Source: American Greatness
by Stu Cvrk
“Last November, an article was posted that summarized Trump Administration Accomplishments in 2025 through October. At that time, President Trump had just signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, brokered a string of ceasefires, and was nine months into what was shaping up to be one of the most consequential presidencies in American history. Since then, the pace has, if anything, accelerated, with a full-scale operation resulting in the capture of a hemispheric narco-dictator, the implementation of the largest tax cut package in a generation, a childhood vaccine schedule overhaul, a new NATO spending baseline, and a genuinely dangerous stretch of open war with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz that is still not fully resolved as of this writing. Let us pick up where that article left off and summarize Trump administration accomplishments since then.” (08/20/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/20/trump-administration-accomplishments-october-2025-present-part-one/
Source: SFGate
“Southern California law enforcement officials stumbled upon an abandoned vehicle in the desert containing Lego sets worth nearly $30,000, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced Wednesday. According to the Sheriff’s Department’s news release, on Monday around 11:30 p.m., Barstow officials discovered the Lego sets inside an unoccupied van at National Trails Highway and Pioneer Road in Newberry Springs. The van held 123 boxes of stolen McLaren F1 Lego sets, which are valued at about $230 per set. Police with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad confirmed that the sets were taken during a train robbery.” (08/20/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/stolen-lego-california-desert-22396751.php
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“Let’s Unstick Congress (with Tom Malinowski and Maya Kornberg).” (08/20/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkV66hr9axI
Source: CounterPunch
by David S D’Amato
“A system with a small number of massive corporate conglomerates under which 99.9% of us have no substantive power whatsoever can never be one consistent with liberal democracy, the rule of law, or economic freedom. Those who focus their attention myopically on the current regime and the corruption thereof show that they understand neither the nature nor the scale of the social problem, and for this reason they can be of only little help in the struggles to come. Indeed, many are no less custodians of the political and economic status quo, and eagerly defend this system of corporate domination and economic fascism. The formal shape of or label on the structure of ownership and power tells us nothing on its own, our ideological delusions notwithstanding.” (08/20/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/20/economic-fascism-and-the-megadeal/
Source: The Atlantic
by Olga Khazan
“When some Taylor Swift fans listened to the lyrics of her 2025 song ‘Wi$h Li$t,’ in which she sings about yearning to ‘settle down’ with ‘a couple kids,’ they heard a Republican dog whistle. On social media, they claimed that Swift’s desire for family life was ‘a conservative agenda on a silver platter.’ Swift, an avowed feminist who has endorsed Democratic political candidates, almost certainly did not set out to make ‘tradwife propaganda.’ But her online critics are getting at something real: Having children—particularly lots of children—has become a bit right-coded, as the kids say. Americans and Europeans who identify as leftist or liberal tend to have fewer children than those who identify as conservative or right-leaning.” (08/20/26)
https://archive.is/Ur53e
Source: Politico
“Former French Prime Minister François Fillon has been suspended for 10 years from the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit, after being found guilty of providing his wife with a fake job in which she was paid a salary using taxpayer money. The decision to suspend Fillon was published Thursday morning in the French official gazette. It was approved by President Emmanuel Macron after being recommended by the body tasked with handling disciplinary measures for the Légion d’honneur. The fake jobs scandal emerged during the campaign for the 2017 presidential election and cost Fillon a shot at the presidency, as he was a front-runner in the contest before the allegations emerged.” (08/20/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/francois-fillon-suspended-highest-french-honor-fake-jobs-scandal/
Source: Cobden Centre
“I [Max Rangeley] talk through some of the complexities with respect to military AI and robotics, then talk through some different theories of consciousness, from neuroscience, physics and other fields, and what they mean for the possibility of machine consciousness.” (08/20/26)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/08/speech-at-cambridge-universitys-centre-for-the-study-of-existential-risk/
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Stavroula Pabst
“After cutting down the DOT&E to a skeleton crew, the Pentagon now wants to remove 25 years worth of its reports from public view.” (08/20/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/dod-weapons-testing/
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jackie Calmes
“It wasn’t so many months ago that Democrats were debating about what their winning message should be for capturing control of Congress in November’s midterm elections and finally putting a needed check on President Trump. Should they stay laser-focused on Trump’s culpability for a laggard economy and American families’ affordability crisis? Or spotlight Trump’s overt and corrupt self-enrichment?
The answer, finally, became obvious to the ditherers: Both. Better late than never, the economy and corruption have merged as Democrats’ two-pronged cudgel against Trump. Midterm elections are, after all, a referendum on the president’s performance; the subservient Republicans on the ballot are simply his proxies.” (08/20/26)
https://archive.is/GdrrV
Source: New York Post
“A Southern California lobbyist who interned in the Clinton administration with Monica Lewinsky has been making lofty claims to win taxpayer-funded contracts — but some of the cities and public agencies on his killer resumé say they couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. Jaime Rojas, president of Rojas Public Affairs, has been collecting thousands in taxpayer fees from a Southern California agency after he bragged about securing tens of millions in federal funds …. Rojas spoke before the Phelan Piñon Hills Community Services District board in January 2025, touting a record of securing more than $90 million in state and federal funding. The district subsequently awarded Rojas a contract paying $5,000 per month. But in documents submitted to that agency and others, Rojas’ firm has overstated or made up multimillion-dollar funding claims in writing while seeking taxpayer funds, including a three-year lobbying deal tied to Gypsum Canyon Memorial Park and a planned state veterans cemetery in Orange County.” (08/20/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/08/20/us-news/mystery-california-lobbyist-used-bogus-million-dollar-boasts-to-land-taxpayer-contracts/
