Fitting...

 

If you have been there, you know....

For 40 years, Dolly Parton was a regular at the Madonna Inn

'Incredibly kind, gracious, and sweet to everyone she encountered'

By Julie Tremaine

If there’s a place in California where it made the most sense for Dolly Parton to be a regular, it’s the Madonna Inn. The sprawling hotel in San Luis Obispo is a tribute to opulence and maximalism in the same way the country icon was before her death on Aug. 25. 

Parton spent nearly her whole life in the spotlight, but when she was able to get some time for herself, she often chose to spend it in California’s charming small towns. She had homes in Hemet and Solvang, and in Idyllwild as recently as 2024. And as often as she could, she’d make it back to the Madonna Inn, the singular 68-year-old hotel on the Central Coast with its bright pink exterior and its highly themed 110 rooms. 

“Dolly first visited the Madonna Inn in the mid-1980s and continued to return annually for many years,” Lyndsey Goldwyn, marketing manager for the hotel, told SFGATE. 

“Dolly often expressed how much she ‘loved the Madonna Inn’ and especially appreciated the warm, family atmosphere,” Goldwyn added. “Our longtime staff remember her as being incredibly kind, gracious, and sweet to everyone she encountered.”

During visits, Parton would always make it a point to stay in a different one of the themed rooms, which range from an Austrian suite that looks straight out of “The Sound of Music” to a “love nest” with a pink-carpeted spiral staircase that leads up to a private viewing tower overlooking the grounds.

But when it came to dinner, Parton had a regular spot in the hotel’s Alex Madonna’s Gold Rush Steak House, bedecked in the hotel’s signature rose-patterned pink carpet and glittering chandeliers. It was, of course, the fanciest corner of the restaurant.

“She would always request to sit in the gold booth,” Goldwyn said, a table in a secluded enclave decorated with mirrors and pink-on-pink baroque-inspired wallpaper. It’s the restaurant’s one gold booth among the overstuffed bright pink circular booths, Goldwyn said. Her meal of choice was regularly the steakhouse’s oak-grilled filet mignon.

“Dolly was also a dear friend of the Madonna family,” Goldwyn said. The Madonna Inn was founded in 1958 by Alex and Phyllis Madonna. “Whenever she dined in the Steak House, Alex would make a point to stop by the gold booth to visit with her.”

After Parton’s death, the hotel named the booth in her honor. “Her visits throughout the years created memories we will always hold close, and our gold booth in the Alex Madonna Steakhouse will forever be known as ‘Dolly’s Booth,’” the inn posted on Instagram on Aug. 25.

Fuck you orange turd!

'We're not changing it': SoCal-based Mapquest takes stand against Trump's 'Lake America'

By Corinne Purtill

Within days of President Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America," Google Maps quietly fell in line. Searches for the international boundary water in Google Maps now direct U.S. users to a renamed "Lake America."

While the president's preferred name for the smallest Great Lake isn't yet reflected on Apple Maps, it may be just a matter of time - searches for the "Gulf of Mexico" on that app lead to the "Gulf of America," which Trump renamed on his first day in office.

But there is one holdout against Trump's efforts to rechristen boundary waters, a voice of dissent straight out of 2005: Mapquest.

"We're not changing it," Mapquest said Friday in a Facebook post that featured a screenshot of the lake. It also unveiled a tool that allows users to download maps featuring their own custom names for the lake.

For many, Mapquest's political stance was less surprising than the news that Mapquest still exists. The company was acquired in 2019 by System1, a Marina del Rey-based advertising platform.

In the years before smartphones and ubiquitous GPS, Mapquest.com was the vanguard of online wayfinding. Launched in 1996, the site would generate directions between two points, which users would have to jot down or print out before their journey.

It was the internet's leading mapping site when America Online acquired it in December 1999 for $1.1 billion, or roughly $2.2 billion in today's dollars.

The site lost ground to competitors over the following decade, and its ownership transferred to Verizon after that company's 2015 purchase of AOL. Four years later, Verizon sold Mapquest to System1 for a sum so reportedly tiny that Verizon did not file any public paperwork to record it, Business Insider reported.

The company's approach to the second Trump administration's renaming spree has earned it name recognition among a new generation of users, with "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads since the Lake America announcement, general manager Doug Berger told The Times on Sunday.

Cartography enthusiasts have pointed out that Trump does not have authority to rename the Great Lakes, which for more than a century have been governed by a joint U.S.-Canada commission. The U.S. president's naming authority extends only to federal maps and agencies; other nations - and private map providers - are not obligated to adopt the change.

New opportunity....

Dam removal launches white water rafting revival near California border

SFGATE contributor Brian E. Clark rafts the recovering Upper Klamath River on the Oregon-California border

By Brian E. Clark

As my raft plowed into a frothy hole on the Wild Horse rapid in the Upper Klamath River’s Kikaceki Canyon, it swung sideways, shuddered and then charged on through a series of churning, boat-eating holes near the California border. 

The excitement turned to thrill when raft guide Alyssa Winkelmann — of Momentum River Expeditions — plowed into a reversal slightly off center. This flung me into the drink and left me swimming in the rushing river.

“Maybe I’d hit it more straight on next time,” chuckled Winkelmann, who grew up in the town of Shasta and has been a raft guide for more than a decade. On this newly restored section of the Klamath, she’s learning about the river like everyone else. 

For over a century, a wild ride through the Class IV cascade was impossible. That’s because this nearly 3-mile section of the Upper Klamath was dewatered, literally dried up, by a penstock diversion for the Copco No. 2 dam and its powerhouse built in the 1920s.

However, in 2024, four aging hydroelectric dams (including Copco No. 2) on the California-Oregon border were demolished in the largest dam removal project in the U.S. Since then, water has started tumbling over rocks and boulders again, opening the canyon for white water rafting and more. 

Bordered by dramatic, 300-foot columnar basalt cliffs, the trip offers intense rapids for advanced rafters and kayakers. It’s also a tour embodying an unprecedented revival of nature and human history. 

The Shasta people and other tribes — including the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Klamath — lived along the river for millennia. The dam removal allows for lost traditions like dancing the salmon home while also spawning new adventures for the outdoorsy set.

When I floated the Upper Klamath with Momentum River Expeditions earlier this summer, I encountered not only Class IV rapids with names like Caldera, Ambush and Dragon’s Tooth in a deep canyon but also gentle, soul-soothing sections of slowly moving water where merganser ducks swam with their chicks.

Otters poked around eddies dotted with yellow-flowered water lilies, possibly looking for a salmon meal. And speckling the riverbanks, we saw scarlet poppies, sticky purple geraniums and yellow lupines. Soaring overhead were bald eagles, another species that thrives on salmon. 

Even better, I got to share this trip with a decades-old friend, Mark Lorenzen, with whom I’d kayaked white water streams up and down the West Coast, Central America, Chile and Ecuador. These days, though, we live more than 1,500 miles apart. He’s in San Francisco, and I live in Madison, Wisconsin, so reunions on the water are rare.

The first evening, we pulled into our safari camp under towering ponderosa pines — with their distinctive, puzzle-like bark — sharing stories over garlic- and thyme-marinated shrimp prepared by the guides. We were later served nightcaps from the wooden “UK Bar” before heading off to our walk-in tents with decks that were spaced out along a path lit by solar-powered lamps in a scene best described as riparian magic.

A positive achievement, an unexpected problem

The Upper Klamath River’s revival is merely the latest chapter in a long and sometimes bloody dispute over who claims the water. Sami Jo Difuntorum, cultural preservation officer for the Shasta tribe, said that in the 19th century, many Shasta were pushed out of the area or killed by gold miners and the U.S. military. 

“But our ancestors struggled to stay there, and we fought to return,” Difuntorum said. “That flowing water and those lands carry their memories. They have a profound cultural meaning to us.”

Difuntorum said the Texas-headquartered company Resource Environmental Solutions worked with the tribes to lead the restoration. They are now reintroducing some 200 native plants that the Shasta harvested for food, basketry, medicine and ceremonies. That includes wild pumpkin, which is placed in fish traps to lure in and capture salmon. 

“It’s all a work in process because you don’t just take out the dams and everything is fine again,” Difuntorum said. “There is more to be done, including on the Klamath’s tributaries.”

Dave Meurer, community affairs director for Resource Environmental Solutions, added that salmon have returned to the reopened river and its tributaries much sooner than anticipated. 

“We got in there fast, and were re-seeding the reservoir footprints as the water receded,” he said. “Planting in muck, planting in 98 percent dead algae that had been accumulating for decades.”

Meurer added that so far, the “plant response has been fantastic, with fields of poppies and 100 other species growing there the first year, including shrubs and bare-root trees.”

Even more remarkable has been the return of salmon to streams that were “buried under warm slack-water and algae-filled toxic reservoirs,” Meurer said. “We were trying to do in a short time what nature would have taken decades.” 

Meurer said that a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist predicted the salmon return might take a dozen years. “He was stunned by how remarkably fast it happened,” Meurer said.

White water where there was none

As the body of the Upper Klamath River welcomes the salmon’s return, the top of the river is calling to river enthusiasts. White water outfits were among the stakeholders supporting the effort to remove the dams. 

Pete Wallstrom started the rafting company Momentum River Expeditions more than 20 years ago on the Rogue River and the Hells Corner stretch of the Upper Klamath. He worked with the American Whitewater environmental group, public agencies and tribes to develop public access points on the river after the dams were removed. There are other outfitters — including Noah’s River Adventures and Indigo Creek Outfitters — and the cost for one- and two-day trips on the Upper Klamath ranges from $200 to $850.

“It’s been crazy — especially after years of uncertainty — to watch salmon swimming upstream soon after the dams’ removal and see how quickly the river is healing itself,” Wallstrom said. 

Recreation on a river with cultural significance may not always seem complementary, but Difuntorum said she supports it as long as people aren’t jumping out of their rafts in places that are sacred or could be a burial site.

Wallstrom said Momentum’s mission is to protect wild places by connecting with guests on an emotional level. “And to show and connect them in a way that they understand, appreciate, enjoy and feel comfortable with,” he said.

Part of that effort includes getting more people — including those who might be averse to roughing it — on the river by making camping more comfortable at its glamping-style overnight, he said. 

“I believe that rivers and public lands are best protected when a wide range of people know and love them — a mix of more ‘outdoorsy’ people and those who are not as lucky and only get to spend [a few] nights under the stars,” Wallstrom said. 

“That includes people that have never really thought about camping — or that camping is so far away from their life experience that they have a hard time considering it. And there are a lot of people like that now.”

M74

If not the most grand, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe of about 100 billion stars, 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces, M74 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as an Sc galaxy, the grand design of M74's graceful spiral arms are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Constructed from archival images, this sharp composite is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Spanning about 30,000 light-years across the face of M74, it includes exposures recording emission from hydrogen atoms, highlighting the reddish glow of the galaxy's large star-forming regions.

A big deal...

NASA launches ‘discovery machine’ to unravel the invisible universe

By Ashley Strickland

A massive observatory that scientists have called a “discovery machine” has launched toward the cosmos, beginning a journey that could mark a significant shift in our understanding of the universe.

Designed to seek out otherwise invisible and faint space objects, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off aboard a rocket at 7:26 a.m. ET Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory reached orbit about 10 minutes later.

Over the next five years, the bus-size telescope’s observations could reveal answers to enduring mysteries such as dark energy, which fuels the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, which provides the cosmos with structure but remains unseen. It could allow astronomers to spot previously unseen galaxies and exoplanets, worlds around stars beyond our solar system, as well rogue planets that don’t orbit stars at all.

Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, reflected on the bittersweet feeling of watching the telescope launch Sunday morning.

“You see it growing up, and then it literally feels like it’s part of your team,” Fox said at a post-launch news conference. “It’s actually the member of the team that’s going to go on this grand expedition and send all that incredible treasure back to us here on Earth. But there is that moment where you think, ‘I’m never going to see that spacecraft again.’ I liken it to sending your kids to college.”

“Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as the space agency unveiled the completed telescope on April 21 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

With surveying capabilities more than 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will capture fundamentally different scientific observations that can’t be done with either Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope.

“Together, the three missions will complement each other, giving us a more complete picture of the cosmos and advancing our understanding of the universe,” Fox said. The mission team also said Sunday that Roman’s mission has the possibility of being extended up to 10 years.

President Donald Trump called in during the Sunday news conference to congratulate the Roman team on their “great success,” calling the US the “hottest in space.”

Roman will take around three months to reach its ultimate orbital position of about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from Earth, known as Lagrange Point 2, or L2. The James Webb Space Telescope is also parked in this orbit, where spacecraft are balanced by the gravitational pull of Earth and the sun. L2 is about four times farther from Earth than the moon, according to NASA.

In the meantime, the observatory will go through commissioning — testing out its instruments in space and deploying the antenna that will relay Roman’s massive imagery back to Earth.

The telescope is expected to transmit one terabyte of data per day — like streaming 1 million songs from 1 million miles away down to Earth, said Jeremy Perkins, Roman telescope integration and test scientist at Goddard.

The estimated $4.3 billion telescope has been in development for about a decade and became a priority for the scientific community about 16 years ago. Scientists around the world are anticipating the unprecedented insights Roman could deliver.

“When you develop a tool that is radically different from anything you’ve had before, you will discover things that you didn’t know were out there,” said Dominic Benford, Roman program scientist at NASA who has been involved with projects related to the concept for more than 20 years.

“Part of what Roman is for as a discovery machine is to give people a way to ask the universe questions that we have yet to conceive.”

What makes Roman different

NASA’s space telescopes have long explored life-altering questions, and in many ways, those capabilities are thanks to the observatory’s namesake, the “brilliant astronomer” Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, said Dr. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA.

Roman was NASA’s first chief of astronomy in the 1960s and pioneered the idea of space-based astronomy observations, recognizing the power of lofting telescopes above Earth’s obscuring atmosphere. She became known as the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.”

“Although she’s often most associated with those first space telescopes, it’s really our full fleet that she deserves credit for,” Domagal-Goldman said. “Every time we build a new space telescope, we add capabilities we didn’t have before and that adds to her legacy. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is no exception.”

The Roman telescope’s first images are expected in January before it kicks off unprecedented surveys of the universe, powered by a field of view more than 100 times that of Hubble thanks to its wide field instrument.

Domagal-Goldman compared Roman’s capabilities to capturing an all-encompassing view of a forest as well as seeing sharp details of its trees, like leaves and birds, all at the same time.

“Of course, this isn’t a forest we’re talking about; it’s the known universe, and those birds and trees are supernova galaxies, planets and stars,” he said during an August 5 briefing.

Dr. Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist, calls the new telescope’s observations the largest census that scientists have ever been able to take of planets across the Milky Way galaxy. It could find tens of thousands of previously unknown worlds and reveal just how common solar systems such as ours are across the cosmos.

“We’re going to be surveying patches of the sky going back over and over and over again to find new things that go bump in the night,” McEnery said. “Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual. We’ll redefine what it means to find a needle in a haystack.”

Some of those needles may include incredibly dim free-floating objects such as rogue planets or even small, wandering black holes, Benford said. Roman could also provide the first definitive proof of exomoons, or moons orbiting exoplanets.

Probing cosmic mysteries

During its five-year mission, the telescope will enable the discovery of billions of galaxies, thousands of exploding stars called supernovas and tens of billions of stars, according to Fox.

Stellar explosions occur so quickly that they often elude the gaze of telescopes. But Roman has the panoramic vision to see several at once, McEnery said, and the supernovas could act as cosmic candles to help astronomers track a mysterious force — dark energy — and unlock the role it may play in accelerating the expansion rate of the universe.

In the 1920s, astronomers Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe has been expanding since its birth 13.8 billion years ago. But research that began in the 1990s has shown that something sparked an acceleration of the universe’s expansion about 6 billion years ago, and the cause remains unknown.

To study dark energy, Roman will measure how gravity bends light across large cosmic distances — creating a 3D map of dark matter in the process.

Dark matter has never been detected, but it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe and help hold stars and galaxies in stable orbits. Roman will map the distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters across the cosmos, looking for the signature gravitational effects of dark matter.

Unlocking the true nature of dark energy and dark matter could help astronomers understand what the universe is made of, how its expansion has changed over time, and if there is more to understanding gravity than meets the eye. Both dark matter and dark energy also play a role in the distribution and movement of objects, such as galaxies and stars, across the cosmos.

“Roman is designed to make the measurements that will determine whether there’s some sort of fundamental difference in the way the universe works compared to the way we think it works,” Benford said.

All of Roman’s data will be made publicly available as soon as it is processed on Earth, providing a treasure trove for scientists to mine for answers to a multitude of cosmic queries.

“Instead of having a telescope that astronomers have to choose to point at a certain object, we just map lots and lots of sky,” Benford said. “Anybody who’s interested in star-forming regions, dying stars or distant galaxies, they’re already there in the data somewhere.”

Enabling a search for life

Apart from its wide field instrument, Roman also carries a technology demonstration called a coronagraph, a proof of concept that’s like “doing magic with physics,” McEnery said.

Astronomers use coronagraphs to block blinding starlight to see finer details, such as planets that may be in orbit around stars other than our sun.

If we were able to see Earth and the sun from a great distance in space, the two objects would appear incredibly close together — and the sun’s blazingly bright light would overshadow Earth’s, Benford said.

Roman will be able to use its coronagraph like a shield against harsh starlight to spot planets that are otherwise difficult to see around other stars and identify them. The observatory will see the glow of a Jupiter-size or possibly a Saturn-size planet near another star, he added. The telescope may even be able to glimpse light reflecting off the tops of clouds on these planets.

Hubble and Webb both have coronagraphs, but Roman’s experimental instrument is 100 to 1,000 times better than any built before, said Bertrand Mennesson, Roman deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Mennesson’s area of focus is on the coronagraph, and he has worked on the mission for 14 years.

“You send the coronagraph into space, and it’s set it and forget it,” Mennesson told CNN. “That’s what I call a passive system, and that’s the case with JWST and Hubble. Conversely, for Roman, it’s an active system.”

To correct for vibrations, fluctuations, thermal radiation or any other errors, Roman’s coronagraph has mirrors that change shape in real time to maintain absolute precision.

If the coronagraph performs as expected, it could pave the way for future observatories.

Think of Roman as being able to take a picture of a firefly next to a floodlight from the other side of the country, Domagal-Goldman said.

What’s even harder is taking the same picture, but without the firefly’s glow, and only the floodlight reflected off the firefly’s dark body.

“If we can do that second one, which Roman is a major stepping stone towards doing, we’ll be able to build our next flagship observatory, the Habitable Worlds Observatory,” he said.

Right now, that mission is just a concept. The Habitable Worlds Observatory would be the first designed to photograph Earth-like planets — and even search for chemical signs of life within the atmospheres of those planets.

“We’re not going to get there with Roman, but we’re going to get there because of Roman,” Benford said.

I am sure she would say "Fuck you".......

Tennessee’s Governor Loves Dolly—But Not the LGBTQ People She Stood Up For

Bill Lee wants to rename Nashville’s airport after Dolly Parton. Repealing the state’s drag ban would be a better tribute.

Sophie Hurwitz

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee has declared his support for renaming Nashville’s airport for Dolly Parton, days after the beloved singer’s death.

“It is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness,” Lee wrote in a press release.

It’s a nice gesture. But it is also bitterly ironic coming from the man who signed America’s first ban on public drag shows in 2023. Lee’s record on LGBTQ rights is abysmal. He defended the right of faith-based adoption agencies to refuse adoption to same-sex parents, renamed Pride month “Nuclear Family Pride Month,” and has outlawed gender-affirming medical care for minors. Parton expressed a deep fondness for drag performers, and for LGBTQ people, while Lee called drag “sexualized entertainment in front of children” and tried to ban it from public spaces—thereby attempting to put his state’s hardworking Dolly Parton impersonators out of business.

Lee’s record of anti-trans rhetoric and action—signing a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, prohibiting colleges and homeless shelters from recognizing a person’s gender identity, and forcing doctors to hand information about their trans patients over to the state—stands in sharp contrast to that of Parton herself, a staunch advocate for LGBTQ people.

“She reminded us of who had our back,” Brian Sullivan, a leader of the Tennessee Equality Project, recently told the New York Times. “She wasn’t a pushover, and she certainly wasn’t when it came to us.”

With her hyperfeminine makeup, and penchant for dressing, as she put it, as a “cartoon character that I created” when she performed, Parton was, arguably, America’s most well-known drag performer: “It’s a good thing that I was born a woman or I’d have been a drag queen,” she once quipped. (On another famous occasion, Parton entered a Dolly Parton drag contest and was thoroughly amused to lose.)

Tennessee’s “drag ban,” the Adult Entertainment Act, prohibits “adult-oriented performances lacking serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for a reasonable 17-year-old.” It’s a definition that weaponizes vagueness, rather than disallowing the practice of drag as such.

Instead, the law classifies drag as an innately “adult-oriented” or sexual act, and according to the ACLU of Tennessee, creates “an environment of fear and confusion, which too often results in self-censorship.” As Tennessee drag king Jordan Allen, a trans man, said in 2023, the law could theoretically be used to classify trans people existing in public as “adult-oriented” or inappropriate for children, too.

“I know trans men and women who are servers at restaurants and they go up to a table to serve,” Allen told PBS at the time. “If they go up to a table to serve a table and there’s a child there—there’s a possibility that they can literally be charged with a crime for doing their job and serving the table.” The bill, Governor Lee said, “protects children from obscene, sexualized entertainment.”

In 2023, Parton mailed a glittery, rhinestoned guitar to Texas drag queen Brigitte Bandit—while Bandit was suing Texas over a drag show ban in that state. “I wanted Brigitte to know that she is not screaming into the void and that we see her work,” Parton said through her company Parton Productions at the time.

The day Parton died, a Reagan-appointed Texas judge struck down that state’s drag ban for the second time, finding it unconstitutional. Brigitte Bandit was victorious. And US District Judge David Hittner referenced Parton several times in his ruling, as he argued that the ban was overly broad.

“A Dolly Parton impersonator who uses a breast plate while dancing and making gestures or an Elvis impersonator who uses a packer while shaking and shimmying their hips” could be subject to criminal penalties under the law “while still being constitutionally protected performances,” Hittner wrote.

In Parton’s home state of Tennessee, people like Lee who remember Parton with affection are still pushing the LGBTQ community she loved out of public life. Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The governor’s proposal to rename the airport after Parton will be discussed by the Nashville Airport Authority in September—but lifting the state’s drag ban would be a better way to honor Parton’s memory.

Like a puddle of vomit, orangutan names a pile of shit after himself...

Google’s Obedience to Trump’s “Lake America” Order Follows a Depressing Pattern

Alex Nguyen

If you’re a Google Map user in the United States, you’ll now see the name “Lake America” instead of “Lake Ontario,” just days after President Trump’s executive order renaming the body of water amid his ongoing trade war with Canada.

In an announcement published late on Saturday, Google explained that it “reflect[s] name changes in official government sources,” in this case citing the US Geographic Names Information System. 

According to Google, Maps users in Canada still see “Lake Ontario” while those outside the US and Canada will see both names: “Lake Ontario (Lake America).” “These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country,” the announcement in part reads. 

On Saturday night, Trump posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social depicting himself kicking over a “Welcome to Lake Ontario” sign and placing a “Welcome to Lake America” sign in its place. His AI avatar then dances robotically to the tune of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Earlier on Saturday, he shared an AI video of ducks sporting Trump’s haircut firing assault rifles to celebrate “Lake America.”

Online reactions of outrage are widespread, but Google has long demonstrated little interest in opposing the Trump administration. The corporation followed a similar pattern to what it did when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in a day-one executive order last January. The following month, the company announced the same split—”Gulf of America” in the US, “Gulf of Mexico” in Mexico, and the bet-hedging “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” in the rest of the world.

Google has also previously carried out the Trump administration’s bidding in other ways, including eliminating DEI hiring goals last February while reviewing Trump executive orders unwinding DEI in the federal government, and—along with other tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft—donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund last year.

So maybe we all go back to using MapQuest again? 

Warned the Iran War Is Unsustainable

Hegseth’s Own Military Brass Warn the Iran War Is Unsustainable

James West

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s top military brass has now privately warned him directly: His war in Iran is unsustainable and is draining America’s ability to defend itself from threats elsewhere—and at home.

On Sunday morning, the Washington Post published a scoop describing a classified assessment by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as top commanders from across three continents, contained in a twice-monthly report called the Secretary of Defense Orders Book.

The pain point, according to the reporting, is that President Trump wants to keep all his options open, including the ability to attack Iran again—extending a large deployment of troops kept at the ready and limiting the ability to train and run missions elsewhere. That prompted the concern, formally known as a “non-concur,” from Hegseth’s commanders, according to the Post:

As President Donald Trump has pressured Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept several U.S. provisions for ending the stalemated conflict, he has been adamant that all options remain available to him — including further military action. Consequently, U.S. Central Command, the headquarters responsible for prosecuting the Iran war, has kept a force of more than 50,000 troops on alert for months in case the president orders additional attacks.

It was the chief of naval operations who provided the bleakest assessment, as deployments of personnel and vessels have been extended for months—warning that just a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is ready to deploy, representing a big decline from prewar levels, according to the Post.

The Pentagon told the Post it does not discuss these sorts of private assessments.

On Day 10 of the Iran conflict, Trump declared the war “very complete, pretty much.” It’s now many months later, with no deal, no end date, and a $37.5 billion price tag, according to Hegseth’s July testimony to Congress. Last week we documented the ongoing whiplash in our video below—from demands for unconditional surrender, to negotiations, to this week’s “Operation Economic Outcast,” a sanctions campaign that amounts to a tacit admission that six months of bombing didn’t get the job done.

Great, just what we need... Diarrhea Beef now...

Trump looks to ease beef processing regulations

The sweeping changes to meat processing will likely require a longer-term regulatory process or congressional action.

By Grace Yarrow

President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration will seek changes to allow farmers and ranchers to slaughter and process their own products in response to calls to loosen the grip of the big companies that dominate U.S. meat processing.

“I am authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “This should move quickly.”

The president’s announcement follows his proclamation earlier this week allowing an increase in beef imports over the next three months as part of a broader effort to bring down food prices ahead of the midterms. Trump also signaled his interest in addressing ranchers’ concerns about the so-called Big Four meat processors during an interview Wednesday with conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

The Trump administration had already been weighing industry-friendly policies to quell ranchers’ backlash against the beef import plans after a previous proposal was shelved earlier this year amid similar complaints.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Friday in a post on X that “big announcements” are coming starting next week, including “expanding truth in labeling,” prioritizing “real support for small processors (funding and deregulation)” and fighting consolidation.

The administration has already rolled out $60 million to bolster small meat processors and initiated an investigation into allegations that the Big Four meatpackers engaged in anti-competitive practices. It’s not yet clear to what extent the new Agriculture Department announcements will differ from existing efforts.

The White House and USDA did not immediately respond to questions about the timeline for the changes or the process for rolling them out.

Beck, who owns a ranch, highlighted concerns about slaughter regulations during the interview with Trump, telling the president that the Big Four meatpackers and regulations are “just killing us.”

“You’re saying, with less regulation, you think that the ranchers and farmers would do a very good job of processing the beef?” Trump asked.

“This is a very big thing you just told me, though, because you just gave me a very good idea,” the president added.

But federal agencies are limited in how much they can unilaterally change without congressional action.

Lawmakers have attempted for years to pass language that would allow small ranches and local slaughterhouses to sell meat directly to consumers without USDA inspections.

The bill, known as the PRIME Act, has bipartisan support led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) in the House and Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Angus King (I-Maine) in the Senate. The legislation has failed to gain traction in the face of lobbying efforts from powerful agriculture groups that argue the change would create a food safety threat.

Massie posted on X on Friday that Trump’s post “is great, but it should be a law, not just an executive order.”

“Pass the PRIME Act so consumers can get affordable U.S. beef and farmers can flourish!” Massie wrote.

And any mandatory change to country-of-origin labeling for beef would also require congressional approval as lawmakers repealed previous beef labeling rules in 2015. The Senate Agriculture Committee voted to include mandatory country-of-origin labels for beef in their farm bill package, which stalled in committee earlier this month.

Insane...

'Like something out of 'Saturday Night Live': Ontario premier laughs off ‘Lake America’ executive order

Doug Ford said: "It's been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It's going to continue being Lake Ontario.”

By Cheyanne M. Daniels

Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Sunday addressed the rising tensions between the U.S. and Canada, including the recent rounds of personal insults he and President Donald Trump hurled at each other earlier this month amid a potential trade war.

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Ford denounced Trump’s tariff plans; said many were feeling “bullied” by the president; and appeared to laugh off an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.

“It was like something out of ‘Saturday Night Live’ when he signed documents saying change to Lake America,” said Ford, who recently unveiled a new sign on the Canadian shoreline reading “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.”

“No one’s going to call it Lake of America. It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue being Lake Ontario,” Ford added.

Ford said the attempted name change is “so disappointing” because he and his fellow Canadians “love the American people” — but he added that Canadians “differentiate between the great American people and the president.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump last week signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to change the Great Lake’s name within 30 days. It was the latest move by the president to pressure Canada into a trade agreement following the collapse of a trade deal between the two countries earlier this month.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated that Canada has no plans to change the lake’s name. Meanwhile, it remains unclear what companies that make maps will choose to do, though Google has updated its Maps application to label Lake Ontario as Lake America for users in the United States.

But Trump and Ford swapped insults even before Trump signed the name change order last week. The president called Ford “unimpressive” and a “flunky” of Carney. Ford, in turn, called Trump a “dictator” and “king of bankruptcies.”

Ford on Sunday admitted things “got heated” between him and Trump, though he did not quite apologize for his remarks.

“You got to eventually stand up to someone that just continuously attacks our country and insults our country,” Ford said Sunday. “It’s unfortunate that he stoops down to that level and, unfortunately, I did that day.”

As tensions continue to escalate, Trump has threatened to double the tariffs on Canadian auto imports — including cars and trucks and steel — beginning Jan. 1.

Ford on Sunday warned that the tariffs would be “devastating for both countries” as he pointed out that Canada is the largest purchaser of American vehicles.

“A tariff on Canada is nothing more than a tax on American people and it’s probably the worst move he could ever do,” Ford said of Trump.

Canada is retaliating with counter-tariffs ranging from 15 to 50 percent on more than 700 products.

“If I can say, everyone’s feeling bullied by President Trump,” Ford said.

It’s unclear how the two countries will move forward in establishing a new trade deal; Ford said Sunday that Carney stopped negotiations with the U.S. after he told the prime minister “it was a terrible deal for Canada.”

Still, Ford added, it’s important that leaders from both countries “focus on a free trade agreement that will create more jobs, more opportunities on both sides of the border.”

“We need to get a deal that’s beneficial for both countries, and you’ll see both countries thrive and prosper and grow. That’s what we want,” Ford said.

Violate the Constitution again.....

Judge declares Rubio’s speech-based student deportations violate the Constitution

Northern District of California Judge Noël Wise, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, sided with the Stanford Daily in its suit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy and Ben Johansen

A federal judge on Friday declared that the Trump administration’s efforts to deport noncitizens for political speech run counter to the Constitution’s First and Fifth Amendments, the latest legal rebuke of the White House’s expansive immigration agenda.

Northern District of California Judge Noël Wise, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, sided with the Stanford Daily, which sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arguing that his use of the Immigration and Nationality Act to deport noncitizen students had foreign students refraining from writing opinion pieces critical of the administration.

”In the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people,” Wise wrote in her opinion. “It is not the government’s to take.”

Another plaintiff was an unnamed woman who is a lawful noncitizen in the U.S. who was previously in the country on a student visa at a school that was not Stanford and “has refrained from publishing and voicing her true opinions regarding Palestine and Israel and has deleted a social media account to guard against retaliation for past expression,” according to court documents.

“Here you can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it,” Wise wrote. “Zealous protection of our Constitutional right to free speech is a provocative demonstration of our country’s powerful lack of fear.”

A State Department spokesperson, given anonymity to discuss internal thought processes within the agency, told POLITICO that the U.S. “is under no obligation to admit or suffer the presence of individuals who subvert our laws and deny our citizens their Constitutional rights.”

“More broadly, the Department of State is committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” the spokesperson said. “A visa is a privilege, not a right.”

The ruling comes after the administration’s campaign last year to revoke visas and seek the deportations of foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian movement. Among those subjected to deportation proceedings were Columbia University activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts University doctoral grad Rümeysa Öztürk and Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri.

Khalil, a green card holder, was detained for more than three months after leading pro-Palestinian protests on his campus. Mahdawi, also a lawful permanent resident, was arrested after he appeared for a citizenship interview. Öztürk was detained by masked agents in Boston after the State Department revoked her student visa because of an op-ed she co-authored criticizing her school’s response to the war in Gaza.

The cases became part of a broader legal and political fight over the administration’s efforts to crack down on campus activism they viewed as not aligned with their foreign policy.

The administration argued their presence could harm U.S. foreign policy. The students and their lawyers responded by saying they were being punished for constitutionally protected free speech.

The detentions also prompted protests and pushback from Democratic lawmakers. Demonstrators rallied in New York and Massachusetts demanding the release of Khalil and Öztürk, while members of Congress pressed the administration over its actions toward the students.

“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” said Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which sued Rubio on behalf of the Stanford Daily.

“Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child,” he said in a statement.

Midterm Nightmare

The Republican Party’s Midterm Nightmare Is Taking Shape

Democrats see an opening in the states where Trump’s policies are hitting hardest.

By Jonathan Martin

The Senate map is less complicated than it appears. As with every modern presidential campaign, it runs through the Midwest.

If Democrats flip Republican-held seats in Ohio and Iowa while retaining Michigan, they will almost certainly net the four seats total needed to take control of the Senate for President Donald Trump’s final two years.

As the traditional start of the campaign season draws near, though, Republicans are increasingly worried they may be consumed by a worsening prairie fire.

“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told me. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”

The triple-whammy of tariffs, expensive diesel and fertilizer and now imported beef has created a crisis for agriculture-state Republicans.

Over some brisket at Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que earlier this month, the pastor of the country’s biggest Methodist congregation said Kansans are at a breaking point.

“Now some of those people are still not willing to say, ‘Hey, we don’t like Trump,’ but they do expect their senator is going to speak up for them,” said Adam Hamilton, the pastor-turned-Democratic nominee against Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). “What I’m hearing when I go across the state is people saying — and these are Republicans, not Democrats — we can’t have six more years of this, or even two more years of this.”

Hamilton said the only question is: “How many farms are going to go bankrupt?”

Two hundred miles north up I-35, at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Josh Turek echoed Hamilton.

“We’re going through a second farm crisis right now, Farmageddon,” said Turek, the Democratic state lawmaker running against Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) for an open Senate seat.

It’s Iowa that’s more likely to flip — Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 — and I think the Hawkeye State is the bellwether in this year’s Senate battle.

Should Iowa turn back to Democrats after supporting Trump in all three of his elections, and not electing a Democratic senator since 2008, it would be an unmistakable tell about the sort of voters who also backed Barack Obama twice.

The alarm among Republicans, though, is that the contagion may spread beyond the heartland.

While GOP incumbents in Kansas and Nebraska are facing the fight of their careers, Republican lawmakers in the South are also seeing unusually adverse polling data, while states at opposite ends of the country, Maine and Alaska, are tilting left because of their fuel- and trade-dependent economies.

If Democrats can hold on to Michigan, a once-daunting Senate map for their party looks less intimidating: To find four seats, they’d capture North Carolina, the most likely state to change hands, Ohio, Iowa and then find one more from the quasi-nation-states that are Maine, Alaska and Texas (with help from third-party candidates on the ballot).

Every wave election brings a late surprise, and if conditions deteriorate, there’s a chance Nebraska, Kansas and even Mississippi could fall.

The culprits are obvious: the exorbitant cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the political center and the massive enthusiasm gap Democrats enjoy over Republicans.

The fear, GOP officials tell me, is that these sentiments are increasingly becoming locked in with voters; that the grim political environment — caused by spiking gas prices after the ceasefire with Iran collapsed last month — is close to irreversible. Or to borrow from Haley Barbour, that sage of Mississippi: In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse.

For months, the shorthand conversation among political professionals has not been if this will be a difficult election for Republicans but whether it will be 2018 or 2006.

Which is to say: Will 2026 bring a backlash against the party in power, but one largely confined to House losses because of polarization, limiting Democratic strength in Senate races? Or will there be a greater wave that grows high enough to sweep out Republicans thought to be safe, flipping both chambers of Congress in the process?

Once Iran hostilities restarted and it became clear that there would be no Supreme Court vacancy, as there crucially was in 2018, the answer became clear. Republicans would not be able to get off defense and lacked the court fight that would hand them their best opportunity to go on offense.

Absent a drastic shift in voter sentiment, this election is poised to mirror the last time a Republican was besieged by ornery voters upset with corruption, the price at the pump and an unpopular Middle Eastern war: complete Democratic takeover.

What gives GOP strategists some hope is that there are fewer red-state voters willing to vote for Democrats 20 years later, and the party’s shift left offers easy fodder for advertising, which could be critical given the hundreds of millions of dollars Republican groups are sitting on as Labor Day nears.

Much of that money is in Trump’s hands, though, and Republicans are privately furious he’s not agreed to spend more of it on his party’s candidates this fall.

Which gets to a deeper problem, something few in the party are in denial about any longer — the president is focused entirely on having fun, claiming a personal legacy and targeting personal rivals.

When Trump is not living the life of a 12-year-old boy — hosting UFC fights on the White House lawn and watching Indy cars go vroom through downtown D.C. — he’s fixated on naming things after himself, doing renovation work and seeking vengeance via the Department of Justice or by renaming Great Lakes.

It’s all so small. Yet it’s no laughing matter when the American voter is paying $4 for a gallon of regular. And while a war with Canada may sound like an old Second City comedy bit, the rising tensions with Ottawa could prove politically fatal to border-state Republicans in the two races they most need to win: Maine and Michigan.

“I would remind [Trump] that Canada is our friend, our closest ally and our biggest trading partner,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told me, adding: “And that our economies are so linked that if you try to hurt one, you end up hurting Maine and other border states.”

Shortly before last year’s New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, I wrote that Trump was leading the party to defeat and “the reason the seemingly esoteric matter of Argentine beef imports has penetrated the Republican psyche is because it’s a stand-in for: Hey, why is the president so focused on these other countries instead of bringing down costs here?”

Few farm-state Republicans would have believed at the time that, less than a year later and in an even more forbidding political moment, he would again be aiding foreign cattle growers to lessen tariffs on beef imports.

“The beef thing, are you kidding me?” Cramer said. “The one ag producer making money for a change and you shrink his revenue.”

The outsized backlash prompted by GOP senators who rarely criticize Trump can only be understood as not wholly over cattle but as a stand-in for their actual anger — at a president seemingly content to give away their majorities.

As one high-level party strategist involved in the midterms put it to me: What besides a more-than-a-year-old tax bill and Democratic excesses is there to run on?

As is the case with so many campaigns when they lack an affirmative message, Republican leaders are living off the land, grabbing whatever the news cycle hands them about Democratic infighting or similar.

The fundamental problem is that polls show voters don’t think Trump cares about them or their priorities, and there’s little Republican lawmakers or White House aides can do to make him act differently.

In fact, a recurring theme in conversations with Republicans is that the cabinet has been well deployed — they were ubiquitous at the Iowa State Fair and in other battleground states this summer — while Trump has been unhelpful.

It’s as if there are two administrations: the staff and appointees who chief of staff Susie Wiles can control in a conventional fashion, and the president himself who does and says what he wants.

Take the forthcoming mini-convention Republicans are staging next month in Dallas. The party will devise videos and speeches aimed at portraying Democrats as extreme. Yet as even one of Trump’s advisers told me, the actual message will be determined by “whatever crazy stuff the president says.”

Such despair reflects reality. There’s a throw-your-hands-up helplessness to it, one that reminds me of the fall of 2023 when it was Democrats who were coming out of their skin about their octogenarian president and his determination to run for reelection.

Approval for the war in Iran is in the low 30s, according to a recent Reuters survey, but there’s no obvious way out as long as Tehran has a vote in the matter.

Flipping pork burgers at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, Hinson was glad to discuss her technique with the spatula, the importance of her race to the Senate map and her opponent missing votes in the legislature. But she went silent at repeated questions about whether it was time to end the war.

In Ohio, incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted has said he wanted the conflict to be “brief and successful,” but it is verging on neither.

And as long as the Strait of Hormuz is in dispute, oil prices won’t come down, and voters won’t feel any better. Sometimes politics isn’t complicated.

It’s the same sort of environment that propelled Sherrod Brown, Husted’s opponent, to his initial Senate win in 2006. That was also a year in which the Midwest proved vital, with Democrats besting incumbents in Ohio, Missouri and retaining Nebraska in what was Ben Nelson’s final race (his opponent: this year’s Republican incumbent, Pete Ricketts).

Former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill told me she knew she’d win her 2006 race when she pulled her campaign RV into a gas station in rural Missouri, and her mom got out of the car to see “a couple of good ole boys in John Deere caps.”

McCaskill’s mom, alluding to the high price of fuel, remarked to the men that President George W. Bush “is an oil man,” and the two shot back: “He sure as hell is.”

It was obvious then, McCaskill said, that voters “had lost confidence in him and therefore the Republican Party.”

Back over his Z-Man sandwich in critical suburban Johnson County — one of the few large metros where Democrats did better in 2024 than 2020 and where the proportion of voters has risen to over a quarter of Kansas’ total electorate — Hamilton described his congregation.

“We have people from barely making ends meet to people who are very wealthy,” he said. “You have gas prices that are $1.40 a gallon more? And you’re barely making it? That’s a problem. And that’s happening because of a decision in Washington that’s hurting people in Kansas.”

Fuck him the fat piggy...

Trump calls for NBC’s Kristen Welker to face ‘rebuke or punishment’

The president took issue with Welker’s description of the “mixed results” of candidates who have received his endorsement this election cycle.

By Cheyanne M. Daniels

President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to report NBC journalist Kristen Welker to the Federal Communications Commission for her reporting on the impact Trump’s endorsement has had on GOP candidates.

In a post to social media, Trump said Welker, the longtime host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates.” He went on to say the claim stands against “the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei,” referencing candidates in South Carolina and Oklahoma, respectively.

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” Trump said. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”

Trump went on to say that his endorsement is “without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics. If it were not, I would be the first to admit it.”

In his statement Sunday, the president also accused the “Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything “TRUMP.”’

“The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” Trump concluded.

In a statement to POLITICO, an NBC News spokesperson said, “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her.”

Welker did not actually speak to the results of the president’s endorsements as she hosted Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” While her interviews with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) discussed the upcoming midterms and candidates they supported, Welker did not ask about the president’s endorsements.

However, in a live shot on NBC’s local D.C. affiliate ahead of Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Welker said Trump will “loom large” over November’s midterms.

“He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries,” Welker said. “He’s had some mixed results, but most recently, his pick of Senator Darline Graham, of course, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, was successful in her primary battle, so now she takes on Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina.”

While Graham did win her primary battle, other notable Trump-endorsed candidates have fallen short in their own bids, including Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who lost his reelection bid earlier this month to former news reporter Ryan Elijah, and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who lost his primary to former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher. Trump also backed failed gubernatorial candidates Mike Lindell (Minnesota), Megan Degenfelder (Wyoming) and Randy Feenstra (Iowa).

It is not the first time Trump has railed against Welker. In June, he abruptly ended an interview with her in Wisconsin after she pressed him on unsubstantiated claims of “crooked” elections. He also criticized her last year for questioning then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) on a chat leak detailing the Pentagon’s war plans.

Welker is not the only journalist or media company Trump has threatened with FCC reports or lawsuits.

He has recently launched personal attacks at other female journalists, including New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Fox News’ Shannon Bream. In a social media post earlier this month, the White House “rapid response” account launched personal insults at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes after she questioned the president during a press conference.

Again.....

US strikes Iran’s Larak Island

Sunday’s attacks in Iran mark the first from the U.S. in a month.

By Jalen Beckford

U.S. forces struck Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday, a U.S. official said, after observing military personnel preparing to deploy rockets loaded with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz.

“I can confirm that earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island,” U.S. CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement.

“U.S. forces are monitoring the area closely, and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” Hawkins said.

Sunday’s strikes in Iran mark the first from the U.S. in a month. Last week, Trump announced in a TruthSocial post that the U.S. Navy removed all mines from the strait’s main shipping lane, and Iran was notified that any new vessels attempting to place new mines would be “immediately and systematically destroyed.”

The move also comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week a new pressure campaign, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” intended to economically isolate Iran after six months of war — warning foreign governments and companies that they could lose access to U.S. financial institutions for continued business with Tehran.

Larak Island is a small Iranian island located in the Strait of Hormuz — the key global shipping route that’s long been a major source of conflict since the start of the Iran war.

Problems awaiting

 The Trump-shaped problems awaiting Andy Burnham, ranked

Burnham’s first 42 days were about Britain. Now he has to deal with the U.S. president.

By Dan Bloom

Andy Burnham spent most of his first 42 days as prime minister in his comfort zone, talking about jobs, living costs, homelessness and shifting power out of London.

Now he’s got to look beyond his own borders. As parliament returns from its six-week summer break on Tuesday, Britain’s new leader faces a towering in-tray of decisions that will affect his relations overseas, especially with Donald Trump.

British officials are preparing for the prospect of his first face-to-face meeting with the U.S. president in late September after Burnham confirmed his intention to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Downing Street is privately exploring the possibility that he visits the White House on the same trip, depending on Trump’s availability.

Burnham has played down the jeopardy, but he also promised to “say what I feel.” He has the advantage of having seen his predecessor Keir Starmer try to please Trump, only to be hectored relentlessly on Truth Social. Like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni or Canada’s Mark Carney, Burnham may sense a political advantage in not kissing the ring.

A visit will still tie him up in diplomacy, however; tricky for a man who wants to keep his focus at home rather than engaging in the geopolitical wrangling for which voters gave Starmer little credit. It will also come days before his first Labour conference as leader, where some of his party faithful oppose oil and gas drilling and want him to take a harder line against Israeli settlements.

POLITICO runs through a few of the Trump-shaped headaches awaiting Burnham, informed by conversations with more than a dozen U.K. government political aides, civil servants and ministers who were all granted anonymity to speak frankly.

Oil and gas drilling

The U.K. is inching closer to a politically fraught decision on whether to allow oil and gas drilling in two of the North Sea’s last major untapped fields.

The Jackdaw gas field received initial approval in 2022, while the Rosebank oil field was green-lit in 2023. Further consultation due to a legal tussle over their environmental impacts ended in mid-August and Whitehall and industry officials expect a final decision in September. Jackdaw operator Adura has claimed gas could start flowing from Oct. 1. 

Burnham — who pledged to give voters “breathing space” on the cost of living, yet is watching unrest in the Middle East push up energy bills — has spent his summer dropping positive hints about the projects, painting North Sea drilling as a “bridge to a renewable future.” He indicated similarly to Trump, who has repeatedly urged Britain to get drilling.

Yet the Green Party surged in opinion polls earlier this year and almost three quarters of England is in drought, after a summer that is on track to be the U.K.’s hottest on record. 

A person with knowledge of the planning said the North Sea decision, which will be taken on a quasi-judicial basis by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, is not expected this week. (One senior figure close to Burnham insisted the timing was “definitely not” tied to the optics of the dry summer, despite some MPs suspecting as such.) 

When it does come, the U.S. president is likely to see it as a test of Britain’s priorities. One U.K. official said senior figures in Trump’s administration “really don’t understand” the hesitancy.

Trump Danger Rating: 4/5

Defense spending

Burnham’s new finance minister John Healey quit as Starmer’s defense secretary to demand that military spending accelerates to 3 percent of GDP by 2030 (on the road to hit a Trump-pleasing 3.5 percent by 2035).

Now he has the job of chancellor, Healey has refused to make that guarantee — and will leave the issue dangling well into next year. Healey will not set a target date for reaching 3 percent in his Oct. 28 budget, a British government official confirmed, and will instead name it as part of a cross-government spending review in 2027.

Conservative opponents seized on Healey’s indecision Friday, arguing he “is backtracking on the very pledge which sealed the fate of the last PM.” Whether Trump will choose to single out Britain is another matter; the president has taken a fairly equal-opportunities approach to berating NATO allies over their spending and many other nations rank below the U.K.

Healey is attending this week’s meeting of G20 finance ministers in the U.S., which could prove an early test of whether the issue is cutting through.

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Israeli settlements

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has promised a “comprehensive” U.K. response to Israel’s E1 settlement in the West Bank, risking a confrontation with the U.S. administration.

Two officials said Miliband is expected to make a statement to parliament in the next two weeks on the E1 project, which he has branded “unacceptable and destructive.” One senior Labour figure said they expected him to announce sanctions on Israeli settlements, though the Foreign Office has declined to comment on any future action. Miliband is separately due at regular questions in parliament on Tuesday.

His intervention will be fresh for two audiences: UNGA and then the party conference in Liverpool, at which grassroots members call for Labour to go further.

One minister said Burnham would want to “put his stamp” on foreign affairs due to the political salience of the Middle East. The senior Labour figure quoted above argued Miliband should wait six weeks until Knesset elections on Oct. 27, but one of two U.K. officials quoted above said: “They don’t want to go into Labour conference with this hanging around.”

A hostile reaction from Israel is inevitable, but it’s less certain how Trump will respond. The U.K. has consistently gone further than the U.S.; Starmer used UNGA last year to recognize a Palestinian state.

Washington recently described a sanctions push by Ireland as “unhelpful” and some Labour MPs told The Times they feared a trade retaliation by Trump. On the other hand, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a warning to West Bank settlers in recent weeks and Britain has safety in numbers; a statement condemning E1 was signed by 20 fellow nations and the European Commission.

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Ukraine … and Iran

Burnham picked Ukraine for his first foreign trip, saying it “particularly” affected his intention to travel to UNGA, and will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in London this week. The prime minister is considering a meeting of European and other non-U.S. leaders in the “Coalition of the Willing” to coincide with the New York summit.

The new PM is not trying to be a global fixer like Starmer but he faces the same challenges. Burnham said he wants to help solve Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors, many of which are being hoovered up by the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. 

Britain has little to fear about Trump’s rhetoric or actions against the U.K. itself, but the president’s actions in both volatile conflicts will have knock-on effects for Britain’s economy. One person who works on U.K. foreign policy said civil servants believe “the Ukraine trip was a bit of an awakening” for Burnham, while a U.K. official claimed Burnham’s team “appear a little blindsided” by the scale of the Iran conflict’s impact.

Some Whitehall officials had low expectations that Burnham would attend UNGA — Conservative PM Rishi Sunak skipped the summit in 2023 — until he told reporters last Monday that he was “likely” to go. At that moment the intensity of planning ramped up, said two Whitehall officials.

The story of both wars has been one of Britain and its allies forming coalitions to nudge the U.S. to a more favorable position, with only mixed success and, as yet, no resolution. Britain’s position is not entirely comfortable in the meantime; Burnham has continued a policy (agreed under Starmer) of allowing the U.S. to use British bases to launch “defensive” strikes on Iran.

Trump Danger Rating: 4/5

Chagos Islands

Burnham has inherited a controversial deal, agreed under Starmer, to hand the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius — while leasing back a U.K.-U.S. joint military base on the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The deal was forging ahead with U.S. clearance until Trump began railing against it in February, following lobbying from figures on the British right including the former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Three U.K. government officials said the deal itself — negotiated and backed personally by No. 10 national security adviser Jonathan Powell — is unlikely to change to appease Trump, leaving it in limbo unless the president changes his mind. “If there were easy additional baubles to provide, they would have been found by now,” said one of the three officials.

Yet this hold-up is causing tension with Mauritius, which was due a windfall in the deal and could press the U.K. to move at UNGA. It also affects wider diplomatic relations since the deal is backed by India, whose trade deal with Britain took effect a few weeks ago.

Trump Danger Rating: 2/5

Tech and trade

Burnham has inherited a complex web of deals that Starmer’s government secured (and in some cases, later un-secured) with the U.S.

These include the “economic prosperity deal” announced in May 2025, which secured lower tariffs for the U.K. than some other countries, including on steel and cars. But elements which had been due for negotiation at a later date remain in the ether. Those include the implementation of a U.K.-U.S. deal on pharmaceutical trade, which has implications for NHS spending on drugs (Britain agreed to spend more in order to get the deal over the line).

Less advanced is the “tech prosperity deal” that both sides hailed in 2025 but was then paused by the U.S. administration. Talks over nuclear fusion energy have resumed while separate tracks on AI and quantum co-operation remain stalled.

One U.K. official said talks could continue at an official level with little involvement from Burnham and Trump. “There is more to do” on both the trade deal, which is “imperfect but better than anyone else’s,” they said, while the tech prosperity deal gave a framework to build on. They added: “It’s a different phase of the relationship. It’s less shuttling over to Washington all the time … it’s not the same sort of theater, needing to be in the Oval constantly, in the way that Starmer had to be.”

One stumbling block: the U.K.’s digital services tax, which has drawn Trump’s repeated ire and raised more than £1 billion last year, much of it from U.S. tech firms. A spokesperson for Burnham’s government said “we remain open to discussing U.S. concerns,” but the U.K. has reiterated its commitment to the tax until a multilateral solution can be found.

Another stumbling block: Burnham wants closer ties with the EU ahead of a summit between Brussels and London this fall. British alignment with EU food standards has previously caused tension with the U.S. administration. 

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Miliband on the world stage

A wild card in all this is Burnham’s pick for foreign secretary: Ed Miliband.

An outspoken former Labour leader who missed his shot at becoming prime minister in 2015, Miliband had coveted Healey’s job of chancellor. Instead he is set to use the foreign office to press Britain’s economic case on the world stage. That inevitably includes his long-held support of net zero, which rankles some in the U.S. administration.

He has personally taken the U.K.’s seat on the World Bank board, instead of a junior minister, and officials believe he would likely attend New York Climate Week (at the same time as UNGA), along with the COP31 climate summit in November. Trump has a habit of deciding individual politicians are beyond the pale. So far, though, the relationship appears to be functioning well enough; he met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for 90 minutes of talks in early August in Washington D.C.

Trump Danger Rating: 2/5

Reparations

One summit looms in November without the U.S.: the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), presided over by King Charles III and attended by the U.K. alongside 55 other countries, most of them former colonies.

The location of Antigua and Barbuda means calls for reparations for the slave trade — which dominated the last CHOGM in Samoa — will inevitably come up.

If Burnham were to attend, it would test how a PM who forged his politics campaigning for justice — including for victims of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium crush, and patients given infected blood products in the U.K. — responds to a call that the U.K. government has long said it cannot afford.

It’s not such an issue for Trump, though. The U.S. president might barely notice the summit is happening.

Trump Danger Rating: 1/5

Cut out early

Johnson faces pressure to cut out early

A stack of circumstances has fueled open speculation among members and aides that House leaders will call it quits much sooner than the currently scheduled Oct. 1 exit date.

Calen Razor

The House is back in session, but it might be a short one.

Speaker Mike Johnson is looking to tick off the lone essential item on the chamber’s to-do list in lawmakers’ first days back: a Senate-passed, shutdown-averting spending bill.

A handful of other priorities are caught up in partisan battles and Senate limbo. Rebel factions in a thin House GOP majority continue to threaten Republicans’ plans of opening the floor for debate. And many Republicans are simply eager to get back home to campaign ahead of the November midterms rather than endure more headaches in Washington.

Together, those dynamics have fueled open speculation among members and aides that House leaders will call it quits until mid-November much sooner than the currently scheduled Oct. 1 exit date.

“So many people are having to run back and forth to campaign,” Rep. Morgan Griffith told reporters Thursday. “I think we can get some other things done [beyond the spending stopgap], but the big bills will probably have to wait until after the election.”

Johnson’s planning to put the spending bill on the floor Tuesday under a fast-track method, since there are reasons to believe it will pass without much drama.

The House agenda for this week also includes a vote from Republicans on a resolution condemning socialism — a political swipe at Democrats. And a potential vote is on tap to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards for alleged inappropriate conduct toward two female staffers following an Ethics Committee recommendation. Edwards attempted to clear his name last week ahead of the expected vote.

Other House priorities are stuck in the Senate or at a stalemate:

Key House Democrats believe the Senate-passed Russia sanctions bill gives too much authority to President Donald Trump, making it unclear it can pass.

Adoption of a budget blueprint for a fresh GOP party-line spending package is stuck amid competing demands from defense hawks, fiscal conservatives and some GOP senators who still aren’t convinced the bill is needed. Senate Republicans don’t expect the budget measure to be brought to the floor before the election, according to five people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.

The Senate is expected to focus in September on confirming Trump nominees and holding a vote on cryptocurrency legislation, as well as trying to advance a bill to overhaul college athletics and the Senate version of the farm bill.

With those items deep in negotiations, there’s little incentive for House members to hang around to see if the Senate will play ball once it returns Sept. 14 for a brief three-week session.

Both chambers are already scheduled for recess next week following the Labor Day holiday, and many Republicans are expected to travel to Dallas then for the GOP’s midterm convention.

Stop Russia from going nuclear

China will stop Russia from going nuclear, Finland’s Stubb says

The Finnish president said Beijing’s message provides “pretty good deterrence” against Moscow escalating the war in Ukraine.

By Paul Ronzheimer and Milena Wälde

China has privately assured Finland that it would not allow Russia to use nuclear weapons, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in an interview.

Speaking exclusively with Paul Ronzheimer of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Stubb was emphatic when asked whether Russia could resort to nuclear weapons, arguing that Beijing provides a powerful brake on Moscow escalating its war in Ukraine.

“I had the foreign minister of China visiting me this summer, and I raised the issue,” Stubb said. “And he said, we will never allow it to happen. And I think that’s a pretty good deterrence.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Stubb in Helsinki on July 5, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and European security among the issues discussed. China remains one of Moscow’s most important economic and diplomatic partners.

Stubb also argued that Moscow benefits from keeping Europeans fixated on the prospect of nuclear escalation or a direct attack on NATO.

“Russia wants us Europeans to sit here and discuss: Will Russia escalate? Will Russia use nuclear weapons? Will Russia attack NATO and Europe?” the Finnish leader said.

His prescription was characteristically restrained: “Stay calm, stay cool, stay collected, stay vigilant. Don’t dramatize, prepare for the worst in order to avoid it.”

That measured tone is familiar from Stubb. In May, after a drone entered Finnish airspace near Helsinki and fighter jets were deployed, he insisted Finland was “not facing any direct military threat.”

In the interview, he similarly played down fears of an imminent Russian assault on NATO, describing Moscow’s attempts to probe the alliance as “more like teasing” than preparation for war. Russia’s troops remain tied down in Ukraine, he said, while NATO’s deterrence makes a direct attack highly unlikely.

But Stubb also argued that Europe is approaching the point when it should reopen direct political dialogue with Moscow — a notable call from the president of a country that shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia and joined NATO after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m sure we are approaching the day when it would be useful for Europeans to be in more direct contact with Russia,” he said, “especially because we need to avoid misunderstanding.”

Europe is “not there yet,” Stubb stressed, with the immediate priority remaining support for Ukraine.

“You can’t sort of press mute. You have to open the discussion,” he added.

Like the angle of death......

MAHA has arrived in Iowa — and Big Ag is reeling

One way or another, Iowa is about to elect a governor who faults industrial agriculture for the state’s high cancer rates.

By Ellie Borst

There’s something in the water in Iowa. And Republican Zach Lahn has centered his gubernatorial campaign around it.

Lahn is taking aim at fertilizers, pesticides and other farm chemicals seeping into drinking water supplies — and the agrochemical giants that make them. He believes Big Ag and Big Chemical are to blame for the state’s high cancer rates, a top issue for voters here.

Once unimaginable for a politician of either party in Iowa, Lahn’s campaign is putting the state’s Republicans in the same bind that has bedeviled the Trump administration during its second term: stuck between the demands of Make America Healthy Again activists and the interests of agricultural and chemical companies that hold deep sway with the party.

“Many people in the primary said, ‘You can’t win an election in the Republican primary talking about the big agricultural conglomerates that are extorting our farmers, talking about clean water, and how we need to lower our cancer rates,’” Lahn said in a stump speech earlier this month at the Iowa State Fair, where the farm industry’s influence loomed large, in the form of corporate sponsorships, expansive exhibits and free swag.

“We did talk about it, and we won,” Lahn said.

It’s not the campaign the Republican establishment wanted in a state with some of this fall’s fiercest battleground elections, including an open Senate seat and three competitive House races. Lahn pulled off an upset in the June primary, besting President Donald Trump’s pick, conservative Rep. Randy Feenstra. Lahn won Trump’s endorsement a month after the primary election.

Now, rank-and-file Republicans are left with little choice but to support a candidate running on ideas most don’t agree with, in a year where Democrats believe they have their best shot in two decades to reclaim the governor’s mansion.

Democratic candidate Rob Sand, the state’s auditor, has already raised more money than any other gubernatorial candidate in the state’s history and is performing well in the polls. He has also made water pollution a central part of his campaign, running on the slogan, “Costs, corruption and cancer.”

“Even within our own caucus, there are some Republicans that are still skeptical of Zach and think that he’s adopted leftist talking points on various things,” said Rep. Jeff Shipley, a Republican who represents a southeastern district in the Iowa statehouse and has backed Lahn.

A political operative and investment firm owner married to the ex-wife of billionaire Charles Koch’s son, Lahn had almost entirely funded his own campaign up until his primary win in June, when the Republican Governor Association’s Right Direction PAC became his biggest donor. As of late July, he hadn’t accepted any corporate donations, including from the agribusiness sector that’s a major financer of campaigns in the state, according to his campaign contribution reports.

Instead, he has the backing of powerful MAHA figures. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the architect and figurehead of the grassroots coalition, traveled to Iowa earlier this month to campaign for Lahn. Kennedy has been meddling in other Iowa races, too — pressuring libertarian candidate Marco Battaglia to drop out of the race for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District so as to not split the Republican vote.

It’s all left the state’s powerful agricultural industry back on its heels.

“Farmers are uncertain at this point,” said Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Association, which lists Bayer, Corteva and Syngenta among its top-tier partners.

“You’ve got some that are probably still in denial,” he said. “And then you get others like me who’d say, ‘You know, in agriculture, we have no credibility if we don’t share in our responsibility to improve water quality in this state.’”

Vows to ‘take on the Big Ag cartels’

It’s impossible to ignore the presence of farm chemicals in Iowa.

More than 83 percent of the state’s land is used for farm operations, with 77 percent of farmlands growing corn or soybeans, according to 2025 U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Driving through rural Iowa, countless farms display signs advertising the brand and product number of the seeds planted there: hybrid corn seeds from Wyffels Hybrids, DEKALB’s specialty corn blends, soybean varieties from Pioneer Hi-Bred.

Pioneer, a giant in the global crop genetics industry, dominates. Owned by Corteva Agriscience, the agribusiness spinoff of corporate chemical giants Dow and DuPont, the company’s headquarters are located 20 minutes outside of downtown Des Moines on a sprawling campus where roughly 2,000 scientists develop chemicals to fend off weeds, fungi and insects, along with crop seeds designed to resist toxic effects from the pesticides.

The brands were ubiquitous at the Iowa State Fair. School children walked the fairway sporting Pioneer shirts. Pioneer sponsored the Livestock Pavilion, and Corteva sponsored the farmer’s market and garden exhibit. Pioneer’s logo was plastered on signs deeming the company “Best of Show,” a title given to sponsors that spend more than $250,000. Either Pioneer or Corteva has held the distinction for the past seven years.

Lahn wants to sue them.

He has targeted the “big three” — Corteva, Bayer and Syngenta — and vowed in his primary victory speech to “take on the Big Ag cartels” and “break up their monopolies.”

“I think it’s going to be a battle, no doubt about it,” Lahn told POLITICO on the sidelines of the fair. “I know it’ll take a lot of effort, but it’s the right thing to do, and we’ve been asleep at the wheel for a very long time, both on the state and the federal level.”

He has also opposed efforts to shield pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits alleging their products caused health harms, and slammed Trump’s executive order expanding domestic production of the herbicide glyphosate.

Corteva and Syngenta did not reply to multiple requests for comment for this story. A spokesperson for Bayer declined to comment.

Instead, Lahn wants to incentivize more farmers to adopt “regenerative” practices that reduce reliance on pesticides, as he has done on his own farm.

The farm lobby is still figuring out how to respond.

“It’ll be interesting to watch what some of these farm organizations that have PACs do and how they articulate why,” said Leeds, with the Iowa Soybean Association, which doesn’t have a PAC and doesn’t endorse or fund candidates.

Agricultural industry donors have typically played a large role in funding political campaigns here. In 2022, current GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds raised $7.4 million for her reelection campaign, largely from a handful of wealthy individual donors who made their fortunes in agricultural businesses. She also raked in more than $50,000 from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

This cycle, the state Farm Bureau has yet to issue an endorsement. The employee PACs for Corteva and Bayer that have given to other candidates this cycle have thus far sat out the governor’s race.

‘A lot of people’s No. 1 thing’

Iowa’s cancer rates and the health risks posed by agricultural pollution are not new concerns here.

Iowa has the second-fastest growing cancer rate in the country. A University of Iowa analysis estimates 21,700 Iowans will receive new diagnoses of invasive cancers in 2026.

Among the most common diagnoses are colon cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which researchers have linked to high levels of nitrates — a byproduct of commercial fertilizer runoff — and glyphosate, the main ingredient in the country’s most popular weedkiller, Roundup, respectively.

But this year “conversations you’re hearing within communities have really bubbled up to grab the attention of policymakers statewide,” said Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union.

Some attribute it to the MAHA movement, which has galvanized grassroots activists concerned about issues ranging from vaccines to food dyes to children’s screen time and pesticides.

As the movement has garnered traction in this Cornbelt state, Republicans have focused on the priorities that avoid a head-on collision with the agricultural industry — the same tack the Trump administration has tried at the national level.

Republicans in the Legislature passed a MAHA bill this spring, which revived the presidential fitness test, banned certain food dyes in school lunches and eased access to controversial Covid-19 treatments.

The movement’s political arm, MAHA Action, has endorsed only a dozen candidates. Lahn was the first in December.

“He’s really just the poster child for MAHA,” said MAHA Action founder and CEO Tony Lyons.

Joe Mitchell, the GOP candidate running for the open House seat in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, also won the group’s backing.

Unlike Lahn, Mitchell is not running a campaign centered on MAHA or agricultural health. The 29-year-old is part of a brand of populist, anti-establishment MAGA Republicans who eschew corporate PAC donations while simultaneously waging war against woke-ism.

But Mitchell told POLITICO he “absolutely” supports Lahn’s pledge to break up agricultural conglomerates.

“You can’t just trust the corporations that put a lot of stuff into our food supply, into our pharmaceuticals,” Mitchell said in a brief interview. “I think for a long time we got complacent. We just believed anything that big business said, and now you have a skepticism in the Republican Party, as we should.”

But when it comes to the link between agriculture and cancer, Mitchell said “none of it has been studied nearly enough.”

Calls for more research are a common refrain among Republicans seeking to navigate the tensions between MAHA and the GOP’s agricultural and chemical powerbrokers.

Take Ashley Hinson, the two-term House Republican running for Iowa’s open Senate seat. She has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from agribusiness donors, including $5,000 each from the employee PACs for Corteva and Bayer.

“Iowa’s growing cancer rate is unacceptable, and we have to work together to fix it. That means more funding for cancer research, early detection and prevention efforts — especially in rural areas — and innovative treatments that can save lives,” Hinson said in a statement. She did not acknowledge questions about Lahn’s position or industrial agriculture playing a contributing role to rising cancer rates.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, running for reelection, has criticized Lahn’s messaging tying cancer rates to farms.

“You’ve got some who have decided to make it a political issue, and I think that can be very dangerous, when we start to go down this path of just automatically blaming somebody or blaming farmers when we really need to address the root causes and then go address those,” Naig told reporters at the state fair.

His Democratic opponent, retired water engineer Chris Jones, has gained momentum for taking on the state’s pollution problem and its link to big farms.

Now, the question is whether cancer rates will be the issue to sway the one-third of Iowan independent voters — the slice of the electorate that typically decides close races.

Voters like Tricia Busch, a 36-year-old mom and two-time cancer survivor, who calls herself a “political orphan.” She stumbled upon Kennedy while researching potential causes of her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But Trump’s executive order on glyphosate production, and Kennedy’s reluctant support of it, have left her with little hope for MAHA.

“People are not happy with Trump,” said Busch, a registered Republican. “Even though Iowa was Trump country, people have woken up.”

But she believes Lahn is different; she’s become an advocate for him.

“Whoever gets elected, their feet are going to be held to the fire,” Busch said. “Because it’s a lot of people’s No. 1 thing. We need to have access to clean water.”