Source: Axios
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to fire federal workers. The majority decision, which lifts a federal judge’s earlier order freezing the cuts, gives the administration power to resume its goal of reshaping and scaling back federal agencies. … The justices noted in the unsigned opinion that they were not ruling on the legality of any specific layoff plans for federal agencies, just that ‘the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful.’ Liberal [sic] justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the conservative [sic] justices in the majority ruling.” (07/09/25)
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/08/supreme-court-trump-fire-federal-workers
Source: Reason
by Ronald Bailey
“Natalist panic is rife nowadays. The White House is weighing initiatives to boost the number of births, ranging from a $5,000-per-baby bonus to awarding ‘National Medals of Motherhood’ to mothers with six or more children. In March, the NatalCon gathering in Austin, Texas, declared that we’re ‘living through the greatest population bust in human history.’ … And yet the world’s population continues to grow. 132 million people were born in 2024, boosting the global population by 71 million. Over the course of my lifetime, the U.S. population has risen from 160 million to 342 million and the world population has grown from 2.6 billion to 8.1 billion. Still, given current trends, demographers calculate that world population will likely peak at just over 10 billion later in this century and then start to fall. Why? Because people are choosing to have fewer children.” (07/08/25)
https://reason.com/2025/07/08/the-depopulation-bomb/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has decried the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the United Kingdom could take further action against Israel if a ceasefire deal to end the war in the Palestinian territory does not materialise. … Last month, the UK joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in sanctioning Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank. Weeks earlier, the UK had also suspended talks for a free trade agreement with Israel over the blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a starvation crisis in the territory. And last year, London halted some arms exports to Israel.” (07/08/25)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/8/uk-threatens-further-action-against-israel-if-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-fails
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison
“The Israeli government is still deliberately starving the entire population of Gaza. The small trickle of aid that it lets in cannot begin to provide for their basic needs and it was never meant to. When people come to get the few crumbs that they are allowed to have, they run the risk of being injured or killed in repeated massacres. The Israeli government piles war crimes on top of war crimes with the blessing and support of our government.” (07/08/25)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/the-killing-fields-of-gaza
Source: mint [India]
“Nearly 20 years after airline passengers were first required to remove their shoes for security screening, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is beginning to phase out the policy at airports across the United States, according to media reports. The directive, issued last week, states that starting Sunday, all passengers will be allowed to keep their shoes on in general screening lanes at many major airports — not just those enrolled in TSA PreCheck. The goal is to expand the new policy to all US airports shortly, the memo reportedly states. … The TSA began requiring passengers to remove their shoes in 2006, in response to a 2001 incident in which British national Richard Reid attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his footwear on a flight from Paris to Miami. Reid’s plot failed after he was subdued by passengers and crew, but the incident [became an excuse for] sweeping changes in airport screening protocols.” (07/08/25)
https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/shoe-removal-rule-ending-at-us-airports-after-nearly-20-years-11751986358055.html
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Three months after 9/11, ‘Shoe Bomber’ Richard Reid tried to blow up an airplane with his footware. Soon afterwards, TSA started ‘recommending’ shoe removal during screenings, though as far as I recall the ‘recommendation’ was universally mandatory from the get-go. Since 2006, shoe removal has been required both de jure and de facto. Now, without a government apology — or even an official explanation — TSA is ending this innumerate security policy. … The average number of air travelers in the US over this period is about 700M per year, implying the destruction of roughly 15 billion minutes of time in the U.S. alone. That’s almost 30,000 years of life. If you figure the average American has about 30 more years to live, that’s 1000 lives destroyed. The cost? One lifetime in prison for Richard Reid. 1000:1. That dwarfs the immediate kill ratio of the 9/11 bombers, which was about 160:1.” (07/08/25)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/americas-most-successful-terrorist
Source: Politico
“The IRS on Monday said that religious leaders could endorse political candidates in churches and other religious centers without losing their tax-exempt status, carving out an exemption from a decades-old tax code provision prohibiting nonprofits and churches from direct political engagement. The decision came as part of a move by the agency aimed at settling a lawsuit brought by the National Religious Broadcasters association, an evangelical media group, and two Texas churches. … In a proposed consent judgment between the tax agency and religious groups, the parties suggest that discussions of politics ‘between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services’ did not constitute participation or intervention in politics, as the Johnson Amendment prohibits.” [editor’s note: I have a better idea … make all organizations and persons “tax-exempt!” – TLK] (07/08/25)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/08/irs-churches-tax-exempt-00441992
Source: Semafor
by David Weigel
“The GOP is clearly betting that it can run a Biden-era campaign in Virginia this year. Led by [Glenn] Youngkin in 2021, the party swept every statewide office and flipped the House of Delegates with a simple formula: Compete in racially diverse suburbs, drive up turnout with rural conservatives, and watch Democrats struggle to defend their record on crime and gender. But this year, Democrats doubt that the issues that bedeviled them four years ago — like post-pandemic learning loss, public school gender policies, or higher crime that got blamed on criminal justice reform — will be on the ballot again. They see Virginia as a proving ground for their post-Biden campaign strategies. And they see a backlash coming against elements of President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda that have hit the state especially hard, starting with his sweeping federal workforce cuts.” (07/08/25)
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/08/2025/republicans-try-a-novel-pitch-make-virginia-2021-again
Source: Public Substack
by Michael Shellenberger & Alex Gutentag
“The idea that America is ruled by a secret government of deep state intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI is a right-wing conspiracy theory, the media has said for the last decade. Journalists at outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR have portrayed claims about a ‘deep state’ as paranoid fabrications pushed by Donald Trump and his supporters to discredit legitimate government institutions. They insisted that accusations of political bias or covert influence by agencies like the CIA or FBI had no basis in fact and served only to inflame public distrust. And yet over the same period, investigative reporting, including by the two of us, and official disclosures revealed that these agencies interfered in domestic politics in ways that aligned with that very narrative.” (07/07/25)
https://www.public.news/p/this-is-a-total-fucking-disaster
Source: US News & World Report
“Measles cases in the United States have reached their highest level in 25 years, with more than 1,270 confirmed cases this year. That number surpasses the last record of 1,274 cases set in 2019, according to new data from Johns Hopkins University. Experts suspect the true number may be much higher, since many cases go unreported. … Measles — one of the world’s most contagious diseases — was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, due to widespread use of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The new cases dovetail with a significant drop in vaccination rates.” (07/08/25)
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-07-08/u-s-measles-cases-hit-highest-level-since-disease-was-eliminated-in-2000
