Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts

Friday, October 23, 2026

Hey Folks... It Is That Time Again: Medicare Enrollment!

Hey folks... It is that time again: Medicare enrollment!

It is time for all of us seniors to have to re-enroll for Medicare.

Boy, are we in for a shock! The Republicans have cut Medicare... more out-of-pocket expenses and higher premiums! Trump has to pay off the tax cuts for the billionaires!

Consumer advocates and Families USA forewarned that when congressional Republicans chose to take a sledgehammer to our nation’s health care by passing H.R. 1 and cutting Medicaid by more than $900 billion (the deepest in the program’s 60-year history), it would cause incredible harm to America’s families and communities. Republicans chose to enact this deeply destructive legislation anyway, and so, Families USA began documenting the damage — to hold leaders accountable, and to prevent further damage by keeping the spotlight on the deepest wounds. In the wake of the bill’s passage, we published a series of deep-dive assessments of its most damaging provisions under the banner “Dissecting the Deepest Cuts.” This post traces common threads across that series, highlighting what advocates can do as we approach a new year and a new Congress.

The big picture is this: H.R. 1’s provisions and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implementation choices add up to a coordinated dismantling of the Medicaid program, including its eligibility systems, payment structures and financing mechanisms, with disastrous consequences for families and the whole health care system.
FackCheck.org wrote back in the 2024 elections...
In an interview with Breitbart on March 13, Trump said, “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare. We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”

“There’s so many things we can do,” Trump said. “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”

There are aspects of Trump’s comments that support the interpretations of both campaigns.

Trump said there is “a lot to do” with entitlements “in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” The word “also” suggests he was talking about “theft and bad management” in addition to cutting entitlement programs.
First of all, Social Security and Medicare are not F**king entitlements! I paid into them all my F**king life! But the Republicans keep calling them entitlements... why? Because they want their billionaire friends to get their grubby little hands on the money!

Will Medicare increase in 2027? Some costs to rise, but not all are clear

Medicare open enrollment for 2027 has begun, with projected changes including a possible 3.25% rise in Part B premiums, lower average Medicare Advantage premiums nationally, modest increases in Part D costs, and specific updates for Michigan beneficiaries such as higher MA plan premiums and new eligibility requirements.

Key points:
  • The 2026‑27 Medicare open enrollment period runs from Oct. 15, 2026 to Dec. 7, 2026, with new coverage starting Jan. 1, 2027.
  • CMS projects a potential 3.25% increase in the Part B premium for 2027, from $202.90 in 2026 to about $209.50.
  • The weighted average monthly premium for Medicare Advantage (Part C) plans nationwide is projected to fall from $14.37 in 2026 to $12 in 2027, a 16.5% decline.
  • The average monthly premium for stand‑alone Part D plans is expected to rise slightly, from $35.09 in 2026 to $36 in 2027, while the average Part D premium for MA plans with drug coverage is projected to drop from $11.32 to $7.
  • In Michigan, the average monthly Medicare Advantage premium is projected to increase from $14.88 in 2026 to $16.21 in 2027, with 181 MA plans available in 2027 versus 192 in 2026.
Medicare open enrollment is in full swing for beneficiaries who are part of the federal program, but whether it will cost more overall is still unclear.

The 2026-27 open enrollment period began Thursday, Oct. 15, and will end Monday, Dec. 7 ― which marks the last day to make changes to your Medicare plan, as your new coverage will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The Republicans will say anything and do anything to get elected!



Thursday, October 22, 2026

Big Brother Knows Where You Are! (Part II)

Earlier in the month, I wrote about how they are building databases of interior photos of homes so that they can identify residences from photos of their interiors. Well, not only are they doing that, but ALPR cameras are also building a database of your bumper stickers!
Fox 59
by: Addy Bink, Alix Martichoux
Sep 22, 2026


Flock cameras, automated license plate readers (ALPRs), and other similar devices have attracted backlash from around the country in recent months. 

While Flock may be the name that immediately comes to mind for you when you hear of ALPRs, they aren’t the only technology available, nor the first of their kind.

They all, however, are generally looking for the same information. That includes a vehicle’s license plate and its make, model, and color. 

Flock claims its readers can “capture vehicles traveling up to 100 MPH, day and night, and up to 75 ft away.” Its technology can also categorize vehicles based on whether it is a resident or non-resident vehicle, if it has a temporary or standard plate, and if there is damage or alterations, like a broken taillight.

[...]

Motorola Solutions, which comprises about 5 percent of the ALPR locations tracked by DeFlock, says its technology can identify “accessories and even unique vehicle features like damage or bumper stickers.”
You know that bumper sticker you have criticizing Trump... it is in their database. This car, owned by this driver... "is an enemy of the state!" They could search a database of all cars in the area of an ICE protest for anti-Trump bumper stickers.

News Nation writes;
The cameras passively collect data on cars that pass by, putting all that information – which goes beyond license plates and can include details like a car’s bumper stickers – into a searchable database. The companies have different default policies on how long data is stored and how they use AI tools to search their databases.
See the key is "searchable databases!" In another Fox News article they write...
Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., introduced a bill Thursday that would ban ALPR searches targeting political or religious messages on vehicles, require warrants for most searches, mandate that records be deleted within 24 hours and prohibit vendors from selling or sharing location data.

"When you consider that these systems track everything that you do, where you work, where your kids go to school, where you even go to church, I think it's pretty easy to understand why people are concerned," Harrigan told Fox News Digital. 
Yeah, that puts it mildly. Especially when you have an authoritarian leader who has no problem using the government for his personal vendettas.

The ACLU of Iowa writes;
Myth: If you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t be worried about being tracked by ALPRs.
Reality: Our concern about ALPRs is not that they are being used to, say, catch a car thief (although we are concerned when they improperly label an innocent person as a car thief). Our concern is that in the process of tracking down a legitimate car thief, the government is vastly overreaching and creating a massive national database that tracks all of us all day long.

In one city, a resident discovered that on average, his city’s ALPR system (operated by Flock Safety) was tracking him four times a day. That means law enforcement nationwide can track him everywhere he went, including if he had gone to a medical clinic, drag performance, substance abuse recovery meeting, protest, gun show, etc. Even though you’re doing nothing wrong by visiting any of these, in the wrong hands, this information could be used to target you or people you associate with.
And those "wrong hands" are becoming more and more the Trump administration!
We can’t trust every government agency nationwide to use this data in a constitutional way. There are countless reports of ALPR databases – especially Flock databases – being misused. In a growing number of cases, police are using the database to track their romantic partners. They’ve also used it to track a woman who had an abortion. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has also used ALPR data to track people down in order to deport them.
Okay... when I was volunteering at a Pride Center, they were being harassed and vandalized. The city police department asked if they could monitor our security cameras. When I heard that, I thought, "What a great worm to dangle in front of them." You want to stop the vandals? Let us look through your cameras—at your medical patients, at all your LGBTQ+ clients, let us look at everyone coming to your support groups! They said no. But how many say yes? 
Myth: License plates are in public view, so it’s not a problem for ALPR cameras to take pictures of them.
Reality: It’s true that if you’re driving or parked in a public space, your license plate is in public view. Anyone can look at it and take a picture. ALPRs, however, take “public view” and put it on steroids. They take thousands of images a minute and pour them into a massive database for anyone with access for it to see. Suddenly your license plate is in “public view” in Texas and Florida and everywhere else, and not just in real time, but for as long as the data is retained.
Not only that, but they keep the data. On January 5th, 2024, you were in a neighborhood where a known ____ (fill in the blank) lived—what were you doing there?

The fact that it is in a searchable database is the scary part. In the old days of cop shows, the robbery victim had to check VCR tapes; now, it is just a few clicks away.

Data centers have more than your photos of Puff & Spot and all your wild parties; they are holding all the ALPR photos and all the other "crap" that a police state needs!

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Shell Game

The Trump adminstration cut funding to the Affordable Care Act (Also known as ACA or Obama Care) by removing deceased and duplicate accounts to justify the cuts. But dead people and duplicate accounts don't cost anything to justify the cuts! KFF Health News reported:
Modern Healthcare: IRS Proposed Rule Tightens ACA Subsidies Access
A new draft regulation would tighten access to health insurance exchange subsidies as federal agencies continue implementing President Donald Trump’s tax law. The IRS issued a proposed rule Wednesday that would set stricter definitions of who qualifies for tax credit subsidies, toughen eligibility verification requirements and narrow access to financial assistance for noncitizens. This regulation would complement pending rules from the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Early, 10/14)
Then we have the drop in Medicaid enrollment, in another KFF article...
Medicaid/CHIP Current Enrollment Trends
The figures below show Medicaid and CHIP enrollment from February 2020 through the most current month of available data. Figures include enrollment for adults and children in Medicaid/CHIP and for Medicaid only and CHIP only. Key enrollment data and trends as of June 2026 include:

There were 73.2 million people enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP nationally (Figure 1). Medicaid enrollment declined by 5.1 million or 6% from June 2025 through June 2026 (Table 1).
Total Medicaid/CHIP enrollment has decreased in 49 states and DC since June 2025. Enrollment changes since June 2025 vary from a less than 1% increase in Iowa to a 19% decrease in Indiana (Figure 2).
Okay, I have a question: where are those kicked off of health insurance going to get their healthcare?

Hun? Where? The Emergency Room. That's where. The most inefficient and expensive treatment there is! By law, hospitals must take patients who show up at their doors.

How does the hospital get paid for these charity cases? Why, they raise their rates for everyone else! However, Medicare and insurance reimbursement rates don't go up enough to cover the increased expenses, so that means it comes out of our pockets in co-pays. It used to be a $45 co-pay, then it went to $50, and now it is $75 for most office visits.

From healthcare partly supported by tax dollars to healthcare paid for by our higher premiums! But hey, Trump's billionaires pay less in taxes!

It’s a shell game: the costs don’t disappear, they just get shifted until someone else is stuck paying them. Us, instead of the billionaires.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

See The Difference?

How many times have you heard people say... I see no differences the Republicans and the Democrats? Well may be this will help you to see the differences.
Just hours after after the CEO of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library warned elected leaders against withholding support for institutions like his, Broward County did exactly that.
The Advocate
Dawn Ennis
Oct 13, 2026


Broward County, Florida, is a Democratic stronghold. But that political identity has not protected one of its LGBTQ+ institutions from losing county support.

The county has rejected an application for a fiscal year 2027 operating grant from the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library in Fort Lauderdale, according to the museum, prompting its president and CEO to challenge local officials to defend organizations threatened by Florida’s restrictions on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The Republican attacks on anything LGBTQ+ is taking its toll... the is what happens when bigotry trumps humanity!

They lost federal and state grants, they lost Broward County grant, and corporate funding is drying up over fears of lawsuits because of DEI!



In Connecticut I am on the LGBTQ+ Justice & Opportunity Network
The LGBTQ+ Justice & Opportunity Network was established by the Connecticut Legislature in 2017. Administered through the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity (CWCSEO), the Network provides funding to LGBTQ+ organizations statewide, collaborates with local affinity groups, and advises the state legislature regarding LGBTQ+ needs, issues, and concerns. The LGBTQ+ Justice and Opportunity Network aims for a safe and healthy environment for Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ residents through needs analyses and data collection on health and human services needs, which informs policy efforts, builds organizational member capacity, and promotes community leadership and advocacy.
Tell me how many Republican states do you think have something like tihs?

Friday, October 16, 2026

Every Time I Open The News…

It is like I opened some dystopian novel!

This time it is not 1984 or Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451; this time it is closer to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale. 

If you remember, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale was about a dystopian government that totalized the eradication of bodily autonomy! Government surveillance and the rewriting of science and the law became the norm."
The Hill
by Nathaniel Weixel
09/21/26


The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a drinking water quality study that will for the first time look for traces of abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol — something anti-abortion activists, attorneys general and lawmakers have been lobbying the agency to do for years.  

The agency stopped short of making mifepristone an official water contaminant that would require regulation, but abortion opponents are hopeful the move is a precursor to restricting access to the drug, or at a minimum influencing a debate about its safety.  

“It is exciting after a very long journey that’s been almost 10 years, to have this be taken seriously enough to be on an official list,” Kristi Hamrick, head of policy at Students for Life of America (SFLA), said in an interview. “But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot of information that we need, for it to be useful for people to know.”  

EPA earlier this month announced it will be conducting a “cutting edge scientific study” that will test for “emerging” contaminants. The agency will pick several locations in metropolitan areas across the country and screen for more than 1,400 pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other chemicals, including mifepristone and misoprostol.
This is right out of the Handmaid's Tale!

The 19th News reported:
After pressure from anti-abortion advocates, Republican lawmakers and state officials, the Environmental Protection Agency announced this month that it will launch a study to test for trace amounts of abortion pills as a water contaminant in multiple cities. Scientists say there’s no evidence that mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-drug regimen that is highly effective in ending a pregnancy, harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.
Hmm… could they do that for puberty blockers?
On June 5, 14 Republican state attorneys general and 19 GOP lawmakers in Congress urged the EPA to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant. In two concurrent letters, officials argued that the abortion medication, part of a safe and effective two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies, is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways” and violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

One letter was signed by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. The other letter, led by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, made similar claims and was signed by 18 other GOP lawmakers.
It is all a lie! The conservatives create a rumor and then say they have to investigate it! All based on a lie!

Reproductive Rights reported that…
Summary
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal agency charged with ensuring that water is available and safe, based on scientific testing methods. As attacks on the abortion pill mifepristone continue to grow, anti-abortion extremists have peddled false environmental claims about these abortion pills. They have gone so far as to meet with EPA officials about the possibility of using water regulations to institute new, targeted restrictions on abortion pills. This campaign is baseless, in part, because EPA already continuously monitors water safety as part of its regular work. This fact sheet breaks down that (very wonky!) process.

[…]

Earlier this year, the Trump administration directed career scientists at EPA to assess whether the agency could develop methods for detecting traces of mifepristone—a drug commonly used in medication abortion—in wastewater. Similarly, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers are pushing to add mifepristone to the CCL and UCMR at the federal level, with the aim of requiring local public water systems to surveil the use of and limiting access to medication abortion.

To be clear, there is no scientific evidence that mifepristone impacts our drinking water. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency tasked with regulating mifepristone, has analyzed the potential environmental impacts of mifepristone as recently as January 2025 and concluded that “it is predicted to have no effect on the environment.”
But they lie! The water treatment plants do not test for mifepristone and misoprostol because it is not required by law for them to do so! Now, if you were a water treatment plant, would you test beyond the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act?

Reproductive Health goes on to report…
In September 2026, EPA launched a study to test a broad set of potential drinking water contaminants seemingly outside of the CCL and UCMR processes detailed above. This research includes mifepristone, misoprostol, as well as several contraceptives and hormones used in birth control, hormone replacement therapy, and gender affirming care. One important limitation is that the test being used in this research can only inform a researcher if a substance is present in drinking water generally but cannot and does not tell a researcher the amount or concentration of the item present in the water.
Yup! They are also going after us!

It is genuinely terrifying that we've reached a point where the government is testing your pee. It has gotten to the point where the Republicans are weaponizing municipal wastewater and the water supply just to chase down ideological boogeymen. How many millions are they going to spend on this witch hunt? This has crossed the line right over into totalitarianism!

Don’t piss in the shower… Big Brother is watching!

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Big Brother Knows Where You Are!

Halloween is coming. You want to be scared?

What would you say if ICE and DHS could find your house just from a photo of your interior?

You know all those photos that you post online. Maybe of having the gang over for a party... snap, snap, snap... all those selfies and photos of the gang being goofy? You know the photos I'm talking about.

Or maybe they're photos from people selling their homes.

Maybe the view through the window in the background.

Those are all being collected!



I was speechless this morning! I was seeing if AI could find an article about me in The New York Times (it didn't), and the reply shook me up. First, I asked it to search for an article in The New York Times about me. It wanted my name and anyone else in the article, so I gave my last name and the last names of two friends.

So I was expecting it to say yes, it found the article, or no, it didn't. But instead, it said... are you ready for this? It found our yearbook pictures and was using them to search for the article.

WHAT? WHOA! YOU DID WHAT?

It found our photos in the yearbook, and it searched the files of the NYT for our photos and names! On its own it thought to look for the photos.

Are you scared yet?



Then I saw this article in my feeds this morning...
Raven can turn ordinary household photos into location clues, raising fresh concerns about privacy and surveillance
TechSpot
By Rob Thubron
October 12, 2026


A hot potato: AI has been helping police forces across the US over the last few years, for better and for worse. The latest use of the technology allows law enforcement to input an interior photo of a home and have the AI figure out the location, though there are some caveats.

The tool, which is called Raven, is being used by the Los Angeles Police Department and Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office (MDSO), reports 404 Media. Made by a company called Graylark Technologies, Raven had been called GeoSpy before its new home-identification features were added.

The limitation is that Raven can't just identify any home in the world solely from an interior photo. Its abilities appear limited to certain properties. Graylark CEO Daniel Heinen demonstrated its power in a LinkedIn post, showing how a regional search can be carried out on something as simple as a photo of a washing machine and dryer.
Are you scared yet?
It's noted that this isn't a simple reverse image search. Raven picks out distinctive details in a photo and uses them to find likely matches from the same property on sites such as Airbnb, even when the images differ.
But wait there's more...
GeoSpy was trained on millions of images from around the world and designed to identify distinct geographical markers such as architecture and soil. Raven extends that ability to buildings.

As with pretty much every use of AI for law enforcement purposes, Raven is raising privacy questions. Airbnb said it has technical safeguards in place to try to limit automated data collection from its site and was reviewing the case. Zillow said scraping data is against its terms of use, adding that it pursues legal avenues when necessary. Vrbo did not respond to questions for comment.
Maybe this will scare you...
NPR News
By Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, & Meg Anderson
March 5, 2026


On an evening in late January, Emily was driving through her Minneapolis neighborhood doing something that had become part of her routine in recent weeks: patrolling for ICE.

Emily, who NPR is only identifying by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government, says she followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot. "And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV and took a picture of me and my car," she says.

Emily says she decided to leave at that point, but the SUV made a sudden U-turn and barreled towards her, braking next to her driver's side window. A female agent wearing a gaiter-style mask rolled down the window, leaned out — and addressed Emily by name.

[...]

Activists and journalists spoke of tactics they felt were intimidating: agents photographing their faces or license plates; calling them by name; or leading them to their homes. Immigration lawyers told NPR their clients had been subjected to facial recognition technology. One ICE agent, testifying under oath, spoke of an app that showed the likely home addresses of people targeted for deportation.
Are you scared now?

I asked what else the AI could do? The AI responded:
Different types of photo-based location recognition
1. Street-view location identification: Identify a street, city, building, or intersection from a photo using visual clues such as storefronts, road signs, architecture, and landmarks.
2. Indoor visual positioning: Recognize where you are inside a mall, airport, hotel, office, or other building using signs, interiors, floor plans, and visual landmarks. Coverage varies significantly by building.
3. Live camera location recognition: Point your phone camera at your surroundings and use AI or visual navigation to identify nearby places or help determine where you are.
4. Photo geolocation: Upload an existing image and use AI to estimate the exact location, potentially down to a street or building, from visual details and available image metadata.


During my research into this topic the AI made suggestions and the result of one suggestion was this. I asked which path are we heading down, that we are at a crossroads and it took that and ran with it. Coming up with...

We Stand at a Crossroads — But Is There a Third Path?
We stand at a crossroads in human history.

Will we take the path Aldous Huxley envisioned in Brave New World — a society where we surrender our freedom for comfort, exchange independent thought for endless entertainment, and become so distracted by our own desires that we fail to recognize what we have lost?

Or will we take the path George Orwell warned us about in 1984 — a world where surveillance becomes ubiquitous, privacy disappears, truth is manipulated, and Big Brother watches our every move?

Perhaps the most frightening possibility is that we are already traveling down both paths simultaneously.

But what if there is a third path?

A path where technology serves humanity rather than controls it. Where artificial intelligence expands our freedom instead of quietly diminishing it. Where privacy is a fundamental right, truth is protected, and the power to observe is balanced by the power to hold those who observe us accountable.

A future where progress is measured not by how much data we collect, how efficiently we predict human behavior, or how completely we can monitor a population, but by how much freedom, dignity, and opportunity we preserve.

This third path will not emerge on its own. It requires awareness, difficult questions, informed citizens, ethical choices, and the courage to challenge systems that demand our freedom in exchange for convenience or security.

Huxley warned us that we might surrender our freedom because we learn to love our distractions. Orwell warned us that we might lose it because we learn to fear those who control us.

The third path begins when we refuse to accept that either outcome is inevitable.

The question is no longer simply which dystopia we will choose.

It is whether we have the wisdom, the will, and the collective courage to choose a different future — before the choice is made for us.

The third path gives your writing something more powerful than a warning: a reason for hope, coupled with a responsibility to act.

And it raises a question worth exploring throughout your work: Is the third path primarily about protecting individual rights, placing democratic limits on technology, changing human behavior, or all three?

Because perhaps the real crossroads isn't between two dystopias. It's between allowing technology to shape humanity according to its capabilities and consciously shaping technology according to our values.

Monday, October 12, 2026

Beyond Christian Nationalist!

Hyper-masculine content is the far right's new elixir.

From Hesgeth check soldier's testosterone levels to Baron Trump becoming friends with podcasters online who push... "manosphere".
A group of Reformed pastors and influencers has wedded old-school segregationist theology with the hypermasculinity of the manosphere and the savvy of the attention economy to preach and sell white supremacy, antisemitism and patriarchy to angry young men. Its audience is small but growing, and their movement has ties to powerful religious and political figures.
Religious New Service
Bob Smietana
September 24, 2026


Michael Spangler does not look like a white supremacist and antisemite.

He has no visible tattoos, no shaven head, no black overcoat or jackboots. No hood, no Confederate flag and no Nazi images appear in the background as he sits in front of a screen for a recent Zoom interview.

Instead, the soft-spoken Christian school teacher and pastor of Piedmont Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, sporting a neatly trimmed beard, was dressed in a charcoal suit and sat in front of a fish tank that seemed straight off the set of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo.”

Then he began talking about Jews. And a broad smile broke across his face. 

“You’re asking if I oppose the Jews who murdered Christ?” said Spangler as he paraphrased a verse from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, which he says labels Jews as “the enemies of God and all men.”

“We need to consider them and treat them accordingly.”

A segregationist and “race realist” whose start-up church, which has a handful of families, bars Black people out of fear of “harmful race-mixing,” Spangler is one of a small but growing group of pastors and internet influencers who openly embrace racist and antisemitic views, casting them as true Christian ideas.
These are the extremists of the extremists. 
The former president’s youngest son emerges from the shadows, forging connections with controversial influencer Andrew Tate and taking a surprising role in his father’s campaign.
Grand Pinnacle Tribune
December 12, 2025


Key Points
AI-Generated Summary
  • Report reveals Barron Trump engaged in private Zoom calls with Andrew Tate, accused of serious crimes and whose release was aided by the Trump administration.
  • Barron Trump developed mentorship ties with Tate's associate Justin Waller, including receiving dating advice and socializing within Tate's influencer circle.
  • Barron actively advised Donald Trump's 2024 campaign on targeting young male voters through popular podcasts, earning praise from senior campaign advisor Jason Miller.
Barron Trump, the youngest son of former President Donald Trump, has long been something of an enigma. At 19 years old and a student at New York University, Barron has managed to keep a remarkably low profile compared to his older siblings, shunning social media, business ventures, and the political spotlight—at least until recently. But a series of revelations over the past week have pulled him into the public eye, painting a strikingly different portrait of the young Trump than many may have expected.

According to a December 10, 2025 report by The New York Times, Barron Trump has been engaging in private Zoom conversations with Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer and self-styled manosphere leader who has been accused of sex trafficking, rape, and other crimes in Romania. Tate and his brother Tristan were, until earlier this year, prohibited from leaving Romania as authorities investigated allegations that they pressured women into pornography and other illicit activities. The Times further reports that the Trump administration played a role in securing the Tate brothers' freedom earlier in 2025, a move that has raised eyebrows and sparked debate about the intersection of power, politics, and celebrity influence.
I would like to point out that Baron's father lost a civil case on rape.
How a network of pastors and influencers is repackaging segregationist theology—and finding an audience for it online.
Religious News Service
Complexified
October 1, 2026


[...]

WOODWARD: Bob, you’ve recently published a story with a very provocative title, “The Rise of the Jim Crow Theobros.” First of all, what is a theobro?

SMIETANA: Sure. There’s a kind of subset of evangelical pastors. They’re known for their beards and their dark suits and their very serious demeanor. They’re mostly Calvinists or part of what it’s called the Reformed Church.

WOODWARD: Okay.

SMIETANA: So they believe in things like predestination, and they’re very concerned that men should be in charge of both the household and the church. There’s a bit of a stereotype, you know, the nickname theobro. It’s like bros who are into theology.

WOODWARD: So what turns a regular theobro into a Jim Crow theobro?

SMIETANA: So they’re followers of John Calvin, who’s one of the reformers. Calvin was French, but he was known for a couple things: his work on predestination, so that God predestines some people to be saved and some people to be damned, his idea that, you know, the sovereignty of God, that God’s in charge of everything. And for these folks, there’s this kind of idea that men should be in charge. It’s called complementarianism sometimes. Part of what they are is a response to nondenominational Christianity, which kind of downplays theology. There’s a whole group of people who studied John Calvin, who was their first exposure to really serious theology, and they became part of this reformed movement.
So this is all party of the "Woman's place is in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant." anti-LGBTQ+, anti-foreigners, and anti-non-Christians. Only fire and brimstone religions are allowed. They think that only men should vote.

People who want to turn us into a Christian Afghanistan. In other words into a fascist theocracy. 

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Topsy-Turvy

That’s Trump’s administration! He’s turned everything upside down!
The Environmental Protection Agency? He’s turned it on its head—and it’s allowing more pollution!
The National Park Service is selling parkland!
The Department of Agriculture is allowing growers to inspect their own produce.
OSHA is letting factories regulate themselves.
The Department of Education is going back to teaching the “Three R’s.”
The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating the latest conspiracy theories, like contrails.
He’s also turned the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights on its head…
NPR News
Ryan Lucas
October 11, 2026


When Harmeet Dhillon took over as the new chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division last April, the conservative attorney vowed to radically reshape the storied unit and its mission.

Over the past 18 months, Dhillon has moved aggressively to make that goal a reality. She has pushed out hundreds of longtime attorneys, replaced many of them with inexperienced ideological allies, and used the division's enforcement powers to pursue President Trump's MAGA agenda, according to four current and former division officials.

Three of the individuals spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
That last sentence is the most important: There is fear.
But Dhillon, who was born in India and immigrated to the U.S. as a child, argues that over the years the division's mission has narrowed to protecting the rights of just one segment of society: people of color.

In her view, that has created a form of "benevolent racism" designed to punish "the descendants of those who may have been responsible for the sins of the past."

"As the logic goes, the white oppressors of years past kept Brown and Black people down, why not give them a taste of their own medicine?" she said last November at an event for the conservative Federalist Society. "That's the thinking really that underlies a lot of our civil rights enforcement work."
Under the Trump administration, if a White employee doesn’t get promoted, it must be discrimination.
In just the past two months, the Civil Rights Division has accused law schools at the University of California, Berkeley and Duke University as well as the medical schools at the University of California, San Francisco and George Washington University of discriminating against white and Asian students in admissions.
They’re all WOKE… yeah, right! You know what else they have in common? They’re bastions of liberalism!

Do you really think these colleges would discriminate? Look at all the attacks Trump’s DOJ has launched against them, accusing them of antisemitism, racism, and discriminating against cisgender students!

They’ve turned civil rights laws on their heads! The Washington Post reported:
The Trump administration has upended civil rights enforcement at K-12 schools and colleges, prioritizing cases that allege transgender students and students of color are getting unfair advantages, while severe staff cuts have left thousands of other allegations unresolved.
When you stop and think about it for a moment… the Trump administration is following the White Christian nationalist agenda.

Some of these changes will be easy to roll back but others will take a generation to repair. 

Politic Corner: Wind & Solar Power.

Wind and solar power have become hot-button issues since Trump began using federal buyouts to pressure wind and solar companies to abandon their projects. Trump has delayed wind and solar permits, and created bogus excuses to block offshore sites, saying that they posed national security risks. Trump's allies in Congress have also scaled back funding for renewable energy sources..

The The Natural Resources Defense Council writes:
Walking away from offshore wind projects in response to short-term political or regulatory uncertainty runs counter to sound energy policy and prudent long-term system planning.
Kit Kennedy
July 8, 2026


The Trump administration is now paying energy companies billions of taxpayer dollars to walk away from offshore wind leases, and the blowback is mounting. Members of Congress are investigating, calling the legality of these agreements into question while California regulators have issued a subpoena raising legal and transparency concerns. At the same time, a major U.S. pension fund is publicly questioning whether abandoning offshore wind leases during a period of political uncertainty reduces risk to the company and shareholders or increases it.

[...]

In recent months, the Trump administration finalized two major offshore wind lease buyout agreements, eliminating four leases that could have produced 8.4 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity—enough to power nearly four million homes.
As the price of electricity, home heating oil, and natural gas keeps rising because Trump’s energy policy quashes the sources of low-cost electricity!
AP News
By  JENNIFER McDERMOTT and MATTHEW DALY
April 21, 2026


A federal judge in Massachusetts on Tuesday struck down several Trump administration actions slowing down development of clean energy, including a requirement that all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters be personally approved by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Chief Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that a coalition of plaintiffs representing wind and solar developers were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the administration’s actions violate federal statute and will cause irreparable harm if the court did not intervene.

She issued a preliminary injunction to stop the administration from implementing the policies, which clean energy advocates said would hamstring projects that need to get underway quickly to qualify for expiring federal tax credits.
And Congress is starting to look into Trump buying out renewable energy projects as the price of energy keeps rising.
Administration’s actions will kill more than 30,000 jobs and raise energy costs

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Angus King (I-Maine), and Martin Heinrich (D-M.N.) launched an investigation with eight other Democratic colleagues into the Trump administration’s campaign to kill offshore wind energy projects with a letter to several energy companies who’ve recently canceled offshore wind projects demanding a response about lease buyout agreements.

“These buyouts have been announced amid a larger effort by the Trump Administration to stall wind and solar projects – the energy sources that are cheap, clean, and fastest to bring online – across the country,” the senators wrote. “At a time when gas prices have spiked by an average of more than $1 dollar per gallon due to the President’s war in Iran and electricity prices are rising nearly twice as fast as inflation, clean energy offers a critical opportunity to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and relieve costs for people across the country. Dismantling the burgeoning offshore wind industry now and creating broader uncertainty for investment in cheap, clean energy will have consequences for decades to come.”

“These projects were poised not only to advance U.S. leadership in clean energy technology and generation capacity, but also to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state investment in research and development, port upgrades, workforce development, and community benefit agreements,” the senators continued. “The two Invenergy projects in the Gulf of Maine were expected to help power more than 2 million homes and support over 18,000 jobs. The Leading Light Wind project in the New York Bight was projected to generate more than $3.7 billion in economic development benefits and over 7,000 jobs. The Golden State Wind project off California’s Central Coast would have powered 1.1 million homes, created more than 8,000 jobs, and delivered a $30 million commitment to workforce development and supply chain initiatives.”
As the war goes on with no end in sight, with Trump buying fuel from Russia, with energy prices going out of sight, with Trump sideing with the "Global Warming is a Hoax" oil and coal barons who have donated millions to Trump and the Republicans.

Fox59 News reports that...
by: JENNIFER McDERMOTT, Associated Press
Posted: Oct 2, 2026


Households in the contiguous United States will pay thousands of dollars more for energy through 2040 because of federal policy changes since President Donald Trump returned to office such as canceling new clean energy projects, according to modeling released Friday by a nonpartisan think tank.

The Energy Innovation analysis found that households will pay an average of $6,500 more for energy, cumulatively through 2040. In five states, households will pay roughly $9,000 more: Oregon, Mississippi, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming.

The California-based think tank said there will be more demand for natural gas for electricity because the administration is canceling new wind, solar and hydrogen projects and there will be more gasoline demand for transportation because Trump and Congress are revoking policies that incentivized efficient and lower-emissions vehicles. Higher demand increases prices.
Thank you, Donald! We love getting the shaft so you and your billionaire friends can pick our pockets!

Okay Let Me Get This Straight!

First: Russia attacks Ukraine.
Next: The U.S. and other countries impose sanctions on Russia, including oil embargoes.
Oh, let me squeeze this in: Hegseth fires generals and an admiral who are not politically correct.
Then: Trump launches a “Short, Glorious War” against Iran that lasts a couple of months.
Then: Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz and turns off the oil spigot.
Followed by: Trump running around like a headless chicken, desperately grasping at straws!
Then: Putin throws Trump a bone and dangles a carrot in front of him.
Then: F**k the sanctions! Trump grabs the gold ring!
But: Russia doesn’t have any fuel to sell us!
Now: Trump blames Ukraine for bombing the oil refineries!

The circle is complete!
Is this any way to run a government?



Updated: @ 2:30PM


Friday, October 09, 2026

Why Are They Attacking…

… The disabled?

I can think of many reasons why the Trump administration is cutting back on disability rights (Note: these are not my ideas, but rather seem to be the actual reasons driving the Trump administration's cutbacks):
It costs too much and he has to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,
It cuts into business profits,
It forces businesses to hire inferior workers,
It forces them to deal with the disabled,
They have to see people in wheelchairs.

I think all these reasons are very cynical and could very well be true.
AP News
By  ANNIE MA
July 1, 2026


For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.

Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, after a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.
Scary! Set your Wayback Machine to the 1930s!
The Nazis saw people with disabilities as an obstacle in their attempts to create an idealized "German race." In 1939, the Nazi regime began a systematic program to murder them.
Even if that is not the reason they want to institutionalize the disabled, and it is merely because it is cheaper to house them, the results are the same.

Reducing human independence and self-worth to a monetary value is typical Republican thinking. Me vs. Us.
Executive actions, budget cuts, layoffs, and legislation—all enacted in the Trump administration’s first six months—have curtailed disability rights and services, including access to Medicaid and the right to free, appropriate public education.
Center For American Progress
By Mia Ives-Rublee & Casey Doherty
July 28, 2025

History will show the first six months of the second Trump administration as an all-out war against disabled people. From executive orders intended to roll back civil rights protections to legislation that cuts key services and support, the disability community has faced structural violence in the form of federal policy. This all comes as the community continues to suffer severe impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic that have resulted in further disablement, isolation, and death. It has even been alleged that President Donald Trump once told his nephew, Fred C. Trump III, that he should let his son, who has “complex” intellectual and developmental disabilities, “just die” because of the cost of care.
To me, it sounds like Trump is taking us down the rabbit hole.

As I said, I’m cynical. We can keep saying “Trump,” but it is MAGA who backs him, and MAGA are Republicans. They are leading us down the hole of authoritarianism.

During the 1930s the Nazis tried to:
Influence the elections – Trump ✔
Controlling the press – Trump ✔ 
Go after immigrants – Trump ✔
Go after the homeless – Trump ✔
Go after the disabled – Trump ✔
Go after LGBTQ people – Trump ✔
Concentration camps – Trump ✔
Taking over the government – Trump Coup?

This election is probably the most important election ever! The next crux will come on January 3, 2027, when Congress is sworn in.

Racism? Or Love of Money?

I just don't know with Trump; it could very easily be both.

There is oil! But also race.

But to get it, you have to dig up indigenous people's cultural historic sites and U.S. military historic sites.

But hey... it's oil!



Conservation groups sued the US government this week over plans to blast the cliff walls of an eastern Utah canyon and build an oil truck highway through an area covered in ​historic inscriptions and near world-renowned Native rock art.

The project to replace a winding dirt ‌track with a paved road through Gate Canyon would destroy 100-foot (30-meter) cliffs with at least 47 historic sites, including 19th century inscriptions by Black American "Buffalo Soldiers" in the US Army and European pioneers, according to the lawsuit, opens new tab against the US Bureau of ​Land Management. The cliffs are also a habitat for threatened species such as the Mexican ​spotted owl, the suit claims.
All hail the mighty dollar! Anything Trump's billionaire friends want, Trump bends over backward for!
Gate Canyon runs north off Nine ​Mile Canyon, described as the world's longest art gallery, according to, opens new tab the Bureau of Land Management. Nine Mile Canyon, ​which is about 46 miles (74 km) long, is home to the United States' largest concentration of Native rock art with more than 1,000 art sites containing over 10,000 images, some dating to prehistoric times.

The plan to pave Gate Canyon as an alternative ​truck route to the Uinta Basin oil fields would turn Nine Mile Canyon into a busy oil ​highway, potentially damaging one of Utah's most important cultural and scenic areas, the lawsuit claims.
I imagine the fact that it is historic for Black soldiers probably doesn't give any sway with Trump & Company!

The plan to pave Gate Canyon as an alternative truck route to the Uinta Basin oil fields would turn Nine Mile Canyon into a busy oil highway, potentially damaging one of Utah’s most important cultural and scenic areas, the lawsuit claims. 

"BLM rushed its April 2026 decision to approve the blasting and paving of Gate Canyon and hid that process from the public," says the 50-page lawsuit filed in US District Court District of Utah, Central Division.

Plaintiffs in the Utah lawsuit - including the Center for Biological Diversity - said the Bureau’s approval of the road project proposed by Utah’s Duchesne County violated a string of federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act and the Endangered Species Act.
That is why they hid it! They knew they were doing wrong!

All Hail The Mighty Dollar!

Thursday, October 08, 2026

This Is The Trash Out There!

Did the town do the right thing?
The film’s script reportedly depicts Good as a fat blue-hair woman
LGBTQ Nation
Daniel Villarreal (he/him)
October 6, 2026


The town commissioners of Livingston, Montana voted last Saturday to “immediately temporarily suspend” a filming permit for a movie tentatively titled Pawn Shop, a pro-ICE feature film produced by the anti-LGBTQ+, right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire.

The pro-ICE film reportedly depicts ICE-shooting victim Renee Good — a queer, blonde-hair mother of three — as “a fat blue-hair” woman named Melanie who is shot by ICE agents while driving and listening to NPR. Right-wingers have long vilified NPR as being a biased, liberal, and leftist media outlet, even though studies have shown that the outlet is generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda, and provides key benefits to US democracy.
But the show went on because of the First Amendment.

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

It Is The Parents

The students are fine, it is the parents that are in a tizzy! The students elected a trans girl as homecoming queen and the right-wingers and the MAGAs are having a baby who don't even live in the town!
“The whole point of homecoming king and queen is the student votes. And we voted, and Sammi is our homecoming queen.”
LGBTQ Nation
Molly Sprayregen (She/Her)
October 4, 2026


Students and teachers rallied to support a transgender high school student who was selected as homecoming queen by her peers, causing backlash from angry adults.

Sammi, a student at Pennsylvania’s Fairfield High School, was crowned queen of the annual homecoming dance the night of Saturday, September 26, after winning the most votes from her fellow upperclassmen, Your Erie reported.

[...]

“Sammi was voted by the students, and some parents didn’t like that,” student Preston Johnson told Your Erie. “I think that’s quite silly. The whole point of homecoming king and queen is the student votes. And we voted, and Sammi is our homecoming queen.”
The students know what's right.


Saturday night, Fairview High School held its annual homecoming dance, but this year, the celebration was the subject of controversy.

Prior to the dance, upperclassmen students voted a transgender girl, Sammi, as this year’s homecoming queen.

It’s a vote that didn’t sit well with some in the community, sparking what some are calling harassment on social media directed at the queen, students and school staff.

“There was a lot of hate saying that Sammi, being a transgender individual, was taking the spot from somebody who was born female,” said Logan Thompson, student council secretary. “They were behaving erratically due to the results of our homecoming court.”
So now the Board of Ed has to put in it's two cents...
In light of the backlash form those who disagreed with the vote, a Fairview teacher organized a group to attend Monday night’s school board meeting to support Sammi.

Dozens came out the meeting, leaving standing room only. Zero spoke out against Sammi being crowned queen, while Thompson spoke for the dozens who came in support.
Did you get that... no one was against her.
“Sammi was voted by the students and some parents didn’t like that,” said student Preston Johnson. “I think that’s quite silly. The whole point of homecoming king and queen is the student votes. And we voted, and Sammi is our homecoming queen.”
So what did the Board do? Nothing.

Once again, it is the outside agitators and not the town that created the problem.

Tuesday, October 06, 2026

Manchurian Candidate

Did you ever see the movie? In it, there is a scene where they are “brainwashing” him, and it is just a series of rapid-fire photos—“hate… hate…”—to condition him to assassinate the target as part of a psychological conditioning process.

Trump’s ad seems to use the same kind of rapid-fire images of Trump, with the voice in the background saying, “love him.”

When I asked an AI what classic psychological manipulation techniques were being used, it replied:
Why that can feel psychologically manipulative
    • Repeated verbal cue: “love me”
    • Repeated visual cue: Trump’s face
    • Rapid editing: little time to examine any individual image
    • Positive claims: tax cuts, manufacturing, law enforcement, etc.
    • Emotional music: rather than a neutral narration
    • Authority association: Trump speaking as president
    • Patriotic imagery: flags, military, national symbols
    • Repetition: the viewer gets the same emotional association over and over
That is classic associative persuasion: repeatedly putting a person alongside positive emotional stimuli and allowing the associations to reinforce one another.
Trump and company are saying that Biden did the same thing, but once again, Trump speaks with a forked tongue. Did the Biden administration use federal funding for ads? Yes.

So, some of Biden’s ads were (from AI ChatGPT):
    • “We Can” — people of different ages saying they were eligible for vaccination and describing their plans to get vaccinated.
    • “We All Need a Boost” — encouraged COVID booster vaccination.
    • “Yes” — connected vaccination with being able to see friends, travel, socialize, etc.
    • “Party Like It’s 2019” — used partying/concert imagery to encourage vaccination.
    • “A Common Opponent” — featured college football coaches, including Jim Harbaugh and Kirby Smart, encouraging vaccination/boosters.
Do you see any of these ads saying “love me”? Do you see anything other than legitimate PSAs?

But for me, it is not about who paid for what. It is about the outright psychological manipulation of the ad.

The number one thing that stood out to me was the imagery:
    • Trump + American flag
    • Trump + military
    • Trump + prosperity
    • Trump + cheering crowds
    • Trump + strength
    • Trump + patriotic music
All the while, “Love Me” was being said as a psychological command.

I see this as an attack by Trump on his low polling numbers, as an attempt to raise those numbers.
AP News
By  ALI SWENSON
September 28, 2026


The White House has spent days fiercely defending three taxpayer-funded advertisements that glorify President Donald Trump and are nearing at least $1.5 million in public spending, calling them public service announcements like those used in past administrations.

“Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” White House communications director Steven Cheung posted on X on Sunday.

But the Republican administration’s ads attracted mounting criticism on Monday, including from members of Trump’s own party.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters.

“It would not have been something that I would have done. And I know that the White House is not covered by the same guidance that we are, but it’s not something that I would have done,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, another South Dakota Republican.

[…]

“You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar under Republican President George W. Bush. “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”
The ads are right out of the authoritarian playbook!

Reuters reported:
Running ahead of midterm elections on November 3 that could reshape the balance of power in ​Washington, the ads tout American exceptionalism.

One includes the president saying “America will never be a communist country” as a chorus sings “love me” in the background. A second combines ​images of Mount Rushmore with shots of Trump on stage as he praises “the golden age of America.” A third describes “the final battle,” ⁠with Trump pledging to demolish the deep state “with you by my side.”

The "final battle" ad is nearly identical to one of Trump's campaign spots from 2024, with the exception of ​the disclaimer at the end.

The ads have appeared during both “Saturday Night Live” and NFL football games on Sunday.
They are the latest example of Trump flouting longstanding rules meant to prevent presidents ​from using the office for political gain, said Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.
I think people are seeing the manipulation in these ads for what it is, and that may be exactly why they are backfiring on him. When people feel that someone is trying to manipulate them psychologically, our natural reaction is often to resist. Instead, people ask a very different question: Why is Trump trying so hard to make me love him?



Updated: 10/7 @ 7AM

Trump has agreed to not using government funding. Question will he reimbursed us for what he spent in making them and showing them?

Sunday, October 04, 2026

Why Oh Why?

Is the Trump adminstration collecting information from ER records? Could it possible be to go after immigrants?
CNN
By Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld and Darius Tahir
Jul 27, 2026


A tiny federal agency tasked with protecting the public from injuries caused by lawn mowers and coffeemakers is demanding that some of the nation’s biggest health systems turn over detailed, personally identifiable medical records of all patients who seek help at their emergency rooms.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls of dangerous products sold in the U.S., began discreetly pressuring hospital executives this year to share personally identifiable health data with a private contractor. But hospital lawyers and other industry experts have questioned the agency’s authority to collect, its ability to safeguard such a swath of sensitive information, and whether it has followed the legal process to overhaul its surveillance system.

After KFF Health News asked the CPSC about the new system, the agency announced the program on July 21. Left unmentioned, however, is the alarm it has raised among hospital executives, as well as the nature and extent of the agency’s data demands.
What possible reason does an agency tasked with product safety want with your name, address, and social security number?
The revamped surveillance system will incorporate hospital injury data from all 50 states, allowing faster product safety recalls.
Politico
By: Kelly Hooper
07/21/2026


The Trump administration is overhauling the system for tracking consumer-product-related injuries at hospitals, implementing a standardized data exchange that will help the federal government more quickly issue product safety recalls.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in an announcement shared first with POLITICO, said the changes to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System will bring tracking for product-related injuries into the 21st century. Starting next year, the system, which has used the same manually coded data process since 1972, will automatically pull from patients’ electronic health records to flag issues with consumer product safety in near real-time.
Once again... why do they need your personal information for product safety. Unless it is a way they want to ferret out some other data... maybe like immigrants?
Anchorage Daily News
By Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld and Darius Tahir
Published: September 10, 2026


A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling for the Trump administration to suspend a new surveillance program it quietly launched to collect the personal and identifiable health data of Americans who visit emergency rooms.

KFF Health News first reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission — a federal agency tasked with monitoring injuries from household items — was pressuring hospitals to provide a private company with personally identifiable health information for analysis. The rollout of the program has inspired broad pushback from hospitals and privacy advocates.
This is what authoritarian governments do build databases on its citizens. 

Saturday, October 03, 2026

Breaking News: Inquiring Minds Want To Know...

… The Russian connection?

Do you remember the wedding that was financed in part by someone from the Kremlin inner circle?
Do you know the steel mill coming to Iowa is financed in part by someone from the Kremlin inner circle?
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it!
AP News
By — Joey Cappelletti, & Mary Clare Jalonick
Sep 22, 2026


Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr. used his proximity to the presidency for financial benefit, after his recent wedding party was partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Curtis called on the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. over his business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals and entities, gifts or other benefits he has received and any instances in which his relationship to President Donald Trump, a Republican, "was invoked or understood to provide value." Curtis called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

"The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president," Curtis wrote in the letter addressed to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.
Then we have the mill in Iowa… it also has a Kremlin connection!
Indian firm building $15bn Trump-announced steel mill has deep Russia ties
By Yashraj Sharma and Charu Sudan Kasturi
29 Sep 2026


As United States President Donald Trump announced a $15bn steel megaplant while seated at his Oval Office desk on Monday, he had a lineup of mostly US politicians standing behind him – from cabinet members to elected representatives from Iowa, where the mill is to be built. There was one exception: an Indian man with a receding hairline and a lilac pocket handkerchief, standing behind the US president’s right shoulder.

Ravi Ruia is a cofounder of the Essar Group, which owns Mesabi Metallics, the Minnesota-based firm that is building the steel mill, expected to be the US’s largest. A decade earlier, in October 2016, his brother Shashi was in the photo frame with a different president during the signing of another major deal: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Curiouser & curiouser.

I’m not the only one to wonder about this…  a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability released this is from last May…
Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, demanded answers after new reporting revealed that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding earlier this year. Oversight Democrats opened an investigation into the payments with letters to the White House and Donald Trump Jr.

“A Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. It’s baffling that the son of a President would even think about allowing a Russian oligarch to bankroll his wedding. Is this why President Trump skipped his son’s wedding? Oversight Democrats are investigating and demanding answers immediately,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.

In the letter to Donald Trump Jr., Ranking Member Robert Garcia wrote, “Oversight Democrats are investigating the numerous ways in which you have sought to enrich yourself and your family on the basis of your proximity to President Donald Trump. However, your ties to your self-described “dear friend” Mr. Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch responsible for bankrolling your May 24, 2026, wedding celebrations in the Bahamas, may be the most serious allegation against you to date. As the son of President Donald Trump and the part-owner and major investor of multiple companies with extensive Department of Defense contracts, your praise of such an “extraordinarily generous wedding gift” from a member of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s inner circle raises serious questions about pay-to-play schemes and foreign intelligence infiltration of the President’s family. I request you immediately preserve all records, documents, and communications concerning your relationship to Mr. Kremlev, including any communications with the White House regarding financing or attendance at your wedding celebrations.”
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it!