Mabel Dore in '44

Kash Patel, the worst FBI director since its founding, is visiting Russia a month before the US midterm election. Not only that, but the FSB is likely to be Wild Eyes Kash's host. The FSB is the successor to the Soviet secret police known as the KGB.

FBI Director Kash Patel is planning to visit Russia later this year, likely in mid-October, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the situation. [ ... ] Patel has a history of involvement in controversial Russia-related matters dating to President Donald Trump’s first term, including trying to cast doubt on investigations into whether Trump colluded with Russia to help him win the 2016 election — an episode he now calls the “Russiagate hoax.” Patel also is developing a track record of taking eye-catching trips in his role atop the FBI, drawing scrutiny from Congress. According to the U.S. official familiar with the travel plans, Patel is scheduled to visit Russia on Oct. 14-15, first stopping in Moscow and then St. Petersburg. His host is likely to be the FSB, the Russian security service that is heir to the Soviet-era KGB, the official said. [ ... ] U.S. intelligence officials have concluded for years that Moscow has been behind efforts to sow discord and interfere in U.S. elections, findings supported by documents Trump declassified last week ahead of a speech intended to bolster support for his long-shot effort to overhaul U.S. voting laws. The Kremlin has also been suspected to be behind major cybersecurity breaches of government agencies and private sector companies. Patel rose to prominence as a result of the central role he played as a staffer to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and 2018, when the panel — led by then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Yep, Kash used to work for Devin Nunes who was the dumbest member of the House of Representatives at that time. Nunes once sued a cartoon cow – and lost. 🐮

Kash's tenure at the FBI has been marked by extravagant spending and embarrassing behavior.

Earlier this month, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees launched a bicameral probe into Patel’s potential misuse of taxpayer-funded resources. News of the trip also comes amid acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s effort to win Senate confirmation and could prompt new questions from lawmakers about the Justice Department’s decision-making.

Kash is a disgrace to law enforcement and is a typically unqualified member of this administration. Perhaps the Russians are hoping to get him drunk and take compromising pictures of him.

Sam Levin and Sophie Sullivan at The Guardian:

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused immigrants and protesters of “weaponizing” their vehicles to “assault” federal immigration agents, a claim used to justify arrests and deadly shootings by officers.

But a Guardian review of 26 cases that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has promoted as evidence of a surge in “vehicular attacks” reveals most of those claims have fallen apart under scrutiny, with the accusations consistently disproven by evidence or rejected in court. Only one of the 26 cases has resulted in an assault conviction, according to court records and information shared by prosecutors.

The findings come as DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are facing intense scrutiny over the back-to-back fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. In both cases, ICE officers killed the men during attempted traffic stops, with DHS arguing the men had endangered officers and the public with their vehicles – claims that witnesses have rejected.

DHS has repeatedly claimed its officers have faced a “3,300% increase in vehicle attacks” under Donald Trump’s second term, but has not provided evidence to support that figure and has not responded to requests for a list of cases. To better understand how the government’s vehicle assault allegations have been adjudicated over time, the Guardian reviewed the most detailed list DHS has put out: a February press release asserting agents have experienced “more than 180 vehicle attacks” since Trump took office. The 2,100-word release provided summaries of 23 incidents from across the country from June 2025 to January 2026, saying it was a “non-exhaustive list”.

The Guardian looked at records for each case and contacted local and federal authorities and immigration and defense attorneys for more details. We identified 26 people accused in the cases of using their vehicles to threaten, assault or injure immigration officers. Five of them were shot by officers during the encounters, one fatally. The review reveals a stunning failure by DHS and prosecutors to prove the government’s initial allegations of violence in those cases.

The review showed:

Fifteen of the 26 people accused of vehicle attacks never faced federal criminal charges over the incidents, and 11 of the 26 people did.

Eight people who were charged had their cases dismissed, including one person who received a “deferred prosecution”, meaning charges will be dropped if the defendant meets certain conditions.

One person has a pending assault charge; one pleaded guilty to assault; and one was convicted of “destruction of government property”, but acquitted of assault.

DHS has repeatedly continued to promote people’s cases as evidence of violence long after the original claims fell apart.

Cases were dropped or never charged in California, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maryland and Washington DC.

The people on the list who never faced federal charges include one man who DHS claimed was “at large” and one who was fatally shot by ICE during the encounter. The sole guilty plea for assault involves a man accused of reversing his car during a traffic stop and hitting an ICE officer in the leg.

DHS’s list of 26 cases is not comprehensive. It excludes other high-profile incidents that took place in that timeframe, including dismissals of vehicle attack charges and the case of Renee Good in Minneapolis, who was also accused of “weaponizing” her car before an ICE officer killed her. The list also leaves out a man accused of “dragging” an agent with his car in a case that ended in an assault conviction in December. And there have been additional cases since the timeframe covered by the DHS list. Last week, the agency promoted a case of an alleged vehicle assault from April, but no charges have been filed in that case, either. This week, a Nebraska defendant pleaded guilty in a vehicle assault case. DHS did not respond to inquiries about the findings or questions about specific cases. “This whole narrative that all of these people were trying to run over officers with their cars is frankly bizarre and laughable,” said Margaret Hellerstein, a California attorney. She represents Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok streamer who was shot by an officer in October during a traffic stop. He was charged with assault, with DHS claiming he began “ramming” officers, but video showed the car did not appear to be moving when he was shot, and a judge threw out the case, saying his rights had been violated during the prosecution. The US attorney’s office has appealed the dismissal.

I've been told that you can switch clients to avoid this, there are a few options other than deer.

Oil prices were almost 4% higher on Wednesday, as conflict in the Middle East continued to escalate.

U.S. forces carried out their 11th consecutive evening of strikes on Iran overnight.

Epstein and Ehud Barak (former PM of Israel) were partners and worked closely with Mossad as well. That's not even a secret. Every news organization has reported on that fact for the last few years.

I do think this is one where we need to be a bit more careful about how this is being discussed. Gazillionaires laundering atrocity is not new nor a conspiracy but the way it gets discussed sometimes is.

98% of these conversations are based in reality, but sometimes there is a twist at the end that dramatically changes the implication.

It's also very similar to how people are realizing just how much is tied to Israel. How many partnerships there are. How many people are shaking hands. How many orgs are in symbiotic relationships over Israel. Then they conclude "oh Israel is controlling the US." Everything was true until the conclusion, which is how some "Epstein Class" conversations are happening.

Epstein Class aka "a simultaneously hyper-exclusive and far-reaching cesspool of corruption and atrocity that is managed by the connection of the wealthiest people on the planet backing one another"

vs

Epstein Class aka "...and the architects of this are Jews."

Personally, I do not like referring to it as the epstein class at all for this reason. I think there is too much misuse, especially as more far right goons follow Tucker Carlson in the schisms into more overt right-wing "anti-Israel" movements (and subsequently get adopted by big tent liberals and "leftists" going "wow even x got it right")

I think everything that falls under "epstein class" could be referred to with other terms that connect it back towards anti-capitalism, opposition to white supremacy, and genuine anti-zionism that keep it from steering towards "paid for by soros" levels of critique.

At worst its antisemitic conspiracy, at best I think it does what "alt-right" does and creates a vague notion of already well-defined action and ideology that allows for people to make horrid shit more palatable.

🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: World’s First Vaccine Targeting the Entire SARS Coronavirus Family Begins Human Testing

Imagine a vaccine that doesn’t just fight COVID but every SARS-related virus, including ones still hiding in bats, waiting to jump.

That’s GBP511. And it just started human trials in Australia.🧵

The vaccine’s core is a computer-designed protein particle — a precise molecular assembly that does not exist in nature. To turn this tiny object into a vaccine, scientists at UW Medicine attached four receptor-binding domains (RBDs) from different coronaviruses — two from SARS-CoV-2, one from SARS-CoV-1, and one from a bat coronavirus (BtKY72) — on the surface. 

“The beauty of this approach is that by presenting the immune system with multiple related antigens at once, we can train it to recognize features that are conserved across the entire sarbecovirus family,” said David Veesler, professor of biochemistry at UW Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, who led the preclinical studies. “That’s exactly what you need to prepare for unpredictable future threats.” 

In preclinical studies, GBP511 protected animals from related viruses they weren’t directly immunized against. 

GBP511 builds on technology validated through SKYCovione, a COVID-19 vaccine that in 2022 became the world’s first computer-designed medicine to achieve regulatory approval. That vaccine was also pioneered by the King and Veesler Labs at UW Medicine and developed by SK bioscience. 

The underlying nanoparticle platform developed at the IPD has been validated in peer-reviewed studies, including a 2021 Cell paper showing that animals immunized with multivalent nanoparticle vaccines were protected against coronaviruses not included in the vaccine itself. A recent preprint describes the preclinical work that led to GBP511. 

Chambers is the former leader of Exodus International, an Orlando-based organization that promoted so-called conversion therapy and claimed for years that people could change their sexual orientation.

Lillian Rizzo at CNBC:

Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery hit its first official roadblock when a judge granted a temporary restraining order on the merger as part of a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general. California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signed off on the order Monday after hearing arguments from both sides in an Oakland courtroom on Friday. The order puts a 14-day pause on anything moving forward with the merger. Last week, a group of state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit seeking to block the $110 billion acquisition due to antitrust concerns. The proposed deal would unite the storied film studios of Paramount and Warner Bros, the CBS broadcast network, a sprawling portfolio of pay TV networks that includes CNN, TNT, MTV and BET, and streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, under one roof. In a statement Monday, a Paramount spokesperson said the company is “confident the evidence will demonstrate that the State AGs’ antitrust arguments are without merit as their alleged markets and claims of anticompetitive effects are without any basis in modern market realities.”   “This merger is lawful, pro-competitive, and will benefit consumers, creators, workers, and the entertainment industry. We will continue to vigorously defend the transaction and will look forward to the hearings on the substance of the State AGs’ action,” according to the statement.

Warner Bros. declined to comment. The lawsuit said the proposed deal would violate the Clayton Antitrust Act — a more than 100-year-old law that prohibits anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. The lawsuit was brought by a group of states that also includes Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. In Monday’s order, Martínez-Olguín said the coalition of state attorneys general presented “compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market.”

[...] The Paramount-WBD transaction has been under review by the European Union and the U.K., which provided a new provisional deadline of July 22. The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice signed off on the tie-up in June, clearing it of federal concerns. It has also won approval from several global jurisdictions. Paramount has said it’s on track to close the deal by the end of September. If the transaction were to be delayed beyond then, Paramount could face additional costs, namely a so-called ticking fee that kicks in if it’s not closed after Sept. 30. The fee would be an additional 25 cents paid to WBD shareholders per quarter until closing — which would equal about $650 million in cash value per quarter. Paramount also agreed to a $7 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn’t move forward due to regulatory concerns.

Good news: the disastrous Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger has hit a temporary snag, thanks to Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granting the TRO.

See Also:

AP, via The Guardian: Judge orders pause on Paramount-Warner merger after challenge from 12 states

Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino at The Guardian:

Since Kamala Harris’s defeat to Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats have chased candidates who exude an ever-elusive “authenticity”. For many on the left, the answer was Graham Platner, a military veteran turned oyster farmer with a gravelly voice and deep hostility toward the political establishment. Even as controversy after controversy emerged – racist, sexist, homophobic online posts; a tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he later covered up; sexually explicit messages sent to other women while he was married; and allegations from former partners of toxic and threatening behavior, which he denied – Platner’s momentum didn’t slow. It was only after a woman accused Platner of rape – which he denies – that his political support collapsed. In the wake of his withdrawal, Democrats are asking themselves many questions, chief among them, who will replace him as their party’s nominee in the marquee Senate race? But the saga has also revived a deeper debate over whose flaws are forgivable – and whose are disqualifying.

“White men get to fail,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young, progressive candidates to run for office. “Women do not get to make mistakes. People of color do not get to make mistakes.” Litman said the argument was not that serious allegations should be treated differently because of a candidate’s identity, but that Platner had been granted an unusual degree of latitude to recover from earlier controversies that a female candidate or a candidate of color would probably not have been afforded. Litman said Platner was the “political equivalent of the Fyre fest guy or Adam Neuman” – high-profile men who continued to receive support for new ventures after spectacular failure. “It’s like there is inherent trust and faith in capabilities that they don’t have to prove,” she added.

Run for Something vets political candidates before offering their endorsement. As part of its endorsement application, Litman’s organization asks candidates to disclose what a background check might turn up, and what the opposition will find, Litman said. After going through the vetting process, women and people of color are more likely to “self-censor” or decide they would rather not run at all, Litman said, adding: “The thing that I keep coming back to is, who has permission to be authentic?” The result, according to candidates, strategists and scholars, is a political environment that often penalizes women and people of color more harshly than their white, male counterparts. “Folks who have been identified as hardscrabble, populist, left-of-center white guys get far more leeway than folks like me, Black progressives,” Chris Rabb, who won a closely watched Democratic primary in a deep-blue Pennsylvania House district, said last month on the Breaking Points podcast. “And that’s a double standard that is largely based on race.”

Despite a record of contemptible behavior, Platner continued to raise large sums of money from grassroots donors, pushed a sitting governor out of the primary and cruised to the Democratic nomination.

[...] When running for office, women, and particularly women of color, often start from a deficit, needing to prove not only that they are qualified but that they fit voters’ expectations of what leadership looks like, said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women in Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “Who can best run authentically on all of their many identities are those whose identities are privileged across the board,” she said.

Dittmar pointed to research on how women decide whether to run in the first place. A 2008 survey of state legislators found women described their decision as “relationally embedded” – weighing how a campaign would affect their families, communities and careers – while men were more likely to run simply because they wanted the job.

Research has found that when women do run for office, they are more likely to face scrutiny over their personal lives. Women are held to a higher moral and ethical standard – a phenomenon the Barbara Lee Family Foundation called the “character pedestal”, in which voters expect women to be more honest and trustworthy than men. When women are accused of wrongdoing, “the fall from the pedestal is longer and harder”, Dittmar said, referencing the work of the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

As more women run for office, some see signs that political gender norms are changing, particularly since the 2016 presidential election, when the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became a defining issue of her campaign – immortalized by the “but her emails” political meme – even as Trump faced a long record of controversies, including multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.

On the left, voters are bucking convention and embracing a new crop of unabashedly progressive – and decidedly aggressive – candidates. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, succeeded in toppling a senior Democratic incumbent in a New York congressional primary despite scrutiny over social media posts she had deleted, but had been archived. In the posts, she frequently and profanely disparaged the Democratic party and its leaders, including Kamala Harris, questioned the origins of Covid-19 and criticized interracial relationships. As a first-time political candidate, Kat Abughazaleh spent months worrying that someone would unearth her “middle school livejournal fanfic account”.

Great article in The Guardian on why white men like Graham Platner are afforded many fuck-ups, while women and POC get far less latitude for mistakes.

Jacob Ogles at The Advocate:

University of Kansas officials threatened disciplinary action against a transgender employee for using the women’s restroom on campus. Janitor Siobhán Kirchstein told The Lawrence Times that she had been reported for violating Kansas’s strict bathroom law, which activists have described as the most aggressive anti-trans law in the country. The initial email to Kirchstein served as a warning that using a restroom designated for a sex other than the one assigned to an individual at birth now violated the law. “I wish to preface this email by acknowledging this is a sensitive matter and my intention in reaching out is to provide awareness of the report and the law, extend to you an opportunity to be heard, and if helpful, share resources,” wrote Katie Varner, director of employee relations at the University of Kansas.

[...] The university said it had received a complaint about Kirchstein using a women’s restroom in Parker Hall. Kirchstein said she does not work in an area with single-stall restrooms available to all genders. She has used the women’s restroom on campus for years without incident, she told the newspaper, and has no intention of complying with the law. “I’ll stay until they basically fire me,” Kirchstein said. “If that’s what they want to do, that’s what I’ll do. But I have no intention of complying. No intention at all.” That termination could happen. Last year, before the new law went into effect, KU fired transgender student worker Anthony Alvarez for speaking to the press about the university’s change in gender-inclusive housing policies, The Lawrence Times reported.

This is insane: trans female University of Kansas janitor Siobhán Kirchstein was threatened over using bathrooms on campus that matching her gender identity, something she has done without incident for many years until now.

Kirchstein is rightly fighting back against the onerous anti-trans bathroom rules.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: University staff member in “complete shock” after being warned by HR for violating bathroom ban

An energy company owned by a major Canadian natural gas producer is proposing to build a massive data centre in west-central Alberta, even though the developer has yet to secure a tech company to operate the facility. Emerald Energy Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tourmaline Oil Corp., is planning to build a power-generation facility and a data centre called Malachite One.  The proposed site is on Crown land, adjacent to Tourmaline’s active Banshee Gas Plant about 40 kilometres southwest of Edson in Yellowhead County. 

Read more.

Trump is not a fan if the International Criminal Court (ICC). Maybe it's because his pardons and his cronies on the US Supreme Court have no sway there.

The highest compliment that can be paid to the International Criminal Court is that the Trump administration is terrified of it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed that fear this week by declaring that the administration would use “all the tools at our government’s disposal” to “dismantle” the ICC. [ ... ] The ICC, which is based in The Hague, came into being in 2002 after more than 100 countries ratified the Rome Statute. Under that treaty, the court has jurisdiction to prosecute and try people for committing various crimes under international law, ranging from war crimes to genocide. Most of its prosecutions to date have targeted dictators and warlords in Africa and Asia. [ ... ] More than a few top Trump officials have good reason to worry about their own legal culpability before the ICC—and the effect it could have on their post-administration life—rather than that of the average American cop or soldier.

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

This article [howtogeek.com] explains how you can still create one on Win11.

Shrai Popat at The Guardian:

Troy Jackson – a logger, longtime legislator and former president of the Maine senate – is now poised to become the Democratic nominee in Maine’s US Senate race. His rise comes after the party’s previous nominee, Graham Platner, abruptly ended his campaign earlier this month following allegations of sexual assault from a former partner. Platner’s withdrawal set off a frantic scramble inside the Maine Democratic party. Several contenders filed paperwork to be considered at a 25 July special convention of 601 delegates tasked with selecting a new nominee. But over the weekend, Jackson’s serious challengers dropped out one after another, clearing a swift and unobstructed path for him. Jackson, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary earlier this year, is now the presumptive choice.

Among those who ended their bids was Jordan Wood, a former congressional staffer who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for Maine’s second district. Two other candidates who also fell short in this year’s gubernatorial primary – former Maine CDC director Nirav Shah and current secretary of state Shenna Bellows – likewise ended their campaigns. Dan Kleban, founder of Maine Beer Company, who briefly ran in the Senate primary against Platner before withdrawing months ago, also announced he would not stay in the race.

Wood, Shah and Kleban have all endorsed Jackson, stressing the stakes of flipping the seat held for nearly three decades by Republican Susan Collins – the only GOP senator running for re-election in a state Kamala Harris carried in 2024. “This fight is bigger than any one person,” Wood said in a social media video. “There is too much at stake in our country, our democracy – our state is depending on us.” Maine is crucial to Democrats’ effort to net the four seats required to retake control of the Senate in November’s midterms. Over the weekend, all 16 counties elected 500 delegates who will vote in Bangor on Saturday, with the remaining 101 delegates coming from the state party’s central committee.

Jackson, now the progressive frontrunner, once campaigned alongside Platner and received his endorsement during his gubernatorial run, where he finished third, which raised concerns that Jackson might be tainted in the breakneck process to replace the disgraced former nominee. Questions have also lingered about Jackson’s public speaking style and whether he could match the commanding presence that helped Platner build a statewide following for his populist platform. But Jackson has consolidated support from major unions, numerous state Democrats and national progressive groups – he also appears to have locked down broad backing from the newly selected delegates. While their commitments are not legally binding, a majority of the 601 delegates have now pledged to vote for him, according to Jackson’s campaign.