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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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President Trump Participates In A Small Business Summit At The White House
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Electricity Costs Up 18% as Trump's Self-Imposed Deadline to Cut Household Bills in Half Passes

President Donald Trump's trade war, demand for the rapid expansion of energy-sucking artificial intelligence data centers, and cancellation of renewable energy projects have all gotten in the way of his ability to deliver on his promise to slash household electricity costs, according to US Energy Information Administration data released as the president's self-imposed deadline for cutting rates by 50% came and went this week.

The latest data from the EIA shows residential rates as recent as this past April, and finds that households paid an average of 18.83 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) that month compared with 17.55 cents in April 2025.

Since January 2025, when Trump entered office for his second term, prices have gone up by more than 18%, according to the EIA.

The data comes as the president reached the 18-month mark of his second administration—the deadline he gave himself to cut electricity rates in half.

"Under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half at least,” Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina in August 2024. “We intend to slash prices by half within 12 months—at a maximum 18 months.”

"Every single thing that I promised, I produced," he added.

As Democratic research group American Bridge 21st Century said Tuesday, "Time's up, and so is your bill."

The 7.3% increase in the average electricity bill over the past 12 months alone shows costs soaring at roughly double the rate of inflation, reported 24/7 Wall Street.

The largest grid operator in the country, PJM Interconnection, reported a capacity price of $16.4 billion for power delivery in the 2028-29 period, according to the outlet. Reason also reported that data centers' electricity use added $6 billion to PJM's capacity auction, which utilities pay to guarantee future power supplies, with the costs flowing to ratepayers.

In the second quarter of 2026, utilities filed $9.2 billion in requests for rate hikes, up 26% from the same period in 2025, according to 24/7 Wall Street.

The EIA projected in May that residential electricity prices would rise by about 5% this year, with costs soaring the most in East Coast states.

Trump's deadline for slashing prices—a promise he made as families were also struggling with rising grocery and housing prices—came as The Century Foundation (TCF) released a report titled "Power Failure: Rising Energy Debt Is Climbing into the Middle Class."

According to the report, energy bills have increased three times faster than the inflation rate since Trump took office for the second time, with the national average utility bill reaching $280 in early 2026—a 12% increase since the end of 2024.

The average household in 18 states is now paying more than $280 per month for utilities, and average costs have gone up by more than 20% in 10 states since Trump began his second term.

In March 2026, the national average overdue utility balance for a household was $817, said TCF.

"The Trump administration’s policies are actively contributing to and worsening the energy cost crisis," reads TCF's report. "The effects of the Iran war will only further increase household utility costs, while runaway data center expansions account for 63 percent of electricity generation capacity costs in the nation’s largest power market. Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed clean-energy tax credits that would have lowered household electricity bills and aid programs to help low-income families afford their energy bills."

Without citing evidence, Trump's energy secretary, Chris Wright, claimed last week that AI data centers "are the greatest tool we have right now to stop the rise of electricity prices," but numerous analyses have tied the rapid growth of the sector—pushed by the White House—to higher household costs, as a typical "hyperscale" data center can use as much as 100 megawatts, the same amount of electricity as 100,000 households.

Trump has also made components of energy infrastructure more expensive, while the think tank Energy Innovation found in a recent analysis that the president's cancellation of solar and other renewable energy projects could leave households paying an additional $460 per year in energy costs by 2035.

"The bottom line is what the data shows," wrote Joel South at 24/7 Wall Street. "The specific promise, cheaper power by mid-2026, was not met."

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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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'An Unmistakably Chilling Message': Trump DOJ Subpoenaed Phone Records of Journalists' Relatives
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'An Unmistakably Chilling Message': Trump DOJ Subpoenaed Phone Records of Journalists' Relatives

Attorneys representing The New York Times have revealed that the Trump administration's subpoenas of the newspaper's journalists are far more aggressive than what had been previously reported.

In a letter sent to US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Saturday and unsealed by the court on Monday, attorneys David O'Neil, Douglas Zolkind, and Julie Edelstein said that the US Department of Justice was engaged in an "alarming pattern of conduct" beyond its recently revealed efforts to compel Times reporters to testify before a grand jury for a probe related to unspecified national security leaks.

The attorneys said the administration had gone so far as to subpoena phone companies for subscriber information and toll records for phone numbers used by one reporter's mother and by two reporters' spouses, among others.

They also revealed that two administration subpoenas seek records going back as far as January 1 this year, "long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the department's investigation," suggesting that "the department is using this investigation... to forage for information about the journalists' source relationships more broadly."

The subpoenas of the Times journalists, issued earlier this month, came days after the paper published a story that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.

The issued subpoenas did not specifically name the Times’ reporting on the Qatari jet as the reason for the grand jury probe, although they were given to all four journalists—Tyler Pager, Julian Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Eric Lipton—who reported the story.

It is highly uncommon for government investigators to subpoena journalists when they are probing national security leaks, as such actions are generally seen as having a chilling effect on reporters’ ability to gather information.

Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, described news of the department seeking phone records of reporters' spouses and a parent as "an extraordinary escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to intimidate the press."

"The Justice Department didn't stop at journalists—it went after their family members, too," Fallow noted. "That sends an unmistakably chilling message to anyone thinking about reporting on this administration. Every American who values a free and independent press should see this for what it is: an abuse of power designed to silence scrutiny."

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, was even more scathing in his denunciation of the administration's actions.

"Even the Mafia says families are off limits," said Stern. "It’s gross that the administration—in its never-ending effort to harass and intimidate reporters who reveal its incompetence—is going after the communications of journalists’ relatives."

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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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