The Mamdani Meltdown

Mamdani Meltdown

The New York City mayoral primaries happened. Much to the shock of establishment Democrats, Zohran Mamdani won the primary and trounced disgraced former NY governor Andrew Cuomo.

Mamdani proudly asserts that he is a "democratic socialist," similar to how Bernie Sanders identifies. This—combined with his skin color and religion—has sitting Democrats and Republicans alike losing their collective minds, often dropping any pretense of pretending to not be racist while perpetuating actual lies about the guy. The Democrats are also doing their darndest to ignore the wild surge of support that Mamdani has received from the exact voter base the Dems have lost in the past view years.

Several high profile representatives and senators have talked about how Mamdani will need to "address his former comments" regarding a claim that he has previously endorsed the statement, "globalize the intifada," which—to be clear—he never endorsed or said. But that apparently doesn't matter.

Anyway, here's a bit of a highlight reel of racist and absurd attacks from Democrats and Republicans in the face of a well-spoken man with popular policies who won his primary election in such a blowout that his top competitor conceded within hours.

In This Corner: The Democrats

• Kirsten Gillibrand is in hot water as she went on a radio show which takes local callers and said some REAL dumb shit. When someone called in complaining about Mamdani endorsing the phrase noted above, Gillibrand didn't even take the obvious layup from the show's host who noted, "that may not be accurate." Instead, she launched into a tirade about how he needs to make his position on that clear, and kept repeating that she will, "work with him" on making sure he will keep the Jewish community safe, as if that's not a thing he would otherwise be doing. Gillibrand has since attempted to walk this back, saying she misspoke.
• Eric Swalwell jumped in the action, using a similar tactic of just sorta implying that Mamdani said some bad stuff about Jews without offering really any specifics
• Chuck Schumer hasn't outright said specifically dumb shit, but also stopped short of endorsing Mamdani
• Hakeem Jeffries also decided to get on the "he arbitrarily owes Jews an apology" train by saying that Mamdani needs to "clarify his position" going forward.

And In The Overtly Racist Corner: The Republicans

I truly cannot take any of these chuds seriously with their whole, "America isn't racist anymore! You're just racist for bring up race!" thing when they turn around and say this kind of shit with their full chest.

• Andy Ogles came out absolutely swinging, referring to Zohran as "Zohran 'Little Muhammad' Mamdani", as well as stating that Zohran is anti-semitic, socialist and communist. He also went on to call for Zohran to be denaturalized and deported. Zohran has lived in the US since age 7 and is a naturalized US citizen.
• Nancy Mace heard there was a bigotry party and jumped in to associate the election of Mamdani with 9/11, saying that "we've forgotten" 9/11.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene—y'know what? I was going to include what she posted here—and it's shitty as hell—but I actually would rather just let you imagine the sound of a gurgling tar pit which would give more or less the same vibe as anything coming out of this person's mouth
• Elise Stefanik also echoed the same stuff from across the board, calling Mamdani a "radical communist" and "raging antisemite"
• Donald Trump, Jr asserted that "NYC has fallen"
• Donald Trump himself referred to Mamdani as a "100% communist lunatic" because words don't mean anything anymore.

A Genuine Surge

It doesn't just seem like an uptick in anti-muslim rhetoric. The Council on American-Islamic Relations noted a 5 fold increase in islamophobia and slur usage on Twitter the day after his victory, and noted that about 60% of the anti-muslim posts shared online came from Twitter.

I just want to remind folks that Mamdani is just a dude with fairly progressive policy stances when compared to standard US politics. I do not live in New York City, and do not tend to endorse politicians as a personal boundary. At the same time, the outsized response from the political establishment at this man is undeniably absurd given that among his most "radical" plans is subsidized public transit and a trial of city-run grocery coops, both of which already exist in some way in the US.

Maybe instead of freaking the fuck out about a city trying something different after decades of "let's hire more cops!" as the core mayoral platform, we can, I dunno—take some action to stop the federal government from fucking over virtually everyone with the upcoming tax bill? Speaking of which…

BBB Voting Underway

O-KAY. We're doing it again.

The Senate version of the "Big Beautiful Bill" is underway. As a refresher, this is the Republican-owned congress' spending and tax plan guided by Trump. They're attempting to pass it using the "reconciliation" process, which circumvents the need for the usual 60 votes to pass legislation due to the filibuster. Essentially, this means this plan is wholly owned by Republicans.

The House passed their version, and the Senate has now made their own tweaks, which somehow managed to make it even more expensive and strip even more people of healthcare coverage.

Here's some info on what we're looking at if this does pass in its current state:

Taxes

• The bill would make the tax cuts from Trump's first term permanent
  • We're under that tax plan now, but it is set to expire
  • If it expired, taxes would go up under Trump due to the temporary nature of his first plan
• No tax on tips is in there, but has income limitations and is only a temporary tax break
• Offers a larger standard deduction to seniors who make less than $75,000/year
  • Young people famously do not need money
• The child tax credit maximum would increase to $2,500, but would also be scaled down based on income, so the poorest people will likely see literally nothing while higher income families would get more money
• There is a current proposal to increase the SALT cap to $40,000, but GOP senators are looking to remove that
  • SALT (State and Local Taxes) is a dollar value that you can deduct from your federal taxes which is based on your state taxes if you don't take the standard deduction. Higher SALT means higher federal tax deductions for high-tax states

Medicare, SNAP, and Climate Cuts

To pay for the tax cuts, the GOP is planning to cut about $1.5 Trillion from the budget which would have gone to providing healthcare for the sick, nutritional assistance for the poor, and climate change incentives for businesses.

This would be the largest cut to Medicaid in US history by a massive margin, and is so detrimental to the health of Americans that Senators from more rural states are trying to include a provision to just have a lump sum of money to support rural hospitals who depend on Medicare to provide services.

Funding for US Concentration Camps

Make no mistake: we are already living in a time where our country has active concentration camps. This isn't even the first time we've done it! While right wing figures happily tour their "detention facilities," people are actively dying in ICE custody due to a grim lack of humane conditions. 911 calls from ICE facilities have spiked, and recently the US had to inform Canada of a Canadian citizen who died in ICE custody.

• $350 Billion for additional funding to ICE
• Funding for 10,000 new agents who would receive a $10,000 signing bonus each
• Funding for 100,000 "detention center beds" (aka concentration camp funds)
• A $12 Billion grant for supporting states who comply with ICE initiatives
• An additional $3.5 Billion grant to the US Attorney General office which they basically just did so they could give it a backronym that shortens to "BIDEN" because their brains are fucking broken

Overall

The Congressional Budget Office has evaluated the bill and projected the following outcomes. As a reminder, the CBO is a non-partisan group whose goal is to provide clarity in how legislation affects money.

• About 12 Million US citizens will lose healthcare coverage
• About 3 Million US citizens will lose nutritional assistance (SNAP / "food stamps")
• The plan will add upwards of $4 Trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years between the CBO estimate and unaccounted costs, far exceeding the original House bill's deficit additions, also in the trillions.

Of note with that last one: Republicans are going with a media strategy of claiming that the $4 Trillion number is bullshit. Their argument is that they're "not changing existing policy" by making the temporary tax cuts permanent, so they want to leave the tax cut losses out of the equation to make the losses look less bad. Unfortunately for them, that is not how reality works.

Largely, the bill is trying to undo some of the larger items from the Obama and Biden presidencies, such as the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Policy Stuff

SCOTUS Decision

The Supreme Court is really doing everything it can to remove any shred of it's own power, huh? First they overturn their own precedent (Roe), then they say the POTUS cannot be charged with crimes done in "an official capacity," and now they've decided that lower courts cannot instate a nation-wide injunction against POTUS executive actions.

This was tied up in court cases about birthright citizenship—a constitutional right for all people who are born on US soil, aside from children of diplomats. Trump is pushing to add more conditions for birthright citizenship in an attempt to stop "anchor babies," or children of undocumented immigrants who then become citizens due to the law of the land.

The SCOTUS didn't rule that birthright citizenship can go away, but they did rule that district judges can't stop the US government from infringing on citizens rights unless the citizens are specifically a part of a class action lawsuit.

This is going to be a mess, basically. It means that if the Trump admin does something blatantly illegal, they can just do that until a class action lawsuit is put together, and then only the people in the class are protected from the actions of the government. So for example, if Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, state AGs could sue on behalf of the people of their state a a class to prevent it, but then if your AG doesn't do that, then the Trump admin gets to just do illegal shit to you. Given that people can travel freely between states, it makes the question of specifically birthright citizenship in this model a disaster, which is why the SCOTUS was like, "uh, but not for that though, at least for now."

What does this mean for you? Unfortunately, it means that the Trump admin has more unilateral power. There's a couple dozen nationwide injunctions holding up some executive ordered which have been deemed legally fucking dubious at best, which are now headed back to the courts where the Trump admin is seeking to "narrow the scope" of those protected by the injunctions. This decision ultimately means that US citizens have fewer options to avoid being subject to illegal actions by the government.

Iran Bombings

We've got basically no idea what's up with Iran's nuclear program at this point. After the sudden leap into Israel's campaign against Iran, the US claimed unilateral victory in fully destroying Iran's nuclear program.

Unfortunately for the government, it's own intel seems to contradict that. Some US intel reports that we did indeed blow their nuclear program to hell, while other reports say it just damaged some stuff and we don't really know. Meanwhile, international nuclear organizations have states that Iran's enriched uranium likely remains intact, and that the knowledge for the program was not wiped out, meaning it was only set back perhaps a few months.

Regardless, the war between Israel and Iran simmered down a after a ceasefire deal went into effect which Israel and Iran both broke, though Israel also took the opportunity before the ceasefire went into effect to ramp up their attacks to the highest levels they could. After 48 hours and some angry phone calls from Trump, the ceasefire took, though remains shaky.

There is a plan for the US to restart nuclear negotiations with Iran, which Trump had ended in his first presidency, causing all of this to happen in the first place. Iran is unlikely to accept the US' requests, which includes having zero enriched uranium.

Kilmar, ICE, Detentions, Vance Meme

Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the man that the US Government admitted to "accidentally deporting" to the death camp prison CECOT in El Salvador—is back on US soil, but still in custody. He has filed petitions to at least be moved back to Maryland, where his wife and family reside, but that's not yet happened. Instead, US officials have stated that Kilmar will, "never go free on US soil," and that he is a, "dangerous criminal illegal alien."

Fuck all the way off. They've changed their story on him a dozen times, and that's not how due process works. The US government is unilaterally stating they intend to refuse a single man's freedom in perpetuity without having found him guilty of anything.

Meanwhile, ICE has continued their escalation of raiding and disappearing people from the streets. One recent case involves an Iranian woman who was abducted by ICE while she was out front of her home, gardening. She moved to the US as a teenager and has been here for 47 years with no criminal record. While she was denied a visa, she was granted a stay of removal, and consistently met the requirements to keep it that way. She is married to a US citizen and has tried for citizenship, but was denied.

Then, of course, there's the JD Vance meme situation.

Mads Mikkelsen (not that one) is a 21-year-old Norwegian man who was traveling to the United States as a tourist. When he got to customs, border patrol agents demanded access to his phone, where they found a widely-shared photoshopped meme of JD Vance. According to Mikkelsen, this angered border patrol, who then proceeded to detain and interrogate him, roughly handling him, placing him in a holding cell for several hours with no food or water, and forcing him to give blood samples and fingerprints, before deporting him back to Oslo.

The US asserts that the reason for his deportation was due to "prior drug use," as during the interrogation, Mikkelsen stated that he has previously used cannabis in countries where cannabis is legal. Despite cannabis being legal in several states in the US, it remains federally illegal, and the US technically can deny entry for basically whatever the fuck, so that's the reason they've given for violently handling and deporting a 21-year-old tourist. Makes total sense, because if he has previously used a substance in a place where the substance is legal, who knows what he could be capable of?

One last stat to leave here: there has been a more than 800% increase in ICE arrests for people without criminal records since Trump took office. Trump famously campaigned on removing the "worst of the worst violent criminals."

Note, however, that somehow these ICE agents who claim to be detaining the country's most violent criminals are somehow not dealing with their targets unloading dozens of rounds of ammunition into their bodies.

World Stuff

Israeli Attacks on Gazans

Israel is continuing it's ongoing holocaust in Gaza, with the biggest news currently being about the repeated attacks on residents of Gaza who are seeking aid at Israeli/US-backed aid distribution sites.

There have been several reports of Israeli soldiers and US "defense contractors" spraying gunfire into crowds of starving Gazans. Save the Children—a worldwide charity focused on children's rights—notes that more than half of all casualties in these slaughters have been children.

Additionally, sources from Gaza report at least 549 people have been killed while attempting to get aid from these sites since the start of the "relief" operation.

At time of writing, Israel is preparing to ramp up attacks in northern Gaza again, despite Trump saying he wants to see a ceasefire.

Character Limit Reached

Japan has executed the "Twitter killer," a serial killer who made a name for himself in 2017 by luring suicidal women to his apartment, promising to offer help, then killing them. His defense attorneys tried to argue that he was "killing with permission," but the guy ended up speaking out against his own lawyers, correcting that he did not—in fact—have consent to murder the women.

He got his name from using Twitter as his venue to find targets.

Horny Chinese Writers

Chinese authorities are cracking down on Boys Love story writers, interrogating them and charging some with obscenity violations.

According to the New York Times reporter Vivian Wang, the ongoing beef between the Chinese government and horny women seeking man-on-man novels has stirred up more discussion about the role of government in policing morality. It also stirred up more discussion about Boys' Love stories, so, well done Chinese Government.

(For the not-terminally-online, "Boys' Love"—aka "BL"—is a grenre of fiction writing which depicts gay, usually erotic relationships between men, but with a usual target audience of women)

Science Stuff

Exoplanets!

The James Webb Space Telescope has taken humanity's first ever picture of a far-away exoplanet.

Exoplanets are planets that aren't our close neighbors. They're… pretty far out in space. Because of this, it's ridiculously difficult to get a picture of them due to their proximity to a star which often just becomes a blip of light. And yet—since the JWST is apparently made and operated by interstellar wizards—scientists were able to filter out a star and get a "photo" of an exoplanet directly for the first time.

Big Booms in the Sky

Folks in Georgia and the Carolinas saw a massive fireball streak through the sky this past Tuesday, thanks to what reports say was a meteor that crashed down to our humble planet.

The meteor fell a little ways south of Atlanta, right through the roof of some poor family's house all the way through their floor. Nobody was hurt, but like damn—calm down, space.

Adblock for Your Face

A Belgian software developer has created a prototype adblock system using augmented reality glasses.

The system runs on a version of Snap's AR glasses, and uses Google's AI systems to detect ads and render a red box over them in your vision. This is of course dystopian as fuck, but also kind of hilarious that Google's own AI is now being used to detect and block advertisements.

That said, if we're heading towards a real-world ad-vs-adblock war, I'm just gonna retire to the wilderness, methinks.

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