From Senator Chris Murphy

Last night in the Senate, something really important happened. Republicans forced us to debate their billionaire bailout budget framework. We started voting at 6 PM because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.

So, I want to explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. The apex of Republicans’ plan to turn over our government to their wealthy cronies is a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And they plan to pay for it with cuts to programs that working people rely on. 

Popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, are all being targeted. In order to pass the tax cut, Republicans have to go through a series of procedural steps. Last night, they took the first step which requires them to pass an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as we want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that.

Now, we knew that Republicans would largely unanimously oppose them, but we had two objectives here. One, Republicans were forced to put their opinion on record — many for the first time — on the most corrupt parts of Trump and Musk’s agenda. Two, as I’ve been saying, I am going to make every process and procedure as slow and painful as possible for as long as my colleagues choose to ignore the constitutional crisis happening before our eyes.

So what did we propose? We proposed no tax cuts for anyone who makes a billion dollars a year. We made them vote on whether or not Elon Musk and DOGE should have limitless access to Americans’ personal data. We made them vote on whether to protect IVF and require insurers to cover it. Every single amendment Democrats proposed was shot down. On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. Every Republican voted against our proposal to prevent more tax cuts for billionaires. The corruption and theft is happening in the open here.

The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the wealthiest that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people. Oh, and by the way, any tax cuts for working people are going to be washed out by higher costs for basic necessities, like health care and food. It’s a fundamental injustice.

Thanks to your pressure and support, many of my Democratic colleagues have joined my effort to do everything we can to make sure they cannot destroy democracy and steal your money in the dark of the night. We are being loud about what is happening. I’m going to continue to grind the gears of Congress down as much as possible to make it that much harder and slower to get away with this corruption. That’s why the votes lasted until nearly 5 AM.

This is a five-alarm fire. I don’t think we have two years to plan and fight back. I think we have months. It’s still in our power to stop the destruction of our democracy with mass mobilization and effective opposition from elected officials. So, we can’t miss any opportunity to take advantage of opportunities to put Republicans on the record and shine a light on what is happening.

And you have a role to play in this as well. I need you to amplify what’s happening, support the leaders who are fighting for you to make sure they can continue speaking truth to power against Musk and Trump’s billionaire cronies, and show up at rallies and town halls. Use every tool at your disposal to send a message loud and clear about how you expect my colleagues to lead and fight in this moment.

Every best wish,

US Senator Chris Patrick Murphy

"History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny"

I fear our mistakes far more than the strategy of our enemies. —Thucydides (470–400 b.c.), Pericles’ Funeral Oration    

It wasn’t all at once (although sometimes the last three months seem that way). Authoritarianism never is. It happens drip by drip, crisis by crisis, until people forget what normal even felt like.

This is how fascism seduces a nation: not by storming the gates, but by wearing down our ability to be outraged. And Donald Trump, more than any political figure in modern American history, has weaponized this steady march into moral and civic numbness.

Ten years ago, if you’d told Americans that a U.S. president would attempt to overturn an election, openly praise dictators, take naked bribes from both foreign potentates and drug dealers, call the press the “enemy of the people,” cage children, pardon traitors and war criminals, and promise to act as a dictator on his first day in office, they’d have laughed. They would’ve told you, “That can’t happen here.”

But it did. And now the real danger is that we’re getting used to it. Let’s not forget:

— When Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, the political class gasped. Now it’s barely discussed.

— When he orchestrated an attempted coup on January 6th, 2021, it was the top story in the world. Today, most Republicans call it “a protest” or a “tour.”

— Had any previous president invited an immigrant billionaire who promotes fascist memes to rip the guts out of the Social Security Administration and shut down USAID (handing our soft power to the Russians and Chinese) there would have been hell to pay. Now Musk’s extraordinary damage to our government is barely discussed.

— When Trump began calling undocumented immigrants “animals” and labeling judges and prosecutors as “scum,” it horrified the media. Now it’s part of the daily churn.

— When a federal judge’s son was murdered by a Trump campaign volunteer it shocked America; now judges are routinely threatened and Republicans won’t even give the judiciary control over the US Marshall’s Service to protect them.

— When Trump praised Putin and Viktor Orbán and suggested suspending the Constitution, the headlines flared, but then faded fast.

— When he arrested a Tufts University student for having written an op-ed in the student paper critical of Netanyahu and threw her into prison for months, the country was appalled. Now he’s rolling out loyalty tests for civil servants and investigating the social media posts of American citizens returning to the country and nobody’s even discussing it any more.

— When ICE agents showed up in Portland in 2020 in unmarked vans without uniforms and their ID missing, kidnapping people off the streets without warrants, Americans and the media were shocked. Now seeing jackbooted thugs with masks covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves has become “normal.”

This is the playbook. Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very banality and ordinariness of evil is its greatest weapon.

Victor Klemperer, a Jew who converted to Lutheranism and then chronicled the rise of Nazism in Germany, saw how average people learned to live with, to adapt to, to bear the unbearable. In his 1942 diary he wrote:

“Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence... and yet still hours of pleasure... and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping.”

Sebastian Haffner, another German observer, noted in Defying Hitler that even he, a staunch anti-Nazi, found himself one day saluting, wearing a uniform, and marching (and even secretly enjoying the feeling of authority associated with it).

“To resist seemed pointless;” he wrote, “finally, with astonishment, he observed himself raising his arm, fitted with a swastika armband, in the Nazi salute.”

And Milton Mayer, in They Thought They Were Free, described how good, decent Germans came to accept fascism. He was a Chicago reporter who, following World War II, went to Germany to interview “average Germans” to try to learn how such a terrible thing could have happened and, hopefully, thus prevent it from ever happening here.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people,” Mayer wrote, “little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....”

He wrote about living there and the ten Germans he befriended: I found his description of a college professor to be the most poignant. As Mayer’s professor friend noted, and Mayer recorded in his book:

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow-motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ...

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must someday lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

In this conversation, Mayer’s friend suggests that he wasn’t making an excuse for not resisting the rise of the fascists, but was simply pointing out what happens when you keep your head down and just “do your job” without engaging in politics.

“You see,” Mayer’s friend continued, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. …

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked — if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33.

“But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.

“The world you live in — your nation, your people — is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

“But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”

Sound familiar? Stephen Miller’s recent musing about suspending habeas corpus to lock up immigrants and even protestors without trial? That would’ve sparked emergency hearings a decade ago. Now it’s barely a blip.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint to purge civil servants and replace them with regime loyalists in complete defiance of the Pendelton Civil Service Act (and the reasons it came into being), should be setting off alarm bells. Instead, it’s getting the same treatment Trump gave Covid and his multiple deviances of the law and the courts: denial, deflection, delay.

It all comes back to normalization, as M. Gessen so brilliantly chronicles in The New York Times: “And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.

“Think of the trajectory of the so-called travel ban during Trump’s first term. Its first iteration drew thousands into the streets. The courts blocked it. The second iteration didn’t attract nearly as much attention, and most people didn’t notice when the third iteration of the travel ban, which had hardly changed, went into effect. Now Trump’s administration is drafting a new travel ban that targets more than five times as many countries.”

When we stop being shocked, we stop reacting. And when we stop reacting, democracy dies. But there is a path forward. The antidote to normalization is resistance. Not just in voting booths, but in the streets, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in pulpits, and at dinner tables.

Thucydides, who had one of the clearest eyes in history about the dangers faced by democracies, said:

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet nonetheless go out to meet it.”

We must regain our vision and resensitize ourselves. We must reclaim our capacity to be appalled.

That means when Trump calls Democrats “vermin,” we don’t say “that’s just Trump being Trump”; we say, “That’s fascist rhetoric.”

When he promises to use the military against American citizens and sends out immigration officers dressed up like soldiers at war, we don’t shrug; we organize.

When Project 2025 tries to turn federal agencies into tools of vengeance, we don’t wait and see; we fight back now.

When armed federal agents hide their identification and their faces the way terroristic police do in dictatorships as they kidnap people off our streets, we call them out.

History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny. And our children won’t either. This is the time to remember that democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires outrage. It demands vigilance. And sometimes, it needs us in the streets with our fists in the air and our boots on the pavement.

If we still believe in this republic, in its ideals, and in the sacred value of a free and fair society, then our answer to Trump’s authoritarianism must be more than words. It must be peaceful action. Don’t get used to fascism. Get loud. Get active. Get in its way.

-Thom Hartmann

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“We’re in a moment of maximum engagement”

 

Trump has attempted to govern by executive orders (largely unsuccessfully, thanks to the barrage of litigation that has been brought against the lawless regime), tied the economy up in knots with a tariff frenzy, and secured a continuing resolution in March thanks to the foolish capitulation of Senate Democrats.

Otherwise, he has accomplished none of his legislative objectives. Even more embarrassingly, MAGA Republicans are on defense, trying to pass a massively unpopular tax and spending bill. Part of their failure can be attributed to internal dysfunction, but popular protest and effective inside/outside maneuvering from House Democrats have played key roles.

House Democrats did not have the votes to stop the bill, but they made the vote razor close and exacted quite a pound of flesh from Republicans in the process. Democratic staff have provided a detailed account of the struggle Republicans went through to pass a widely disparaged bill that has caused the bond market to quiver and has drawn the ire of everyone from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

On Friday, May 16, the House Freedom Caucus Republicans rebuffed the House GOP leadership bill. But late Sunday night (the first of several late-night maneuvers underscoring the legislation’s unpopularity), the GOP-controlled Budget Committee sent the bill over to the Rules Committee.

Before dawn on Wednesday morning, the House Rules Committee convened to try to jam home the bill. House Democrats, lacking numbers to defeat the measure, nevertheless gummed up the works for hours. Inside the Capitol, Democrats, starting with House leadership, sent 100 members to testify for 20 hours with some 500 amendments.

This dragged out the debate during the day, requiring Republicans to do exactly what they did not want to do—take scores of votes defending a hugely unpopular bill. (It’s no coincidence that Democrats on the House Rules Committee had their act together; unlike other committees, these members are handpicked by the Minority Leader.)

Debate went late into Wednesday night, when the Democrats convened a House caucus meeting. According to a Democratic source, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (R- N.Y.) told his members: “We’re in a moment of maximum engagement.” He added: “This is just one round in an epic contest. And they made this bill more extreme. It’s gonna make their swing-seat Republicans even more vulnerable.”

“We’re in a moment of maximum engagement.”

Just before midnight, Democrats tried to adjourn to give members time to make the slew of changes Republicans had rammed through. Republicans refused, meaning virtually no Republican took the time to read or review the bill in any detail. The bill finally came to the floor for a vote on Thursday morning at around 6:00 a.m. Every Democrat voted against it. The bill passed with the smallest margin (215-214), with two Republicans missing the vote, another two voting no, and one voting present.

House Democrats also played the outside game, as they have been doing from the time Democrats started showing up at GOP members’ town halls. At least a dozen Democrats went out in force on traditional media and, in a break with the past, sought out spots via new media to lambaste a scheme that would take away healthcare coverage, food aid, and green investments to fund tax cuts to the super-rich.

Democrats in the House, as they did in 2017 when the Affordable Care Act was on the chopping block, ultimately did not have the votes to stop the GOP bill. But they did the next best thing: they forced vulnerable House members to take rotten votes and make the bill unpalatable to many Senate Republicans—not to mention most Americans.

Jeffries told Republicans on the floor on Thursday, May 22: Because the American people are paying attention, they are smarter than you think, and they know when they are being hurt. They know when their interests are not being served, and they know when they have been lied to and deceived. Labeling Republicans as flunkies of Trump, Elon Musk, JD Vance, and billionaires, he could lay claim to Democrats being the party for ordinary Americans.

Outside activists can claim credit for having mobilized the public, focused the media on the egregious aspects of the bill, stiffened Democrats’ spines, added pressure on Republicans, and carried the message that this is a reverse Robin Hood bill that will come back to haunt Republicans. Senate Democrats, not known to be as vigorous and aggressive as their House counterparts, are now in the spotlight. Their challenge is to draw out enough Republican opponents to sink or hugely modify the bill.

It’s far from clear what will happen next. According to polling, the bill is unpopular, underwater in approval by double-digits. Rather than be the centerpiece of the GOP agenda, it has fast become an albatross around the necks of every Republican. Nevertheless, they have made egregious statements in defense of the bill, which includes the most devastating Medicaid cuts in history. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) provided Democrats with the talking point they could dream of: Republicans justifying cuts to Medicaid because “We’re all going to die.”

Faced with the devastating impact of the bill (e.g., 14 million people losing insurance, 22,000 deaths, nearly 100 rural hospitals being closed), Republicans are forced to lie about the bill. But that’s par for the course. “House Republicans lied to America. On the campaign trail in 2024, they promised to lower the high cost of living and disavowed Project 2025,” Jeffries told The Contrarian. “This year, the Republican majority has done nothing to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”

Even business leaders are in panic mode. The Wall Street Journal related Jamie Dimon’s dire warning at the Reagan Nation Economic Club: “You are going to see a crack in the bond market, OK? It is going to happen.” The Journal explained, “Bond markets have been rattled by the prospect that the already wobbly fiscal situation in the U.S. will worsen, should tax legislation backed by President Trump become law.” The Journal confirmed it would add trillions to the deficit. (No wonder Rand Paul is up in arms.)

In sum, over the next couple of weeks, Democrats in the Senate and a united opposition throughout the country must make certain the public understands exactly what Republicans are trying to pull off. “For the rest of this Congress, House Democrats will continue to expose the so-called moderate Republicans who spent weeks pretending they would protect healthcare, nutritional assistance, and clean energy jobs — only to quickly cave to Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Jeffries vowed.

If Republicans pass this nightmarish bill, their own constituents will suffer from severe Medicaid, SNAP, and green energy, setting them up for defeat in 2026. If they don’t pass it, the Trump tax cuts will expire, the MAGA base will be in an uproar, and Trump’s presidency will be in tatters. House Democrats deserve credit for carrying the ball this far; now it is up to Senate Democrats to keep the public engaged and fully expose GOP lies seeking to provide cover for a bill no one can defend on the merits.

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Sandy Koufax

 

When you speak of legends that transcend baseball, few names resonate with the same awe and reverence as Sandy Koufax, famously known as "The Left Arm of God." Born on December 30, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, Sanford Koufax wasn’t immediately destined for baseball immortality; in fact, during his early years, he was more focused on basketball, attending the University of Cincinnati on a basketball scholarship. Yet fate had other plans.

Koufax’s baseball career began with flashes of brilliance marred by inconsistency, but what followed over twelve electrifying seasons with the Brooklyn and later Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966 would forever alter the landscape of Major League Baseball.

His fastball was a thing of pure, blistering beauty — a sonic boom of a pitch that left batters bewildered — while his devastating curveball broke with such wicked, jaw-dropping sharpness that even the most seasoned hitters were rendered helpless.

It wasn’t merely that Koufax dominated; it was how he dominated. Between 1961 and 1966, he crafted one of the most awe-inspiring stretches of pitching mastery ever witnessed, culminating in four no-hitters — a feat that was almost unthinkable at the time — and a perfect game that etched his name even deeper into baseball lore. Sandy Koufax wasn't just winning games; he was redefining the art of pitching itself, setting standards that future generations would desperately chase but rarely reach.

In 1963, Koufax’s genius fully erupted onto the national stage. That year, he achieved the holy trifecta for a pitcher: winning the pitching Triple Crown by leading the National League in wins, strikeouts, and ERA, and capturing the Cy Young Award — the first of three, each secured by unanimous vote, an astonishing measure of his undisputed supremacy.

That same year, he was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player, a rare honor for a pitcher, proving he was not merely the best on the mound but arguably the best player in the entire league.

His performance in the 1963 World Series was legendary, dismantling the mighty New York Yankees with two complete-game victories, including a record-setting 15-strikeout masterpiece in Game 1 that left even the proudest Bronx Bombers humbled and speechless. Koufax wasn’t just a pitcher; he was a force of nature, and the spectacle of his dominance turned every appearance into a must-watch event.

Yet perhaps what made Sandy Koufax even more iconic was the dignity and grace with which he carried himself, both on and off the field. He was a man of few words, letting his pitching speak volumes, but when he made a statement, the world listened — as when he famously refused to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. In an era before athlete activism was common, Koufax’s quiet stand resonated far beyond sports, earning him a place not only in baseball history but also in the broader narrative of American culture and conscience.

The 1965 season might well have been the summit of Koufax’s astonishing career. Battling severe pain from chronic arthritis that increasingly ravaged his left elbow — to the point where he was reportedly taking cortisone shots and pitching with his arm practically numb — Koufax still managed to hurl 335 innings, post a 26-8 record, rack up 382 strikeouts (a National League record that stood for decades), and capture another Cy Young Award. In the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins, Koufax delivered one of the gutsiest performances in sports history.

With the series tied, he pitched a complete-game shutout in Game 5 on just two days’ rest, then returned in Game 7 to blank the Twins again with a masterclass of pitching brilliance, securing the championship for the Dodgers. Koufax didn’t just win; he conquered pain, he conquered fatigue, he conquered expectation. He rose above every conceivable challenge, transforming suffering into legend with every perfect curveball that snapped across the plate, every batter he froze in stunned admiration.

But greatness often comes at a price, and for Sandy Koufax, that price was his career. After the 1966 season — another Cy Young-winning, ERA-leading, strikeout-dominating campaign — Koufax made the heartbreaking decision to retire at just 30 years old, rather than risk permanent damage to his arm.

Despite the abrupt end, Koufax's impact was everlasting. In 1972, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as the youngest player ever elected at the time, a testament to the seismic magnitude of his brief yet blindingly brilliant career. Koufax’s statistics are mesmerizing on their own — a career ERA of 2.76, 2,396 strikeouts, four no-hitters, a perfect game, three Cy Young Awards, two World Series MVPs — but numbers only tell part of the story. His career was a comet across the baseball sky, burning bright and fast, leaving behind a trail of wonder that no one could ever forget.

Even decades after his retirement, his name remains synonymous with the highest ideals of sportsmanship, excellence, and humility. The sight of Sandy Koufax, in those crisp Dodger blues, pausing mid-delivery with that classic high leg kick, before unleashing a pitch that seemed to defy the laws of physics, is seared into the collective memory of baseball fans everywhere. His legend is renewed every time a young pitcher dreams of perfect mechanics, or an athlete chooses principle over profit, or a fan whispers in awe about "the Left Arm of God."

Beyond his pitching, Koufax’s mystique was also built on his aura of quiet elegance. In an era when celebrity often meant flamboyance, Koufax was fiercely private, almost enigmatic. He shunned the spotlight after retirement, declining interviews and public appearances, allowing his myth to grow organically rather than through self-promotion. That decision only fueled the fascination surrounding him; he became not just a hero, but a symbol of a purer time, when greatness spoke for itself.

And yet, when he did appear — as he did during the Dodgers’ milestone celebrations, or when offering wisdom to the next generation of pitchers — the reverence in the air was palpable. Sandy Koufax wasn’t merely admired; he was revered, like a sacred relic of baseball’s golden age.

Even among his peers, Koufax’s greatness inspired almost spiritual awe. Hank Aaron once said hitting against Koufax was like "drinking coffee with a fork," and Willie Mays called him the toughest pitcher he ever faced. When the greatest players in history speak of you in such tones, you know you have touched something eternal.

Today, more than half a century after he last threw a pitch in anger, Sandy Koufax’s legacy endures not just because of the astonishing records or the glittering accolades, but because of the purity of his excellence. He showed the world that greatness isn’t about longevity alone; sometimes, it’s about shining so brightly, so intensely, that your light can never be extinguished. Sandy Koufax didn’t just play baseball — he elevated it into an art form, a nearly spiritual experience for those fortunate enough to witness it.

His career was a triumph of talent, willpower, grace, and integrity, and his story remains a golden thread woven into the rich tapestry of American sports history. For every kid picking up a baseball and dreaming of greatness, Sandy Koufax remains the ultimate, almost mythic, inspiration — proof that even if your time is short, you can still touch eternity.

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Ants and Their Unified Purpose

 

Once, waking up in nature early in the morning, I noticed something surprising. Several dozen ants had fallen into a five-liter bottle of water that had been left open the night before. They waved chaotically in the transparent water, as if each one was fighting for its life. At first, it seemed to me that they were drowning each other, saving themselves at the cost of the death of others.

This thought made me repulsed, and I turned away, deciding not to intervene. However, after two hours, curiosity got the better of me, and I looked in the bottle again. My astonishment knew no limits: the ants were alive! Furthermore, they had formed a true living island, a pyramid, in which some were supported by others, staying afloat like an entire colony.

I held my breath and began to observe. Those at the bottom were actually submerged in the water, but not forever. After a while, they were replaced by ants from the upper layer, which voluntarily descended. Those who were tired went up, without hurrying, without pushing the others.

Nobody tried to save themselves first. On the contrary, each one made an effort to go where it was most difficult. This coordinated system of mutual aid touched me to my core. I couldn't resist. I found a spoon that easily passed through the neck of the bottle and carefully inserted it. Seeing salvation, the ants began to come out one by one, without generating even a drop of panic.

Everything was going well, until one of them, weakened, slipped back into the water, without reaching the edge. And then something happened that I will remember all my life. The last ant, almost outside, suddenly turned back. He came down, as if to say: "Hold on, brother, I won't leave you!"

She dove into the water, clinging tightly to the drowning one, but she couldn't pull him out on her own. I couldn't resist, I brought the spoon closer, and then they both came out, alive, together.

This episode moved me more than any movie or book about friendship and sacrifice. I felt a storm of emotions: first, condemnation, for having taken the ants for insensitive beings; then, amazement at his resistance; admiration for his discipline and brave sacrifice... And in the end, shame.

Shame on humans. For us. Because of indifference, because of how we lose each other in pursuit of benefits, because of how rare it is that someone comes back to save the weak. We build walls, instead of creating living bridges.

If ants, small creatures, are capable of such coordination and selflessness, why are we humans so often deaf to the suffering of others? That day I understood one thing: true strength is in unity. And if someone still doesn't know how to live correctly, let them learn from the ants.

-David Attenborough

Massive Database, Immigration, Tariffs, HIV Vaccine Research...

·       Donald Trump has reportedly enlisted the data analytics company Palantir to help build a massive database containing information on every American citizen.

·       As anticipated by critics, the federal government—through the Department of Governmental Extraction (DOGE)—has aggregated vast amounts of personal data from various agencies. That information is now reportedly being transferred to Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Donald Trump has tapped Palantir to construct a sweeping database containing records on virtually all-American citizens.

·       Observers note that Thiel, a longtime advocate for strong centralized power and a self-described political disruptor, has spent years positioning Palantir at the intersection of government and surveillance. The move is raising fresh concerns about privacy, civil liberties, and the future role of private tech firms in state intelligence efforts.

·       U.S. immigration authorities are collecting DNA from migrants—including children—and uploading it to a national criminal database, according to newly released government documents. While the FBI-run system is typically used for individuals arrested or convicted of crimes, most migrants whose DNA is being gathered by Customs and Border Protection haven't been charged with any felonies, raising concerns about what experts are calling a sweeping expansion of genetic surveillance.

·       The Trump administration has admitted to wrongfully deporting another Salvadoran man despite a court order blocking the removal, citing a “confluence of administrative errors.” His attorney now plans to seek his return to the U.S.

·       Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he plans to raise tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50%, effective June 4. The move marks a significant escalation in his protectionist trade agenda and is likely to provoke strong responses from both international trade partners and domestic industries.

·       College and university leaders have been quietly meeting with senior White House advisor May Mailman, a close aide to Stephen Miller, in an effort to avoid the kind of federal pressure recently aimed at Harvard. As the administration intensifies its campaign against schools over how they handle alleged antisemitism, officials are warning that federal funding may be cut, calling universities "incubators of discrimination" that can no longer count on taxpayer support.

·       Despite claims made by RFK Jr. earlier this week, the CDC’s updated immunization schedule still recommends COVID vaccines for healthy children—as long as it's approved by their doctor.

·       The Trump administration has delivered a major setback to HIV vaccine research by shutting down a $258 million program that was considered vital to ongoing development efforts.

·       A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Trump’s plan to carry out mass firings across multiple federal agencies will remain on hold. The decision is a significant setback for Trump’s push to downsize the government through sweeping layoffs—known as reductions in force—after a lower court found he lacked the authority to implement them without Congress.

·       Iran has continued to expand its stockpile of uranium enriched close to weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The agency is urging Tehran to reverse course immediately.

·       Donald Trump hasn’t ruled out the possibility of pardoning or commuting former Senator Bob Menendez’s sentence, though sources close to him say such a move remains unlikely.

·       New satellite images reveal that North Korea has deployed what appear to be balloons near a damaged 5,000-ton warship that has remained partially submerged since a failed launch last week. Experts say the balloons might be intended to help stabilize or conceal the vessel, which was meant to showcase North Korea’s naval modernization but was severely damaged after a launch malfunction on May 21.

·       Workers at the U.S. Department of Energy warn that budget cuts and deregulation are weakening the agency’s ability to function and could drive up energy costs for consumers. According to independent analyses, Trump’s proposed policies—including repealing clean energy tax credits—could raise household utility bills by over $230 annually by 2035 and jeopardize future energy innovation. The department is also facing steep staff reductions, with thousands reportedly taking buyouts or being laid off amid a proposed $19.3 billion budget cut.

— Aaron Parnas

Parnas Perspective

 

Prepare yourself for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn

WASHINGTON (AP) — Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world’s top weather agencies forecast.

There’s an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it’s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office.

“Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stronger precipitation, droughts,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the calculations but said they made sense. “So higher global mean temperatures translate to more lives lost.”

With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused climate change “we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events (particularly heat waves but also droughts, floods, fires and human-reinforced hurricanes/typhoons),” emailed Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not part of the research.

And for the first time there’s a chance — albeit slight — that before the end of the decade, the world’s annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said.

There’s an 86% chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70% chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured.

The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centers of scientists.

Ten years ago, the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance — about 1% — that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical 1.5-degree threshold and then it happened last year. This year, a 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner, something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called “shocking.”

“It’s not something anyone wants to see, but that’s what the science is telling us,” Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement.

Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement’s threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated.

“With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also, we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape,” said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter.

Ice in the Arctic — which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world — will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said.

What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from an El Nino, which adds warming to the globe, the planet doesn’t go back down much, if at all.

“Record temperatures immediately become the new normal,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

-PBS