A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



June 30, 2025

Matter of months

U.N. nuclear watchdog says Iran could enrich uranium again in 'a matter of months'

By Joe Hernandez

The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog says Iran could begin enriching uranium again within months following an attack by the U.S. military on three of its facilities earlier in June.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. office that inspects countries' nuclear programs to ensure compliance with nonproliferation agreements, made the comments in an interview recorded Friday and aired on Sunday by CBS's Face the Nation.

"They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that," he said.

Grossi said he believed the facilities that were hit by U.S. bombs suffered severe but not total damage, and added that Iran had other means of achieving its nuclear goals.

"Iran had a very vast ambitious program, and part of it may still be there, and if not, there is also the self-evident truth that the knowledge is there. The industrial capacity is there. Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology, as is obvious," he said.

President Trump said shortly after the strikes that the U.S. had "totally obliterated" Iran's three main nuclear facilities, and other administration officials have echoed a similar assessment of the mission's success.

But a preliminary report by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested Iran's nuclear facilities may have only suffered "limited" damage, setting back the nuclear program by months.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that report was a "preliminary, low-confidence report that will continue to be refined" and called the U.S. operation a "a "historically successful attack."

Grossi told CBS that it was possible Iran could have moved canisters of enriched uranium before the attack to a secret offsite location. The IAEA previously reported that Iran had a stockpile of over 400 kilograms — or nearly 900 pounds — of highly enriched uranium.

But President Trump reiterated in an interview aired on Fox News Sunday morning that he believes that wasn't the case. "First of all, it's very hard to do. It's very dangerous to do. It's very heavy, very very heavy," Trump said.

Trump said he believed the attacks also caught Iran by surprise — particularly the strike on its underground Fordo facility. "And nobody thought we'd go after that site, because everybody said, 'that site is impenetrable.'"

Grossi said it was important for the IAEA and Iran to resume discussions, and for international inspectors to be able to continue their work in the country. "We have to go back to the table and have a technically sound solution to this," he said.

Safe?????

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was deemed the 'safest' of planes. The whistleblowers were always less sure

Theo Leggett

The Air India tragedy, in which at least 270 people died, involved one of Boeing's most innovative and popular planes. Until now, it was considered one of its safest too.

We still do not know why flight 171 crashed just 30 seconds after take-off. Investigators have now recovered flight recorder data and are working hard to find out. But the incident has drawn attention to the aircraft involved: the 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes.

Prior to the accident, the 787 had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality. During that period, according to Boeing, it carried more than a billion passengers. There are currently more than 1,100 in service worldwide.

However, it has also suffered from a series of quality control problems.

Whistleblowers who worked on the aircraft have raised numerous concerns about production standards. Some have claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service – allegations the company has consistently denied.

The Sonic Cruiser and the 9/11 effect

It was on a chilly December morning in 2009 that a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle and, as a cheering crowd looked on, accelerated into a cloudy sky.

The flight was the culmination of years of development and billions of dollars worth of investment.

The 787 was conceived in the early 2000s, at a time of rising oil prices, when the increasing cost of fuel had become a major preoccupation for airlines. Boeing decided to build a long-haul plane for them that would set new standards in efficiency.

"In the late 1990s, Boeing was working on a design called the Sonic Cruiser," explains aviation historian Shea Oakley.

This was firstly conceived as a plane that would use advanced materials and the latest technology to carry up to 250 passengers at just under the speed of sound. The initial emphasis was on speed and cutting journey times, rather than fuel economy.

"But then the effects of 9/11 hit the world airline industry quite hard," says Mr Oakley.

"The airlines told Boeing what they really needed was the most fuel-efficient, economical long-range jetliner ever produced. They now wanted an aeroplane with a similar capacity to the Sonic Cruiser, minus the high speed."

Boeing abandoned its initial concept, and began work on what became the 787. In doing so, it helped create a new business model for airlines.

Instead of using giant planes to transport huge numbers of people between "hub" airports, before placing them on connecting flights to other destinations, they could now fly smaller aircraft on less crowded direct routes between smaller cities which would previously have been unviable.

Airbus's superjumbo vs Boeing's fuel efficiency

At the time Boeing's great rival, the European giant Airbus, was taking precisely the opposite approach. It was developing the gargantuan A380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world's biggest and busiest airports.

In hindsight, Boeing's approach was wiser. The fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021, after only 251 had been built.

"Airbus thought the future was giant hubs where people would always want to change planes in Frankfurt or Heathrow or Narita," explains aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who is a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

"Boeing said 'no, people want to fly point to point'. And Boeing was extremely right."

The 787 was a truly radical aircraft. It was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight. It had advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag.

It also used highly efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, and it replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

All of this, Boeing said, would make it 20% more efficient than its predecessor, the Boeing 767. It was also significantly quieter, with a noise footprint (the area on the ground affected by significant noise from the aircraft) that the manufacturer said was up to 60% smaller.

Emergency landings and onboard fires

Not long after the aircraft entered service, however, there were serious problems. In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston's Logan International Airport.

A week later, overheating batteries forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an internal flight in Japan.

The design was grounded worldwide for several months, while Boeing came up with a solution.

An investigation was launched after a battery fire aboard a 787, while it waited at a gate
Since then, day to day operations have been smoother, but production has been deeply problematic. Analysts say this may, in part, have been due to Boeing's decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands.

This was done to take advantage of the region's low rates of union membership, as well as generous support from the state.

"There were serious development issues," says Mr Aboulafia. "Some notable production issues, related especially to the decision to create Boeing's first ever production line outside of the Puget Sound area."

Damaging whistleblower allegations

In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. As more problems were found, the company widened its investigations – and uncovered further issues.

Deliveries were heavily disrupted, and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year.

However, potentially the most damaging allegations about the 787 programme have come from the company's own current and former employees.

Among the most prominent was the late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory in South Carolina. He claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety.

In 2019, he told the BBC that workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line.

He also maintained that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks. Screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring.

His claims had previously been passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating, it concluded that at least 53 "non-conforming" parts had gone missing in the factory.

An audit by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not "present a safety of flight issue", though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later said it had "fully resolved the FAA's findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence".

'A matter of time before something big happens'

Mr Barnett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. "I believe it's just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787," he told me in 2019. "I pray that I am wrong."

In early 2024, Mr Barnett took his own life. At the time he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit against the company – which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations. Boeing denied this.

Much of what he had alleged echoed previous claims by another former quality manager at the plant, Cynthia Kitchens.

In 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins and fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving.

Ms Kitchens, who left Boeing in 2016, also claimed employees had been told to overlook substandard work, and said defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings, had been deliberately installed on planes – creating a risk of dangerous short-circuits.

Boeing has not responded to these specific allegations but says Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 "after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan". It says that she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Boeing, "alleging claims of discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues", which was dismissed.

More recently, a third whistleblower made headlines when testifying before a senate committee last year.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because "the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial aeroplane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives".

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, "had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets".

He also noted that on the majority of aircraft he looked at, tiny gaps in the joints between sections of fuselage had not been properly rectified. This, he said, meant those joints would be prone to "premature fatigue failure over time" and created "extremely unsafe conditions for the aircraft" with "potentially catastrophic" consequences.

He suggested that more than 1,000 aircraft – the bulk of the 787 fleet – could be affected.

Boeing insists that "claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate". It says: "The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis has validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life over several decades, and these issues do not present any safety concerns."

'Serious problems would have shown up'

There is no question that Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards. In the wake of two fatal accidents involving its bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

It is a perception that chief executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overturn - overhauling its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

But has the 787 already been compromised by past failures, that may have created ongoing safety risks?

Richard Aboulafia believes not. "You know. It's been 16 years of operations, 1,200 jets and over a billion passengers flown, but no crashes until now," he says. "It's a stellar safety record."

He thinks that any major issues would already have become apparent.

"I really think production problems are more of a short-term concern," he says. "For the past few years, there's been far greater oversight of 787 production.

"For older planes, I think any serious problems would have shown up by now."

The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was more than 11 years old, having first flown in 2013.

But the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US organisation established by the former Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson that has previously been highly critical of the company, says it did have concerns about 787s prior to the recent crash.

"Yes, it was a possible safety risk," claims Mr Pierson. "We monitor incident reports, we monitor regulatory documents. Airworthiness directives come out that describe various issues, and it does make you wonder."

One such issue, he argues, is water potentially leaking from washroom taps into electrical equipment bays. Last year, the FAA instructed airlines to carry out regular inspections, following reports that leaks were going undetected on certain 787 models.

However, he stresses that the cause of the recent tragedy is still unknown – and that it is vital the investigation moves forward quickly, so that any problems, whether they lie with the aircraft, the airline or elsewhere, can be resolved.

For the moment, however, the 787's safety record remains strong.

"We don't know at this point what caused the Air India crash," says Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Company.

Blistering heat grips Europe

'Unprecedented' alerts in France as blistering heat grips Europe

Kathryn Armstrong

A record number of heat alerts are in place across France as the country, and other parts of southern and eastern Europe, remain in the grip of soaring temperatures.

Some 84 of 96 of France's mainland regions - known as departments - are currently under an orange alert - the country's second highest. France's Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has called it an "unprecedented" situation.

Heat warnings are also in place for parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and Balkan countries including Croatia.

Both Spain and Portugal had their hottest June days on record at the weekend.

El Granado in Andalucía saw a temperature of 46C on Saturday, while 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora in central Portugal on Sunday.

Many countries have emergency medical services on standby and are warning people to stay inside as much as possible.

Nearly 200 schools across France have been closed or partially closed as a result of the heatwave, which has gripped parts of Europe for more than a week now but is expected to peak mid-week.

Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said she was working with regional authorities over the best ways to look after schoolchildren or to allow parents who can to keep their children at home.

Several forest fires broke out in the southern Corbières mountain range on Sunday, leading to evacuations and the closure of a motorway. They have since been contained, fire authorities told French media on Monday.

Meanwhile, 21 Italian cities are also on the highest alert - including Rome, Milan and Venice, as is Sardinia.

Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine, told AFP news agency that hospital emergency departments across the country had reported a 10% increase in heatstroke cases.

Parts of the UK could see one of the hottest June days ever on Monday, with temperatures of 34C or higher possible in some parts of England.

Much of Spain, which is on course to record its hottest June on record, also continues to be under heat alerts.

"I can't sleep well and have insomnia. I also get heat strokes, I stop eating and I just can't focus," Anabel Sanchez, 21, told Reuters news agency in Seville.

It is a similar situation in Portugal, where seven districts, including the capital, Lisbon, are on the highest alert level.

Meanwhile, the German Meteorological Service has warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday - further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

The heatwave has lowered levels in the Rhine River - a major shipping route - limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.

Germany is one of a number of European countries with health alerts in place as temperatures soared in recent days

Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool slightly.

In Turkey, firefighters continue their efforts to put out hundreds of wildfires that have broken out in recent days.

A fire in the Seferihisar district, 50km (30 miles) south-west of the resort city of Izmir, is being fuelled by winds and has already destroyed around 20 homes and some residential areas have had to be evacuated.

Wildfires have also broken out in Croatia, where severe heat warnings are in place for coastal areas.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and coastal towns near the capital Athens last week erupted in flames that destroyed homes - forcing people to evacuate.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported its hottest day since records began, while a record 38.8C was recorded in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

The temperature in North Macedonia's capital, Skopje, reached 42C on Friday - and are expected to continue in that range.

While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the climate. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.

The UN's human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation - moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change.

"Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more," he told the UN's Human Rights Council.

Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense - as the planet continues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.

"The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme."

20 Palestinians killed

At least 20 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza seafront cafe, witnesses and rescuers say

Rushdi Abualouf, Wyre Davies

At least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a popular seafront cafe frequently used by activists, journalists, and local residents in western Gaza, according to medics and eyewitnesses.

Rescue teams evacuated 20 bodies and dozens wounded from Al-Baqa Cafeteria, an outdoor venue which consisted of tents along the beach, a spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence told the BBC.

He added that emergency crews were still searching through a deep crater left by the explosion.

"I was on my way to the café to use the internet just a few meters away when a massive explosion hit," said Aziz Al-Afifi, a cameraman with a local production company, told the BBC.


"I ran to the scene. My colleagues were there, people I meet every day. The scene was horrific - bodies, blood, screaming everywhere."

Videos posted by activists on social media appeared to show the moment a missile, reportedly fired from an Israeli warplane, struck the area. Footage captured the aftermath of the attack, with bodies scattered across the ground.

Al-Baqa Cafeteria had become a well-known space for journalists, activists, and remote workers, offering internet access, seating, and workspace along Gaza's Mediterranean coast.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The attack came after Israel carried out a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight, triggering the mass displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families, witnesses said.

Rescue teams recovered the bodies of five people, while dozens of injured civilians were evacuated to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to local reports.

The bombardment follows one of the largest evacuation orders issued since the war resumed in March.

It comes amid increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refocus efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said on social media that Netanyahu was working on negotiating a deal with Hamas "right now". That came days after a senior Hamas official said mediators had intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

A two-month ceasefire collapsed in March when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The ceasefire deal - which started on 19 January - was meant to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Israel followed this with a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings of starvation from global experts.

The partial easing saw the creation of the controversial US- and Israeli-backed aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Since GHF took over distribution operations, there have been almost daily incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.

Eyewitnesses and medics have blamed Israel, though Israel has said it has only fired warning shots towards people it considered a threat.

Residents in Gaza City said dozens of Israeli air raids targeted densely populated eastern neighbourhoods, including Shujaiya, Tuffah, and Zeitoun.

Videos posted by activists on social media captured scenes of chaos and explosions illuminating the night sky, followed by flames and thick plumes of smoke rising above the skyline.

One of the strikes reportedly hit a school in Zeitoun that had been sheltering displaced families.

"Explosions never stopped... it felt like earthquakes," Salah, 60, from Gaza City told Reuters news agency.

"In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground we see death and we hear explosions," the father of five added.

The five fatalities reportedly occurred in a strike at the Al Shati camp, to the west of Gaza City.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier ordered residents to leave large parts of northern Gaza, in anticipation of the attacks. Most of those displaced overnight moved westwards within Gaza City rather than to the southern region as instructed by the IDF.

"We had no choice but to leave everything behind," said Abeer Talba, a mother of seven who fled Zeitoun with her family.

"We got phone calls recordings in Arabic telling us we were in a combat zone and must evacuate immediately.

"This is the seventh time we've been forced to flee," she added. "We're in the streets again, no food, no water. My children are starving. Death feels kinder than this."

Amid the growing humanitarian crisis, fears are mounting that the evacuation orders and sustained air strikes are part of a broader Israeli plan to expand its ground offensive deeper into Gaza.

But there is also speculation in Israeli media that some generals are close to concluding that military operations in Gaza are near to being achieved.

That is also the view of many former army leaders who fear that the descent of the Gaza campaign into more attritional, guerilla-style warfare would lead to more deaths – of hostages, civilians and soldiers.

The Israeli prime minister's next moves are being closely watched. While Benjamin Netanyahu's instincts have always been to continue the war and defeat Hamas, he is coming under increasing pressure at home and abroad to pursue a new ceasefire agreement.

The Israeli military launched its bombardment of Gaza in response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Rips Into Again.............

Elon Musk Rips Into Trump’s “Utterly Insane” Tax Bill Again

The wrestling match continues.

Inae Oh

After a brief interlude, Elon Musk on Saturday resumed his public wrestling match with President Donald Trump, ripping into the president’s domestic policy bill as “utterly insane and destructive” just as the Senate met to vote on a key procedural step to pass the “big beautiful bill.”

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” the billionaire wrote on X. In a later post, Musk warned that the bill would be “political suicide” for the Republican Party.

Musk’s apparent attempt to influence the vote ultimately failed; after several hours, the Senate ultimately cleared the procedural hurdle. But in this crucial moment for the president’s massive spending agenda, Musk’s latest attacks are certain to infuriate his former boss as their rift widens once more. Are we moments away from the return of ugly insults? Will Musk expand on his Jeffrey Epstein accusations? Will a new level of lawlessness be unlocked? As of this writing, Trump has yet to respond. But as I predicted only weeks ago, it was only a matter of time before their feud returned to the public sphere.

But what is certain, as Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” now heads to the House for final approval, is that the country is on the verge of passing one of the most dangerous bills in US history. It will decimate spending on Medicaid and food stamps while adding an estimated $3.3 trillion to the deficit—send energy bills skyrocketing across American households; unleash billions for Trump’s border wall; and far more.

Got played...

Dear Joe Rogan, Kash Patel Played You

On Rogan’s show, the FBI director spun a false narrative of the Trump-Russia scandal.

David Corn

Dear Joe Rogan,

I don’t know you. We’ve never met, and I am not a regular listener of your podcast. But I have the impression you are a man who does not like to be played. I regret to inform you that Kash Patel played you.

When the FBI director was on your show last month, he made multiple statements that were false or misleading. Given that you’re a proponent of truth-telling, I expect you will be troubled to learn this.

Let me start with Patel’s remarks about what he derisively calls “Russiagate.” A good chunk of your two-hour-long conversation was devoted to this topic, a personal obsession of Patel. As he has done for years, Patel presented to you and your audience a highly skewed and false narrative. “All roads lead to Russiagate,” he declared. “That’s where it all started.” He meant that his entire critique of the so-called Deep State and the supposedly corrupt Joe Biden gang stems from the Trump-Russia scandal. So it can be rather instructive to look at his claims about this foundational matter.

During the podcast, Patel gave you the “90-seconds” version of this controversy:

Can you imagine a time in the United Staes of America in the 21st century, where a political party would go overseas and acquire fake foreign intelligence from a foreign intelligence officer funded by donations to that political party in the United States of America, then take that material, package it, walk it to the FBI, literally, and say, ‘Hey, we need you to surveil the opponent of our political party who happens to be running for the president of the United States”? Then convince the FBI to go to a secret federal FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court that I used to use to manhunt terrorists and say, ‘Hey I need you to wiretap essentially all the comms in and around Trump camp because of the material we gave you.’ And then have that FBI lie to the federal court and the judge in that warrant application, which is a felony, and intentionally remove information of innocence from that application just to get it above the threshold so the judge would sign it. That’s Russiagate.

Much in this description was inaccurate. The political party Patel was referring to—the Democrats—did not hand that opposition research to the FBI and request surveillance of Donald Trump, and the FBI did not seek to wiretap “essentially all the comms” of the Trump camp. It requested a wiretap on one former Trump campaign adviser.

But more to the point, Joe, what Patel was referring to was merely one slice of the much larger Trump-Russia affair. And this is Patel’s magic trick. It’s a diversion. He wants you and others to fixate on the issue of a search warrant and not pay attention to the bigger story: Russia attacked the 2016 election to help Trump, and Trump aided and abetted Moscow by denying this assault, thus providing cover to Vladimir Putin.

For years, Patel and other Trump allies have deflected from these basic facts by focusing solely on what’s become known as the Steele dossier and how it was used by the FBI to obtain that surveillance warrant for Carter Page, a little-known foreign policy adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign.

As you know, the dossier was a collection of memos that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official and Russia counterintelligence specialist, wrote during the 2016 election on possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Steele, who had previously worked with the FBI, was commissioned to do so by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was being paid by a lawyer for the Clinton campaign to dig up material on Trump. Starting in June that year, Steele sent periodic reports to Fusion GPS that contained unconfirmed information, much of it gossip and speculation from unidentified sources about internal Russian politics and juicy but unsubstantiated tidbits on Trump and his campaign. Weeks later, Steele began sharing these documents with his FBI contact.

The first of these research memos alleged that Russia had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting TRUMP for at least five years.” It noted that Trump and his inner circle had accepted “intelligence from the Kremlin” on his Democratic rivals. It claimed that Russian intelligence had compromising information on Trump that could be used to blackmail him (including what would come to be known as the “pee tape,” which supposedly showed Trump instructing prostitutes to perform a “golden showers” show in his hotel room). The report stated that the Kremlin’s cultivation of Trump included offering him real estate deals in Russia. Another of Steele’s memos cited a source saying there was a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair (who had a history of working for a Russian oligarch and Moscow-friendly Ukrainian politicians) was overseeing this arrangement.

Steele’s memos remained a secret until I revealed their existence in a story I reported in Mother Jones on October 31. One of the owners of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, had shown me a copy of the documents and set up an interview for me with Steele, with the provision that I could not cite Steele by name. My article disclosed that a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence had provided the FBI with memos contending the Russian government had for years attempted to co-opt and assist Trump and that the FBI was looking into these allegations. (I did not report the details of the unsubstantiated lurid claims about Trump’s personal behavior believing that would not be fair to him.)

My story on the Steele memos received some attention, but it did not have much impact on the overall coverage of the race in the final week. (By the way, because of my reporting on the Steele documents, I’ve been pulled into some right-wing conspiracy theories about all this. If you’re interested, you can read about that here.)

Let’s back up a bit: Unknown to the public during the 2016 campaign was that in late July the FBI had opened up an investigation—dubbed Crossfire Hurricane—to determine whether Russia was trying to covertly intervene in the election and whether there had been contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians related to this. (The bureau had already been investigating the hacking of Democratic Party computers—an operation attributed to Moscow.) As part of this investigation, the FBI applied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act federal court for a warrant to spy on Page, the Trump campaign adviser, who had had curious interactions with Russian officials during a trip to Moscow.

For those who don’t know, this was S.O.P. It’s generally tough to get a warrant for surveillance on an American citizen—as it should be. The bureau has to file an extensive application with this court to win such permission. In its application for the Page warrant, the FBI cited the Steele memos. This was an egregious mistake. The documents contained unconfirmed scuttlebutt about Page from a foreign source. And as Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz later noted in a 2019 report, the application was loaded with other errors. Nevertheless, in late October 2016, the FISA court approved the secret warrant—and would in subsequent months approve re-authorizations of this warrant.

This was FBI wrongdoing. Patel is correct about that. An FBI lawyer even pleaded guilty to doctoring an email that the bureau used to win FISA court approval to eavesdrop on Page after the 2016 campaign was over. Much of FBI misconduct regarding the application for the surveillance of Page was laid out in that 478-page report issued by Horowitz. (For those in your audience who want to do their own research, the report can be found here.) By the way, the Horowitz report noted that the Steele dossier was only used in the surveillance application regarding Page. There were no other FISA warrants sought by the FBI in this investigation.

Discussing his effort as a congressional investigator to uncover FBI malfeasance related to the Page surveillance, Patel told you, “What I had unearthed was the biggest political criminal scheme ever perpetuated by portions of the FBI leadership and other people in the intelligence community in coordination [with the media].”

Sounds like hype to me. But you be the judge.

Patel, Trump, and others have beat the drum about the FBI’s misuse of the Steele dossier to draw attention from Putin’s assault on the 2016 election and Trump’s complicity. They claim that there is nothing to the Russia “witch hunt” or “hoax”—and that the entire fuss was kicked off by the Steele dossier, which was a Democratic dirty trick. That is, the Dems orchestrated the entire “Russia, Russia, Russia” business with the Steele documents.

That’s not true. Who says so? Many sources. We can start with Horowitz. His report concluded, “We found that Crossfire Hurricane was opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication.” It also found no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced…[the] decision to open Crossfire Hurricane.” In fact, his report noted that the Steele dossier had nothing to do with the FBI’s launch of the Russia investigation. That inquiry began after the FBI learned that another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser named George Papadopoulos had told an Australian diplomat that the Trump team had been informed that Moscow could assist it by anonymously releasing information damaging for Clinton.

So it wasn’t a political witch hunt engineered by the Dems. You know who else says this? Special counsel John Durham, who was appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the Russian investigation.

Durham found flaws in the probe, but he concluded that the FBI inquiry “could have been opened more appropriately as an assessment or preliminary investigation” and not a “full investigation,” as it had been. In other words, the bureau did not improperly launch this investigation but assigned it the wrong level of seriousness. Durham, too, did not report uncovering any “political bias” regarding the FBI’s investigation, though he did assail the bureau for “confirmation bias.”

Now let’s look not at the investigation but the thing itself: what happened in 2016. Several government investigations have concluded that Russia mounted a covert operation to hack and leak Democratic emails and other materials to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump.

Trump and Patel, though, deny this. In a recent documentary, Patel said that the the FBI and the rest of the US intelligence community that investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election “knew it didn’t exist.” For his participation in this documentary, Patel was paid $25,000 by a Ukrainian-American-Russian filmmaker who has worked on a Russian propaganda project financed by Putin’s presidential office. Joe, I wish you had asked Patel about that payment. Maybe you can next time he’s on. Here are the details.

It’s rather odd that Patel would deny Russia clandestinely intervened in the 2016 election. When he was investigating what he calls “Russiagate,” he was a Republican staffer on the GOP-run House intelligence committee, which in March 2018 released a report on the Russian attack that opened with this line: “In 2015, Russia began engaging in a covert influence campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election. The Russian government, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, sought to sow discord in American society and undermine our faith In the democratic process.” Yet Patel won’t acknowledge even the existence of this Russian operation. Joe, why is that? Why isn’t he—or you—pissed off that Russia messed with our election? Why is the FBI director covering for Putin?

I know you like to get to the bottom of things. In this case, that would mean spending time with the 966-page report released by the Senate intelligence committee in 2020. This is the most comprehensive account of what Russia did in 2016—and it’s bipartisan. In fact, Republican Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, was chair of the committee when the report was released. He and other Republicans on the panel endorsed its findings. So it ain’t Democratic spin or a phony narrative cooked up by the liberal press and Deep State that hates Trump.

There’s a lot of mind-blowing stuff in this report. But here are the basics:

The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…

While [Russian military intelligence] and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.

You and your listeners ought to give those passages a good read. The committee—including such Republicans as Rubio, Tom Cotton, and John Cornyn—was saying the Russian assault was real and that Trump assisted Putin by echoing Moscow’s denial. What’s more, these Republicans were confirming that Trump had been indifferent to an attack on the United States by a foreign adversary and had even sought to exploit it.

Oh boy. I ask you, Joe: What’s worse—the FBI screwing up one FISA application or Trump helping Russia subvert an election for his own benefit? Is it a close call?

I’m guessing that about now you are thinking, “Well, what about all that talk of collusion?” Democrats and some in the media did spend a lot of time claiming that Trump colluded with Russia in this attack. Special counsel Robert Mueller, reported that he found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia. But his report did detail extensive contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives who tried to influence the election. As Mueller testified to Congress, “We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term.” Trump and his loyalists seized on the absence of criminal charges to claim full exoneration. That was spin.

On the issue of collusion, Joe, I would, once more, direct you to that lengthy GOP-backed bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report. Its many revelations include the disclosure that Manafort, when he was chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign, covertly met with a former business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik whom the committee characterized as a “Russian intelligence officer,” and he handed over inside campaign information.

Check out this line from the report: “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Trump’s top campaign aide hobnobbing with Russian intelligence. Isn’t that scandalous? Why does that not interest Patel?

The committee noted it had “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the [Russian intelligence’s] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” That’s big: Trump’s campaign chief was in close contact with a Russian intelligence officer who might have been tied to Putin’s covert attack on the 2016 campaign to help elect Trump. Moreover, the report reveals that the committee found “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility” that Manafort himself was connected “to the hack-and-leak operations.” Might one call this collusion?

This was not the only possible collusion. Several government investigations, include the Senate intelligence committee’s, confirmed that in June 2016, top officials of the Trump campaign—Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner—met in Trump Tower with a Russian intermediary after being informed she was bringing them dirt on Clinton as part of a secret Russian government effort to help Trump. The information she handed over was apparently not useful. But by agreeing to this meeting, the Trump campaign signaled to Moscow it was just fine with Russia mucking about in the election. Collusion? I dunno. But it’s certainly getting cozy with an enemy.

And consider this: After that Trump Tower meeting, when the news broke that Russians had hacked into Democratic Party computers and 20,000 pages of the pilfered material was leaked right before the party’s convention to hurt the Clinton campaign, Trump Jr. and Manafort publicly insisted that Russia had nothing to do with it. They had been informed Moscow was scheming to covertly boost Trump. Yet here they were backing up Putin’s assertion that Russia had nothing to do with the the hack-and-leak operation. They were lying to protect Russia. Collusion? If not, perhaps complicity?

Joe, if you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably tiring from all these details. I know this whole affair can seem convoluted. But for my money, it remains damn important. It’s the original sin of the Trump presidencies. And I wonder why the current FBI director, whose brief includes countering Russian covert actions targeting the United States, doesn’t seem to care that Putin screwed with an American election.

Patel calls Russiagate “the disinformation seed that started it all.” In a way, I agree. Trump’s betrayal in 2016 helped him reach the White House. Remember when WikiLeaks released John Podesta’s emails, which were hacked by Russian ops, to draw attention from Trump’s “grab ’em’ by the pussy” video? During the final weeks of the campaign, the dissemination of those swiped emails generated a ton of negative news stories for Clinton, which certainly contributed to her ultimate defeat.

Over the past nine years Trump and loyalists like Patel have done their mightiest to cover up Trump’s foul deed—his aiding of the Russian attack—pushing a competing narrative that lets Putin and Russia off scot-free.

During the podcast with Patel, you appeared to accept his version of all this at face value and expressed outrage at the FBI’s misuse of the Steele dossier: “It’s so crazy,” you said, “that someone could do something like that and a whole enormous group of people could do something like that with no repercussions….You were part of something that was one of the biggest scandals in political history. But because it was targeted toward Trump people look the other way.”

And you blasted the left:

The disturbing thing to me is how people on the left are willing to look the other way….If the federal government is doing this, and they’re doing this to someone you consider an enemy, what’s to stop them from doing this against your candidate. This is unprecedented behavior that is tolerated and coordinated with the media. That’s dangerous for the country. But people are so ideologically captured. They’re so locked into their party. By any means necessary. We gotta get Trump out. And they push that narrative so hard that they’re willing to do a very un-American thing.

I wonder if you can take a critical look at your embrace of Patel’s self-serving narrative and at the Trump gang’s unrelenting effort to hide Trump’s involvement in Russia’s assault on the United States. I know that might be tough to do. But I would love to see you have Patel back on the show after you read through those reports I cited above. He sure can sound convincing—unless you know the facts.

While I have you: Two other small things regarding your chat with Patel. At one point, he said, “We are on track to have the lowest…murder rate ever…We’re already down 20 percent from last year.” You asked him how he achieved this, and Patel explained that he was following the policy “let good cops be cops,” suggesting the Biden administration had not focused on stopping crime. I contacted the FBI and asked for statistics to back up Patel’s claim of a 20-percent decline. It responded, “The 2024 and 2025 statistics on the murder rate have not been publicly released yet.” The most recent numbers cover 2023, and those show a 11.6 drop in the murder rate. In fact, the murder rate peaked in 2020, during Covid, when Trump was president, and it has been decreasing since then. Any decline in murders is good news, but Patel made it seem as if the Trump administration had scored an unprecedented achievement, when this drop (assuming Patel’s stat is accurate) may well be part of a historical trend.

Also during the podcast, Patel brought up a claim he has many times made: that Trump “preemptively authorized” the deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 National Guard troops before January 6—and these troops were rejected by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser. You seized on this to suggest these Democrats were somehow behind the riot: “So they wanted it to be chaos?” (Patel did not dispel that notion and replied, “I will leave it to you on that.”) But does it make sense that Pelosi or any other Democrat would want to cause a riot that might interfere with the certification of Biden’s electoral victory? What would be the point? In any event, the acting defense secretary at that time, Chris Miller—a Trump appointee—has testified there was no Trump order to ready military personal ahead of January 6: “I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” Miller told Congress.

There were other assertions that Patel made during his time with you that could be similarly challenged or debunked. But by now you get my drift. He didn’t deserve the free ride you provided him. I realize it’s popular to blast the Deep State and portray the Biden crowd as nothing but evil and corrupt—and to depict “the media” as craven accomplices in assorted schemes to undermine Trump. This is Patel’s hymnal. But if you critically scrutinize many of his claims, you will find they don’t hold up or are not the full story. Patel deserves factchecking as much as any government official. Perhaps more so, given he’s been running a con for years, insisting the Russia scandal was not real.

You’re an influencer with a massive audience. So I hope you’ll take the time to read up on the Trump-Russia affair. You know, do your own research. There’s a ton of material. Being informed these days can take a huge amount of effort, especially when Patel and others are out there pushing disinformation. But I assume you’ll agree that whatever our differences we all believe that an accurate flow of information is what’s best for our country and necessary to ensure a sound future for American democracy.

If you want to discuss any of this, Joe, I’d be delighted. My DMs are open.

All best,

David

Overnight voting is delayed

Debate is underway in the Senate on Trump's big bill, but overnight voting is delayed

By LISA MASCARO, KEVIN FREKING and JOEY CAPPELLETTI

Debate has been underway in the Senate late into the night, with Republicans wrestling President Donald Trump's big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts over mounting Democratic opposition — and even some brake-pumping over the budget slashing by the president himself.

The outcome from the weekend of work in the Senate remains uncertain and highly volatile, and overnight voting has been pushed off until Monday. GOP leaders are rushing to meet Trump's Fourth of July deadline to pass the package, but they barely secured enough support to muscle it past a procedural Saturday night hurdle in a tense scene. A handful of Republican holdouts revolted, and it took phone calls from Trump and a visit from Vice President JD Vance to keep it on track.

GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced Sunday he would not seek reelection after Trump badgered him for saying he could not vote for the bill with its steep Medicaid cuts. A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. It also said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.

But other Senate Republicans, along with conservatives in the House, are pushing for steeper cuts, particularly to health care, drawing their own unexpected warning from Trump.

“Don’t go too crazy!” the president posted on social media. “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected.”

All told, the Senate bill includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts, making permanent Trump's 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.

The Senate package would roll back billions in green energy tax credits that Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide, and impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements and making sign-up eligibility more stringent.

Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.

If the Senate can pass the bill, it would need to return to the House. Speaker Mike Johnson has told lawmakers to be on call for a return to Washington this week.

Democrats ready to fight all night

Unable to stop the march toward passage of the 940-page bill, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress is using the tools at its disposal to delay and drag out the process.

Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took some 16 hours. Then senators took over the debate, filling the chamber with speeches, while Republicans largely stood aside.

“Reckless and irresponsible," said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. "A gift to the billionaire class,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump's first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits.

“In my 33 years here in the United States Senate, things have never — never — worked this way,” said Murray, the longest-serving Democrat on the Budget Committee.

She said that kind of “magic math” won't fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.

"Go back home and try that game with your constituents," she said. “We still need to kick people off their health care — that’s too expensive. We still need to close those hospitals — we have to cut costs. And we still have to kick people off SNAP — because the debt is out of control.”

Sanders said Tillis' decision not to seek reelection shows the hold that Trump's cult of personality has over the GOP.

“We are literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry kids,” Sanders said, while giving tax breaks to Jeff Bezos and other wealthy billionaires.

GOP leaders unfazed

Republicans are using their majorities to push aside Democratic opposition, and appeared undeterred, even as they have run into a series of political and policy setbacks.

"We're going to pass the 'Big, beautiful bill," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Budget Committee chairman.

The holdout Republicans remain reluctant to give their votes, and their leaders have almost no room to spare, given their narrow majorities. Essentially, they can afford three dissenters in the Senate, with its 53-47 GOP edge, and about as many in the House, if all members are present and voting.

Trump, who has at times allowed wiggle room on his deadline, kept the pressure on lawmakers to finish.

He threatened to campaign against Tillis, who was worried that Medicaid cuts would leave many without health care in his state. Trump badgered Tillis again on Sunday morning, saying the senator “has hurt the great people of North Carolina.”

Later Sunday, Tillis issued a lengthy statement announcing he would not seek reelection in 2026.

In an impassioned evening speech, Tillis shared his views arguing the Senate approach is a betrayal of Trump's promise not to kick people off health care.

“We could take the time to get this right,” he thundered. But until then, he said he would remain opposed.

Democrats can’t filibuster, but can stall

Using a congressional process called budget reconciliation, the Republicans can rely on a simple majority vote in the Senate, rather than the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome objections.

Without the filibuster, Democrats have latched on to other tools to mount their objections.

One is the full reading of the bill text, which has been done in past situations. Democrats also intended to use their full 10 hours of available debate time, which was underway.

And then Democrats are prepared to propose dozens of amendments to the package, a process called vote-a-rama. But Republicans late Sunday postponed that expected overnight session to early Monday.

GOP senators to watch

As Saturday's vote tally teetered, attention turned to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who was surrounded by GOP leaders in intense conversation. She voted “yes.”

Several provisions in the package are designed for her state in Alaska, but some were out of compliance of the strict rules by the Senate parliamentarian.

A short time later, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., drew holdouts Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming to his office. Vance joined in.

Later, Scott said, “We all want to get to yes.”

Messier 109


Big beautiful barred spiral galaxy Messier 109 is the 109th entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright Nebulae and Star Clusters. You can find it just below the Big Dipper's bowl in the northern constellation Ursa Major. In fact, bright dipper star Phecda, Gamma Ursa Majoris, produces the glare at the upper right corner of this telescopic frame. M109's prominent central bar gives the galaxy the appearance of the Greek letter "theta", θ, a common mathematical symbol representing an angle. M109 spans a very small angle in planet Earth's sky though, about 7 arcminutes or 0.12 degrees. But that small angle corresponds to an enormous 120,000 light-year diameter at the galaxy's estimated 60 million light-year distance. The brightest member of the now recognized Ursa Major galaxy cluster, M109 (aka NGC 3992) is joined by spiky foreground stars. Three small, fuzzy bluish galaxies also on the scene, identified (top to bottom) as UGC 6969, UGC 6940 and UGC 6923, are possibly satellite galaxies of the larger barred spiral galaxy Messier 109.

The "dark side"


 

NGC 4651


It's raining stars. What appears to be a giant cosmic umbrella is now known to be a tidal stream of stars stripped from a small satellite galaxy. The main galaxy, spiral galaxy NGC 4651, is about the size of our Milky Way, while its stellar parasol appears to extend some 100 thousand light-years above this galaxy's bright disk. A small galaxy was likely torn apart by repeated encounters as it swept back and forth on eccentric orbits through NGC 4651. The remaining stars will surely fall back and become part of a combined larger galaxy over the next few million years. The featured deep image was captured in long exposures from Saudi Arabia. The Umbrella Galaxy lies about 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed northern constellation of Berenice's Hair (Coma Berenices).

Clear cut....

Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship. History Proves It.

Lawmakers knew the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to the children of immigrants.

By Joshua Zeitz

"ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

That’s the opening line of the Fourteenth Amendment. The vast majority of legal scholars have long understood the clause to confer citizenship on immigrant children born in the United States. But not President Donald Trump.

“This had to do with the babies of slaves,” the president asserted yesterday, at a press conference celebrating a Supreme Court decision that partially clears the way for the administration to end the practice of birthright citizenship, though the attempt will face further legal hurdles. (The court has not ruled on the challenge to birthright citizenship itself, only the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions against it.) According to Trump and his supporters, Congress never intended the amendment to grant citizenship to immigrant children — only to formerly enslaved people and their children.

As legal experts have explained, the text of the amendment itself disproves Trump’s claim, which the court’s conservatives — who so often extoll the virtues of originalism, interpreting the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written — should well know. So does the historical record.

We do not have to guess what members of Congress intended with the Fourteenth Amendment and the children of immigrants. We know, because they told us themselves. And Trump won’t like what they had to say.

The president is correct on one point: The Fourteenth Amendment’s framers intended its primary beneficiaries to be formerly enslaved Black people.

In the months immediately following the Civil War, ex-Confederate states began forming new governments and passing laws that sharply curtailed the rights of freedmen who had been liberated under the terms of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment.

The so-called Black Codes varied by state but shared common features. In Mississippi, for example, Black people were required to sign annual labor contracts, and those who left their jobs could be arrested for vagrancy. In South Carolina, African Americans were barred from any occupation other than farming or domestic work unless they paid a special tax. Many codes also limited Black people’s rights to own property, bear arms, serve on juries or testify against white people in court. These laws effectively criminalized Black life and sought to reimpose slavery in all but name.

In response, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, conferring rights and citizenship on Black Southerners. Recognizing that they might not enjoy congressional supermajorities in perpetuity, they also sought to enshrine these rights permanently in the Constitution, via the Fourteenth Amendment.

But today, Trump contends that the amendment does not apply to immigrants. His argument rests on two conceits:

First, that the text of the amendment specifically limits birthright citizenship to “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — which, conservatives argue, does not include immigrant children, as they owe allegiance to a foreign power and are not fully subject to U.S. sovereign authority.

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Second, as the president explained on Friday, he believes the framers intended only to confer citizenship on freedmen (retroactively) and their children (prospectively). In effect, they were attempting a constitutional repudiation of the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Court in 1857 denied that Black persons could be citizens.

We know both of these arguments are shambolic, because the framers told us so.

Senator Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, drafted the birthright citizenship language and was clear in his intent. “This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States,” he explained.

But Howard qualified his explanation. “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

At first blush, it would seem that meant to exclude the children of foreign-born immigrants from enjoying birthright citizenship. But the Senate debate makes clear he and his colleagues meant only to exclude the children of foreign diplomats and officials in the United States on business.

In a key exchange, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania fretted that the amendment would expose the United States to mass demographic upheaval, specifically by making immigrant children citizens. He worried particularly about “Gypsie” (or Roma) immigrants in his home state and a small but growing population of Chinese immigrants in California. In response, John Conness, a senator from California, who supported the bill, agreed with Howard that the citizenship clause applied to immigrants, affirming that the amendment “relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.”

Marco Rubio on his many roles, plus a chat with Trump’s ‘chief Twitter troll’ | The Conversation
Setting aside their crude racial determinism, the exchange makes clear that Howard and other Republicans intended the amendment to apply to all persons born in the U.S., not just freedmen. Cowan was the only Republican senator to vote against the amendment, specifically because of his concerns over birthright citizenship and immigration. In other words, even the amendment’s opponents understood its meaning and intent.

In debating who was subject to the “jurisdiction” of the amendment, the Senate focused almost entirely on the question of whether Native Americans, who had treaty rights and sovereignty, enjoyed its provisions. Most Republican supporters believed at the time they did not. But there was essentially no disagreement about the children of immigrants, who were understood to qualify for citizenship.

And the Supreme Court agreed in a landmark 1898 decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred from naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion Act. After a trip abroad, he was denied re-entry to the U.S., prompting a legal battle over whether he was a citizen. In a 6–2 decision, the court ruled that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration status — establishing a foundational precedent for birthright citizenship that remains in place today

In last week’s decision, the court didn’t specifically uphold Trump’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, it significantly limited the power of lower courts to issue nationwide (or “universal”) injunctions blocking policy implementation, including Trump’s executive order denying passports and Social Security cards to immigrant children. The court signaled it would likely take up the more specific question of birthright citizenship down the line.

For the time being, the decision opens the door to a patchwork legal landscape, where birthright citizenship protections can vary dramatically depending on which states or judges are involved, leaving families in some jurisdictions shielded while others face the executive order’s full force. Legal experts warn that curtailing nationwide injunctions could let parts of Trump’s order go into effect unevenly — forcing challenges through slower and more localized litigation — and thereby sow confusion, fear and unequal citizenship rights across the country.

Trump’s argument about the Fourteenth Amendment also calls into question the process by which tens of millions of American families of European descent became citizens.

At the time of the amendment’s adoption, its framers worried primarily about whether it would make citizens of Asian immigrants. European immigrants — Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews and, later, Eastern and Southern Europeans — were broadly understood to fall under the protections of the original 1790 Naturalization Act, which made all “free white persons” of “good character” eligible for citizenship.

Many of those “free white persons” never bothered to become citizens, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when a large number of immigrants were “birds of flight” who immigrated and re-emigrated multiple times, mostly to work seasonally and bring wages back home. Many ultimately remained in the United States, but if Trump’s reading of the Fourteenth Amendment were in effect, many of their American-born children would not have been citizens if their parents were unnaturalized at the time of their births. Since 1868, birthright citizenship has been central to our understanding of who is legally an American. Take it away, and that understanding gets murky.

All eight of my great grandparents were foreign-born Jews from Eastern Europe. A few naturalized. Others didn’t. Their children — my grandparents — were born on American soil, well before their parents became citizens. By Trump’s reading, my grandparents and parents would not have been entitled to birthright citizenship. Neither, for that matter, would I. The same logic applies to tens of millions of Americans.

Lucky for me, the history is clear on this point. If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority actually believes in originalism, that means the legality of birthright citizenship is a matter of history — and the history is undeniable. Lawmakers on both sides of the issue acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment would extend birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.

Deals blows

Senate rulekeeper deals blows to revised ‘big, beautiful bill’

A Medicaid carveout for Alaska was among the “Byrd bath” casualties.

By Katherine Tully-McManus

The Senate’s rewritten domestic policy bill faces new hurdles after the parliamentarian advised senators Sunday that several provisions violate the chamber’s strict rules for budget reconciliation bills.

The rulings, released in a memo from Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, come as Senate Republicans are still trying to ensure they have the votes for final passage of their signature legislation.

Two provisions added to the bill just days ago — and tailored specifically to boost Medicaid payments to Alaska and Hawaii — have been ruled to violate the Senate’s Byrd rule. That limits what can pass through the reconciliation process with a simple majority.

GOP leaders had hoped the Medicaid provisions focused on non-contiguous states, along with other Alaska-friendly changes, would be enough to win the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). She had voiced concerns over deep cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Murkowski voted to move forward with the bill Saturday night after making committee chairs and leadership sweat.

Elsewhere, Senate Republicans attempted to expand a Medicare drug-price negotiation exemption for “orphan” drugs to include medicines that treat multiple rare diseases. But the parliamentarian ruled it is not in compliance with rules and could threaten the ability to pass the megabill with a simple majority. The orphan drug provision was in the House-passed bill, but was not included in the first Senate Finance Committee’s proposal earlier this month.

The parliamentarian also ruled against provisions that sought to block implementation of two Biden-era regulations that seek to make it easier for older adults and individuals with disabilities to enroll in Medicaid and maintain coverage.

Also flagged by the parliamentarian was a provision that would prohibit implementation of a Biden Administration rule on nursing facility staffing, which was estimated to reduce federal Medicaid spending by $23 billion over 10 years.

“We have been successful in removing parts of this bill that hurt families and workers, but the process is not over, and Democrats are continuing to make the case against every provision in this Big, Beautiful Betrayal of a bill that violates Senate rules,” Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a statement.

The latest rulings also delivered some good news for Senate Republicans: A handful of provisions they tweaked to try to get them in compliance with the rules were green lit.

The Senate Republican proposal to delay planned cuts to provider taxes that fund state obligations to Medicaid survived the so-called “Byrd bath” and will not be subject to a supermajority vote. The changes would still incrementally lower the allowable provider tax in Medicaid expansion states from 6 percent down to 3.5 percent. But the drawdown would begin in 2028, one year later than planned.

A proposal to bar Medicare coverage for non-citizen immigrants was also deemed to be within the rules. It would remove the ability of refugees, asylum seekers, and people with temporary protected status from being able to enroll in Medicare.

Similarly, provisions specifying that non-citizens cannot qualify for tax credits and cost-sharing reductions to purchase health insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces were also ruled to be compliant with the rules.

Still under review by the parliamentarian is a provision that would bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Medicaid funds.

Democratic appointees

Trump tried to fire them. But these Democratic appointees are still on the job.

At a few federal agencies, officials have managed to maintain their positions in defiance of Trump’s efforts to remove them.

By Hassan Ali Kanu

President Donald Trump has fired a host of Democratic appointees at independent boards and commissions across the government. There’s just one catch: Some of them are still working.

More than a dozen leaders of independent federal agencies received terse emails from the White House purporting to fire or demote them shortly after Trump’s inauguration, despite the fact that their roles are governed by laws that bar termination without cause. Many of them decried Trump’s summary termination notices as illegal and made various attempts to remain in their posts, including suing.

Their efforts have proven largely futile against the administration’s brute force strategy: The overwhelming majority have in fact left, accepted new jobs, dropped their lawsuits, or been otherwise forced out — quite literally locked out of their former agency offices in some cases. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has signaled that it will continue to expand the president’s power to fire board members who run regulatory agencies.

Yet a handful of officials have successfully resisted, either because they were reinstated — at least temporarily — by lower-court judges, or because they have simply managed to maneuver around the White House’s orders and directives.

Those officials’ resistance could end up shaping how courts view crucial, pending questions about the hiring-and-firing powers of the presidency, and whether Congress can create federal agencies with some degree of independence from the chief executive.

Trump fired three members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees PBS and NPR, in April. But those members participated in two CPB board of directors meetings this month. Diane Kaplan, Tom Rothman and Laura Gore Ross made motions and voted on issues before the board on June 10 and 11. Former President Joe Biden appointed Rothman and Kaplan to the CPB. Trump appointed Ross during his first term, and Biden reappointed her in 2021.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Trump “exercised his lawful authority” to remove the members because the CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.”

Similarly, Rochelle Garza, the Biden-appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights whom Trump purportedly demoted in March, has maintained her role without interruption. The civil rights board investigates discrimination and guides the development of civil rights laws. Garza presided over multiple commission business meetings since March, including a meeting last Friday, where she voted on several motions.

The CPB members and Garza have hung on to their roles by simply resisting the White House’s directives — and with the support of some colleagues. The CPB quickly changed its bylaws after being targeted by Trump, adding a provision that bars removing directors without two-thirds approval from their colleagues. Garza said in April that she invited a vote on her purported demotion, but her colleagues on the bipartisan commission have not taken up the matter.

Other officials have scored temporary wins in ongoing court battles.

Three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission who were fired in May are back in their roles after a federal judge reinstated them, said Nicolas Sansone, a staff attorney at the advocacy group Public Citizen, which represents the officials. Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. have conducted substantive business at the agency since they were reinstated on June 13, including convening meetings and voting on matters.

The same goes for two Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board whom Trump claimed to fire in January. Ed Felten and Travis LeBlanc have remained in their roles by virtue of a federal court ruling in May. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton held that the board’s mission — to monitor whether government surveillance efforts infringe on civil liberties — “is incompatible with at-will removal by the President” because that would make it “beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee.” Attorneys for the members told the court last month that they have been “back at work” since May.

The White House didn’t respond to follow-up questions about the broader group of commissioners and board members who remain in their roles despite a purported firing or demotion.

Don Kettl, former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, said fundamental questions about the president’s authority over independent regulatory bodies remain unresolved, even as some courts have recognized that the president has wide removal powers over the executive branch more broadly.

Trump administration officials have urged the Supreme Court to overturn a 1935 precedent that upheld Congress’ power to limit the president from firing leaders of some executive branch agencies. And the justices indicated in a preliminary order in May that they will likely curtail that precedent. For now, though, the issue remains in flux.

“I think some commissioners, as a matter of principle, are hanging on by their fingernails waiting for courts to decide, but also as a way of creating a series of legal challenges that forces them to frame the questions” differently, Kettl said.

“It’s a shadow-boxing match at this point,” Kettl added. “All sides are feeling each other out and trying to find a way to frame the ultimate legal questions in a way that’s more likely to produce the results they want.”

Uphill battle against the White House

The officials who have maintained their jobs are exceptions in Trump’s firing spree.

The president fired more than a dozen inspectors general at major federal agencies during the first week of his second term, bulldozing through legal requirements to provide 30-days notice to Congress and explain the terminations. And the White House has terminated or demoted numerous political appointees — almost all Democrats — across the government since then, often bypassing term limits and other job protections.

Indeed, the administration has been remarkably successful in its broad campaign to consolidate Trump’s power over the executive branch.

Ellen Weintraub, a former Federal Election Commission member Trump attempted to fire in February, said at the time she would remain in her role, calling the move illegal. By May, Weintraub said she was officially leaving. This month, she announced that she was taking on a new role at a campaign finance reform group.

Perhaps the most illustrative case involves former Federal Trade Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter.

Slaughter and Bedoya sued the president after receiving termination notices in March. They also fought to continue exercising their authority as commissioners — but they struggled against the practical powers of the White House.

The administration revoked their access to agency offices, emails and resources. And officials reassigned or placed much of their staff on leave.

Bedoya and Slaughter continued trying to decide cases and weigh in on matters — but they were limited to doing so via social media and the FTC’s public comments portal. They also made public appearances as commissioners, but the agency has indicated that their “time in office” ended in March.

Earlier this month, Bedoya told the judge he was formally resigning, adding that he has a family to support, and that the government has stopped paying his salary.

“As a result of these actions, I have been unable to fulfill my duties … with over a year remaining in my term of service,” Bedoya said.

For the time being, the handful of targeted appointees whose resistance has been more successful remain defiant.

“Our bylaws prohibit any person, including the President of the United States, from removing a director without a two-thirds vote of the other directors,” CPB chair Ruby Calvert said in the latest board meeting this month. “We will continue our mission, because the importance of a vibrant, independent public media system … is needed more now than ever.”

Ultimately, the White House appears poised to win the fight — judging by the experiences of the broader group of appointees Trump has already removed, and the early signs from the Supreme Court. Still, the resistance by the handful of “fired” appointees who remain in their seats could end up shaping the courts’ views on the issue.

NATO target

Italy’s grand plan to meet NATO target: A €13.5B bridge to Sicily

Meloni’s deputy prime ministers are keen to class the bridge as a NATO-related project. But does it really mesh with Europe’s military goals?

By Tommaso Lecca, Ben Munster and Martina Sapio

Faced with a daunting new NATO spending target, Italian politicians are proposing that a long-discussed €13.5 billion bridge to Sicily should be defined as military expenditure.

Rome is one of NATO's lowest military spenders — only targeting 1.49 percent of gross domestic product on its military last year. That makes the new goal of 5 percent by 2035 seem out of reach.

And that's where the bridge could help.

The government of Giorgia Meloni is keen to advance with the pharaonic scheme to span the Strait of Messina with what would be world's longest suspension bridge — a project that has been the dream of the Romans, dictator Benito Mussolini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Both Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, Meloni's deputy prime ministers, are playing up the notion that the bridge has a strategic value to NATO rather than a purely economic role — a point that was also stressed in a government report in April.

A government official stressed no formal decision had been made on the classification of the bridge as a security project, but said further talks would likely be held soon to “see how feasible this feels.” The idea could be politically useful for Meloni as she struggles to convince a war-wary public of the need for major defense outlays at a time when Italy is already inching toward austerity.

There are some clear grounds on which Italy might be able to build a case for the bridge. Of the 5 percent of GDP NATO target, only 3.5 percent needs to be core defense spending, while 1.5 percent can be steered to broader strategic resilience such as infrastructure.

An Italian Treasury official also suggested that branding the bridge as a military project would help the government overcome some of the economic and technical barriers that have stopped it being built in the past.

For decades, efforts to build the bridge — with a estimated central span of 3.3 kilometers — have repeatedly run into problems of costs, the difficulties of operating in a seismic zone and the challenge of displacing people.

The new designation would “override bureaucratic obstacles, litigation with local authorities that could challenge the government in court claiming that the bridge will damage disproportionately their land,” the Treasury official said. It would also “facilitate raising money, especially in the next year, for the bridge.”

Imperative or ridiculous?

In April, the Italian government adopted a document declaring the bridge should be built for “imperative reasons of overriding public interest.”

In addition to its civilian use, “the bridge over the Strait of Messina also has strategic importance for national and international security, so much so that it will play a key role in defense and security, facilitating the movement of Italian armed forces and NATO allies,” the document added.

Italy also requested that the project should be included in the EU’s financing plan for the mobility of military personnel, materiel and assets, as it “would fit perfectly into this strategy, providing key infrastructure for the transfer of NATO forces from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean,” the government report said.

The bridge “represents an advantage for military mobility, enabling the rapid transport of heavy vehicles, troops, and resources both by road and rail,” the government added.

Whether NATO — and more importantly U.S. President Donald Trump, who loves a big building project — will buy into that logic is another matter.

Officially, the Strait of Messina lies outside Italy’s only designated NATO military mobility corridor — which begins at ports in the Puglia region on the heel of the Italian boot, crosses the Adriatic to Albania, and continues on to North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It is also unclear whether the strait features in the EU’s own military mobility network, whose corridors, according to people familiar with the discussions, are expected to align with NATO’s routes.

The Americans aren't showing their hand for now. When asked about the bridge at the NATO summit in The Hague in late June, U.S. aides chuckled, but offered no immediate response.

Berlusconi bridge

Foreign Minister Tajani is a vocal advocate of the bridge. “We will make Italians understand that security is a broader concept than just tanks,” he said in a recent interview with business daily Milano Finanza.

“To achieve this, we will focus on infrastructure that also has civilian uses, such as the bridge over the Strait [of Messina], which falls within the concept of defense given that Sicily is a NATO platform,” he added. 

Infrastructure Minister Salvini, Meloni's other deputy, sees the bridge as something that could transform his far-right League party — originally the secessionist Northern League — into a successful nationwide political movement that also commits to a big project in the south.

“Of course,” he recently responded when asked by a reporter whether the bridge could help Italy reach its new NATO goal.“Infrastructure is also strategic from a security perspective in many ways, so if we invest more in security, some strategic infrastructure will also become part of this security plan.”

Salvini has been pressing for the process to speed up, according to the Treasury official and a lawmaker familiar with internal government dynamics.

"Matteo is pushing a lot to obtain some form of 'approval' of the project at technical and political level in order to show to the public opinion that something is moving," the Treasury official said.

Opposition parties disagree with both the need to build the bridge and its classification as military spending.

“This is a mockery of the citizens and of the commitments made at NATO. I doubt that this bluff by the government will be accepted,” said Giuseppe Antoci, a member of the European Parliament from the left-populist 5Star Movement.

“The government should stop and avoid making an international fool of itself, which would cover Italy in ridicule,” he added.

Another argument against the project is that it would connect two of Italy's poorest regions, neither of which has an efficient transport system. Many believe that investing in local streets and railways is more urgent.

“The population of Sicily and Calabria suffers from inadequate water infrastructure, snail-paced transport, potholed roads, and third-world hospitals. The bridge over the strait, therefore, cannot be a priority,” Antoci said.

But the governing coalition is determined to move forward. On Tuesday, Salvini said the project's final authorization is expected in July.

In a somewhat inauspicious sign, Tajani has proposed naming the bridge after Berlusconi, a prime minister famed for his bunga bunga parties and interminable legal battles.