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Rebecca Solnit:
Lifeguards and Angels

I have lived a long time but I have never lived through such a time of destruction, of nature, of human lives, of truth, fact, science, journalism, the rule of law. … It is often overwhelming, and it feels like more than any one of us can respond to.

But we can. We might need to take breaks or pace ourselves or find our niche and our people to do it. People are doing the work, often in undramatic ways — meetings, court filings, fundraisings, investigations, forms of support and solidarity that are not high-profile. But let me talk for a moment about a high-profile incident that riveted people across the country and the world. A few days ago, I watched a novice lifeguard, age sixteen, pull a younger boy out of the surf that threatened to sweep him away, on a Santa Cruz beach where the waves had suddenly become far larger and more dangerous. …

Even so, there are parallels. Many are caught up in the violence of Trump’s unregulated militias, the ICE stormtroopers, and many are trying to pull them back out to safety, to the solid ground of the lives they were leading in the places they lived. … Such lifeguards … do not always succeed but they go into the surf to try. Perhaps another lesson from that riveting video of rescue is that the waves may crash over you repeatedly before you get to safety. The process may not be simple and the outcome may not be certain while things unfold, which I say because I too often hear the lack of immediate victory interpreted as defeat.

In a way this is a terrible metaphor. The harm is not being done by a vast and ancient natural force or even by a majority; it’s being done by an unpopular regime that is plummeting in the polls and seems almost frantic to do as much as it can while it can (because they seem likely to lose the midterms, because they are losing popularity fast, because Trump seems to be in a phase of rapid decay, and because the courts– thanks to the lifeguards of the law–keep overturning their overreach and other transgressions). …
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Ryan Kennedy
@ pv magazine:
FCC bans foreign-produced solar inverters

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This means any solar or battery storage project relying on an inverter made outside the United States that has not already received an official FCC ID cannot legally turn on or interconnect. Because there is no phase-in period, grandfather clause, or grace window, the regulatory pipeline is frozen today, forcing developers to halt active procurements and find new hardware vendors. Crucially, this applies strictly to new inverter model filings rather than an absolute freeze on all foreign-built components. Find a fact sheet from FCC here.
…

The action effectively overrides the Department of Energy analysis from January 2026, which inspected 30 Chinese inverters and found zero evidence of malicious hardware. …

The immediate practical result is a massive equipment shortage that will delay upcoming commercial and utility projects. Department of Energy data shows that domestic manufacturers supply only seven percent of the U.S. solar inverter market, leaving a 93% deficit that cannot be filled by local factories anytime soon. This impact will primarily materialize down the line as manufacturers introduce new product refreshes or next-generation hardware designs that require fresh FCC grants.

The hardware blockade hits right as developers plan to connect more than 58,000 MW of new solar and storage over the next year. Without certified inverters, fully built solar farms will sit dark and unable to feed electricity to the grid.

Osmond Chia @ BBC: Trump administration bans new Chinese humanoid robots

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Chance Meeting:
Entering an American Concentration Camp

My Visit with Martin Soto at the Elizabeth NJ Concentration Camp

For almost two months, Martin Soto has been in solitary confinement in the Elizabeth Concentration Camp in New Jersey. Before being transferred there, he led a hunger and labor strike in Delaney Hall so effective, it made national news and spawned weeks of large-scale protests. For it, they punished him and painted him a criminal.

When Gabriela asked me if I wanted to join her during visitation and speak to Martin, I immediately said yes.

I had my doubts they’d let me in. Just the night before I had been outside taking pictures of the facility with Matthew Wagner and some others when a guard resembling a human rendering of Jabba the Hutt started yelling at us that we were on private property and had to leave. I asked where the signs were and what ensued was an argument turned lobbing of insults between me and Jabba before the police came to mediate.
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Laerke Christensen @ Snopes:
Did anti-migration buoys close port in Laredo, Texas?

Claim: In July 2026, anti-migration buoys broke loose as the Rio Grande flooded in Texas, closing the port in Laredo.

What’s True
Floodwaters did sweep away a number of anti-migration buoys on the Rio Grande, leading to Port Laredo temporarily closing its bridge for commercial traffic, the World Trade Bridge.

What’s False
This did not lead to the full closure of Port Laredo. City officials redirected commercial traffic to the Colombia Solidarity Bridge.

What’s Undetermined
It was unclear how the temporary closure of the World Trade Bridge affected trade at the port.

Sandra Sanchez @ Border Wall: Border buoys and wall will hasten flooding in Rio Grande in Laredo area

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Heather Delaney Reese:
Things are going to get better

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Dear MAGA,

I am not writing this to mock you or ridicule you. I am writing this because somewhere underneath all the chaos, I believe most of you still care about this country the same way I do. So I am asking you to stop for a moment. Not to listen to me. To listen to yourself. Look at your own life. Not the entertainment the other side is bringing you. Just your life.

Is it better? …

If you are starting to see what is really happening to our country, you do not have to go public or post about it or even tell a single person. You don’t have to admit anything to anyone. But when you look at what is in front of you and decide whether this is really what you want, it’s okay to know it isn’t. This country is headed somewhere very dark. But it does not have to keep going there. We still have a Constitution and elections. And the midterms are less than four months away. That can be your moment to let your voice be heard.

And if you are the one who has been quietly questioning, who has been wondering whether this is what you signed up for, you are not alone. More people are stepping back from this than any of us can see. Many are doing it the same way you are: quietly to themselves or to a small group of others who are also deciding this has gone too far. Every single person who decides they do not want to take the country on the path Donald Trump is taking us changes the math in the next elections and the trajectory of our country after.
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Tony Romm,Brad Plumer: Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 24, 2026

Tony Romm and Brad Plumer of the New York Times reported this afternoon that the Trump administration’s claim last October that it was cutting programs in order to protect taxpayers against waste was, in fact, a lie. In court filings, federal officials admitted that the $7.5 billion in cuts from clean energy projects begun under former president Joe Biden were “based solely” on whether states had voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought announced the cuts by saying, “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.” But, in fact, a government lawyer told the court that none of the cancellations were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

In contrast, the administration funded grants for states that had backed Trump in 2024, even though the Energy Department had recommended they be cancelled.

The admission calls into question the administration’s claims that it is making cuts to combat “waste, fraud, and abuse,” especially as Vought is working to finalize rules that would make political appointees the final arbiters of how the government would award more than $1 trillion in annual grants. Rather than combatting waste, it appears Trump and his cronies are trying to take control of the United States government, using the power of the American people for their own ends.
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The record of the Trump administration on July 24, 2026, shows a White House focused on the goals of Trump alone. It’s a striking contrast to a Fireside Chat broadcast over the radio on July 24, 1933. In that talk, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took stock of what he had accomplished in his first 100 days in office.

He explained that his administration had stabilized the nation’s banks and raised taxes to pay for millions in borrowing. That federal money was feeding starving people, as well as employing 300,000 young men to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees to prevent soil erosion, building levees and dams for flood control, and maintaining forest roads and trails. It was also funding a public works program for highways and inland navigation, as well as state-based municipal improvements. The government had also raised farm income and wages by regulating agriculture and abolishing child labor.

FDR urged Americans to get behind a program of shorter hours and higher wages to create purchasing power that would restart the economy. He explained: “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – July 23, 2026

… In early March 1953, soon after Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower took office, Soviet leader Josef Stalin died, giving the president a chance to reset the rising militarization of the United States. In mid-April, in a speech to newspaper editors that he insisted on delivering although he was suffering acutely from inflammatory bowel disease, Eisenhower warned of diverting the nation’s tax dollars to war at the expense of the people.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said. “This world in arms is not spending money alone.

“It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he said. “Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Eisenhower’s speech has been on my mind as the Trump administration slashes Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, foreign aid, scientific and medical research, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and yet is demanding more money for the Defense Department, bled out by Trump’s foreign adventures in Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and, of course, Iran.
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Omar Abdel-Baqui, Stephen Kalin, Saleh al-Batati @ WSJ: The Houthis Have Opened a New Front in the U.S.-Iran War

Yemeni militants set up standoff in one of the world’s most vital waterways with threats against Red Sea oil shipments

Sam Sifton @ NY Times: Photographic Evidence

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France24: French modelling scout linked to US sex offender Epstein found dead outside Paris

A French modelling scout with close ties to the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Under investigation in France, Daniel Siad, 69, was one of several French men accused of aiding Epstein to traffic and abuse women.
…

An autopsy will be carried out as part of the probe.

Targeted by several complaints, including allegations of rape, Siad was the subject of an investigation conducted by the office specialising in combating human trafficking.

Siad’s name appeared in more than 1,000 documents released as part of the declassified Epstein files.
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Miles Taylor, Jason Pack: Legal Tourist Killed by ICE Shatters Trump’s Narrative

… Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, the Mexican tourist killed running from ICE agents in St. Augustine. The right rushed to call him “illegal.” He wasn’t. He was in the country legally, two days into a vacation, with a return flight already booked. And according to an eyewitness, even the people standing there watching didn’t know the men chasing him were federal agents. So how was he supposed to know?

Andrés Rodríguez, Maye Primera @ EL PAÍS: Questions surround the death of Juan Jairo Coronilla, the Mexican who was fleeing ICE: ‘He came with his work visa’

The 28-year-old from Guanajuato worked as a furniture salesman and had a return ticket to Mexico for July 18. He was hit by a truck while trying to evade a migrant enforcement operation in Florida

Dan Gooding @ Newsweek: Who Is Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran? Mexican National Dies in Florida ICE Incident

Heather Delaney Reese: “I help Stephen Miller” – Homan just revealed who’s really running ICE

Heather Delaney Reese: There’s no question who’s in charge

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Ben Wikler:
The Number of Votes Needed to Change Everything Is Smaller Than You Think

The ceaseless attacks by the Trump administration and its allies on democracy, our communities, and fundamental American values can be overwhelming. …

It can leave you with a sense of powerlessness. When so much is falling apart, you might ask, how can we possibly get out of this mess?

As you think about where to spend your time and energy between now and November 4, it can help to keep this in mind: Mind-bogglingly important elections are, mind-bogglingly often, decided by a mind-bogglingly small number of people.

This was true in 2024.
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If just 114,885 Trump voters — spread in the right proportions across the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — had flipped their votes over to Kamala Harris, she would have won, …
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The closest U.S. Senate race in 2024 came down to just 15,115 votes. …
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How about the GOP’s U.S. House majority? In 2024, that was the product of just 7,309 votes across three ultra-close House races. …
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