Whoosh And They're Gone
Well that was fun. In last week's welcome bit of comic relief, we got the vapid rise and rapid fall - despite requisite blonde hair, faux smile and passing resemblance to Ivanka - of "manifestly unqualified" Barbie News Reader and fake Chinese lawyer Katie Zacharia after a brutal debut. So much for MAGA meritocracy. SAD! Zacharia set a new speed record - half a Mooch - in a job akin to Spinal Tap drummer. But the question remains: When will the incompetent male dolts get fired?
While by far not the most substantive Trump blunder, it was one of the most cringeworthy, exposing (again) the profound ineptitude of his shambolic rule just before voters go to the polls to render judgment on it. In less than a week, Zacharia managed to get plucked from right-wing obscurity, be "shoehorned" into a job far beyond her skillset, humiliate herself before millions, go on Fox and stammeringly fail to redeem herself, and get fired by a capricious, perennial loser who got famous fake-firing people on TV and now daily exposes his own clownish unfitness for his job. One astute observer: "I'm starting to think this Donald guy might not have any idea what he's doing."
Born Kate Sharon Black in 1984, Zacharia grew up in California in the "liberal cesspool” of Cambria; she was the conservative “black sheep” of her family "thanks to the great, late Rush Limbaugh, who raised me as a kid on the radio." Describing a clash with woke patrons of her "cardio kickboxing gym," she said the owner once asked her not to wear her "Trump 2024" hat but "I would never take my Trump hat off to appease the left." A Pizzagate, Qanon and Stop the Steal buff, she was a "huge fan of ICE and Border Patrol" who briefly worked for Kristi Noem and a commentator for right-wing TV before being spotted by Trump, maybe because she scheduled her gigs when she thought he'd be watching. Totally normal.
Officials looking to replace Karoline Leavitt had reportedly narrowed down the list of candidates "only to find that (they'd) said something negative about (Trump)," which of course wouldn't do for the fragile toddler. Thus did uber-obsequious, ringlet-bottle-blonde "lizard person" Zacharia take to the podium, blare "Good morning!!" in a sing-songy screech, and stumble through a smiley, halting, inflection-challenged briefing about Trump's "historic one-day war," "attendance at record highs as enthusiastic hardworking Americans are lining up and packing arenas," a "booming economy....and a, um, he, great relationship...with Venezuela...um, and...my president, excuse me, my husband, that's a good one..." Not.
After the one question on Ukraine, and the famous, “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” it was over. 14 minutes, or forever in bimbo time. It got worse. The oft-repeated claims of being a lawyer when she’d failed the bar - weirdly, thanks Hannity - and of working in China on “international transaction law” when she was basically a paid intern. The verdict: "A train wreck," "a joke hire," "talk about a public execution," "between the 3rd-grade level reading and the fake attorney in China thing, brutal." Anti-DEI,.scandal-plagued Rick Santorum's glowing review: She was "not even close to the worst." Trump's lazy excuse: "I told her, 'If I were you, I'd reconsider.'" Fox: She's "transitioning" out of the job she held for 14 minutes.
It was a made-for-the-Internet spectacle. The White House declared, "She’ll be remembered as one of the all-time greats." America proclaimed, "She's gonna be a punchline for a very long time." Democratic strategist Mike Nellis clarified, "She wasn't fired because she lied,” a Trump requisite, but because "she was a bad liar." Another requisite: Michael Steele mused no more "blonde white female pronouncing his noise in a way that makes him feel good.” Some selfishly mourned the loss: "Please let her last long enough to hold a second briefing - I need the joy." Some empathized with SNL writers stuck with Friday night rewrites. Some were shocked: "I can't believe her husband, I mean president, fired her."
Though no press secretary really matters because Trump daily lies, veers, makes things up, some speculated on the next one: Scott Jennings, Katie Miller, Melissa McCarthy doing Sean Spicer. The Borowitz Report announced it's George Santos, who was "thrilled...I will bring to this job my experience not only as a lawyer but as a doctor and astronaut.” Also, he was cutting short his reunion tour "with his fellow Beatles." Some noted Zacharia "was press secretary longer than she was a lawyer." Others asserted they'd had blueberries, bananas, takeout and lettuce in their fridge longer than she had her job. Also that the U.K's Liz Truss lasted longer, as did the head of lettuce that often competed with her.
Some mulled Zacharia's future: "Next: memoir and book tour," "Now she can go back to studying for the bar, or at least its cocktail menu," "She is leaving 'to spend more time with my children, who will teach me how to read.'" A guy met her years ago on a cruise ship: She was telling a friend she'd partied the night before and slept in. They told her she'd missed them crossing the equator that morning. She said, "Oh, what did it look like?" Some waxed lyrical: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives." Some lamented inflation: "I remember when you could get a few months of work out of a press secretary. Now they're like those new batteries - they look like they'll last but whoosh and they're gone."
In honor of her historic reign, Wikipedia’s “List Of Humorous Units Of Measurement” was updated to include the “Zacharia,” a “fractional unit of a Scaramucci,” the previous record for Anthony Scaramucci's 11 days as press secretary in Trump's first term. The change prompted heated debate, pained mathematical equations, admiration: "Nobody thought anything could go faster than the speed of Mooch, but here we are." There were questions - Are Mooches a metric system? Would that be 45 centi-Mooches? - and answers: "They convert at a 5/11 ratio." Talk turned existential: "A Scaramucci was a measure of time. A Zacharia is more ethereal, a measure of being, a disconnect between one’s story and one's purpose...Beautiful really."
And there was anger Zacharia got fired but Trump's still here, that the media and GOP have let him "get away with LYING ABOUT EVERY GODDAMNED THING...from 2015 SPOUTING THAT OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE SHIT AND EVERY OTHER FUCKING LIE HE’S TOLD SINCE." And, in the last few months, that half of eight female officials have resigned or been fired, all replaced by men. That consistently inept, unhinged, corrupt, sick idiots like Hegseth, Patel, Lutnick, Goebbels, Vance etc lie, cheat, rave, royally screw up yet keep their jobs. What the fuck. Meanwhile Zacharia, still sketchy, posts altered photos from the Oval Office and declares the guy who threw her under the bus "kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic and hard-working...No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to." Damn, we hope not.
Helpful Press Secretary conversion table.Image from Bluesky
‘Deadly Serious’: Half of World’s Reef-Building Coral Face Extinction Threat as Oceans Warm, Study Warns
Nearly half the world's reef-building coral species are at risk of extinction according to a global assessment released Thursday. Researchers warn that the accelerating climate crisis is making the danger even worse than the most recent data shows.
Coral reefs are among the most important ecosystems on Earth, providing food and shelter for around a quarter of all marine species. Their destruction jeopardizes not only entire marine food webs, but also the millions of people who rely on those species for food.
The study, published in the journal Nature, found that as of 2020, about 44% of coral species were threatened, compared with about one-third in 2008.
David Obura, a marine biologist and lead author of the study, said the new assessment "provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of global extinction risk among reef-building corals, and a stark warning of the accelerating increase in global threats to coral reefs."
But he said it also "highlights the challenges we face in addressing major data and knowledge gaps on the status of species at global scales, at the same time as having to take urgent decisions to reduce the drivers of global declines in critical species and ecosystems.”
The researchers stressed that the data they analyzed understates the danger. The assessment does not take into account the damage from the devastating bleaching event that began in 2023 and lasted until mid-2025. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it was the largest such event ever recorded, exposing about 84% of the world's coral reef area to bleaching-level heat stress and causing widespread coral deaths.
It also doesn't take into account what meteorologists have projected could be the strongest El Niño ever, which could break ocean temperature records in the coming months, likely leading to another massive die-off of corals.
"It is entirely possible that reassessing the status of corals just after this coming El Niño may show them to have crossed the 50% mark of the proportion of species at elevated risk of extinction," Obura told AFP.
He noted that a previous "super" El Niño, in 1997-98, also caused tremendous damage to reefs.
"That this coming event is worse than that, after three intervening global bleaching events, is a terrifying reality," he said.
Researchers extract a fossil coral core sample from a massive coral colony in the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct historical climate and El Niño cycles as part of a study published in Science on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Julia Cole/Science)
In the new assessment, researchers found that human-caused climate change is the primary threat to reef-building coral, determining the fate of about 90% of the species at greatest risk.
They emphasized that coral reef health is more complex than simply "survival" versus "disappearance," and that every reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions matters.
“Coral reefs can feel a world away..." said Françoise Cabada-Blanco, a marine ecologist at the University of Portsmouth and co-author of the study. "But they cover a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, while supporting an enormous share of marine life and the food, coastal protection and livelihoods of millions of people."
"What happens to them affects all of us," she said. "The message from this assessment is that every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid gives corals a better chance—so action now really does count.”
A report published last year concluded that the globe had already passed the 1.2°C warming threshold for widespread coral reef dieback and found that unless global temperatures drop substantially, reefs could largely disappear.
“The crisis facing corals is deadly serious,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we don’t take swift action to curb climate pollution, we could lose half of them forever.”
“We’ve already seen a lot of disruptions to sea life from the much warmer waters El Niño has brought this year, and I’m really worried about what that will do to threatened coral species," she added. "Coral reefs are the backbone of the ocean, and we can’t have a healthy marine ecosystem without them.”
'Shameful': Trump DOJ Ditches Civil Rights and School Desegregation Cases
The new analyses of the cases—"Walking Away: DOJ's Abandonment of Civil Rights Cases for People of Color" and "Filling in The Gaps: Tracking The 50+ School Desegregation Cases DOJ Says It Is Ending"—were developed by Democracy Forward's oversight and accountability project Red Line for Civil Rights.
"People and communities rely on DOJ to pursue vital cases to address threats to civil rights under our nation's laws. The Red Line for Civil Rights reports don't just highlight the cases that have been abandoned, but also make clear the harm that DOJ's abandonment of its mission retreat has caused," said Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman.
The project found at least 36 abandoned cases and probes addressing discrimination against Black, Latino, and Native American people, from Voting Rights Act lawsuits and redlining settlements with banks to firefighter and police hiring issues.
There was United States v. Cobb County, Georgia, in which the DOJ alleged that credit checks and a written exam illegally screened out Black firefighter applicants, and United States v. Patriot Bank, a 2024 consent order over redlining of Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee.
In United States v. SouthEast Bank, the department argued that a student loan refinancing product discriminated against Alaska Native, American Indian, and Black applicants, and in United States v. City of Minneapolis, the DOJ concluded that police discriminated against Black and Native American in Minnesotans.
"The shameful withdrawal of DOJ resources from these cases and investigations highlights how this administration is abandoning communities across the country," said Megan Marks, a former leader in the department who is now the project's deputy director and managing editor. "Walking away from them doesn't mean the discrimination has been addressed. It just means DOJ is no longer watching."
In its second analysis, the project identified 56 school districts in 12 states where the department has moved to ditch or end a desegregation case, or did not oppose ending one—from Athens City, Alabama and Chesterfield County, South Carolina to South Bend, Indiana and Waterbury, Connecticut.
Tanisha Milton teaches a lesson on busing and the desegregation of Boston, Massachusetts public schools during an 8th grade civics class at TechBoston Academy on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
"The Supreme Court held in its landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education, that segregating public school students by race violates the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection," the report notes. "Since Brown, DOJ has monitored and enforced desegregation orders, reviewing evidence and often working collaboratively with school districts and, in some cases, private plaintiffs to support progress."
"This work was central to the Civil Rights Division's history. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorized DOJ to file its own school desegregation lawsuits against public schools or institutions of higher education and to join cases that families had already brought," the paper explains. "These school desegregation cases are how the promise of Brown reaches individual classrooms. Behind each of these cases are children, families, and a community that fought, sometimes at great personal risk, for the right to an equal education."
Shaheena Simons previously oversaw the Justice Department's desegregation docket but is now a senior adviser at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In response to the report, she said that the "DOJ's haste to end these cases without deliberation or transparency is a betrayal of Black students who continue to face segregation and inequality in our schools."
"This retreat is part of a much bigger picture," Simons emphasized. "Not only has the Civil Rights Division abandoned its work to protect the rights of our most marginalized students, but it is also weaponizing civil rights statutes against them."
Democratic leaders in the US House of Representatives also spoke out about the project's findings. Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott (Va.) accused the "politicized" department of "turning its back on workers and students by abandoning entire categories of discrimination cases and ending the fight against school desegregation altogether."
Democrats on his panel "are committed to the protection of civil rights and to guaranteeing that all Americans are protected from discrimination in accordance with the civil rights laws that so many Americans fought to secure," pledged Scott, as his party prepares for next month's midterm elections, in which Republicans could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.
Harmeet Dhillon shakes hands with Republican US President-elect Donald Trump in a photo she posted on social media on October 31, 2024. (Photo: Harmeet Dhillon/X)
Fellow Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin (Md.), a constitutional scholar and ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, said that "Democracy Forward's reports expose the Justice Department's shocking betrayal of its central duty to protect Americans against race discrimination."
"While DOJ devotes its resources to persecuting Trump's political enemies, it has dropped protection of voting rights and is allowing discrimination to proliferate by abandoning school desegregation and job discrimination cases," he said, as the Trump administration pursues everyone from former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
"We need a Department of Justice that stands by the rule of law and the rights of all Americans," Raskin asserted. "But this administration carries out presidential vendettas, covers up child sex trafficking, promotes corruption, and pardons and coddles violent felons in the president's private militia."
