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Jess Piper: Silencing Mockingbirds

Reading is resistance

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I was in my classroom, and it must have been second or third hour because I remember I was hungry — we hadn’t had lunch yet, and I was running too late that morning to grab breakfast. I was reading a short chapter from To Kill a Mockingbird aloud to my 8th graders.

Most liked it so far.

My Principal walked in for an observation and noticed we were reading a novel, and then proceeded to walk right back out…he stood at the door for a second and told me to visit his office after school.

If you think being summoned to the Principal’s office as a child is terrifying, you should be summoned as a teacher.

A shiver went down my spine.
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BBC: Renewables overtake coal as world’s biggest source of electricity

Renewable energy overtook coal as the world’s leading source of electricity in the first half of this year – a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember.

Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use.

However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture.

Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation.
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Robert Reich: The Mad King’s Television

When over the weekend federal Judge Karin Immergut (a Trump appointee) blocked Trump from deploying Oregon’s National Guard to Portland, Trump said she “should be ashamed of herself” because “Portland is burning to the ground.”

Trump promptly ordered the California National Guard to Portland.

Apart from the obvious question of how Trump can so blatantly defy a federal judge, there’s a deeper puzzle here. Where did he get the idea Portland is burning to the ground?

Nine days ago, when Trump first threatened to send troops to Portland, Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, told him there was no reason. “He thinks there are elements here creating an insurrection,” Kotek said after her call with Trump. “I told him there is no insurrection here and that we have this under control.”

Trump responded to Kotek this way:

“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? … They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … it looks like terrible.”

Why the factual discrepancy between what Governor Kotek told Trump about Portland and what he believed was happening there?

In the suit seeking an injunction to stop Trump from sending troops to Portland, which Judge Immergut granted, the state of Oregon alleged that Trump relied on videoclips from Portland protests over the murder of George Floyd that took place in 2020.
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Jason Easley: Inept Republican Senate Majority Leader Demands Democrats Reopen Government He Controls

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) demanded that Democrats reopen the federal government that he and his party control.

The difference between John Thune and Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader is that McConnell refuses to sell out the Senate’s independence to Trump. Thune abandoned the Senate’s status as part of a coequal branch of the government.

Republicans keep trying to blame Democrats for the government shutdown when poll after poll shows that their strategy is not working, but since this is what Trump told them to do, Republicans keep failing.
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Sen. Thune could announce today that he is bringing the Senate back into session tomorrow to vote to change the rules to require 51 votes to pass the House CR.

Thune can do that, and he could do it very easily, because Republicans have total control of the federal government.

This is a Republican shutdown.
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Dan Wang and Arthur Kroeber: The Real China Model

Beijing’s Enduring Formula for Wealth and Power

A decade ago, planners in Beijing unveiled Made in China 2025, an ambitious scheme to take leadership of the industries of the future. The plan identified ten sectors for investment, including energy, semiconductors, industrial automation, and high-tech materials. It aimed to upgrade China’s manufacturing in these sectors and others, reduce the country’s dependence on imports and foreign firms, and improve the competitiveness of Chinese companies in global markets. The overarching goal was to transform China into a technological leader and turn China’s national champion firms into global ones. The government backed this vision with enormous financial support, spending one to two percent of GDP each year on direct and indirect subsidies, cheap credit, and tax breaks.

China has been wildly successful in these efforts. It not only leads the world in electric vehicles and clean technology power generation; it is also dominant in drones, industrial automation, and other electronics products. Its lock on rare-earth magnets produced a quick trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump. Chinese firms are on track to master the more sophisticated technological goods produced by the United States, Europe, and other parts of Asia.

And yet China’s model still has many skeptics. Lavish funding, they point out, has led to waste and corruption. It has created industries in which dozens of competitors manufacture similar products and struggle to make a profit. The resulting deflation makes companies wary of hiring new staff or raising wages, leading to lower consumer confidence and weaker growth. China’s economy, which once looked poised to overtake the United States’ as the world’s biggest, is mired in a slowdown and may never match the American one in total output.

These problems are not trivial. But it is a serious error to think they are big enough to derail China’s technological momentum. …
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Jim Palmer: The Gospel of Jane

The passing of a voice that taught us how to listen

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

I read In The Shadow of Man in 2003 and it changed my life. This was Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking memoir that chronicles her early years studying wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. As a young boy I was fascinated by chimpanzees and gorillas. Jane introduced me to David Greybeard, Flo, and Fifi.

Jane Goodall, the pioneering primatologist and conservationist, passed away on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, at age 91 from natural causes while on a speaking tour in California.

Her legacy is monumental…
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Closer to the Edge: 25 QUESTIONS

Because Opposing Fascism Apparently Needs Clarification Now

1. If I walk in here with a copy of Alice’s Restaurant on vinyl, does that count as antifascist literature under NSPM-7?
2. Can I still sing “you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant” without being charged as a domestic terrorist — or do I need a permit?
3. When Arlo Guthrie said he was “sittin’ on the Group W bench,” did he mean the one reserved for antifascists in 2025?

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Bill McKibben: A different kind of leader gives a different kind of speech

An afternoon with the Pope
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If you’d told me 20 years ago that the Roman Catholic Church would emerge as perhaps the most progressive large global institution, I would have giggled. And I am well aware of the Church’s myriad defects (though feel free to enumerate them further in the comments section below; you won’t offend me, a sometime Methodist). But beginning with Francis’s noble gestures and continuing with his mighty encyclical Laudato Si—a thorough and scathing critique of modernity, and probably the most important document of this millennium so far—the Vatican has been out in front in many ways.

And the sense I got from listening to the Pope speak this afternoon is that that will continue.
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John Pavlovitz: Bad Bunny and MAGA’s Super Bowl of Racism

Sometimes you don’t have to work to figure out where the racists are. Sometimes they out themselves.
 

Within nanoseconds of the NFL announcing that Latin rapper Bad Bunny would be performing the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the Trump cult tore itself away from Charlie Kirk martyrdom, MAGA church shooter retcons, restaurant logo crusades, and pro-ICE posturing to launch into a full-on frenzy of performative white histrionics in protest.
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He is the literal embodiment of the American Dream that the GOP has spent decades waving in our faces.

So, what’s the problem?

Let’s just say it’s a pigmentation issue, with a side order of MAGA cultism and a dash of homophobia thrown in.

As I mentioned, Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico, which a terrifying number of MAGAs don’t seem to know is an American territory, as they’ve fallen all over themselves to decry the supposed insult of a “non-American” artist playing the Super Bowl. (Something tells me the objections weren’t leveled at the Who or the Rolling Stones or U2, but in those cases the melanin was more compatible and palatable.)

Many of the outraged Right have suggested that ICE should show up at the game and deport Bunny. Deport him from where, exactly? Others have (without merit) bristled at a guy who “doesn’t speak English,” while they still can’t differentiate they’re, their, and there.

This kind of knee-jerk, mob mentality vitriol is what Trump’s movement has fostered and fomented, and what it demands.

A self-described gender-fluid Latin musician who sings predominantly in Spanish has previously criticized Donald Trump and recently lamented the inhumanity of ICE? He must be condemned and vilified and eradicated because membership in the mindless death cult of white American intolerance they now call home requires it.
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James Eagle: Tariff receipts have exploded

I’ll admit my bias upfront: I deeply oppose tariffs because they contradict everything I believe about free trade. Trade is the thread that stitches our world together, compelling us to engage with one another whether we like it or not.
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Here’s the dirty secret about tariffs: they’re a magnificent tax machine. Monthly customs receipts have rocketed from $7-8 billion to nearly $30 billion, while the trade deficit yawns at the same old $90-110 billion, utterly unmoved by the current protectionist theatre.

American businesses and shoppers meanwhile foot most of the bill through higher prices. Clever multinationals meanwhile, simply shift their supply chains, shipping through Vietnam or Mexico rather than bringing jobs home. It’s taxation dressed up as trade policy.

For investors, this is perverse: retailers and car manufacturers are bleeding margins while government coffers swell. The speed of it all is breathtaking. Tariff receipts nearly quadrupled overnight, yet the trade deficit couldn’t care less. Anyone betting this windfall will last is dreaming. It’s a transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector. This is cyclical cash grab, not structural reform, and the hangover will be spectacular.
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