Scopes Trial 100 Years Later

Source: The Pamphleteer
by Davis Hunt

“Today, we anticipate the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton …. It was a strange thing that the eyes of the entire English-speaking world had descended upon such a small town in rural Tennessee during the summer of 1925, but a lot was on the line. John T. Scopes, a local high school teacher in the declining mining town of Dayton, was charged with violating the state’s new prohibition against teaching Darwinian Evolution in schools, and the whole world wanted to see what would happen to him in what would become known as the infamous ‘Scopes Monkey Trial.’ Now, for the 100th anniversary of the trial, from July 11th to the 19th, Dayton wants to tell the story on its own terms, free from a century of spin and misrepresentation.” (07/07/25)

https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/scopes-trial-100-years-later/

Steve Trinward

Schumer wants probe of National Weather Service response in Texas

Source: Reuters

“The U.S. Senate’s top Democrat on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service affected the forecasting agency’s response to catastrophic and deadly flooding in Central Texas. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer asked the Department of Commerce’s acting inspector general Monday to probe whether staffing vacancies at the NWS’s San Antonio office contributed to ‘delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy’ in forecasting the flooding. He asked the watchdog to scrutinize the office’s communications with Kerr County officials.” (07/07/25)

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/schumer-wants-probe-national-weather-service-response-texas-2025-07-07/

Steve Trinward

Liechtenstein hit by Russia-linked “zombie trust” crisis

Source: Financial Times [UK]

“Liechtenstein has launched an emergency task force to tackle a crisis of ‘zombie’ trusts, which has left hundreds of entities linked to wealthy Russians in legal paralysis. The tiny Alpine principality, a hub for thousands of trusts and foundations, has been hit by a wave of resignations by fiduciary and board directors in the past six months as its regulatory system adjusted to US sanctions packages against Russia. The result could leave as many as 800 orphaned entities — legally recognised but functionally frozen — with nobody in charge to manage assets or oversee liquidation. Bankers and lawyers have warned the crisis risks contagion into the country’s broader financial sector, including major banks, if the government does not address the problem.” (07/07/25)

https://archive.is/ZZsgB

Thomas L. Knapp

Good, bad and ugly: Impact of US Iran strikes on Russia war talks

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mark Episkopos

“To a considerable degree, President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 because voters embraced his message of keeping America out of protracted conflicts and his promise to end the war in Ukraine. The administration has made substantial operational headway, particularly in reopening stable channels for dialogue with Russia, but it has proven difficult to arrive at a framework for a negotiated settlement that enjoys buy-in from all the stakeholders — Ukraine, Russia, and Europe. A sharp diversion of American resources and attention to the Middle-East threatens to make the goal of facilitating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine more evasive still.” (07/07/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-strikes-russia/

Thomas L. Knapp

Vote Communist!

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived! Maybe, just sometimes, we let fools dig themselves deeper into their folly. Take New Yorkers. The city’s government has been dysfunctional for ages. But now it’s potentially taking the starkest left turn yet, towards … communism. Mayoral candidate Rep. Zorhan Mamdani may call himself a ‘democratic socialist’ and quote Martin Luther King piously, but he also admits that seizing the means of production is the ultimate goal … just not politically acceptable.” (07/07/25)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/07/07/vote-communist/

Thomas L. Knapp

Ten Bizarre Things Hidden in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill

Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper & David Dayen

“Well, everyone, it’s official. Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act passed the House last Thursday afternoon and was signed into law on the Fourth of July. You’ll likely be able to celebrate with a local hospital closure of your very own, very soon — or, if you live in Red Willow County in southwest Nebraska, which voted for Trump 84-15, right now. For obvious reasons, the enormous cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in the bill, along with the permanent extension of the Trump tax cuts tilted mostly to the wealthy, got the most attention. But this thing is stuffed to its back teeth with provisions, almost all horrible, and many of them downright weird.” (07/07/25)

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-07-ten-bizarre-things-hidden-in-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/

Steve Trinward

Trump threatens new taxes on American buyers of goods from BRICS nations

Source: CNN

“President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs on [American buyers of goods from] any nation supporting ‘anti-American’ policies of the BRICS group of emerging economies, as he announced tariff letters would be sent out to scores of countries from Monday, ahead of a key deadline. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said the US would impose an additional 10% tariff on [American buyers of goods from] ‘any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS’ with ‘no exceptions,’ though it was not immediately clear which policies Trump was referring to. The BRICS group, an acronym of founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has long stood as a disparate body of countries united by a shared view that global power-sharing should be redistributed to reflect current global economic realities for a ‘multipolar’ as opposed to a West-led world order.” (07/07/25)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/06/business/bessent-tariff-deadline-trump

Thomas L. Knapp