“The California State Assembly narrowly approved a controversial bill Friday evening that would ban popular nonstick cookware products from being sold in the state starting in 2030. The measure bans cookware containing perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, more commonly referred to as PFAS, from being sold in the state. It would also ban any new ‘cleaning product, dental floss, juvenile product, food packaging, or ski wax’ that contains PFAS from being sold starting in 2028. The Assembly approved the measure in a 41 to 19 vote, with 20 assemblymembers not voting. The bill still needs a final concurrence vote in the Senate before it can be sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature to make it law. Isabella Jimenez, a spokesperson for Assemblymember Damon Connolly, who was managing the proposal, told SFGATE in an email that their office expects the bill to pass that vote.” (09/13/25)
“The beastly assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at a Utah college event this week makes clear, once again, that conservative speakers are not safe on America’s campuses, and that something must be done to change that. The Trump administration has tools in the shed to address this problem, but before we get to that, let’s look at just how bad things have gotten. The term ‘heckler’s veto’ is a relative newcomer in the English language. It was coined in 1965 by University of Chicago law professor Harry Kalven, in his book, The Negro and the First Amendment.’ Kalven was describing how government authorities would deny civil rights protesters the right to assemble because of threats made against them, and because of the costs associated with protecting them from those threats. Hence, the heckler gets to veto the event.” (09/13/25)
“Federal prosecutors have indicted the founder and several leaders of the House of Prayer Christian Churches of America, accusing the Georgia-based ministry of running a decades-long, $22 million fraud scheme that targeted U.S. military members and veterans. Following the indictment, the FBI on Wednesday conducted a raid near Augusta, Georgia, arresting leaders after years of allegations that the church operated like a cult and preyed on military communities nationwide. FBI Atlanta public affairs specialist Jenna Sellitto confirmed to Fox News Digital it carried out a raid at a home in Columbia County, Georgia, and made authorized arrests related to the church investigation. Sellitto said she could not immediately release the identities of those taken into custody. The charges come after the FBI in June 2022 raided at least three churches associated with the House of Prayer Christian Churches in Georgia and Texas, established just miles from Fort Gordon, Fort Stewart and Fort Hood.” (09/13/25)
“Arnold Schwarzenegger has spent the better part of the past decade out of politics, but California’s fight over redistricting has suddenly thrust the Hollywood star and former governor back into the arena as the Republicans clamor for his help. As California governor Schwarzenegger helped create a nonpartisan process in 2010 to draw ‘fair and equal’ congressional district lines that Gov. Gavin Newsom is now attempting to temporarily dismantle. Republicans are hoping the former bodybuilder can help convince people to vote against Newsom’s Proposition 50, the November ballot measure that asks voters to approve the new Democrat-favoring map, a last-ditch attempt to counter gerrymandering taking place in Texas. Schwarzenegger is, according to one poll, the most popular Republican in the country, and Republican strategists have said the former bodybuilder is ‘uniquely positioned’ to fight Prop. 50 and that ‘it would be huge’ to have Schwarzenegger directly on the campaign.” (09/13/25)
“Responding to Israel’s September 10 attack aimed at Hamas negotiators in Qatar, all 12 members of the UN Security Council issued a toothless statement of condemnation that didn’t even mention Israel by name. This cowardly response underscores the pathetic international reaction to nearly two years of genocide. Israel believes it can do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, with no consequences–which has been true for two years now. It has already destroyed Gaza. It is expanding settlements, annexing the West Bank, threatening Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. It has attacked aid flotillas, bombed refugee camps, and assassinated negotiators. Now it has bombed a U.S.-allied Gulf capital. And still, the world hesitates.” (09/13/25)
“The period of finger-pointing and blame-shifting among Democrats for their 2024 election defeat should be near its end, but not before hearing from Kamala Harris. Her book on the 2024 campaign, 107 Days, will be released by Simon & Schuster on September 23, but The Atlantic has published an excerpt about her life as vice president prior to Joe Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out. The only way to put it is that Harris is seething with anger over her treatment by Team Biden before she was suddenly thrust into the global limelight as putative replacement candidate.” (09/10/25)
Source: TomDispatch
by Mattea Kramer & Sean Fogler
“The federal takeover of Washington, D.C., rightfully attracted extensive media coverage, but an executive order called ‘Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,’ quietly issued on July 24th, received remarkably little attention. Perhaps it didn’t make a splash because it wasn’t specifically about policing (or, for that matter, National Guarding), but more generally about how we should treat people who already exist on the outermost fringes of society, human beings who have long been reduced to labels like ‘addict’ or ‘homeless.’ Indeed, the Trump administration is counting on us to renounce those living on the streets, while struggling with their mental health or the cost of housing (or both). And if history is any guide, that may be exactly what most of us do.” (09/11/25)
Source: Washington Monthly
by Richard D Kahlenberg
“In a moment when the President of the United States is trying to use the power of the state to intimidate critics in academia and the media (not to mention his political opponents), some may think that a new book like Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Summer of Our Discontent, which focuses mainly on the illiberalism of the left, is terribly timed. They will fault the author for ‘not meeting the moment,’ or worse, for ‘enabling’ an autocrat by articulating ‘right-wing talking points.’ Liberal critics have already panned the volume …. In fact, the book by Williams, an iconoclastic writer for The Atlantic, could not have come at a better moment. It is precisely because Donald Trump is wreaking havoc daily that it’s crucial to comprehend why so many of our fellow Americans came to dislike the Democrats even more than the unlikable and chaotic man they elected president.” (09/11/25)
“Guido Reichstadter, for the past week, has gone without a calorie. He’s survived on vitamins and electrolytes, conducting a hunger strike to protest the San Francisco startup Anthropic’s pursuit of super-powerful artificial intelligence. Reichstadter, on Tuesday, the eighth day of his protest, sat hunched in a rollator outside the company’s South of Market office. He drank from a bottle of water gifted to him by a construction worker employed in Anthropic’s building. He thought about the two hunger strikers he’d inspired in London, protesting outside Google’s DeepMind AI lab. And he spoke with SFGATE about the experience of hunger striking, and about his hope that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will shut down his startup’s AI development — or at least give Reichstadter a reason why he won’t.” (09/11/25)
“I have met people who gave me grace in Iran, in Mexico, in Haiti, in Gaza, in Cambodia, in Vietnam. People who understood the difference between ordinary citizens and the governments that rule them. People who offered me kindness when they had every reason not to. That grace stays with me. As a US citizen and physician, I have lived my life trying to hold onto a sense of responsibility. But what I see now, in Gaza, in Haiti, in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, is the full weight of what psychologists call diffusion of responsibility. It is the shrug that says: Someone else will answer for this, someone else will carry the shame. The United States cannot keep living in that shrug.” (09/11/25)
