end forever wars, not to fund them."

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