Common Dreams

New FEC filings show the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has become the dominant funder of the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican Senate super PAC. Musk was responsible for 58% of the fund’s third-quarter fundraising, and his latest contributions bring his total giving to the Republican group to $168 million. His contributions to a single party super PAC appear poised to exceed the previous record by approximately $100 million.

In response, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said:

“Elon Musk is pouring unprecedented sums of money into Republican super PACs, giving him extraordinary financial leverage over the party’s political future, in an attempt to sway the midterm results with his net worth. The current state of our campaign finance system allows one billionaire to supply the overwhelming share of a major party’s political funding. This is undemocratic and flat-out wrong. America should be a nation where the voices of regular people are heard just as loudly as the ultrawealthy. And where the billionaire class is prevented from consolidating political power.”

Musk also has his own pet super PAC, which he has given $126 million according to recent analysis by Public Citizen. In 2026, Musk has contributed a total of $366 million to super PACs and other political groups in an effort to help Republicans win in November.

A Fox News poll has revealed that corruption is a leading issue for voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, with a whopping 88 percent saying they are concerned about corruption, including 60 percent who say they are “extremely concerned” about it.

In response, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert issued the following statement:

“The public is furious about the corruption they see from the government. Even Fox News polling says as much. If we see a shift in power in the next Congress, the American people will expect the new holders of the gavels to deliver oversight and accountability in a strategic and disciplined way that zeroes in on the real harms that the current regime, in cahoots with corporate power, have carried out at the expense of everyday Americans.”

The devastation goes on apace at the teeny toxic hands of the clowns and hacks in power (maybe not much longer?). Topping the abuses: An assault by Homeland Security (sic) thugs on the home of a duly elected (albeit female, brown, Muslim) member of Congress for imaginary crimes as a child. Also: racist rallies, fake rumors, defying of court orders, calamitous fails on all sides. Their witless leader: "If Republicans get in power, you're going to (have) a depression. These people are incompetent."

In 2022, Cory Doctorow helpfully wrote Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. At the time, it was an analysis of how the Internet went wrong, a sort of "Big Tech disassembly manual" aimed at curbing powerful people from making transactional, short-term, self-serving policy choices ultimately bad for everyone but themselves. Alas, since the return of Trump 2, many argue the same dismal process of enshittification has oozed and expanded outwards to become "the organizing principle of US statecraft" itself, rendering pretty much everything in the public sphere....shitty.

Trump and his cabal of low-lifes daily ensure we get ample evidence of that dark reality. Their latest target: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the first Somali-American lawmaker, one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, the most visible refugee in American politics and Trump's worst nightmare who has long endured the most venomous of his abuses, which is going some. After four childhood years spent in a Kenya refugee camp, she came to the U.S. at 12, was reportedly 17 when her late father filed their immigration paperwork, was sworn into Congress at 36, and will now likely see easy re-election in the mid-terms.

For those crimes, she's been relentlessly bullied, threatened and assailed by a racist buffoon who has sneered she's "garbage," "totally crooked" and a "terrible person" who married her brother, came from "a non-country - all they have is crime and squalor," and should be sent back there, a notion his audience of bigots and cretins embraced this weekend at another Nazi rally where they mindlessly screamed, "Deport!" This, after Trump intoned "they are looking at her very carefully" after a judge signed a piece of paper allowing DHS goons to raid her home in the dubious name of unclear charges of vague unproven offenses.

The raid, which defies longtime DOJ policy banning major actions just before an election - "Another hard norm out the window" - was foreshadowed by racist story creator J.D. burbling it "seems like something's fishy there“ as he and Goebbels worked to decide, "How do you go after her (to) get some justice for the American people?” What a crock. A steely Omar responded to their clumsy "fascism in the extreme" by calling it "just the latest escalation" in ten years of Trump's "baseless lies and smear campaigns." “I will not be silenced,” she concluded, which reportedly "translates from Congressional-speak as 'Fuck You.'"

Trump, meanwhile, lumbers on, learning nothing. At a rally in Ohio that drew a paltry few thousand - with empty seats hidden by tarps and flags - he fittingly marked Columbus Day with more racist crap. He celebrated Haitians losing their legal status, insisted "I was right" about Springfield residents eating pets, called Somalis in Minnesota "low-IQ people," attacked Omar, from "the worst country," for claiming constitutional rights. (More "Deport!" chants. Jesus.) He also admired Jon Husted's ass - "I don't do this with men very often" - and urged on fans beating up a protester he called "fat," "paid," and "scum." (Pot/kettle.)

And he still keeps losing in court. Hungry to turn a public, affordable D.C. golf course where he dumped East Wing debris into a private fat cat resort, he tried to pull a fast one - filing a Friday 5 p.m. request, then razing 430 trees the next morning - on a judge who furiously blasted the “inexcusable," "preposterous" action, ripped him a new one - "In what universe did anyone in your office think this was acceptable?" - slapped him with a restraining order, and warned if they violated the order "by two seconds" they'd face contempt charges. "We did our best,” whined regime lawyers. "No," she snapped. "You did your absolute worst.”

So it goes. Another judge again blocked - past Election Day - the ludicrous, $20-million, taxpayer-funded, "educational and unapologetically patriotic" propaganda ads she banned once; in another end run, regime weasels moved them to YouTube. One ad portrays the desperate fragile snowflake as a lion who has to "show the jackals who he is." Another declares, "God made Trump...somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild...who goes into the den of vipers, cares for the flock (and) won't ever forsake them," especially if they accept his $5,000 bribe.

Implausibly, his lackeys are just as lame and awful. Despite facing a scarcity of agents and funds, FBI head (sic) Kash Patel has been boasting of his supposed crackdown on violent crime, claiming the arrest of over 54,000 violent criminals, or 90% more than in the Biden era. Less than shockingly, his numbers turn out to be wildly inflated by including arrests by state and local police and other federal agencies where an FBI agent may have happened to be present. In fact, actual numbers show FBI arrests are down at least 15% from previous years, though at least they're busy harassing Trump's personal enemies.

There's more macho bullshit from aspiring warrior Pete Kegsbreath, fresh from his Arsenal of Freedom Tour (really). Speaking at an annual Army meeting on a panel of warmongers eager to expand the use of unmanned drones to make death-dealing even easier, Pete was repeatedly interrupted by protesters calling him a "coward" and "Nazi.” "The world fucking hates you. You're a fucking war criminal," yelled one. "We’ll see you at the goddamn Hague." Pete grew increasingly irritated; maybe he'd read reports that, despite their brave boat strikes, record supplies of cocaine still arrive here, "cheaper and purer than they've been in decades."

Other MAGA flops abound. When James Talarico took a week off the campaign with the flu, conspiracy crackpots decided it was a cover for a mental health crisis. Spencer Platt's crude take: “This isn’t a case of the ‘flu’, it's 'one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” The "silly season" claim fell apart so fast even right-wingers were embarrassed. "This is such shit work, bro," wrote one, wondering if Talarico would sue. There was also the cringey fall of Kimberley 'The best is yet to come!' Guilfoyle, and Trump's brazen distancing - "She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago” - despite the surfacing of damning partying video on Jan. 6.

And the rise of new Press Barbie Katie Zacharia, former Pizzagate and QAnon fan, whose debut - so bad "a Zacharia may replace a Scaramucci as a time measurement" - was summed up by The Atlantic : "Hi, I'm Your New Press Secretary, and It's My First Time Reading Words Out Loud...I swear I have seen a sentence before, and I know where one stops and. Starts. And whether? To speak. With a rising inflection?" Now there are reports the self-described lawyer isn't one; a complaint has been filed with the California Bar for “the Unauthorized Practice of Law," and one account says she took the bar but failed it.

Fail fail fail: Thy name is MAGA. Perhaps we should be grateful; unimaginably, the current clusterfuck could be worse with competence. Take the Defending Main Street Super PAC, "the most effective independent expenditure organization for the GOP," which just spent tens of thousands of dollars to run a million 30-second ads arguing, “Maine can’t afford Troy Jackson and all his taxes" in the wrong Portland - Oregon, not Maine, over 3,000 miles off-base. One Maine operative: "At least now Portland, Oregon, can enjoy some of the crap we’ve been seeing every day.” MAGA's mantra: Make it shitty. Ours: Make it stop.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Today’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report shows prices rose 0.6% in September and are up 3.7% over the past year, the fastest pace since May. Gasoline prices jumped 9.1% in September alone, accounting for over half of the monthly increase in overall prices, and are up 34% from a year ago. Core CPI, excluding food and energy, rose 0.33% in September, the largest monthly increase since April.

Americans are increasingly frustrated with Trump's failure to bring down high prices. Consumers' views of current economic conditions are at an all-time low, and 82% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the cost of living. Instead of working to rein in inflation, Trump is trying to pull a fast one on voters, spewing empty promises to bring prices down and send Americans a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans hold Congress, despite having never delivered on the DOGE and tariff checks he promised last year.

Today's inflation report is the last before the Federal Reserve's October 28 interest rate decision. The Fed raised interest rates last month for the first time in three years because of inflation concerns, and most officials anticipate another increase by the end of the year. In its latest meeting minutes, the Fed pointed to Trump's tariffs and higher energy costs, as well as the president’s never-ending war with Iran, as drivers of persistent inflation. Trump’s war and tariffs are raising the prices of nearly everything families buy, and now his actions are raising borrowing costs for families, too.

Groundwork’s Senior Vice President of Policy, Advocacy, and Research Alex Jacquez, released the following statement:

“It’s no wonder Americans have lost faith in Trump’s economy. The president has repeatedly made promises he can’t keep, and despite the band-aid attempts from the White House, there is a gaping hole in our economy just weeks from the midterms. Between the president’s war in Iran and reckless tariffs, his economy is on life support.”

The following statement was issued by Richard Fiesta, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, regarding the announcement that there will be a 3.6% cost-of-living (COLA) benefit increase for millions of Social Security beneficiaries next year:

“Millions of Americans who rely on Social Security welcome any increase in their monthly benefits, but even this larger-than-normal cost-of-living increase is just not enough to keep up with the cost of food, gas, utilities, and prescription drugs.

“The average retired worker will see about $74 more per month next year but a good chunk of that will be wiped out by the higher Medicare Part B premium, which is projected to rise to $209.50 a month in January.

“Strengthening and expanding Social Security must be a national priority. If billionaires and the wealthiest 1 percent pay their fair share, we can boost benefits for everyone, implement a COLA that reflects the cost of things older Americans spend money on, and guarantee the program’s solvency for future generations. It’s time for clear and decisive action.

“In just three weeks, older Americans will have an opportunity to elect members of Congress who will make strengthening Social Security a priority. The future of our earned benefits is on the ballot.”

The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, on Social Security’s 2027 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which will be 3.6 percent:

“Every year, Social Security’s benefits are automatically adjusted to account for inflation. This is an essential feature of the system, which prevents benefits from eroding over time.

Next year’s COLA can’t come soon enough for many Social Security beneficiaries. The Trump administration's war of choice with Iran and tariff chaos have driven gasoline prices up nearly 40 percent, and caused grocery costs to skyrocket.

The COLA adjustment will help. But it doesn’t fully account for the costs that Social Security beneficiaries face. That’s because the measure used to calculate it, the CPI-W, is designed to reflect the costs of working people — not retirees, who spend a higher percentage of their income on healthcare, housing, and other bare necessities.

Democrats in both the House and Senate have plans to improve the COLA, by switching to a more accurate measure, the CPI-E. Meanwhile, Republicans complain that the current COLA measure is too generous.

Many Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have endorsed plans to use a stingier measure, the chained CPI. That’s a cut to the American people’s hard-earned benefits.

Over time, switching to the chained CPI, as the Republicans have proposed, would shrink yearly benefits by hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Switching to the CPI-E, as the Democrats propose, would increase benefits. This would particularly impact women and Hispanics, who have longer average life expectancies.

In 2032, within the six-year terms of U.S. Senators elected this November, Social Security is projected to face a funding shortfall. The vast majority of Republicans refuse to support a single penny in revenue increases, even from the ultra-wealthy, to address the shortfall. That leaves benefit cuts, including less generous COLAs, as their only option.

The bottom line: Social Security’s future is on the ballot this November, and that includes the size of annual COLA adjustments.”

The anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the three-year, U.S-funded Gazan genocide it ignited marks the birth of a dark new world where "the unthinkable has become banal," where many thousands of damaged Palestinian children - homeless, toy-less, traumatized, unschooled, with mournful questions about a lost world - have been given only "tents, hunger, and rubble as answers." Zohran Mamdani on the arduous, unfulfilled task before us: "There must be room to mourn every single life."

Precisely one year into what over 100 human rights organizations around the world call "a ceasefire in name only," Gaza remains "Ground Zero" in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In the last three years, Israeli strikes have killed at least 74,254 people, including over 21,500 children, and wounded 175,000 more, killing or wounding more than 1 in 10 of Gaza's pre-war population; health officials estimate tens of thousands more dead remain buried beneath Gaza's 61 million tons of rubble. Since the start of the so-called ceasefire on Oct.10 of last year, at least 1,470 more Palestinians have been killed, including nearly one child a day. No hospital is fully functional, over 1.4 million Palestinians face crisis-level hunger and most Gazan families remain trapped in a devastating cycle of loss, grief, deprivation and uncertainty.

Reports seeping out from a still-mostly-blockaded Gaza describe "entire worlds wiped out" - extended families, neighborhoods, over 80% of all buildings, resulting in nearly 1.9 million Palestinians displaced. Gaza's missing, or last seen detained, handcuffed, tortured, naked, haunt those who survive: "We don't know whether to mourn them or wait for them." During occasional prisoner swaps, Israel hands over images or remains of decomposing bodies of detainees, many handcuffed, blindfolded, missing limbs, clearly tortured. Parents scroll or search through them, all that's left of a long-missing son: "How did I become a mother who hopes to find her child among mutilated corpses? My dream was to hug him. Now I pray simply to bury him."

Others relive brutality they withstood: fires, bombings, multiple evacuations, sights, smells, sounds of phosphorous bombs, drones, tanks; the terror of running to an outhouse fast enough not to "be sniped," as bombs fall the uneasy sleep close enough to outside walls that, if buildings fall, neighbors can dig them out or at least bury them, the first up-close sight of Israeli soldiers swathed in armor, looking "invincible." The orders to strip to underwear, blindfolded, tightly handcuffed behind backs; kneeling on ground of broken glass and rubble; insults, beatings, cold relieved only when their own warm welcome blood from punches runs over them. Trying to pray or sleep, hallucinating "between life and death," when blankets, speaking, changing position is forbidden: "Everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death."

Palestinian detaineePhoto by Activestills

And always there are the children, Gaza's "lost generation," roughly 700,000 students left behind by three years of war and deliberate “scholasticide" that have destroyed 95% of their schools, turned the rest into shelters for the displaced, killed over 20,000 students and 1,000 teachers, seen books burned for fuel for warmth or cooking. At the start of a new school year, the UN and its partners have set up over 500 tent sites - no desks, chairs, books, water, ovens in summer, freezing in winter - to serve up to 100,000 hungry, shell-shocked students struggling to focus in an attempted return to a "normal life" they can't imagine, who've grown up falling asleep to the sound of bombs, "their entire existence one of life amid rubble, tents, stones and sand," writes Tareq Hajjaj of kids often too young to remember what a home or school was.

Hajjaj fled for Cairo in 2024 so his only child wouldn't "grow up believing the whole world looked like Gaza." He left behind 15 nieces and nephews whose "expectations for ordinary life" he's seen shrink; on one video call, a six-year-old nephew saw him sitting on a sofa and asked how he fit it in his tent, and they dream only of a bigger, dryer tent. In the occupied West Bank, residents likewise endure new Israeli gates that turn villages into "an effective cage," Bedouin families are expelled, settlers steal land, livestock, homes, olive groves harvested by Palestinian generations past. This is not a Palestinian "superhuman capacity" for resilience, Hajjaj argues, but "the ordinary human behavior of people who have no other choice, who are left alone to their fate." To cope, they dismiss the hardship with “aadi,” Arabic for normal -"it is what it is" - but "there is nothing normal about it."

Many Gazans are still surviving on a fraction of the food aid they need.Getty Image

In a deeply complicit America that contributed over $30 billion to the enduring carnage, the truth of what our blood money has wrought slowly seeps out. Last month, the New York Film Festival premiered NAZA, the Guardian-produced documentary by two Israeli filmmakers that offers a grim "Window Into Systems of Mass Killings" in a Gaza where rabid Zionists argued there are "no innocent people." NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for civilian deaths as high as 500 for one legit target, presents damning testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers, faces obscured from Israeli retribution, who veer from naming their genocidal acts to rationalizing them through performative nods toward their guilt - a longtime form of Israeli sort-of-moral-reckoning with state violence known as "shooting and crying" that critics dub "addiction to the mediated obscene." The film will stream for free in November on The Guardian website.

This week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani proffered a more heartfelt, equitable reckoning with what remains "a moral tear in the universe" by attending a peace vigil and press conference to commemorate the grim anniversary. As expected, he caught flak from both sides when he called out both Hamas' “horrific war crimes” - he's a Muslim "traitor" - and Israel's “devastating, ongoing genocide” - he's an "anti-Semite." Calmly, he noted, he "signed up for this," and will continue to insist on it, citing the need to equally mourn and extend human rights to the over 1,100 Israelis killed and 74,000 Palestinians subsequently killed. "This is part of what it means to believe in a sense of humanity, " he said. "We need not choose between which death we will mourn and which we will ignore, and we must reckon with the fact that all of it is to be opposed.”

A ceasefire in name only: The mother of 8-year-old Amal al-Mughayir mourns her death in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last month.Photo by Doaa Albaz

Further glad proof of that reckoning was the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to “Navi” Pillay, 85, South African jurist, former U.N. human rights chief and member of the ICC who has led decades-long fights seeking accountability for apartheid, wartime rape and most recently the Gaza genocide. The Nobel committee cited Pillay's “exceptional courage”; noting her last report naming Gaza a genocide, she responded, "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Fittingly, Pillay learned of the award while at Germany's Nuremberg Forum, where Nazis went on trial in 1945: "I was sitting here minding my own business, listening to the panel present their research, because you’re always learning.” When colleagues applauded her, Pillay won the Internet by slyly adding, "Thank you so much. If you clap a little more, I may share this prize with President Trump."

Last year, Pillay was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. She dedicated it to “all the survivors of international crimes” and to “defenders of international justice (who) ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign.” Joining her righteous fight is Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Recently, per Zeteo, Toha wrote A Letter of Sympathy to the President of the United States after he saw posts online mocking Trump when he was seen wincing at the “deafening sound" of a military flyover for his autocrat bestie Chinese President Xi. "I didn’t like the tone of many of those posts,” Toha wrote. "I don't blame you for such a reaction/ I have reacted like this, and worse, hundred of times..."

To wit:
"My parents, wife, kids, and siblings have too.
So all of us now
know how
that sound feels.

In 2008, I was 16
on the roof of our house in Beit Lahia,
standing with my father, watching his pigeons in their coop,
when an Israeli, U.S.-made F-16
flew low, like a shaving machine,
before razing a neighborhood.

I panicked at its piercing shriek,

but also at the sight of the missiles

mounted beneath its wings.

But Mr. President, all of us, except you, know
the screech of a missile
or the blast of an explosion.
Do you know what’s louder than the screech and the blast?

The voice of a mother in Jabalia Camp,
begging me on October 31, 2023,
to search for the bodies of her husband and children
under the rubble
not just of her house,
but of the entire neighborhood.

The desperate pleas of 5-year-old Hind Rajab
from her uncle’s car in January 2024,
and the 335 bullets fired at her
before, during, and after the call.

The trickle of tears on the cheek of a father
who returned with no bread for his kids in a tent
in Khan Younis, and the screams of an infant
whose mother’s breast had dried up.

The heartbeat of 18-year-old Ahed
as her uncle, Dr. Hani Bseiso,
amputated her leg on a kitchen table,

without anesthesia.

It was dark!

The grinding footsteps of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyya
as he walked toward the tank in his white coat.

I can hear the sound of his disappearance.

And I can still hear and hear more!

But do you know what will be much louder than all?

The sound of the gavel
in the court of justice."

As part of the Trump administration’s ongoing push to illegally expand oil and gas drilling into long-protected Arctic public lands in Alaska, the Department of the Interior today announced a categorical exclusion that aims to exempt oil and gas exploration projects from individual review under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Under the categorical exclusion, Interior is relying on old environmental studies from different projects in ecologically distinct areas to claim that new proposed activities would have “no significant impact on the environment.”

Categorical exclusions are typically used by federal agencies only for small projects like routine road or trail maintenance, restoration work, or minor facility upgrades – when no harm is expected to the environment. An exemption for large-scale industrial activities like exploratory drilling and seismic testing across a landscape as vast, varied, and changing as the Western Arctic is a radical departure for how categorical exclusions are typically used.

The 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the Western Arctic is the largest tract of public land in the U.S. Its diverse habitats range from tundra and wetlands to mountain foothills, grassy uplands, riparian areas, and river deltas. Using older studies that analyzed impacts of oil exploration in a specific area of the Western Arctic to forecast impacts for future projects in ecologically different locations is extremely problematic and unsupported. It would also completely cut out the public from future permitting decisions.

“In issuing this categorical exclusion, this administration is seeking to fast track large scale oil drilling and seismic exploration without any further environmental analysis or public input,” said Earthjustice Attorney Janet Bering. “It is cutting the public out of this decision and future decisions. The administration finalized this new approach with zero public input. Combined with a similar proposal that rubber stamps new oil production, this is a one-two punch. It’s bad policy, and it is unlawful.”

Exploration projects, which include seismic surveys, exploratory drilling, and related infrastructure, are known to harm wildlife, including caribou and polar bears. Seismic surveys are conducted with thumper trucks weighing tens of thousands of pounds that repeatedly strike the ground with a large plate to send seismic waves into the earth to detect oil deposits. Transporting industrial equipment and camps for seismic workers across sensitive landscapes also comes with significant risk to the environment.

Last winter, a massive drilling rig nicknamed “the beast” toppled over, caught fire and spilled diesel while it was being transported on an ice road to a new exploration site.

Today’s action follows a similar proposed rule announced by the Trump administration last month to rubber stamp new drilling production projects in the Western Arctic. The public may comment on that proposed rule, but if itis finalized, the public would be cut out of the process. The production rule aims to require Interior to approve new projects as massive as Willow within a 60-day limit of the oil company submitting its application, without any additional environmental study or public process.

Background

The 23-million-acre Reserve in the Western Arctic is one of the most biologically, ecologically, and culturally significant tracts of public land in the United States. The region is home to iconic and imperiled wildlife species like polar bears and seals that depend on sea ice. It provides globally significant habitat for millions of migratory birds and for Alaska’s unique caribou herds.

The Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976 recognized the importance of the Western Arctic for wildlife and migratory birds including animals protected under the Endangered Species Act, and for the cultural practices and food security of Indigenous communities. The act requires the BLM to assure adequate mitigation of harm from oil and gas activities, and “maximum protection” of the fragile tundra, birds, wildlife and other unique resources within the Reserve when it allows exploration or drilling in special areas. When Congress authorized leasing and oil extraction in 1980, it again directed the federal government to assure the protection of the Western Arctic’s ecological and cultural resources.

Today, the Trump administration invited fresh controversy when it announced it will abandon environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to allow oil and gas companies to run roughshod over pristine Arctic ecosystems to search for expensive, far flung oil.

The Bureau of Land Management granted the polluters a new categorical exclusion that will allow activities including seismic surveys, construction of ice roads and airstrips, and exploratory drilling to move forward without the environmental analysis typically required under NEPA. The decision comes as the Trump administration continues its push to expand oil and gas development across Alaska's public lands, threatening sensitive Arctic wildlife and the communities that depend on them.

In response, Mike Scott, National Oil and Gas Campaign Manager, released the following statement:

“The Trump administration is handing Big Oil another free pass to exploit America's public lands, this time by gutting environmental oversight in one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. Oil companies have already shown the risks they pose to the Western Arctic, and now this administration wants to make it even easier for them to drill without scrutiny.”

“This isn't about lowering energy costs or helping Alaskans. It's about doing the fossil fuel industry's bidding at the expense of wildlife, Alaska Native communities, and our public lands. The Trump administration is putting corporate profits ahead of people and the planet, and the Western Arctic will pay the price."

In response to allegations that U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle abused her diplomatic position to advance private gas interests in the Balkans, Oil Change International’s Allie Rosenbluth said:

“Trump’s push to lock Europe into decades of U.S. gas dependence puts fossil fuel profits ahead of people’s energy bills, health, and safety [1]. Any use of diplomatic power to threaten elected governments or secure private gas deals would be an outrageous abuse of public office and must be investigated.”

Note to the editor:
[1] To read more about Europe’s increasing dependence on U.S. LNG imports: Pay, Baby, Pay: Trump’s AI and energy dominance agenda means costlier LNG for Europe.

Corporations that have benefited from the Trump administration’s cancellation of federal enforcement actions have given $210.5 million in contributions and pledges to MAGA Inc., and other Trump-aligned Super PACs, according to a new investigation by Public Citizen.

The finding comes as Public Citizen’s new analysis documents the Trump administration’s cancellation of 212 federal enforcement actions involving 205 corporations, including 80 investigations, 67 dismissed enforcement lawsuits and 54 canceled accountability measures involving alleged corporate misconduct.

Among the largest contributors, including corporations, executives, and investors are as follows:

• Elon Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX benefited from at least eight canceled enforcement actions, pledged to spend $100 million to help elect Republicans in the 2026 midterms, largely through America PAC which he controls, and gave $5 million to MAGA Inc.. Both Tesla and SpaceX benefited from four canceled actions each.

• Crypto.com, which profited from the Securities and Exchange Commissions’ (SEC) cancellation of an investigation into allegations that the crypto platform traded unregistered securities, gave $35 million to MAGA Inc., and another $2 million to Keep America Great, both Trump-aligned Super PACs.

• Gemini, similarly profited from a dropped SEC investigation into allegations of trading unregistered securities, gave $20 million to MAGA Inc. Its co-founders, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, personally gave an additional $10 million each to MAGA Inc.
• Andreessen Horowitz, along with co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, gave $12 million to MAGA Inc.. Nine corporations that benefit from canceled actions are a part of the firm’s investment portfolio.

“Corporations and ultra-wealthy executives with enormous financial interests before the federal government are pouring extraordinary sums into the president’s political operation,” said Robert Weissman, Public Citizen co-president. “Once the check is cashed, the administration is pulling back enforcement actions meant to punish corporate misconduct. It’s a great deal for the corporate wrongdoers – at the expense of their victims and the American people.”

“The potential is limitless when companies and the wealthy people behind them can give millions of dollars to Trump-aligned political groups,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the report. “The scale of these contributions raises fundamental questions about what corporations are expecting when they invest heavily in a political operation, especially when it involves the President of the United States.”

Public Citizen’s Corporate Enforcement Tracker is an online resource for watchdogging the Trump administration’s cancellation of federal enforcement actions brought against corporations prior to President Trump’s second term.

In response to the outcome of the pre-COP summit in Fiji, Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi said:

“These talks were an underwhelming precursor to the summit in Türkiye next month. The absence of leaders from the richest and most polluting countries sends a dangerous signal that the global commitment to tackling the climate crisis is wavering.

“While rich governments fail to take responsibility for climate action, the world faces an onslaught of climate disasters. Devastating heatwaves in Europe claimed thousands of lives this summer, while a lethal combination of El Niño and existing climate breakdown leaves millions of people facing hunger across the Horn of Africa and Latin America.

Leaders cannot spend another COP sidestepping their climate commitments. At COP31, rich governments must increase their climate finance commitments and hold the richest polluters accountable.”

Oxfam Australia’s Policy and Advocacy Lead Josie Lee said:

“For Australian leaders to leave the pre-COP talks without a single substantial funding pledge, merely repackaging previously committed funding, is irresponsible, and falls short of the bold leadership it promised. Australia spends ten times more on fossil fuels subsidies than it does supporting its neighbors to act on climate change.

“We cannot claim to be a responsible regional partner while continuing to prioritize support for coal oil and gas over adequate climate finance. Oxfam Australia is calling on the Government to demonstrate real solidarity with its Pacific neighbors, by putting money on the table and taking responsibility for our share of the climate crisis.”

Executive Director of Oxfam in the Pacific Eunice Wotene said:

“Our hope for hosting pre-COP in the Pacific was that leaders of historically polluting countries would see for themselves the losses and damages with which we are grappling and take decisive action. We urge leaders to take these observations onward to COP31 to ensure the richest countries, corporations and individuals are held accountable for their disproportionate role in the climate crisis.”

Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson had the following response to the news that Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton discussed cuts to Social Security in private conversations in Washington, as revealed in leaked audio published by the Texas Tribune:

“It's disgusting that Ken Paxton is laughing while planning to cut Social Security benefits for everyone in this country, including the nearly 5 million Texans who rely on Social Security and the 1.3 million Texans who Social Security keeps out of poverty.

“This is a sick man who thinks it’s a joke to push over a million Texans into poverty by stealing their hard-earned benefits. This is a man who should not be allowed anywhere near the levers of power, since clearly he thinks working people are a joke to be laughed at with the billionaire donors he works for.”

Facing significant backlash to his recent TV ads, Trump recently declared he will no longer use taxpayer funds to pay for partisan advertisements. He has not indicated that he will reimburse the U.S. Treasury for public funds wasted so far.

Public Citizen has filed multiple complaints against the Trump administration for using taxpayer dollars for the ads, which lavishly praise the character of Trump and boost congressional Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. AdImpact estimates $10.1 million in taxpayer funds was spent on the production and airing of these ads. The complaints allege that the payments violate federal laws against using taxpayer funds for “propaganda” purposes and the involvement of White House staff in producing and distributing the ads violate the Hatch Act.

Craig Holman, Ph.D., government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

“It apparently took weeks for the Trump administration to realize it is illegal to use taxpayer dollars to pay for campaign commercials.

“But what of the millions of taxpayer dollars already spent on these self-adulation campaign ads? The act of having wasted taxpayer dollars on these ads remains a violation of law. At the very least, Trump and his administration must reimburse the Treasury and face the consequences for violating federal law and the Hatch Act.”

More than 200 conservation organizations sent a letter today urging Congress to oppose the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026,” introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Mike Lee (R-Utah). The bill includes sweeping attacks on the Endangered Species Act that would gut protections for nearly every endangered species across the country.

The legislation would weaken the Act’s gold-standard “best available science” mandate, making it substantially harder to protect imperiled species and the places they live. It would also surrender authority to states to conduct Section 7 consultations — one of the most important safeguards against harm from federal agency actions.

“We don’t have to choose between protecting our most endangered animals and plants and building a clean energy future,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hollowing out the Endangered Species Act only benefits energy-hungry data centers and the fossil fuel industry while leaving monarchs, manatees, and countless other species to pay the ultimate price.”

The bill also includes judicial review provisions that would make meaningful review of certain Endangered Species Act challenges much more difficult.

“Friends of the Earth US is proud to stand beside our NGO partners in the fight to uphold our country’s bedrock environmental laws,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “It’s paramount that Congress keeps things in perspective as it continues to navigate our desperate need for a clean energy future. There is no reason to throw endangered species under the bus to secure what falls short of even a half-measure approach to achieving justly sourced, renewable energy access and affordability.”

Today’s letter notes that “real environmental champions do not trade away the world’s strongest conservation law in pursuit of a legislative mirage that does nothing more than grease the wheels for pipelines, data centers, petrochemical buildouts, and the next generation of energy-guzzling tech infrastructure.”

Apologies for invoking again the awful noise that never stops. But a month before mid-terms, a fascist feckless clown show run by the dumbest people ever churns on with lies, bribes, cruelty, crude racism; their flailing leader grows daily more perilous; and fiery patriots remind us we cannot grow weary. Oddly, we find solace in Lindsey Graham's 2016 prophesy to the GOP: "If we (choose) Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it." God: "And in the fullness of time...."

Because we are well and truly beyond the looking glass, an actual, NYTPitchbot-likeTimes headline just posited that "some conservatives are having second thoughts" about Trump - this, even as he continues obliterating every institution of democratic governance, bars press outlets, ignores court rulings, betrays allies, courts autocrats, spews profanities online and at rallies, turns the election into a reality show and the Oval Office into a bordello, and shovels over $1.8 billion into junk vanity projects as his approval plunges to 26% on the economy and his brain dissolves into mashed potatoes. "Second thoughts?"

Decades ago, Robert Reich warned an American economy moving increasingly overseas through the 1970s was creating a two-tired society of a few rich winners and too many left-behind Americans whose anger, resentment and historic racism could be easily manipulated by a savvy carnival barker hungry for power - especially with a right-wing SCOTUS willing to give him almost total immunity for his boundless crimes. The grim result: What Timothy Snyder calls unprecedented "superpower suicide," wherein a major country quickly crashes and burns due to incompetence at all the "basic instruments of state power."

Now, facing "the mid-term music," the GOP flounders through "a five-alarm fire," pulling out lies, bribes, denial. They "must WIN" by using "every tool" - vote early, absentee, in person, by mail (or ICE thugs). Rick Wilson: "Oh, NOW mail-in ballots AREN'T a scam? Sweaty Don is nervous." They hype a duplicitous White House App: "365 Days of Wins." Trump offers a stream of paltry bribes: $90 to 20 million seniors to offset higher Medicare costs he caused, $500 to a million "excess" Obamacare fees, $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win, conjuring a shameless Oprah-like spectacle: "You get a car, and you get a car..."

The alleged master of the Art of the Deal grows cringey and desperate, as do his boasts. At a recent rally: "I know more about inflation, I know more about everything than anyone in this room, anybody anywhere in the world." Of his two-day "emotional support" debacle of a Texas convention, he claimed 107 million views compared to the NFL's 25 million; the reality was his 3.3 million vs. their 25 million views, with even Ken Paxton secretly complaining, "It dropped our numbers." One viral meme tells the tale: A sign with sky-high gas prices, an angry MAGA voter, and the text, "Turns out my truck doesn't run on liberal tears."

In 2015, Trump packed a rally in Mobile ALA with over 30,000 fans; last week, at a high school gym with mostly empty upper tiers, people began streaming out as he bragged the economy is "booming," with new plants "everywhere." Later, he stubbornly insisted, "There are no empty seats" and his rallies are "HOTTER than ever," so nothing to see here except mashed potatoes. "Just pretend I’m on the ballot," he pleaded, a loser's losing message amidst the debacles he's forged. In need of safe harbor, his itinerary in "a red-state October blitz" is almost entirely in deep-red states he once won by double digits: Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas.

In Ohio this weekend, he raved Democrats' "transgender for everybody" policies would “mutilize your children," he has "record-winning numbers," "Talafreako" (in Texas, not Ohio) is a "vaygan" who "eats a piece of lettuce all day long" but he's now "gone full on eating meat" to get elected so he goes to barbecues where he's "throwing up all the time." He rambled, ranted, cursed, flaunted "the utter disdain for the office he holds and the people hes supoosed to serve." NYTPitchbot: "Whether it’s Obama saying 'Yes We Can” or Donald Trump saying 'We're gonna shove it up their ass,' both presidents adopted divisive slogans."

Beyond the rallies, the carnage persists. Millions have lost SNAP benefits. Many thousands, caught in our immigration atrocities, endure "quiet reckonings with what the country has become.” The Atlantic profiled the Ohio truck driver who hit and killed Haitian student Pierre Damas Bel in an apparent suicide; he is haunted by a young man who “would have been a model citizen,” who had to charge his own ankle monitor, who "was hurting - we did not do right by him.” War agit-prop still spews. So does cultural appropriation: Park rangers blast regime theft of Smokey the Bear, a forest fire refugee: "Only you can prevent fascist liars." "Zoologically-deficient hacks" have also dropped AI slop of USA-themed penguins in Greenland, where they don't live; some suggest they "shouldn’t have dismantled the Department of Education so quickly."

Surreal dissonance flourishes. Because they are "committed to leading the world in Gold Standard Science," other regime goons are bravely charging ahead to "MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL" with an executive order to "ELIMINATE FOREIGN, INVASIVE TICKS AND MOSQUITOES" to "restore enjoyment of the great outdoors" through "safe and effective technology-enabled methods," thus rebuilding "public trust in science." Too little, too late? Still, their effort aligns nicely with Press Barbie's move to Fox News, per The Borowitz Report, "as a stepping-stone" to acquiring the requisite “warrior ethos" to become Secretary of Defense. And that profound disconnect is alive and festering in the incoherent child king somehow still babbling about "the golden age of America.”

Declaiming, “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’,” he just boasted his sparse rally crowds are "unbelievable!" He even added for the 8,726th time his now parody-level, "Nobody has ever seen anything like it"and raved the GOP is “flipping races all over the place.” As a public service, Aaron Rupar, who's borne witness to years of this insanity, urges we read the transcript of his recent Time interview to grasp "the grave cognitive impairment" of "random brain firings" like, "I just got a tariff from Lindsey Graham" and "100 million people watched the midterm convention." Observers: "He’s like a criminally inclined rutabaga with some language skills" and "He looks like an attendant just asked him if he wants pudding or Jello and he’s mad he has no idea what those are."

Sunday night, Indivisible hosted a "Hands Off Our Vote" event in New York to prep for Oct. 17's No Kings and the election. Despite our fatigue - from lying, thieving, genocidal rants, fucking ballrooms - a fiery Mark Ruffalo vowed to "Hulk-out" to convey his rage. "We are so tired, but we can't give up now," he said. "They want to keep us afraid. Their only weapon is our fear. But we're inevitable." He recalled meeting with activist Harry Belafonte a few years ago and asking, "How are we going to know what to do? When are we going to know when it's our calling? And he said, 'Brother, you’ll know. And then you go. You show up.’“

Robert De Niro, out of furious fucks to give, raged at policies crazy, cruel and increasingly unpopular. "Power...to...the...people," he intoned. "It isn't just a slogan. It's the founding principle of our nation." So what do those now unduly empowered do? he asked. "They try to take our votes away. Are you kidding me?" (Ghost of Travis Bickle) "Hands Off Our Vote. Lemme put it another way - keep your fucking hands off our vote," he seethed. Then he led the crowd in an explosive call-and-response to "spineless officials, the Supreme Court, masked ICE thugs," finally "that coward, that fucking piece of shit Donald Trump. When he tries to take our voice and power away, what do we tell him?" To each, he bade,"Keep your fucking hands off our vote!" and take back the House, the Senate, our country. In brief, show up.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Trump's middle-school level AI images feature headless penguins in Greenland, where they don't live. Truth Social post

The Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in the case of Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The case, which was heard by eight justices panel after Justice Samuel Alito recused himself, concerns the permissibility of state-law claims over climate-related deception and harms. In response, David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:

“This case is about whether local communities experiencing devastating climate harms should get their day in court against Big Oil companies that spread climate deception. The fossil fuel industry has been going to extraordinary lengths to attack these climate cases, not just asking the Supreme Court to end the lawsuits, but also pushing Congress and state legislatures to grant fossil fuel companies immunity from all climate-related liability. The current offensive isn’t just about defeating the cases. It’s also about preventing the public from learning the extent and severity of the industry’s wrongdoing. It’s about fossil fuel CEOs’ profound fear of sitting in front of a jury of 12 Americans and trying to defend their companies’ deceptive conduct—because they know it’s indefensible.

“Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in Suncor, it’s hard to imagine these companies can bury the evidence and escape accountability indefinitely. The fossil fuel industry’s conduct has become some of the most harmful and culpable in human history. Eventually, it will be held to account.”

Read Public Citizen's amicus brief on Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County here.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s arguments today in Suncor v. Boulder, Corey Riday-White, legal director of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement:

“Big Oil’s desperation to escape trial for climate deception is still in search of a legal justification. Justices across the ideological spectrum asked good, skeptical questions that poked holes in Big Oil’s attempt to stop Boulder’s case before it can go to trial.

“Boulder’s case is about holding corporations accountable for deceptive conduct, and the people of Boulder should have their day in court to present the evidence of Exxon and Suncor’s deception.”

Notable moments when the justices questioned Exxon and Suncor’s arguments included:

• Justice Kagan raised questions about Exxon and Suncor’s claims that Boulder’s case is preempted by the principles of federalism. "Where's the text for that? Where’s the support for that? Where’s the precedent for that? Where’s the anything for that?”
• Multiple justices, including Justice Thomas, raised questions about whether it was premature for the Supreme Court to take the case at this early stage. The justices themselves added a question to arguments about whether they have jurisdiction to rule on the case now. “We’re really early in this case,” said Justice Jackson. “I wonder whether we should be considering matters like this essentially piecemeal? . . . Why shouldn’t we wait and hear all of these claims once the state courts are done with their federal considerations?”
• Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that there’s a long history of state courts hearing tort claims like Boulder’s: “Conduct that could have impacts in many states, all of the states, we still allow, in many of these situations, people to file in their state to seek relief from injuries that are occurring in their state.”
• Justice Kagan called lawsuits against Big Oil companies “Chapter 3” in a line of cases beginning with those against tobacco and opioid companies for their deceptive actions. “This is the same kind of lawsuit against the same kind of actors for the same kind of harm. And I guess I’m not understanding how this one would be preempted and the other is not?” Kagan asked.
• Justices also sharply questioned the idea that Boulder’s case is preempted by the Clean Air Act or other federal law. Justice Barrett characterized the oil companies’ arguments over federal preemption as “a little slippery.”
• Justice Sotomayor pointed out that Boulder’s case centers on the oil companies’ deceptive behavior, which has long been an area of law in state authority, and not preempted by federal law: “The Clean Air Act does not regulate marketing or advertising of fuel … It’s not clear to me how regulating the production and false advertisement of oil affects air and water.”

Background on U.S. Climate Accountability Lawsuits Against Big Oil:

Eleven U.S. states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai`i, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont — and the District of Columbia, two tribal governments, and dozens of municipal governments have active lawsuits to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. These cases collectively represent more than 1 in 4 people living in the United States.

Background on Boulder et al. v. Suncor et al.

Originally filed in 2018, Boulder’s lawsuit seeks to make ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy pay for the costs of local climate damages, arguing that the companies deceived the public about the dangers of their fossil fuel products and continued to produce, market, and sell them at dangerous levels despite knowing the risk.

Like other communities across the country, Boulder is facing staggering costs to protect residents and infrastructure from climate damages. In 2021, more than 1,100 homes and businesses in the county were destroyed in the deadly Marshall Fire, which scientists found was made more destructive because of climate change, and caused more than $2 billion in damages.

A wide range of voices across the ideological spectrum have sided with Boulder’s arguments. They include Colorado ranchers, nonpartisan government groups, tribal governments, economists, conservative and progressive legal scholars, 19 attorneys general, 90 members of Congress, and former officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations.

A coalition of environmental and consumer protection organizations filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s final rule rolling back federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards, a move that will make new vehicles less fuel efficient, increase gasoline consumption, and drive up costs for American drivers already facing high gas prices.

The lawsuit challenges the administration’s attempt to weaken longstanding fuel economy requirements that have helped reduce gasoline consumption and save drivers money at the pump. The rollback comes as families are already struggling with record-high gas prices, with transportation ranking as the second-largest household expense after housing, accounting for roughly 17% of average household spending.

The existing fuel economy standards would have saved 64 billion gallons of gas. Even before the current rise in gas prices, they were set to deliver $35 billion in savings to consumers over the lifetimes of the vehicles covered. Today’s final rule weakens those standards, allowing manufacturers to produce a fleet of vehicles in model year 2031 that are less efficient than the model year 2024 vehicle fleet that is already on our roads.

The administration’s own projections show that Americans will be forced to spend over $1,600 more on fuel over the life of these life-efficient vehicles, and NHTSA estimates this final rule will result in an increase of over 121 billion gallons of fuel consumption through 2050.

“With gas prices at historic highs, Trump picked the worst possible time to roll back federal mileage standards,” said David Pettit, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Oil companies will profit from less efficient cars, but drivers will take a hit to their wallets and our kids will breathe dirtier air. We’ll all pay the price for more tailpipe pollutants spewing everywhere from playgrounds to wild places. We’re asking the courts to put a stop to this callous giveaway to Big Oil and Big Auto.”

“We’re taking the Trump administration to court for this reckless rollback that prioritizes Big Oil and automaker profits over American families,” said Katherine Garcia, director of Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All. “It is unlawful for Trump to turn back the clock on fuel-efficient cars forcing drivers to waste more money on gas and communities to breathe toxic air. The Sierra Club is proud to stand with our coalition partners in defending our right to cleaner, more affordable vehicles.”

“The Trump administration is steering us toward cars that burn more gas to travel the same miles, draining family budgets along the way,” said James Crowley, senior attorney at Conservation Law Foundation. “As the needle drops toward empty, more grocery and rent money goes into the tank, while more pollution fills the air we breathe. We’re taking this administration to court because families can’t afford to be steered backward.”

“Consumers need more fuel efficient choices when considering new cars, and they deserve vehicles that get more miles per gallon and miles per dollar,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Trump’s lawless push to roll back key safeguards on fuel economy will pollute our air, and line the pockets of oil and auto CEOs. We are confident of stopping Trump’s CAFE standards rollback.”

“The Trump administration’s rollback will mean wasted gas, more air pollution, and higher costs for Americans who are already struggling with high fuel prices,” said Andy Su, senior transportation attorney at Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re going to court to oppose this dangerous U-turn away from decades of successful work to make our cars more efficient and less expensive to drive.”

Sidestepping his debacle of a war, "smug pathetic little man," warfighter fetishist and Gen.-Patton-cosplaying clown Pete Hegseth just gave a blustering speech before troops In a "hyper-macho freak show" to announce he's cutting forces, starting several senseless new programs, and proclaiming, "We are no longer the woke (or) weak department...No fatties, trannies, beardos, weirdos, wimps, radicals. Just warriors." Appalled consensus on the yahoo "turning the military into a frat house": "What a dick."

Perhaps due to his low-rent credentials as a weekend TV host at Fox - and a history of drunkenness, adultery, sexual assault and on-the-job incompetence so sordid he needed JD's tie-breaking vote to get his job - Hegseth has built a sloppy, fragile "Department of Defensiveness" focused on shaping a self-serving narrative and persona awash in paranoia, distrust, dysfunction, lies and frequent purges of those deemed disloyal. From his make-up studio to his press strictures to his blunders - Signalgate, the war, its first day's war crimes - Pete's spent an inordinate amount of time covering his ass and overcompensating for his multiple failures. "He's just a true believer in way over his head, the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect,” said one DOD employee. “Generally, we consider him a joke, a deeply unqualified clown.”

Still, with men reportedly fleeing MAGA, their need to "pump up that masculine animus" is well-served by Pete's juvenile, chest-pounding, lethality-obsessed focus on testosterone in the name of a "High-T Department of War" that has "nothing to do with science and everything to do with regressive ideas of what masculinity is." The same idiocy fuels all the culture war malevolence: Banning books, gutting DEI initiatives - "Diversity is not our strength" - blocking promotions for women and Blacks, a "no more dudes and dresses" transphobia, and ending tenure for civilian professors at military academies 'cause who needs to protect independent thinkers, scholars, leaders, experts from "the tyranny of a government that actively hates its critics," the "mindset of someone who has learned nothing (from) American military failures."

And so to another cringey, Strangelovian "State of the Force Address," which was not a thing until a TV bobblehead took over the military and turned it into bumbling amateur-hour theater. Last year, he summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, advisors from around the world, all smarter and higher-ranking than him, to rant about beards and "fat troops," tell them they "kill people and break things for a living," and prattle about a 10% cut in their numbers by "removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership." When he paused for applause, there was only deep silence. Maybe because a Joint Chiefs chairman, two service chiefs, two intelligence directors, several generals and the better part of the Army’s senior leadership "were told to run faster by a weekend television host."

On Wednesday, he gathered about 600 officers and enlisted members, again at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, for another speech. In the weeks leading up to his latest dash of show business, The Wall Street Journal reported, he emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend. They had to "fit certain physical standards," he wrote, to have the proper height/weight ratio, with "impeccable grooming: "I want central casting." If they were hot enough, he added, as a bonus some would have "the opportunity" to join him in a hot and sweaty dawn work-out at the Pentagon. Totally normal! And luckily, a camera crew was there to follow them on a chanting, banner-bearing run through D.C. To make them look even cooler, he gave them all t-shirts that read, "This Is War." Or at least off-off Broadway.

Later, before a giant American flag, he dropped the hammer in a campy speech many compared to SNL's Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth, or Tom Cruise's braying misogynist in Magnolia, or George C. Scott's Gen. Patton "minus the inspiration." Under his "less generals, more GIs" mandate - though it's "fewer" not less - he said he was doubling the previous cut of 10% of high-ranking personnel to 20% with, wrote Tom Wellborn, "the confidence of a man who has looked at the most powerful armed force in the world and concluded its central weakness was the number of people in it who outrank a major," what he was. Months into a disastrous war, "That is the force Pete Hegseth has built by subtraction. What it has lost is (what) a general is for, which is to be the person in the room who says no, and (he) has made sure, one firing at a time, there is nobody left in the room to say it."

"The media calls that a purge," blustered Hegseth, evidently expecting criticism. "I call it accountability. As usual, what the media levels as an accusation, I wear as an accomplishment.” He haughtily went on to “lay it out simply for the anti-American losers in our media...We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors." On coverage of the war and eight attempted suicides on the USS Lincoln, he slammed “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda as if it’s written by our adversaries.” "The information space is a battle space," he said. "The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in." Smirking, he added,."With testosterone testing on top." Jesus, dude.

He also announced several new programs with fancy warlike names like Fortress America and Autonomous War Command or AutoWarCom, a "four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities," and "The Next Great American Base," the first new military base in 40 years, with all 50 states "invited to bid for it like an Amazon headquarters," and "America's Corps of Cadets, creating new college partnerships with right-wing Liberty University and Hillsdale College, plus Louisiana State, Mississippi, Tuskegee Universities, to increase the number of "patriotic leaders of character" and counter "anti-American, DEI-worshiping woke factories," aka the Ivy League schools Hegseth attended.

There's the bonkers Project Meridian to study "the future of warfare," headed by "three of our nation’s best minds" - two tech fat cats and one 83-year-old MAGA hawk - none of whom have served in the military, two of whom have made fortunes from it. Cue Elon Musk, a gonzo rocket salesman with billions in Pentagon contracts, GOP pol Newt Gingrich, who got almost as many deferments as Trump during the Vietnam War, and Palmer Luckey, MAGA donor, self-proclaimed "radical Zionist" and founder of tech company Anduril - "three great Americans to help plan the next war with three people who have never been in one," what could possibly go wrong?" From a military Reddit: "Is this real?", "Yes master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro!" and "Oh fuck this fucking Nazi-loving fuck outta here."

There's a new Office of Religious Affairs for a DOD "putting on the full armor of God" to "strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters," aka "do the Lord's work to improve smiting capacity," because, "while we wage physical war, the real battle is spiritual." (Maybe why the Pentagon's covering up not-real casualties?) It's "voluntary," which skeptics say is akin to being “voluntold” to do things. Finally, as a party favor, troops were given a new 144-page "field manual" of transcripts of Hegseth speeches. Its forward is by Trump, in classic Trumpese. "As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not ask you to fight dumb Wars," it reads. "I will unleash you to be violent, lethal and unstoppable - and I will always have your back. Godspeed, Great Warriors. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Along with other regime Nazis, crackpots and fools, theories abound as to what the fuck is wrong with Pete Hegseth. Many argue he's afflicted with the common sickness of countless, soulless, mediocre white men who know, deep inside, they have risen further than they deserve to. Hence, the bottomless need to be subservient to a monster like Trump (who is too mad to know that) to maintain their place and value in a white guy patriarchy, to always understand "who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from," and to remain within that vaunted structure, the only one where they have power and respect, by continuing to rule over those they've been taught are beneath them. It's also why, conversely, they freak out when their vital slot is threatened: See Hegseth's frantic lie detectors at any sign of leaking, mocking, saying no.

Hegseth seems particularly despised by Americans, many of whom eagerly await his war crimes trial, his impeachment,, his rapturing - hopefully first in line, though maybe behind Goebbels/Miller. The concrete damage done by his legacy - the calamitous war, hollowing of the military's promotion chain, lethality-tinged dumbing down of its intellectual infrastructure and exploitation of those serving - will presumably take years to repair. But people hate him just as much for his personal failings: his gross unfitness and incompetence, his swaggering "Jr High Machismo," the Nazi-adjacent arrogance of "this nose-powdering drunk," the lying, preening chutzpah of the military's worst-ever leader consistently "acting like a 19-year-old edgelord loser," like "a dipshit," "an asshole," "an absolute tinydick in every goddamn way."

Several truly obnoxious moments of his state-of-the-empire speech ignited that animus. His attack on media who do their job and tell the truth about him began with a lame nod to the First Amendment - "A free press is of course important" - that veered to a diatribe: "But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking (is) anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually...It has to be said." Umm, not, said America: "Secretary of Dewar’s doesn't get he’s the only one getting smeared, not the troops," "I love the free press until they say words I don't like in which case I call them traitors and want them killed," "Bro, they're not shitting on the troops, just you," "It's called free speech, fucknut. The thing your troops are supposed to defend," "The mission of our military has become historic only in the degree of its absurdity."

Then there was a pitiful, fitness-instructor-like defense of his bullying of troops: "Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass - that's not discrimination. That's leadership." Fact: Actually, it's neither. It's stupid, shallow, beside-the-point bullying. Many argued it's just "being a dick" and "an asshole." That he should "tell his boss to get in shape and start busting his ass." That it's weird how he "doesn't get to the part where he actually discriminates." That leadership is "inspiring, being an example, not getting your nation into an illegal war, losing it in days and committing war crimes." That he's "a drunk, vain, adulterous rapist with ridiculous sideburns." That it's "stunning in an awful way a man his age is so immature." That "this motherfucker is waaay out over his skis." And damn, more fucking patriotic cowboys is the last thing we need thanks.

How Pete's (deservedly) doingScreengrab from CNN