“‘Pastor, have you ever read Thomas Sowell on this high school?’ Elaine asked me as we stood outside Paul Laurence Dunbar High School — or Dunbar, for short — in Northwest Washington, D.C. I told her that was why I made a point of making Dunbar a stop on my Walk Across America to revive merit and the American Dream. I had asked her, a mother of two kids in the school, what it was like, and her verdict was sadly negative. ‘Sowell said Dunbar was an example of excellence back in the day. What happened?’ From 1870 to 1955, this all-Black public school drew ambitious families from across the country — parents relocating just to enroll their kids for the best shot at life. Sowell described these families as ‘aspirational,’ meaning they sought to overcome any obstacles.” (10/28/25)
“Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system, which includes closing a prison built in the 1800s, moved forward Tuesday with bipartisan support despite complaints from Republican lawmakers that their concerns weren’t being addressed. A bipartisan subcommittee of the state building commission approved spending $15 million to proceed with planning for the Evers proposal. The full building commission, which Evers chairs, was expected to green-light the spending later Tuesday. Evers in February presented his plan as the best and only option to address the state’s aging facilities. Problems at the lockups have included inmate deaths, assaults against staff, lockdowns, lawsuits, federal investigations, criminal charges against staff, resignations and rising maintenance costs. Republicans have opposed parts of the plan that would reduce the overall capacity of the state prison system by 700 beds and increase the number of offenders who could be released on supervision.” (10/28/25)
“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has spent more than a decade warning that the world was on the brink of unimaginable peril due to rising global temperatures, now says climate change ‘will not lead to humanity’s demise’ in a stunning reversal. Gates, 70, who has sunk billions of his vast fortune into initiatives ostensibly meant to combat global warming, penned a lengthy blog post this week urging a shift away from the ‘doomsday outlook’ many climate activists have adopted to terrify nonbelievers into seeing things their way. ‘Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,’ he wrote. ‘People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.'” (10/28/25)
“Prior to 9-11 the US fought proxy wars and launched coups throughout Latin America, supporting autocratic regimes. In Indonesia it helped kill about a million leftists. During the Vietnam War, it killed several million. Since just 9-11 the US invaded or bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Yemen, Iran, Somalia, and Niger. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, US wars since 9-11 killed 4.5 million people and cost over $8 trillion. The US aided war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. The US has occupied one-third of Syria, the parts with oil, since about 2015, with help from a proxy army, the SDF. The US allied with al-Qaeda-linked extremist groups in Syria, as reported here, here, and here. It killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians through brutal sanctions. The Trump administration is now bombing Venezuelan boats and is preparing for a land invasion.” (10/28/25)
“Indian authorities on Tuesday carried out a cloud-seeding experiment over smog-choked New Delhi in an attempt to induce rainfall and clear the city’s toxic air, which has sparked anger among residents. A plane sprayed chemicals into clouds over some areas of the Indian capital to encourage rain and wash pollutants from the air, which remained in the ‘very poor’ category, according to air quality monitors. Cloud seeding — a weather modification method that releases chemicals into clouds to trigger rain — has been used in drought-prone regions, such as the western United States and the United Arab Emirates, though experts say its effectiveness remains uncertain. Delhi Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that the trial was done in collaboration with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, with more planned in the coming days.” (10/28/25)
“As the government shutdown enters its fifth week, we wonder when Democrats in Congress will regain touch with reality, or if that’s even a thing for most of them anymore. LAX shut down for hours last weekend thanks to an air-traffic-controller shortage; flight delays and cancellations will only get worse nationwide the longer this goes on. And the pain is starting to hit what used to be core Democratic values: Food stamps (SNAP) won’t be funded after this week, nor Head Start.” [editor’s note: The Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. They can end the shutdown any time they want it ended. Right now, they don’t want it ended – TLK] (10/27/25)
“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, claiming the use of Tylenol leads to higher risk of autism and that the over-the-counter drug is deceptively marketed to pregnant women as safe. Many medical experts have disputed such claims. The lawsuit, dated Monday, alleges Johnson & Johnson and Tylenol maker Kenvue, which separated from Johnson & Johnson in 2023, knew for decades ‘that acetaminophen — Tylenol’s active ingredient — is dangerous to unborn children and young children. Yet they hid this danger and deceptively marketed Tylenol as the only safe painkiller for pregnant women.’ In the lawsuit, Paxton pointed to the Trump administration’s claims about acetaminophen’s risks, saying that ‘the federal government confirmed what Defendants knew for years: acetaminophen use during pregnancy likely causes conditions like [autism] and [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder].'” (10/28/25)
“U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis on Tuesday ordered a senior U.S. Border Patrol official to meet her daily ‘to hear about how the day went’ after weeks of confrontations between immigration agents and the public in the Chicago area. The immigration sweeps from Operation Midway Blitz have produced more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force. Ellis also asked Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino to submit by Friday all use-of-force reports from Border Patrol agents involved in the operation from Sept. 2 through Tuesday. The courtroom on Tuesday gave the feeling of a principal’s office as Ellis detailed examples of incidents where she felt her previous order restricting the use of force, including tear gas, was not being followed.” (10/28/25)
“The cost of Donald Trump’s garish ballroom that’s replacing the East Wing of the White House keeps increasing, from $200 million to $300 million and now $350 million in a matter of days. That’s because the cost of construction isn’t nearly as important as having an inventory of donations available for corporate America to pony up. These contributions (or if you prefer, bribes) work in two directions: One, they represent cash that companies can give to secure favors from the government. Two, they serve as a disciplining function from Trump: People giving to his ballroom can’t easily speak out against his abuses of power. It’s no real surprise that the formal editorial page of The Washington Post offered a limp defense of the ballroom, when the company founded by the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, is one of the donors.” (10/28/25)
“Yes, in the ever more ominously unsettled (dis-)United States of Donald J. Trump, I recently went to the ‘hate America’ rally in New York City. Or at least that’s what Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson insisted it was. Who knew that so unbelievably many Americans, millions of us across the United States, would ‘hate’ this country enough to go out and march in the recent No Kings demonstrations, even in places where we might have feared being in distinct danger from the troops of ‘our’ president? In the days before the latest No Kings demonstrations, no matter whom I talked to or where they lived, they seemed to be planning to go to their local version of that march/rally. My neighbors, other city people, suburbanites, even friends living in the countryside.” (10/27/25)
