“At his confirmation hearing in January of 2025, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, assured the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee of his commitment to provide specialized, high-quality medical care for the roughly nine million veterans enrolled in the nation’s largest and only truly integrated public health care system, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). But Collins, a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve, also explained that his mandate from President Trump is to make it ‘easier for veterans to get their health care when and where it’s most convenient for them,’ by giving them greater choice between in-house and outsourced care. To do this, he planned to lean on the network of 1.7 million private-sector providers who are part of the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP), created by the VA MISSION Act of 2018.” (08/04/25)
“Predictably, the New York Times pooh-poohed the release of the classified annex to the Durham report. … Mr. Trump and his aides have coupled those releases with wild and inaccurate claims about what they show, spinning the reports as proof of his long-running narrative that the investigation was a hoax instigated by enemies for political reasons. This whole ‘assembled by Russian spies’ line is based on one assessment about a pair of emails likely pulled by Russians from other real American victims of hacking. Beyond this instance of a ‘composite’, the paper ignores the gigantic load of material from the same source, which has been described in multiple other reports as real and affecting numerous American ‘victims’ from the Executive and Legislative branches, as well as think-tanks and NGOs.” (08/01/25)
“Leaders of almost the entire Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, recently signed on to an extraordinary statement. They endorsed a call for Hamas to end its control of Gaza and hand over its weapons. In effect, the demand, led by the 22-state Arab League, acknowledges that the individual sovereignty of the people in Gaza, not Hamas, must determine the territory’s governance. While the statement is a historic first for Arab nations, the universal principle of individual sovereignty – or a person’s inherent right to be free and treated equally – has been gaining ground among Gaza’s 2 million residents. Even before its 2023 attack on Israel, Hamas had lost much of its legitimacy. As its popularity further dropped, protests began to break out in March openly condemning the Islamist group – despite threats of retaliation.” (08/01/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“MAGA wingnut Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling the Gaza holocaust a genocide while progressive hero Bernie Sanders continues to adamantly refuse to do so, despite the solidified consensus among human rights groups and genocide experts that that’s what this is. This is humiliating for everything that passes for the ‘left’ in mainstream US politics. Imagine being such a dogshit human being that you’d let Marjorie Taylor Greene be a better person than you. I keep seeing people say we shouldn’t use the label genocide until Israel has been found guilty by an international court, but that’s exactly the same as saying you can’t say a murderer is trying to murder someone and intervene to stop him until he has been convicted of murder in a court of law.” (08/02/25)
“New reporting based on a leaked briefing memo from a recent meeting between high-level officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department sparked fresh warnings on Saturday about the Trump administration’s internal plans to increase its domestic use of the U.S. military. According to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, which obtained the memo, the document ‘suggests that Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse.’ The ‘terrifying’ memo (which the outlet recreated and published online with certain redactions that concealed operational and personnel details) ‘provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation.'” (08/02/25)
“‘The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!’ President Donald Trump wrote Thursday morning on Truth Social. Amen. While in Scotland on Monday, Trump had voiced a very human concern about the children of Gaza, when he said, ‘I mean, some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake it. So we’re going to be even more involved.’ His remarks come ahead of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September. So begins another pressure campaign from the all-bow international community to weaken Israel’s self-defense in a war Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, by murdering some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.” [editor’s note: The Israeli regime was holding, and continues to hold, far more than 250 hostages; why don’t they count? – TLK] (08/02/25)
“The Senate left Washington Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and Trump posting on social media that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer can ‘GO TO HELL!’ Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee.” (08/02/25)
“After the long-time skittish New York Times published a lengthy essay by the renowned genocide scholar, Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University, titled ‘I’m a Genocide Scholar, I Know It When I see It,’ the Palestinian-hater, Times columnist Bret Stephens, immediately jumped into the Netanyahu‑style rebuttal mode. His column was titled ‘No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.’ His cruel and specious assertion, contradicted by many genocide scholars, was that if the Israeli regime was truly genocidal, they would have committed ‘hundreds of thousands of deaths’ in Gaza instead of the mere 60,000 deaths reported by the Hamas‑run Health Ministry. Get real, Mr. Stephens, the Israeli military has destroyed the lives of at least one out of four Palestinians there, or about half a million at least, from the daily bombing since October 7, 2023, of civilians and their infrastructure.” (08/02/25)
“Hamas has reaffirmed that it will not agree to disarm unless a sovereign Palestinian state is established [sic], in response to one of Israel’s key demands in talks about a ceasefire in Gaza. The Palestinian armed group said it was responding to remarks it attributed to US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff that Hamas had ‘expressed its willingness’ to lay down its weapons. Israel considers the disarmament of Hamas one of several key conditions for any deal to end the conflict. Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages stalled last week.” [editor’s note: The state of Palestine was established in 1988; what Hamas wants is a totalitarian theocratic state under its control, which is why, ever since it won one election in 2006, it has refused to let Palestinians in Gaza vote again – TLK] (08/02/25)
“The typical time that broadcast networks report on the advertising world is just before Super Bowl Sunday, to give viewers an advance peek at what companies will be shelling out millions to display. The clothing company American Eagle just scored a marketing coup with ad with White actress Sydney Sweeney making a sly joke about her ‘genes’ and her jeans. ‘Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,’ cooed the actress. ‘My jeans are blue.’ This quickly spurred outrage from purple-haired TikTokers and leftist websites complaining about ‘centering Whiteness’ and ‘fascist propaganda.’ On Tuesday, July 29, ABC’s ‘Good Morning America First Look’ was already employing the word ‘backlash.'” (08/02/25)
