Nothing but the truth. Even if against me.

Nothing but the truth. Even if against me.

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Go North Young Man: Leave Backwardness and Disease Behind.


The future no longer belongs with the US. The honeymoon is over. Candor and naive optimism have worked through much of the 20th century. Reality is setting in for the long haul. Others on this planet were willing to deal with the dumb and ugly Quasimodo of America because it was still a cute monster who did the right thing when necessary. But now, the cuteness is gone, and only the dumb and ugly occupy much of what the world thinks of America.

Under Trump's stupid madness against science and technology, the US is falling behind. Persecuting universities and research centers because the ignorant criminal idiot in the White House isn't smart enough to understand science, or hates "those smarter than him", or is hunting down students and academics in the streets because some of their research doesn't profit him financially.... has led scientists to flee the country for greener pastures. His Kristallnacht campaign against immigrants who have become the Jews of 1930s Germany has caused far fewer smart brains to drain out of their countries to come to the US. As a result, American science and technology are already lagging, and Trump and his racist xenophobic buddies think they can keep America on top with their pig farmers, Appalachian moonshiners, illuminated southern preachers, and backwoods survivalists. 

Under Trump, under the fake golden glitz and the fake optimistic pronouncements of the Idiot-in-Chief that run counter to facts, numbers and reality, the US is slowly becoming an Afghanistan-on-the-Potomac, with ultra-religious Evangelical barbarians running the place and white Christian supremacists setting the tone of this regression into barbarity. Someone once said that the US is the only superpower in history to go from barbarity straight into decadence without going through a civilization. Trump is proving this adage by accelerating the fall into decadence.

But, we've been here before. The US has still to mature out of its primitive past of puritan religiosity, the enslavement of other human beings, colonialism, and the exploitation and persecution of immigrant minorities. Like an obnoxious teenager with acne, angry and uncertain about its identity and its role in the world, acting like a bully in the courtyard because the world keeps changing around its comfortable but fossilized conservatism, and resentful at having to become an adult with responsibility, the US periodically goes through crises of identity.

Right now, Trump is causing irreversible damage to everything that made the US the world's superpower. All our friends are finding alternatives to long-standing relationships with the US. By the time the jackass is out of office, and even assuming somehow that reasonable people replace him, be they republicans or democrats, it will be too late for those he has been insulting and bullying to forgive and repair the damage. The precedents that the criminal felon has now established will not be easy to undo or overcome.

The world, except those countries led by mad religious autocrats like our American idiot, will no longer trust us because we bring dangerous imbeciles and criminals to power who then embark, in their stupidity, on re-inventing the wheel, abandoning the knowledge and wisdom accumulated through previous horrible experiences and who, ironically, think they can move forward by returning to the past with stale ideas and defunct ideologies that are no longer compatible with the modern world.

Even if another president after Trump stands at the international podium some day after 2028 and declares that "America is Back", very few countries will rally around that cry for lost unity. It's over. From now on, the US will no longer have the moral capital to convince others with reasonable argument and conviction; it will have to continue on Trump's long streak of violence, bullying, threats and blackmail to get others to cooperate. Which might work for a while, but as time goes by, and as these victims of American despotic and imperious swaggering find alternatives elsewhere, it will be too late to reverse gears.
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Canada eyes researchers looking to leave 'hostile' US
Fanny ALARCON
Wed, September 9, 2026


Aerial view of the McGill University campus in Montreal, one of several Canadian universities looking to attract US talent (Sebastien ST-JEAN)

Fed up with the funding restrictions surrounding her research on the links between climate change and health, American epidemiologist Sheryl Magzamen has left the United States for Canada.

The former University of Colorado researcher, now with the University of Montreal, is one of the dozens of scientists to quit US-based posts in recent months for a role in Canada, which is making a push to attract US talent.

Watching academic freedom decline in the United States was "very hard," Magzamen told AFP, citing multiple grant withdrawals in a research area that has been derided by President Donald Trump's administration.

But she said the University of Montreal has offered her "an incredible amount of resources" for long-term research -- and she has started learning French to help integrate into Quebec, Canada's majority-francophone province.

Since Trump returned to office last year, major Canadian institutions have publicly declared their desire to recruit leading US-based researchers who may be looking to move.

Canada's largest hospital group, the University Health Network, said last year it would open its doors to a range of foreign experts, including US scientists studying vaccines, an area where the Trump administration has made sweeping and controversial policy changes.

Trump has also launched a campaign against certain American universities, accusing them of operating with a left-wing bias and advancing priorities he views with suspicion, including climate science.

Canada, which is locked in an escalating and costly trade war with the United States, has launched a CAN$1.7 billion (US$1.23 billion) 12-year program to recruit researchers globally, but it's clear the United States is a top poaching target.

"While certain countries are cutting research and turning their back on academic freedom, we're doubling down on science and we're doubling down on research," Industry Minister Melanie Joly said last month.

- 'Hostile' climate -

Molecular biology professor Phillip Zamore is set to leave the University of Massachusetts for McGill University in Montreal in April.

"The climate towards science in the US now is hostile," he told AFP, condemning an approach he called "counterproductive to doing great science."

"I decided I had to move somewhere else," he added, praising Canada for continuing to value "scientific enterprise."

Quebec City's Laval University has hired 15 researchers from the United States during Trump's second term.

Laval's rector, Sophie D'Amours, told AFP that the recruitment effort has been helped by what she called "state control over science" in the United States.

- 'Healthy competition' -

Canada is not the only country eyeing talent from elite US institutions, which for decades has been a major engine for global innovation.

The European Union allocated 500 million euros (US$581 million) from 2025 to 2027 to lure US-based researchers.

In May, France announced that it had identified 60 foreign scientists it wanted to recruit, mostly US-based researchers.

McGill University's vice-president for research and innovation, Dominique Berube, called the battle for US talent "a healthy form of competition" and an opportunity for Canada to bring in specialists in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and medicine to aerospace.

Zamore, the molecular biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, said he used to receive two applications for postdoctoral positions per week, but those applications have completely dried up.

"It is now much more attractive for students to study in Canada than in the United States," he said.

fa/mg/bs/md


Fundamentalist Polytheist Hinduism: Just as Bad as the Three Monotheistic Cults

[I ended up with a long introduction on the poison of religion. You can skip to the bottom to read about how the Hindu religious fanatics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanded that the Paris government "puts away" its women so as not to inconvenience its radical extremist Hindu all-male performers. I thought the French have had enough of Muslims blocking public streets on Fridays for prayers!]
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The monotheistic cults that claim to have propelled humanity forward by imagining one (not many) Zombie in the Sky only, instead of dozens and hundreds of gods in other religions, are bad enough with their exclusive hatreds of each other. But one thing they cheerfully share is their hatred and fear of women.

Did you know that Mary Magdalene - مريم المجدلية (pronounced Maryam al-Majdaliyya) in Arabic, or Miryam ha-Migdalit (מרים המגדלית) in Hebrew, or Maria Magdalena in Latin - wrote her own Gospel? Probably not, because the Church doesn't want you to know that. But the fact is there were two dozens gospels written some time between 100 and 200 years after the death of Christ by afficionados of the Christian Communist rebellion against the Roman Empire.

I say "Christian Communist" because that is what those Jews who rebelled 1- against their own ultra-fundamentalist religious establishment, and 2- against the Roman occupation of Palestine, were: Share everything, do not pursue money, shun personal ownership, their mission is internationalist and universal etc. The early Christian Church was essentially a Jewish separatist sect, driven by what we know today as Communist ideals of solidarity, common property etc., that sought to distance itself from the barbarity of the ultra-fundamentalist Jewish religion in Palestine. The sect's members, known as "brothers" or "comrades" (disciples and followers), left Palestine for the capital of the world at the time, Rome, where the much hated colonizing political power was. These Jews, gradually known as Christians, aimed to foment a rebellion and topple the established Roman superpower of its time. I guess, since history is often occulted, that these early Christians were hunted down and hid in the catacombs, not only to feel pity for themselves and worship, but to foment terrorist attacks against Roman soldiers and politicians.

These early "Christian" Jews recruited non-Jews - Romans and others peoples from around the Mediterranean - into their movement. They thus built an internationalist movement that needed a central figure, a hero, to rally all these people around the new ideal. To do so, they elevated the little known "freedom fighter-terrorist-militant-rebel insurgent" Rabbi Yeshua (whose bastardized Romanized name of Iesus is a distortion of the original Aramaic Yeshua, and has come down through the centuries to English speakers as Jesus) to the level of a deity, custom-tailoring a posteriori a made-up persona to fit the bullshit prophecies of the Torah. In so doing, they hybridized the old (to recruit recalcitrant Jewish conservatives) with the new (the progressive Jewish rebels) to elevate this otherwise unknown Palestinian rebel to the level of a worshipable hero, a god. There was, in fact, a raging debate among them as to whether the Torah should remain part of the new movement or should be rejected (Classics vs. Modern, Old vs. New, Conservatives vs. Progressives, etc.). The conservatives won the argument and the Jewish Torah, in all its barbarity, was appended as the Old Testament to the New Testament of the Gospels.

One of the custom-tailored policies that were fashioned by the Jewish church leaders concerned the status of women. In Judaism, women are treated like cattle just as it is in all religions. Again, among those leading the Jewish rebellion was the Jewish conservative wing who won this argument too and it was decided to keep women out of the picture. In the canonical gospels (those four officially admitted by the Church and which everyone talks about) there are lots of women surrounding Jesus, including Maryam the mother of Jesus, Maryam the Magdalene, Maryam the mother of James and Joseph (also called Mary of Clopas or Mary of Bethany), Martha, Salome, Joanna, Susanna, and Anna (a rare Jewish Prophetess) who the Gospel of Luke (2:36–38) tells us appeared during the presentation of the infant Jesus at the Temple.

Of course, the early male-dominated church, just like Islam and Judaism, did not want "dirty" women to stain the purity of the Christian movement. Therefore, these church elders began reducing, silencing, and excluding women from their ranks. Only one kind of woman they could not exclude was Maryam the mother of Jesus. In order to "cleanse" her, they made her to be a virgin, both during her impregnation by the sublime sperm of Yahweh and later after she gave birth to Yeshua. In contrast, Maryam the Magdalene was reduced to the status of a prostitute who, to add insult to injury, was made to have been forgiven her sins by Jesus himself. Yet, she is everywhere in the Gospels, constantly being by the side of Dear Leader Jesus, as if she was his girlfriend, mistress, concubine or even wife.

The non-canonical gospels, also known as "apocryphal" gospels were, just like the four canonical ones (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), written decades if not centuries after the death of Leader Yeshua-Jesus. This would be the equivalent in our time to the way Lenin, Marx and Stalin were elevated to near-mythical status by the Communists between the late 19th and late 20th century. In fact, we have a "live" trinity of gods in today's North Korea where the Eternal Father is Kim il-Sung who begot the Dear Beloved Son Kim Jong Il, who begot the current god Kim Jong Un. Around them, was built a clone of the Christian religion: The Workers' Party is the Holy Spirit, and Kim Jong Suk is the "holy mother".

Not to belabor the point, but religions are after all primitive or ancestral forms of what we know today as political parties: they are built around a central hero figure (prophet, dictator, president, chairman, leader...) surrounded by lieutenants (disciples, followers, politburo, etc.) and a "holy" text serving as the charter or constitution of the party. Marx's Das Kapital. Hitler's Mein Kampf. The Syrian Fascist leader Anton's Saadeh's Rise of Nations. Mussolini's 
The Doctrine of Fascism and My Autobiography, and many other lesser known pretenders to lead humans to happiness. And so it goes for Judaism's Torah, Islam's Koran, Christianity's Gospels and their myths and heroes.

When one brings up the non-canonical gospels as evidence that the Christian religion as we know it today is "à la carte", a made up and selectively designed ideology - that no longer has to do with the original idea or the historical facts - the typical answer to probing questions is: "these non-canonical gospels have been debunked". As if the canonical gospels themselves are established facts and are immune to such "debunking". These "other" gospels do exist, and whoever has decided they are "debunked" is merely saying so to protect their own little turf. Any piece of Bronze Age fictional literature that claims to be the word of some deity is highly debunkable.

Would these religious Fascists say that Homer's Iliad or Odyssey have been "debunked"?  If so, why not the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Roman Aeneid, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead....? If you must cast away these as "myths", I suggest you lump with them the Torah, the Gospels and the Koran and any other Bronze Age fictional garbage.

When you, for example, present the case of the mass conversion to Judaism by the central and eastern European Khazars around the 9th century as the founding stock of European Ashkenani Jewry (hence absolutely unrelated to the Hebrew genociders of the Canaanites), Zionist propaganda rebuts this claim with a standard argument: "This theory has been debunked". That's it; with one puny statement they hope to shut down any argument against the colonial Zionist rape of Palestine. 

Because, think of it: If European "Jews" are logically, historically, genetically, culturally and religiously not of Semitic near-eastern Jewish stock, then all the Zionist claims to ownership of Palestine, absurd as they are with thousands of years of "statutes of limitation" even if somehow applicable, are false and undermine the Zionists' Torah argument to lay claim to the land of biblical Palestine. Imagine for instance if the Muslims of India, forcibly converted from Hinduism some 1,200 years ago by the Arab Muslim conquest, made territorial ownership claims to Mecca and Saudi Arabia on the grounds that they are Muslims! Or if the Catholics of Latin America, forcibly converted by the Conquistadores, now make territorial claims to the Vatican and to St. Peter's Church.

Back to the Gospels and their fake fictional representation of what Yeshua-Jesus did in his time. 
Has anyone for example ever wondered why Peter, the founder "rock" of the Church, never wrote his own gospel? He was the closest to Jesus. For all I know, he may have written one gospel, but it has been lost and has never been found.  Why am I expected to believe what Luke wrote in his Gospel? He wasn't a disciple, let alone a Jew.

One of the gospels was in fact written by Mary the Magdalene, but it has been derided, discredited and "debunked" (again that word). Its contents suggest she was married to Jesus or perhaps was his girlfriend or consort. Common sense dictates that Jesus, as a man, must have lived like other young rebellious men of his time, and may not have been as celibate as the Church wants us to believe.

But the customization of the religion was slowly and gradually refined over centuries to fit the central dogma of the Church, despite its diversion and distortion of the historical facts. For example, Maryam the mother of Jesus did not formally ascend to heaven until 1950, when after centuries of a sterile and silly debate, her Assumption (on August 15) was declared a dogma of the Catholic Church (November 1, 1950) by Pope Pius XII.

Just as nothing in the so-called "scriptures" says that Jesus married Maryam the Magdalene, nothing in the Gospels says that Jesus's mother Maryam did in fact rise to the Heavens. But the church selectively and conveniently denies one while accepting the other, and much of the Christian religion has thus been fashioned by a slow gradual sculpting and fine-tuning to form a hopelessly consistent whole. For example, Jesus was made to have been retrospectively born in Nazareth (Naasra (ܢܨܪܬ) in Aramaic) to satisfy the prophecies. Dozens of similar stories, now official canons of the Church, were made up by these early Jewish leaders of the Church (who became known as Christians) and later through the centuries by Church leaders. Another example is how the Church a posteriori beatified and sanctified pre-Jesus Jewish and Canaanite figures, heroes and prophets, some of whom were brutal mass murderers and criminal savages who served the Church by slaughtering so-called pagans. Saint Elias is one them: he is often portrayed as stepping on the body of a "pagan" (who is a refusenik who rejected his forced conversion) and brandishing a sword with which to cut the head of the said "pagan".

I digressed from the original story, but here it is. The Hindus, like Jews, Moslems, and Christians, see women as "dirty" because of their bloody menses or as "seductresses" who lead men into sin. Hence, they want them out and away, and in some dark recess where they can have sex and reproduce with them. 
================================================

Eiffel Tower closed in row over women removed for Hindu group
Charlotte Dessolin and Shahzad Abdul
Tue, September 8, 2026


Dancers from the BAPS group performed next to the Eiffel Tower (Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD)

The Eiffel Tower was closed on Monday because of a strike by staff over the removal of female colleagues during a visit by a Hindu religious group, workers and management said.

The visit came on the same day as a cultural boat procession on the Seine organised by the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) spiritual movement.

In a statement, Eiffel Tower staff condemned "professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex" during the visit by the delegation.

"Instructions were given to female employees of the Eiffel Tower and to female employees of contractors to make themselves invisible in order to welcome this delegation," the staff said in their statement, adding they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.

"Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present."

The operating company that runs the Paris landmark, SETE, acknowledged that the Hindu delegation had requested the visit be organised so as to limit "interactions with women" and said that "these conditions should not have been accepted".

The conditions "were not in line with SETE's values, nor with the principles of equality between men and women," the company said, promising to accept the "consequences".

"It is clearly not an acceptable practice," SETE president Ariel Weil, who is also a socialist elected official in Paris, told AFP.

"I restate the Eiffel Tower's commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women."

The French capital's socialist mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said on X it was "unacceptable" that the Tower management agreed to the delegation's conditions, and said an investigation would be launched.

- Hindu nationalist ties -


The Tower, which receives nearly seven million visitors a year according to its website, was closed all day on Monday, but will open as normal on Tuesday according to a staff representative.

BAPS, which is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling conservative Hindu nationalist party, consecrated its first major temple in France on Sunday, near Paris.

French Equality Minister Aurore Berge reacted angrily on X.

"In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic," she wrote.

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also criticised the incident, saying France would "never accept that women's presence be 'limited'".

Gabriel Attal, a centrist rival to become president, said that "in France, no culture, no belief, no religion, nothing and no one can come and dictate to women what their place should be".

bur-pdw/rlp/cms

Monday, September 7, 2026

As He Sinks in Polls, Trump Plots more Criminal Schemes to Undo the Midterms Results



Donald Trump approval rating falls to record low on economy—Poll
Hugh Cameron
Mon, September 7, 2026 

A new poll has revealed growing pessimism about the health of the U.S. economy under Donald Trump, who is falling deeper underwater with voters on key issues amid fears over affordability and the knock-on effects of the Iran war.

In their latest gauge of Americans' views on the administration, published on Sunday, the Financial Times and Focaldata revealed that only 33 percent of registered voters approved of Trump's presidential performance—a three-point drop from a month prior and the lowest level since the series began in May.

In addition to general dissatisfaction, 66 percent of the 2,178 adults polled said they believed the U.S. economy was going in the wrong direction, another high for the poll. Meanwhile, Trump's net approval on "inflation and the cost of living" fell to a record low of 17 percent—with 69 percent disapproving of his job on this front—as support for his approach to "jobs and the economy" slid to its own low of 26 percent.

Newsweek has contacted the White House via email for comment outside of regular working hours.

Economic Approval Waning

Only 18 percent of Americans now say they feel better off financially than when Trump returned to office last January, down from 32 percent when the pollsters first asked this question in May.

The number who feel worse off, meanwhile, reached 57 percent this month, up from 36 percent, as the share selecting the "about the same" or "don't know" options fell to 26 percent from 36 percent.

And declining economic confidence has coincided with an uptick in negative sentiment across both parties. Those who say the economy is headed in the wrong direction has risen to 66 percent from 61 percent in May, as disapproval of Trump's handling of inflation/the cost of living and jobs/the economy climbed to 69 percent from 58 percent, and 58 percent from 51 percent, respectively.

Among Trump voters, 44 percent said that the economy was on the right track—compared to 55 percent in May—with the number holding the opposite view rising to 40 percent from 33 percent. Even among those who identify as "strong" Republicans, only a slim majority of 52 percent said the economy was moving in the right direction—down from 65 percent—compared with 32 percent who disagreed and 15 percent who were unsure.

Midterm Threat

These results have been echoed across a number of polls in recent months, with a clear increase in pessimism since the start of the Iran War in late February, presenting a challenge for the administration and the president's party given the role economic issues and affordability seem set to play in this year's elections.

A Harris Poll conducted for The Guardian in early July found that 95 percent of Americans consider the U.S. to be in an affordability "crisis" driven by the rising cost of groceries, gas and other expenses.

Fuel prices remain elevated amid an ongoing bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz shipping corridor, with diesel surpassing its all-time high last week and now approaching $6 per gallon.

And mid-August polling from the FT and Focaldata revealed that Democrats were more trusted than their opponents when it came to handling the economy—44 percent to 38 percent.

The latest poll revealed that economic issues are the most important to Americans two months out from the midterms, with 43 percent selecting "inflation and the cost of living" and 31 percent choosing the economy and jobs, followed by war and immigration at 20 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

In response to the latest results, a White House spokesperson told the FT that Trump acknowledged the "temporary disruptions" caused by the war, and that the administration "remains committed to implementing a proven economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and energy abundance."

The spokesperson also cited August's employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—in which job gains came in nearly triple analyst expectations—as proof that "that this agenda continues to create private sector jobs and drive America's re-industrialisation."

But Matt Klink, a political consultant and president of Klink Campaigns, told Newsweek back in August that the president "can't bring voters around to his program with rhetoric alone."

"Economic skepticism is dangerous for the party in power, in this case, the Republicans, because it directly affects the coalition that brought Trump back to power: working-class, rural, and independent voters who expected relief on prices," he said. "If voters believe costs are still rising and Washington is making excuses, the midterms become a referendum on affordability, and that is a much tougher battlefield for the GOP."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Cristina Diciu.
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BUT the other good news is that Trump's odorous stain on their shirts is forcing his MAGA moron candidates to distance themselves QUIETLY (cowards as they are) from his putrid fumes.

The MAGA moron candidates are in a Shakespearean dilemma: To ditch Trump or not to Ditch Trump. One of them put it bluntly:

"You're f***ed if you mention him too much, and you're also f***ed if you don't stay in his good graces."
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Republicans in battleground states are ditching Trump from their campaign websites: reports

Joe Sommerlad
Mon, September 7, 2026

Republican candidates are quietly removing mentions of President Donald Trump from their campaign websites as his approval rating remains low and concerns over the economy and gas prices persist.

A number of Republican candidates facing tight races in November's midterm elections have dropped mentions of President Donald Trump from their campaign websites, according to reports.

The president's approval rating stands at just 33 percent in the latest Financial Times/Focaldata survey, with respondents again expressing concern over the state of the economy and the impact of Trump's ongoing war with Iran on domestic gas prices.

Despite the possibility of a wave of support for Democrats sweeping the opposition to power in the House of Representatives and Senate, Trump has insisted on placing himself front and center of GOP campaigning and is this week hosting a midterms convention for his party in Texas.

At least 45 congressional Republicans – and first lady Melania Trump – have already made their excuses and will not be attending the event and it seems their wariness about being seen associating with such an unpopular commander-in-chief extends to campaigning.

The Washington Examiner reports that Florida state Rep. Mike Beltran, who is battling for Florida's 14th Congressional District, has reworded his website so that it no longer claims he has motivated to enter politics because of Trump's example and now states instead that he "felt called to public service" and that he is running to be a "champion for lower costs, lower taxes, and increased healthcare access."
 
Mentions of President Donald Trump are reportedly being quietly dropped from Republican candidates' campaign websites, according to reports (Reuters)

Similarly, according to NBC News, Kentucky House contender Ralph Alvarado is now promising "independent leadership," having previously pitched himself as an "American First fighter."

The Washington Post has found another five GOP House candidates in battleground races who had modified their sales patter to downplay allegiance to Trump.

Michigan's Mike Bouchard has reportedly moved a banner prominently displaying the president's endorsement, Iowa's Joe Mitchell no longer mentions Trump on a section of his site explaining why he is running for Congress (but does include pictures of the president elsewhere) while Texas's Eric Flores, Alaska's Nick Begich and Arizona's Elijah Crane have revised references to their supporting Trump's agenda.

Jon Shiner, a spokesperson for Bouchard, told the Post, "Mike is proud of his endorsement by President Trump," and said the updates to his site had been made to reflect the fact that he was now the party's nominee for the seat, not a primary challenger.

Drew Johns, Mitchell's campaign manager, said in a statement: "Websites are updated all the time. I don't think anyone questions where Joe Mitchell stands on President Trump and the America First agenda."

Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the House Republicans' campaign committee, rubbished the matter as "nothing more than a manufactured storyline all to provide cover for Democrats who kissed the ring of their radical socialist leaders to survive their primaries and are now desperately hoping a phony moderate makeover will fool voters before November".

Offering a counter interpretation, Washington Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene said: "It's easy to understand why those careening towards defeat are attempting to distance themselves from the President.

"Voters are angry at Republicans for making their lives worse and are ready – if not outright eager – to reject them in November."

It was previously reported that some GOP campaign operatives have frankly told the president's team not to weigh in on their candidates' behalf, fearful of his intervention having an adverse impact.

"We've told them he cannot come," a senior Republican working on a competitive House race told Politico Friday. "Candidly, he would not be helpful here."

One House GOP competitor described the guidance they had received from pollsters and operatives in even blunter terms: "You're f***ed if you mention him too much, and you're also f***ed if you don't stay in his good graces."

The president himself appears not to have got the message, however, and told guests at his Rose Garden barbecue last week that he intends to enter the fray for the final 30 days of campaigning.

In addition to voters seemingly souring on Trump, Republicans have also been unnerved by the president's hesitance in releasing his MAGA Inc. Pac's campaign war chest to support failing candidates.

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy overtly appealed to him to release funding to help out Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during an appearance on Fox News last week, saying: "We in the Senate don't have the money budgeted for Texas. We need help from the president.

"The president says he has $850 million in his campaign accounts. That's a lot of jack. I'm hoping that the president's gonna spend $100 or $200 million in Texas. But he hasn't committed to it yet."

Trump has now done so, desperate to avoid the deep red Lone Star State turning blue for Paxton's Democratic challenger James Talarico.
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When cornered into wanting to steal the midterms, Trump replies:

"I would do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."

Translation: I would commit any crime necessary, including cheating, posting armed gangs at polling stations to terrorize voters, and deny voters their right to vote by mail, to make sure my minions win the elections. 

At the very least, he is positioning his supposed policies such that he can use them as arguments to deny the results of the elections.

None of the criminal schemes he is plotting were in place when he won in 2024. Yet he never complained about fraud then because he won fair and square. Nothing has changed since then, so why is he anticipating hypothetical and false claims of fraud under the same exact conditions that made him win in 2024?
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CNN

Will the Trump administration send federal officers or troops to the polls?

With less than two months to go until this year's midterm elections, Democrats are becoming increasingly unnerved about the possibility of President Donald Trump deploying federal immigration officers or troops to polling places.

Messaging from the Trump administration about that potential has been mixed. While some, like Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, have largely dismissed the notion of a poll deployment, others have left open the possibility of troops or officers being at the polls under specific or exigent circumstances, despite federal laws that prohibit such activity.

Trump himself has been noncommittal. But while he has not explicitly come out to say he would take this step, several of his past actions and comments have worried those who believe he might overstep his authority, or that the implied threat might be enough to keep people away from the polls altogether.

"If there is someone in the administration foolish enough to order them to be there, that will be stopped immediately," said David Becker, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

"The states are prepared; they will go to court," he said. "But it may be that there are members of the administration, and perhaps even the president himself, who would like to inspire in some voters the fear that that might occur, and get them to decide themselves not to show up rather than have to go through the trouble of trying to physically suppress their votes."

Here is what top officials within the administration or the military have said about the potential of sending troops or federal officers to polling locations: Mullin says ICE officers could be at polling places in specific circumstances. The law says they can't be.

Concerns about immigration authorities being dispatched to polling places partly stem from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's decision earlier this year to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to airports during a government shutdown. While immigration authorities have long had a presence and enforced immigration laws at airports, the large-scale deployment of ICE officers to assist with security and lines was a new development.

It also spurred concern about whether polling places could be next, especially given the administration's broader crusade against what it claims — without evidence — is widespread voter fraud by immigrants in the country illegally.

"These are all tools of how the president is trying to think about a much larger plan, which is, if you cannot hold onto power through democratic elections, then adjust democratic elections," Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, told CNN in March.

Asked by reporters last week whether ICE officers could be sent to polling locations in November, Mullin left open the possibility that they could be under specific circumstances.

"The only reason why we would be at polling places, if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down," Mullin said. He later added: "If we're serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be."

But federal law prohibits "any troops or armed men" being sent to "any place where a general or special election is held." Exceptions are provided for if they are actively voting.

"I hope someone in his office has made him aware of 18 U.S.C. § 592," Becker said. "That is illegal, and anyone who orders anyone to do that is committing a federal crime."

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Friday that ICE "is not planning operations targeting polling locations." But the spokesperson added certain officers, "if called upon" by local law enforcement, could be poised to "rapidly respond to an incident if necessary."

Mullin's comments this week echo a response he gave to a similar question during his confirmation hearing. "The only reason why my officers would be there is if there was a specific threat for them to be there, not for intimidation," he said in March.

Caine has denied any plans for active US military troops to be deployed to polling locations in November.

In a letter responding to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat who asked military leaders to commit to not sending troops to the polls, Caine wrote the military has "no plans" to send federal military personnel or federalized National Guard troops to voting locations.

"Likewise, the Joint Force has no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election-related material," wrote Caine, who is the nation's highest-ranking military officer.

Trump says he would do 'anything necessary' to secure elections

Trump has not specifically laid out any plans to deploy troops or federal officers to polls this year. But the president has constantly undermined the results of elections he lost or which went poorly for his party, and has made several suggestions or attempts to exert federal control over elections or undermine voters' confidence in their security and reliability.

In January, the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia — a state that had been the centerpiece of Trump's false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and where the president and his allies previously tried to overturn the results. The raid stemmed from an investigation into allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Tulsi Gabbard, the then-Director of National Intelligence, was at the raid, and her presence generated controversy given that her typical purview is coordinating overseas intelligence operations and not domestic law enforcement.

Days after that raid, Trump called on Republicans to "nationalize" future federal elections. That would run contrary to provisions in the Constitution that give states, and not the federal government, primary control over their own elections.

After he lost the 2020 election, some Trump aides urged him to enlist the military to seize voting machines. Trump told the New York Times in an interview earlier this year that he regretted not doing so.

The president has also signed a pair of executive orders aiming to boost proof of citizenship requirements for voting and seeking to limit mail-in ballots. The former executive order was permanently blocked, while the administration is asking the Supreme Court to review the latter.

The Department of Justice has also attempted to undertake a nationwide campaign to acquire states' voter roll data. Those efforts have been consistently blocked by judges.

Trump refused to rule out sending National Guard troops or federal officers to the polls when asked about it earlier this year. He said he would "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."

MAGA Terrorists Begin Reacting to Impending Midterms Losses with Violence

MAGA's radical terrorist right-wing in the US is already reacting with its habitual violence as it contemplates a crushing defeat in the November midterms.

Suspected Trump MAGA follower attempts assassination of Ohio Democratic nominee for governor. The suspected terrorist was armed. He broke through the ranks of the cheering crowd and lunged at Democratic candidate for governor Amy Acton.

The incident happened over the weekend during a campaign stop by Acton in northeastern Ohio. Although Acton herself was not harmed, several others were injured.

Law enforcement is expecting right-wing radical terrorism to become more and more active as the November midterms approach. As if predicting their losses to the Democrats, republican MAGA extremists are already reacting to their projected losses.

The suspected right wing terrorist knocked down volunteers and supporters trying to get closer to the Democratic candidate. He was arrested with multiple weapons in his possession.


Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former director of the Ohio Department of Health, Dr. Amy Acton, speaks to supporters during a rally on April 28, 2026 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Acton and her husband Eric expressed their gratitude for the swift and decisive action of law enforcement in a statement. "This kind of violence has no place in Ohio," the statement said, adding, "Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that puts us against each other."

Acton's opponent in the gubernatorial race, Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, described what happened as unacceptable. Ramaswamy, who is the child of Indian immigrants, is facing an uphill battle both with his Democrat opponents and his own racist MAGA "Christian" followers who not only dislike his Indian background and Hindu religion but seethe over his past criticisms of American culture as favoring ignorance over science.

Law enforcement is predicting a sharp rise in rightwing, Trump-affiliated, MAGA violence against Democrat candidates. All polls are consistently pointing to a crushing defeat of Trump's extremist rightwing MAGA candidates this upcoming November. Elections in the recent past involving Trump have seen similar right-wing violence erupting. Most notable was a domestic MAGA right-wing terror plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in October 2020 by 14 MAGA followers (affiliated with the far-right Christian white nationalist terrorist group known as the Wolverine Watchmen). Authorities said his kidnapping plot was an attempt to ignite civil war to disrupt the 2020 presidential election. A couple of months later, Trump's defeat to Joe Biden led to Trump leading a seditious armed attack on Congress in January 2021 to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory.

Sunday, September 6, 2026

Ultra-Religious States vs. Non-Religious States: Correlation with Education

Religious states in the US are the most backward: They are the the ones with a slavery past and the highest rates of illiteracy and ignorance. That is why they voted for the jerk-in-chief.

In contrast, non-religious states are the most advanced, the most liberal and free-thinking, with the highest rates of literacy and education. They didn't vote for the asshole-in-chief.

Though the correlation is clear, there are outliers and exceptions, of course. Check Nevada for example: it ranks 46th in education but is 19th only in religiosity; maybe it's the Las Vegas effect? Or Iowa which ranks only 21st in religiosity but is smack in a highly religious peasant part of the country. 

This is how it was in the past and that is how it still is today. There are two United States of America that once fought a civil war. One that descends directly from the crooked illiterate peasant settlers of England and Europe, and one that descends largely from the later waves of immigrants who were more educated and more cosmopolitan. 

No wonder then that the ignorant backward states voted for Donald Trump - they are fools who believed his lies and loved his moronic persona because they see themselves in him.

By the same token, the most educated and scientifically literate states are those who didn't vote for Trump.

According to 2026 data: 

The top states for educational attainment (degree holders) are:

Massachusetts: Ranks #1 overall, high attainment and high school completion.
Vermont: Ranks #2 overall, high attainment and strong school quality.
Maryland: Ranks #3 overall, high attainment and top-tier school quality.
Connecticut: Ranks #4 overall.
Colorado: Ranks #5 overall, with the #2 attainment rate but lower school quality ranking.

The states with the lowest educational attainment and quality scores include:
West Virginia: Ranks #50 overall.
Mississippi: Ranks #49 overall.
Louisiana: Ranks #48 overall.
Arkansas: Ranks #47 overall.
Nevada: Ranks #46 overall.
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The Least Religious State in America Isn’t Where You’d Guess
Amanda OBrien
Sun, September 6, 2026

Vermont has the lowest percentage of highly religious adults in the United States, with only 13 percent meeting the criteria, and the state's population scores the lowest on Pew's religious engagement scale.



A new nationwide study measuring religious devotion across all 50 states has confirmed something long suspected but rarely quantified this precisely. One small New England state has pulled so far away from the rest of the country on matters of faith that its nearest competitor isn't even close, and the state sitting at the opposite extreme has nearly four times as many deeply religious residents.

The numbers come from Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, one of the largest religion surveys ever conducted in America, drawing on responses from nearly 37,000 adults across every state and the District of Columbia. The findings reveal a country still sharply divided along old regional lines, with a few genuine surprises mixed in.

How States Landed on This List

Pew classified respondents as highly religious only if they scored at the very top of a four-part scale, based on how often they pray, whether they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty, how much religion matters in their daily life, and how often they attend religious services. Each answer earned up to two points, for a maximum score of eight. Only those hitting a seven or eight qualified as highly religious, a bar cleared by roughly a quarter of all American adults.

The Ten Least Religious States in the Country

Vermont, 13 percent highly religious
New Hampshire, 15 percent
Maine, 17 percent
Nevada, 19 percent (tied)
Oregon, 19 percent (tied)
Massachusetts, 20 percent
Hawaii, 21 percent (tied) 
Iowa, 21 percent (tied)
Rhode Island, 22 percent
Connecticut, 23 percent

Vermont's 13 percent is not just the lowest in the nation, it undercuts even Washington, D.C., which came in at 18 percent. Only 17 percent of Vermont adults attend religious services at least monthly, compared to a national rate of 33 percent, and 44 percent of the state's population scores a zero or one out of eight on Pew's scale, the rock bottom of religious engagement.

New England's Grip on the Bottom of the List

Five of the ten least religious states in the country sit in New England: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. This is not a new phenomenon. Pew has run comparable surveys since 2007, and New England has occupied the bottom of the religiosity rankings in every single one.

New Hampshire's numbers reveal just how fast that secular drift has accelerated. In 2007, 27 percent of the state's adults identified as religiously unaffiliated. By the time of this latest survey, that figure had climbed to 48 percent, nearly doubling in under two decades and marking one of the steepest religious declines recorded anywhere in the country.

The Irony Sitting in Massachusetts

Few entries on this list carry as much historical irony as Massachusetts. The state where Puritan settlers built a colony explicitly around strict religious devotion in the 1600s now ranks sixth least religious in the entire country, with only 20 percent of its adults classified as highly religious. Its religiously unaffiliated population has jumped 20 percentage points since 2007, rising from 17 percent to 37 percent.

The States That Break the Regional Pattern

Not every entry on this list fits neatly into the expected coastal or New England mold. Iowa lands at 21 percent, the only Midwestern state to crack the bottom 10, in a region that typically splits the difference between the devout South and the secular coasts. Hawaii ties Iowa at 21 percent as well, though for entirely different reasons. Rather than one dominant secular trend, religious belief in Hawaii spreads almost evenly across all measured categories, shaped by the islands' large Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese communities and a spiritual landscape that includes Buddhism and traditional Hawaiian practice alongside Christianity.

The Staggering Distance From the Top of the List

At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Mississippi, where fully half the adult population qualifies as highly religious, the highest share in the nation and more than triple Vermont's figure. South Carolina and a tie between Louisiana and South Dakota round out the most religious states, all comfortably above 45 percent. Nine states in total post highly religious shares above 40 percent, and every single one is either in the South or, in Utah's case, home to a large Latter-day Saint population.

Utah's story stands out as one of the more unexpected shifts in the data. Despite remaining firmly Latter-day Saint in character, the state's religiously unaffiliated population jumped from 16 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in this latest survey, one of the largest swings recorded anywhere in the country.

A National Slide That May Be Leveling Off

Beyond the state-by-state rankings, the study points to a broader trend that has defined American religious life for two decades and may finally be pausing. The share of religiously unaffiliated adults nationwide has held essentially flat since 2019 at 29 percent, the first real stall after years of steady decline in Christian affiliation. Pew researchers are cautious about calling this a genuine turnaround rather than a temporary plateau, noting that adults under 25 remain far less religious than those over 74 on every measure the survey tracked, and that no generation in the study's history has become more religious as it aged.

What This Means Looking Ahead

The regional divide at the heart of this data has not budged across three separate Pew studies spanning nearly two decades. New England and the Pacific Northwest have anchored the secular end of the scale since 2007, while the South and Utah have held the religious ceiling the entire time. With younger Americans consistently less religious than their elders and roughly a third of all adults having switched away from the religion they were raised in, the gap separating the least and most religious corners of the country shows little sign of closing anytime soon.

This article draws on data from Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study.

MAGA Republican Sen. Josh Hawley Denounces AI as New Corporate Scamming Enterprise

Surprising from a corporate-friendly MAGA republican who is going against his own MAGA boss, the dumb imbecile in the White House, on AI and data centers. He pretends to ignore the fact that in America every development in technology is accompanied by abuse, exploitation, scams and crimes. There is nothing new to what he was saying, except he chooses to apply it to AI, although one can very well apply everything he is saying to every other industry in the US. Here is what he was saying yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. 

Watch the hearing itself on: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/your-data-their-profit-the-consumer-cost-of-ai-surveillance-pricing

Or read below from: https://www.hawley.senate.gov/icymi-hawley-exposes-predatory-ai-surveillance-pricing-consumer-data-harvesting-in-subcommittee-hearing/

Listening to these people discuss the behind-the-screen practices of American corporations: A pure scamming cartel emerges.

[ICYMI = In case you missed it]
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ICYMI: Hawley Exposes Predatory AI Surveillance Pricing, Consumer Data Harvesting in Subcommittee Hearing

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

WASHINGTON — Yesterday, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, held a hearing exposing the exploitative practices of AI surveillance pricing and consumer data harvesting used by large corporations to scam working Americans out of their hard-earned money.

Senator Hawley opened, “Hardly a day goes by in this town, without some booster of AI talking about how it’s going to transform the American economy for the better, the question is whose betterment will this transformation lead to? … We’re here today to talk about one of the effects of this AI boom: the partnership between the AI industry and some of the biggest corporations in America to effectively scam consumers out of every last dollar they have in order to buy products that they need and rely on … This is one of the biggest scams in American history. This marriage between the AI industry and these mega corporations, and they’re trying to pull it off against every American consumer. AI surveillance pricing is the unholy trinity of everything Americans hate: spying on people, ripping them off, and taking away jobs.“

“Earlier this year, there was a disturbing incident that played out on Twitter on X that shed some light, I think, on how airlines are using surveillance pricing in real time, right in front of us. I think I’ve got the relevant exchange over my shoulder here. You have an ex-user who, in April, this is April of this year, posted that he had seen a $230 price increase in one day when he was booking travel for a funeral on JetBlue. $230 price increase. Now, here’s the interesting thing: JetBlue’s own corporate account helpfully responded to him and instructed him to clear the cache and the cookies, or use an incognito window,” Senator Hawley began.

“Now, Ms. Owens, you’re familiar with this incident, I assume. Can you explain to us broadly what is what’s going on here?” he asked Dr. Lindsay Owens, the President and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, about airline surveillance pricing.

Dr. Owens responded, “This really simple tweet basically is a confession of two things. The first thing in asking the customer to clear their browser before purchasing flights, you know that the company is tracking your browser history. The second thing we know is that they are using the data that they collect in their pricing decisions, and in this case, adversely, the price is going to be higher for this individual based on their browsing history. But I also think this is such an important example because it shows that surveillance pricing isn’t just about things like income. This is about desperation. This individual is trying to get to the funeral. He needs this ticket urgently. He wants to attend, and that can be weaponized against consumers. This isn’t about the rising jet fuel prices. That’s not what’s going into an end to their pricing decision. Desperation is driving this decision.”

Senator Hawley continued, “Let me just ask you, Dr. Owens. I think it’s pretty clear. But what’s the motive here? I mean, what is JetBlue’s motive?”

Laying down the hammer, she answered, “This is about profit. The data that powers the surveillance pricing engine is estimated to be a $700 billion industry by 2030.”

“What other kinds of information do these companies have that they can use to set these personalized, scam, I would say, prices?” Hawley questioned.

“Unfortunately for consumers, the answer is, increasingly, nearly everything. It’s your location data, it’s behavioral data, what you buy, what you don’t buy, what you keep in your cart, it’s demographic data. If you login with a loyalty program to fly, they know how many people are in your family, whether you have kids, where you go frequently. And as we know, with AI, as companies build enterprise agents, people often start conversing with these companies, and they have the information that you tell them,” Dr. Owens testified.

Senator Hawley exposed that AI surveillance pricing costs the average American family an additional $1,200 per year, stating, “Your initiative, your organization, the Groundwork Collaborative, issued an expose on Instacart earlier this year. What your findings betray and put onto the record is just incredible. Your report exposes on Instacart’s charging different shoppers different prices for the same groceries at the same time, and the amount of money that we’re talking about here is really extraordinary. Your report found that the price swings for an average family could end up being in the neighborhood of $1,200 per year.$1,200 per year-that is a lot of money. Tell us about what you found in your report and 
why it’s so significant.” 


“We uncovered a vast experiment that Instacart was running on millions of Americans while they shop for groceries. What we found is that different shoppers were being offered different prices for the exact same set of items at the exact same time at the exact same pickup location. This wasn’t an occasionally finding. More than three-quarters of the items in our test grocery basket were found to be offered at different prices, sometimes as many as five prices per item. Sometimes the price difference was as much as 23% for a simple carton of eggs,” Dr. Owens said.

Senator Hawley turned to Robert Hedges, Former Chief Data Officer at Visa and Digital Fellow at MIT, “Let’s talk a little bit about the role that the credit cards play in this … You are Visa’s Former Chief Data officer. Talk to us a little bit about what you know about what the industry, what kind of information the industry gathers, and I want to zero you in on one thing in particular. JetBlue works reportedly with one of your former competitors, Mastercard, to make assumptions and draw profiles about its customers, about JetBlue’s customers, and they use categories like confident, or satisfied, or focused, or in love with JetBlue. This Mastercard subsidiary then flags if a JetBlue customer is likely to pay an above-average fare. This seems extraordinary. Tell us about what you have learned about what this subset of at least some of the credit card industry is doing to participate in surveillance pricing.”

Mr. Hedges responded, “The subsidiary that Mastercard is using is a company called Dynamic Yield. One of the specialties of what Dynamic Yield does is calculate willingness to pay, and so there’s a whole set of data that’s collected to inform willingness to pay … In the airline case, where you really travel? When did you book the ticket? Have you already booked the hotel? Do you have friends or neighbors or relatives in the area? How long ago was the trip organized? All those using the airline example, all those things will influence the score and willingness to pay.”

Hawley asked Z. John Zhang, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, “The problem with this surveillance pricing is that it seems to say there’s going to be a different rule for every single person, and the corporations have all the information. We have none of it. The asymmetry is astounding. They know everything there is to know. I have basically no ability to set the price. They’ve got all of the information. Doesn’t that doesn’t there seem to be something that is fundamentally wrong with that?”

Dr. Zhang defended surveillance pricing, stating, “I would totally agree with you that there has to be a boundary. The boundary probably most likely is in the way you collect information, process information, and use the information, but not in a way that you would actually have a multiple price points for the product … I think at this point, somehow that our understanding is that anytime you use personalized pricing, not only you’re going to make the price variable across the customers, also that indeed the prices always go high. I don’t believe that’s the case. The fact that the prices are variable, they are already there already, and so you don’t need the AI to do all that. And the firms do actually change pricing in so many different ways, but in terms of whether prices always go up, I think that probably is not the case.”

Senator Hawley pressed, “But isn’t the goal of surveillance pricing always to maximize profit? … In this case, the consumers have no protections. They’ve got no protections. The firm has all of the information. The corporation’s got all of the power. I have no power to set the price. The only thing I can do is hope and beg that maybe at 2 A.M. in the morning, when my child is running 102 degree fever and I desperately need Tylenol, that maybe if Walmart Plus is charging me 30 bucks for it, gee, if I can drive to an open CVS, maybe I’ll get lucky. I mean, I’m just at their mercy, right? That just seems fundamentally wrong to me, and I think it seems fundamentally wrong to most Americans, which is why we’re here today.”

Senator Hawley concluded, “What I’m really concerned about is time after time after time, it’s working people who are going to be paying more, who are going to be forced to pay more, and frankly, the needy, because the whole point here is to maximize the profit of these already wildly profitable corporations … And we need to give consumers and working people and families in this country rights against this kind of surveillance and exploitation. If we don’t do that, the basic foundations, the moral foundations of our economy and of our country will be devastatingly eroded. And you see it already. This is why people don’t trust anything. They don’t trust any institution. They certainly don’t trust any of these companies we’ve talked about today. Nor should they, because they’re being exploited constantly, and it is this body’s job to do something about that. So we need to stand up and say we’re going to protect the American people. We’re going to give them rights. We’re going to preserve that basic moral foundation that makes our economy and our country more broadly work, and that we agree on together. So it makes us Americans. It’s done us pretty good for the last 250 years. I think maybe we ought to preserve it.”

Cincinnati Cries for Help: Stop Deportations, We have no Workers Left

Where are all the dumb white trash imbeciles to fill these jobs? They're too busy getting drunk and shooting heroin. In 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy told his own MAGA conservative morons - he's from Ohio - in a post on X that American culture has "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for decades, saying that this cultural trait explains why American companies prefer to hire foreigners who are smarter and more driven than "native" white trash Americans.

Vivek also criticized the U.S. for prioritizing social conformity and leisure—citing examples like celebrating brainless jocks and prom queens over the math olympiad champ—and urged a cultural reset toward "hard work over laziness" and "nerdiness over conformity."

He is, unfortunately, correct. The "native white trash" of America are generally dumb, ignorant and from peasant background, having hailed from the boonies of Europe. The only successes that the US rightfully claims are those made by immigrants from all over the world, including from those the dumb racist asshole in the White Outhouse calls "Shithole countries". Through the short history of this country, the cycle has been repeating itself: Every wave of immigrants propels the country forward, before the white trash xenophobic morons begin to expel and deport immigrants. A decade goes by, and suddenly Americans realize they are falling behind Japan, Korea, India, Brazil, China or other countries. That is when they revert to begging immigrants to return and reinvigorate the country's economy with innovation, new ideas and technology. It's a cycle that has been going on since the birth of this country.

Why is Cincinnati running out of workers? Where are Trump's fine white trash idiots to fill these jobs? They probably are all on government welfare checks (which they blame immigrants for), and are addicted to illicit drugs (which they also blame immigrants for). Vivek was right: "White Trash" Americans are lazy bums who started out exploiting the free labor of African slaves, then the cheap labor of Chinese immigrants to build the railroad, then the labor of every immigrant wave to build the factories, and lately the labor of educated immigrants who built Silicone Valley, sequenced the Human Genome, sent rockets to space, etc. 

Very soon after Trump's devastation of the US economy, the American government will embark on a huge campaign of re-opening its doors to foreign immigrants - from the scientists and engineers down to the strawberry and lettuce pickers - to re-stock itself with smart and hard-working people. 

Have you noticed the skyrocketing number of food and drug recalls in recent weeks? This is because farmers are cutting corners without immigrant workers, and Trump's deregulations have savaged all the quality controls, from CDC's drugs and vaccines to the food you put in your children's mouths. Why are there more than 4,000 measles cases in the US, the highest in 35 years? Because of that moron RFK Jr. who convinced dumb white trash Americans people that vaccines are bad for their children.
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Cincinnati can't afford Trump's mass deportation push | Opinion
Robert T. Herman, Opinion contributor
Sun, September 6, 2026

A $222.5 million bill would dominate debate at Cincinnati City Hall. Yet that is Cincinnati's estimated share of Washington's mass-deportation campaign: about $2,308 per Cincinnati filer owing federal income tax after credits.

The figure comes from the Economic Policy Institute's Cost of Deportations Calculator. It begins with the National Priorities Project's estimate that Washington plans to spend $268.9 billion on mass deportation during Trump's second term, then allocates that cost according to each community's share of federal income taxes.

Because the IRS does not publish city tax totals, EPI apportions ZIP-code data among Census places; $222.5 million is an estimate, not a City Hall appropriation. Local officials cannot redirect it. It is the bill Cincinnati taxpayers will help finance before counting the economic losses that follow when workers, consumers and taxpayers disappear.

The number is especially striking because Cincinnati has tried to draw a different line. In February, City Council restricted federal immigration agencies from using city property as staging areas or accessing city camera, drone and license plate reader data for civil enforcement except as required by law or a court. Cincinnati can protect its property and public-safety tools. It cannot keep residents' federal taxes out of the dragnet.

That mismatch matters because the region is short of working-age people. The Cincinnati Regional Chamber ranks the region 17th among 20 peer metros in its share of residents ages 25 to 54. Only 38% of residents fall within those years.

Hamilton County's figures sharpen the contradiction. The county gained just 559 residents between 2024 and 2025. International migration added about 3,000 people, while domestic migration cost the county roughly 4,700. Without newcomers from abroad, that modest growth would have become a decline.

Not every international migrant is undocumented; the foreign-born workforce includes naturalized citizens and people with lawful status. But an enforcement campaign this broad reaches beyond those ultimately removed. It destabilizes mixed-status families and employers, while the climate it creates can deter lawful workers and international students who have other places to go.

Immigrants already account for 7.6% of Greater Cincinnati's employed workforce. Their leading fields include education and health services, manufacturing, and professional and business services. Driving workers away does not create nurses, machinists, or engineers. It leaves jobs unfilled, reduces consumer spending and narrows the tax base.

Supporters deserve a response. The federal government has a duty to enforce immigration law, and people who present genuine dangers should be priorities. The Department of Homeland Security also argues that unauthorized immigration imposes public costs. It told Axios that traditional deportations cost roughly $18,000 each, while its self-deportation program saves about $13,000 per removal.

But making each removal cheaper does not make an indiscriminate workforce policy economically sound. As of July 11, 70.6% of people in ICE detention had no criminal conviction. Many immigration cases involve civil status violations, such as overstaying a visa, rather than violent crime.

U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman and U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno should demand transparent accounting, focus enforcement on genuine public-safety threats and expand workable legal pathways for longtime residents and workers this region needs.

Cincinnati was right to keep local property and surveillance systems from becoming extensions of a civil immigration dragnet. Congress should bring the same discipline to federal spending. Washington should not make Cincinnati pay twice: once in taxes and again in lost workers, customers and neighbors.

Richard T. Herman

Richard T. Herman is an Ohio immigration attorney, founder of Herman Legal Group, and a University of Cincinnati alum. He has practiced immigration law for more than 30 years, is the co-author of "Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy," and writes regularly on immigration enforcement.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati can't afford Trump's mass deportation push | Opinion