The unofficial Trump adviser and conservative social media influencer announced she's taking a break at quite the moment.
Foreign-born workers account for all net labor force participation and employment gains since July. Manufacturing adds 101,000 jobs since December 2025, leaving net gain of 8,000 under Trump. Median and average unemployment spells are longest in about a decade excluding the pandemic. Information and finance remain weakest in AI-exposed industries.
The Federal Aviation Administration still uses computers that require floppy disks. But those are finally on the way out within the next few years. Yes, it's still 2026, and yes, you read that right: The FAA -- the agency responsible for overseeing aviation safety in the US -- is finally getting rid of four systems dating back to the 1980s that remain in use at more than 400 facilities around the country, the agency announced on Thursday.
President Trump said Saturday that he is ordering the Department of Justice to "look into" what he describes as threats by Democrats to impeach senior Republican figures, calling them "extortion at the highest level." read more
The attorney general defended the surveillance technology and dismissed privacy concerns as "misinformation."
Then there's this ...
The US election showed growing frustration with Israel on both sides of the aisle
apnews.com
... In the space of about 24 hours, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested cutting off aid to Israel, a staunch critic of Israel won a key Senate race and the vice president partly blamed his own party's landslide defeat on U.S.-Israel relations.
The rupture caused by Israel's devastating military campaign in Gaza and the jointly launched war with Iran has shredded bipartisan U.S. support for Israel that goes back decades. Democrats are fiercely divided over Israel, and Republicans are increasingly critical of its actions.
In Israel, critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of having mismanaged relations with the country's closest ally. But the divide runs much deeper, and is likely to persist even if a new government is formed after last week's elections.
On the left, Americans increasingly see Israel as an international pariah because of the war in Gaza and violent settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. On the right, some see Israel as having undermined Trump's "America First" pledge, accusing it of dragging the U.S. into a costly and unnecessary war with Iran.
"Something fundamental has shifted," said Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. "My working assumption is that the call to cut off military aid is just the beginning." ...
Related ...
OpenAI boss Sam Altman spells out how and why the AI industry wants to slow down: We could lose control' (September 2026)
www.cnbc.com
... AI bosses have since shown a rare display of unity, with both Altman and Musk on Saturday backing an essay from Amodei that urged AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models. ...
Sam Altman sets out 2 ways AI could go 'very badly'
"We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI," Altman said in a post on X just after midnight on Monday, adding that "no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness."
Altman warned of two ways AI progress could go "very badly," including losing "control of the future to AI" and too much power concentrating around a single person or company.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are scrambling to address calls for safeguards. ...
Probably more than you may want to read ...
Why Was the Electoral College Created? (October 2025)
www.history.com
...At the time of the Philadelphia convention, no other country in the world directly elected its chief executive, so the delegates were wading into uncharted territory. Further complicating the task was a deep-rooted distrust of executive power. After all, the fledgling nation had just fought its way out from under a tyrannical king and overreaching colonial governors. They didn't want another despot on their hands.
One group of delegates felt strongly that Congress shouldn't have anything to do with picking the president. Too much opportunity for chummy corruption between the executive and legislative branches.
Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. Second, they feared a headstrong "democratic mob" steering the country astray. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.
Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. These intermediaries wouldn't be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent "electors" who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency.
Slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise
But determining exactly how many electors to assign to each state was another sticking point. Here the divide was between slave-owning and non-slave-owning states. It was the same issue that plagued the distribution of seats in the House of Representatives: should or shouldn't the Founders include slaves in counting a state's population?
In 1787, roughly 40 percent of people living in the Southern states were enslaved Black people, who couldn't vote. James Madison from Virginia"where enslaved people accounted for 60 percent of the population"knew that either a direct presidential election, or one with electors divvied up according to free white residents only, wouldn't fly in the South.
"The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States," said Madison, "and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes."
The result was the controversial "three-fifths compromise," in which three-fifths of the enslaved Black population would be counted toward allocating representatives and electors and calculating federal taxes. The compromise ensured that Southern states would ratify the Constitution and gave Virginia, home to more than 200,000 slaves, a quarter (12) of the total electoral votes required to win the presidency (46). ...
@#6 ... plays for "the team" ...
That may be a major understatement regarding AG Blanche's view towards Pres Trump.
To wit ...
'I love you, sir': Todd Blanche, devoted Trump enforcer, tapped to do his bidding full time (June 2026)
www.theguardian.com
Wait, what?
I had read this ...
Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated -- and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News (June 25, 2025)
www.whitehouse.gov
... The world is far safer after President Donald J. Trump's highly successful, decisive precision strikes against the Iranian regime's key nuclear facilities.[emphasis theirs]
Take it from those who actually know:
President Trump: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term! The white structure shown is deeply imbedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level, and completely shielded from flame. The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" ...
From the sub-summary...
Gulf states fear fiercer Iran retaliation if US strikes again
www.stripes.com
... Gulf states fear that another U.S.-Israeli attack on a better-prepared Iran could unleash an even more destructive war across the region, leaving them to pick up the pieces.
"We find ourselves drawn within a crisis that we worked diplomatically very hard to try to avert," Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to UAE's president, told the IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Sunday. "We are clearly seeking a political off-ramp."
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. and Israel would "finish the job" in Iran. ...
When I saw this thread, I wondered how it may be related to another comment I have posted ...
To wit ...
U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina's Voter ID Law (2016)
www.npr.org
...The appeals court noted that the North Carolina Legislature "requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices" -- then, data in hand, "enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans."[emphasis mine]
The changes to the voting process "target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the circuit court wrote, and "impose cures for problems that did not exist."
The appeals court suggested that the motivation was fundamentally political -- a Republican legislature attempting to secure its power by blocking votes from a population likely to vote for Democrats....
Big Daddy Graham- Walk On The Mild Side (1984)
www.youtube.com
Why did I post this song?
Well, maybe the Democrats need to take a step back and look more towards the long-term, and stop relishing in their current amazing win.
That is, maybe the Democrats need to be more ~mild.~