Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful

Today began with yet another demonstration of the fact that the U.S. options for extricating itself from Trump’s war on Iran with conditions anywhere near as good as they were under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated with a number of countries under President Barack Obama, or even as good as they were in February 2026 before Trump and Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu launched air strikes on Iran, do not appear promising.

At about 7:15 this morning, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. According to staff from the Portland Press Herald, Guerrero was from Colombia and was authorized to work in the U.S. The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition said he had a Social Security number and was on his way to work.

Spokespeople for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, have not commented. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has called for “a full and impartial investigation,” but as her political opponents note, Collins voted just last month to give ICE another $70 billion. ICE and Border Patrol had become far less visible as Republicans worked to pass supplemental funding for ICE and Border Patrol through Congress. In the wake of that new funding, immigration sweeps are back in the news. Protests broke out today outside Collins’s Biddeford office.

Neil Young

Direct correlation?

Dynaudio is pulling out of North America.

In a brief statement from from Skanderborg, Denmark, the Danish loudspeaker manufacturer announced that it will refocus its future market development efforts on Europe and Asia. As part of that shift, Dynaudio says it will “cease operations of its commercial activities in North America and permanently shut down its U.S. subsidiary in the fall of 2026.”

The United States is currently in the grip of an outbreak of the Cyclospora parasite, which causes severe diarrhea and has sickened more than 3,000 people across the U.S. Last August, Aria Bendix of NBC News reported that on July 1, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would no longer track infections caused by cyclospora and five other common causes of foodborne illnesses.

The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and ten state health departments covering about 54 million people have run a program called the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, since 1995. Until last July 1 it monitored eight pathogens. Now it monitors only salmonella and toxin-producing E. coli.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said then: “The health and safety of the American people is the Administration’s utmost priority. USDA, HHS, FDA, and the CDC will continue to cooperate and maintain the highest vigilance to safeguard our food supply against pathogens.” But director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University Barbara Kowalcyk called the decision to reduce FoodNet surveillance “very disappointing,” saying, “A lot of the work that I and many, many, many, many other people have put into improving food safety over the past 20 or 30 years is just going away.”

Meanwhile, the New World screwworm continues to spread in the U.S. and Central America, where Melody Schreiber of The Guardian reported today conservation cameras are showing the infestations spreading rapidly in deer, jaguars, peccaries, and even porcupines.

While Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly blamed former president Joe Biden for the arrival of the flesh-eating maggots, three former officials from the Agriculture Department, as well as another source, told Marcia Brown of Politico in June that Trump administration officials held up funding for the construction of a facility crucial to slowing the spread of the pest and also delayed funding for a $100 million research initiative to find new ways to stop the screwworm.

Today Tara Copp and Alex Horton of the Washington Post reported allegations from soldiers who survived the Iranian attack on Port Shuaiba in Kuwait that killed six U.S. military personnel and wounded dozens more that the generals in command ignored intelligence that Port Shuaiba was a probable target. The site was not adequately protected against drones, as scouts noted before the war when the Pentagon began to move troops off large bases onto smaller facilities to make them harder for Iran to target. Port Shuaiba’s emergency warning system wasn’t working, and the facility had no coverings to conceal personnel or hamper drones. Then troops were deployed there without weapons.

After the strikes, wounded soldiers sent to Germany’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center discovered that they had neither been listed in the military’s database as seriously injured nor been recorded on the flight manifest as medical evacuees, so could not be admitted as patients. Doctors treated them as outpatients and sent them to barracks where they waited a week to be sent back to the U.S.

In June, Jonah Kaplan and Michael Kaplan of CBS News reported that wounded soldiers and their families say the Army downplayed their injuries. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters in March that almost 90% of the injuries 400 service members had sustained had been minor and that the wounded soldiers had returned to duty. One man the Army classified as “not seriously injured” sustained extensive shrapnel wounds, a concussion, hearing and vision loss, and lung damage. Another underwent multiple surgeries to remove shrapnel.

Wounded soldiers told Kaplan and Kaplan that the duty for which they had been cleared was an active order to recuperate from injuries in a specialized recovery unit.