From The Hill
Click in for more news from The Hill {beacon} Healthcare Healthcare The Big Story Stopgap funding bill seeks delay of Trump’s science funding plan Senate Republicans are supporting a provision in the stopgap funding bill that would delay the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal…
More than 148,000 people across Scotland will receive their exam results on Tuesday.
Source: BBC.
Scott Eastwood says he was ready to whoop Shia LaBeouf’s ass on the set of “Fury” … until Brad Pitt jumped in and broke it up. Scott revisited the tense encounter on Monday’s episode of “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” … saying Shia’s extreme…
From TMZ.
After grossing over $690M during its theatrical run, 20th Century Studios’ The Devil Wears Prada 2 has set a record on streaming. The film has surpassed Deadpool & Wolverine with the biggest live-action movie premiere on Disney+ and Hulu, having notched 15.2 million global views in its first five days of availability. Following. up a […]
Source: Deadline.
This famous stand-up comedian is as hot as she is funny … which is great because she jokes about sex all the time. She slays on the stage … but this comic is also a brilliant writer-producer who co-created the sitcom “2 Broke Girls” — and was…
From TMZ.
Ursula von der Leyen has called for action ahead of an urgent EU interior ministers meeting to discuss the issue.
Source: BBC.
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: It’s clearer than ever that President Donald Trump has no way out on Iran.
What’s happening? Over the weekend, Trump posted to social media that he had agreed to “hold off any attack” on Iran because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.” The deal, he said, would include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a nebulous “end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”
That should all sound fairly familiar, since it’s essentially what the US and Iran agreed to — and subsequently abandoned — in June. As of Monday morning, though, Trump had already pivoted, accusing Iran of being “unbelievably duplicitous” in negotiating.
“This is a last chance for them to sign a good document,” he told reporters in the Oval Office Monday afternoon, threatening “decapitation” — essentially the same warning he issued in April.
What’s the context? Since the collapse of the June “memorandum of understanding” between the US and Iran, which ended the immediate conflict and set out a path for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, the two countries have resumed hostilities, if not full-scale war. In July, three more US servicemembers were killed in Iranian attacks.
The strait also remains largely closed, with only a handful of vessels per day passing through.
Why does this matter? The Logoff has tried to steer clear of blow-by-blow coverage of the Iran war, because this kind of reversal happens a lot: Trump is constantly blustering, promising a deal, threatening massive retaliation, backing down, and doing it all over again.
This latest episode, more than five months into the war and tidily compressed into just a few days, is little different. We’re writing about it anyway because it’s a good reminder of what has emerged as the essential fact of the war: Trump may have started the conflict, but he doesn’t seem to have any real plan in place to end it — and the longer things drag on, the greater the risk to the US troops fighting it.
Vox’s Unexplainable podcast is tackling the “holy grail of sensory biology” — magnetoreception, which lets birds navigate using Earth’s magnetic field — this week with some help from author and journalist Ed Yong. You can listen here, and I also recommend Yong’s newsletter, which regularly features some spectacular bird photos.
Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
Source: Vox.
From The Hill
Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Monday urged American universities to outline their commitments to a set of Trump administration priorities by the end of this year. In an open letter to university presidents and board members, McMahon lamented that higher education institutions, in her view, have “drifted from the principles that built up so much…
The widow of PC Andrew Harper says it is “disgusting” her husband’s killers remain eligible for the scheme in England and Wales.
Source: BBC.
When Markwayne Mullin succeeded Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in March, he was expected to be less spotlight-seeking than his predecessor, but no less dedicated to Trump’s deportation policies. As a freshman senator from Oklahoma, Mullin had defended the federal immigration agent who reportedly killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, opposed birthright citizenship and called for shutting down airports in “sanctuary cities.” President Donald Trump called him a “MAGA warrior.”
Yet this MAGA warrior apparently isn’t good enough for MAGA die-hards. They’re furious and calling for his ouster over comments he made Saturday at a National Governors Association meeting in which he drew a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and also suggested immigration reform would be a good idea in the long term because it’s needed to help the economy grow.
These pundits and activists seem to be angry that Mullin dares suggest any immigration into the country is acceptable.
“If we’re looking to grow our economy, we need more permanent solutions on [work visas], because this narrative that it steals American jobs is true in some industries, it’s not true for all industries,” Mullin said in one of the comments that drew the MAGAsphere’s ire. He added, “It is America. We want to take care of Americans first. It’s our economy, it’s our homeland, but there’s a way to utilize labor where we’re not having the participation rate we need to, and we can plug those holes.”
Right-wing conspiracy theorist and media personality Laura Loomer slammed Mullin — whom she called “Markwayne Muslim” in an attempt to use “Muslim” as a slur — saying he was excited to give “millions of illegal aliens mass amnesty.” (Mullin neither used that phrase nor specified that his idea of reform entailed widespread amnesty.) Fox News host Tomi Lahren said, “Markewayne [sic] wants to appease liberal media and big labor.” Conservative activist Robby Starbuck accused Mullin of projecting “weakness” and called for him to be replaced.
After the blowback began, on Saturday, Mullin posted on X what appeared to be a defensive clarification of his comments: “NO amnesty for illegal aliens. Ever. We are a nation of laws. If you are illegally present in the United States of America— you will be detained and deported. Period.” But the statement seemed to do little to put out the firestorm.
Former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino — who exemplified the showboating of Noem’s DHS — objected to Mullin treating legal immigration as acceptable in any form. “He proudly announces nearly 900,000 naturalizations in 12 months (95% third world immigrants), then lectures us about the legal process,” Bovino wrote on X. “He celebrates your replacement as long as it’s done legally, without mentioning that 80% of legal immigrants will vote Democrat.” Bovino’s invocation of “replacement” references the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. And while immigrant voters do lean Democratic, his number is not accurate.
As Politico notes, Trump’s deportation machine is still going at full speed: Under Mullin, “nearly every metric — including removals, arrests, detention population — is up, with several at record or near-record levels for this administration.” And yet MAGA is piling on him anyway, showing the depth of their anti-immigrant fanaticism.
These pundits and activists seem to be angry that Mullin dares suggest any immigration into the country is acceptable and — to at least some extent — economically beneficial to anyone but immigrants themselves. Mullin, of course, is right. Robust immigration is essential for the economic growth of affluent countries, whose birth rates are generally on the decline. But he’s forbidden from speaking the truth, lest he violate the dictates of the white nationalist ethos of MAGA activists.
For now, the Trump administration has not indicated that it has lost trust in Mullin, but given Trump’s fixation on satisfying his base, competence won’t keep Mullin safe. Given that deportations are continuing at an aggressive pace, one wonders if MAGA critics really just crave the theatrics of cruelty and domination that Noem excelled at, with her photo shoots at a notorious El Salvador megaprison and her championing of Alligator Alcatraz detention center in the Florida Everglades.
Bovino is presumably disappointed by the downturn in street fights and federal immigration agents acting like a militant occupying force in American cities. Perhaps Mullin just needs to be overtly sadistic to gain their trust.
The post Why MAGA is turning on Trump’s DHS chief appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” was released over the weekend, and an audience in one particular theater got an extra release with their movie … when a fart forced them to evacuate the screening! Here’s what went down — or up, depending on who you…
From TMZ.
Linda Blair allegedly had hundreds of dogs on her property Friday when cops showed up over possible animal neglect and code violations — and while she says it’s all good and the pups are “fine,” neighbors say there’s a major problem. Here’s the…
From TMZ.
