Extreme Commanders

Trump appointees have ties to companies that stand to benefit from privatizing weather forecasts

As commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick oversees the U.S. government’s vast efforts to monitor and predict the weather.

The billionaire also ran a financial firm, which he recently left in the control of his adult sons, that stands to benefit if President Donald Trump’s administration follows through on a decade-long Republican effort to privatize government weather forecasting.

Deadly weekend flooding in central Texas has drawn a spotlight to budget cuts and staff reductions at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two agencies housed within the Commerce Department that provide the public with free climate and weather data that can be crucial during natural disasters.

What’s drawn less attention is how the downsizing appears to be part of an effort to privatize the work of such agencies. In several instances, the companies poised to step into the void have deep ties to people tapped by Trump to run weather-related agencies.

Privatization would diminish a central role the federal government has played in weather forecasting since the 1800s, which experts say poses a particular harm for those facing financial strain who may not be able to afford commercial weather data.

The effort also reveals the difficulty that uber wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet have in freeing themselves from conflicts, even if they have met the letter of federal ethics law.

“It’s the most insidious aspect of this: Are we really talking about making weather products available only to those who can afford it?” said Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. “Basically turning the weather service into a subscription streaming service? As a taxpayer, I don’t want to be in the position of saying, ‘I get a better weather forecast because I’m willing to pay for it.’”

The White House referred requests for comment to the Commerce Department, which said in a statement that Lutnick has “fully complied with the terms of his ethics agreement with respect to divesture and recusals and will continue to do so.”

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I believe it was Santayanna that said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers

Randy Carter is a member of the Director's Guild of America and has notched some significant credits during his Hollywood career. Administrative assistant on The Conversation. Part of the casting department for Apocalypse Now. Longtime first assistant director on Seinfeld. Work on The Blues Brothers, The Godfather II and more.

But the one project that Carter regrets never working on is a script he wrote that got optioned twice but was never produced. It's about the summer a then-17-year-old Carter and thousands of American teenage boys heeded the call of the federal government ... to work on farms.

The year was 1965. On Cinco de Mayo, newspapers across the country reported that Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz wanted to recruit 20,000 high schoolers to replace the hundreds of thousands of Mexican agricultural workers who had labored in the United States under the so-called Bracero Program. Started in World War II, the program was an agreement between the American and Mexican governments that brought Mexican men to pick harvests across the U.S. It ended in 1964, after years of accusations by civil rights activists like Cesar Chavez that migrants suffered wage theft and terrible working and living conditions.

But farmers complained — in words that echo today's headlines — that Mexican laborers did the jobs that Americans didn't want to do, and that the end of the Bracero Program meant that crops would rot in the fields.

Wirtz cited this labor shortage and a lack of summer jobs for high schoolers as reason enough for the program. But he didn't want just any band geek or nerd — he wanted jocks.

"They can do the work," Wirtz said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., announcing the creation of the project, called A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower. "They are entitled to a chance at it." Standing beside him to lend gravitas were future Baseball Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Warren Spahn and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown.

Over the ensuing weeks, the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, and the President's Council on Physical Fitness bought ads on radio and in magazines to try to lure lettermen. "Farm Work Builds Men!" screamed one such promotion, which featured 1964 Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte.

Local newspapers across the country showcased their local A-TEAM with pride as they left for the summer. The Courier of Waterloo, Iowa, for instance, ran a photo of beaming, bespectacled but scrawny boys boarding a bus for Salinas, where strawberries and asparagus awaited their smooth hands. "A teacher-coach from [the nearby town of] Cresco will serve as adviser to all 31," students, the Courier reassured its readers.

But the national press was immediately skeptical. "Dealing with crops which grow close to the ground requires a good deal stronger motive" than money or the prospects of a good workout, argued a Detroit Free Press editorial. "Like, for instance, gnawing hunger."

Despite such skepticism, Wirtz's scheme seemed to work at first: About 18,100 teenagers signed up to join the A-TEAM. But only about 3,300 of them ever got to pick crops.

One of them was Carter.

He was a junior at the now-closed University of San Diego High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Southern California. About 25 of his classmates decided to sign up for the A-TEAM because, as he recalls with a laugh more than 50 years later, "We thought, 'I'm not doing anything else this summer, so why not?' "

Funny enough, Carter says none of the recruits from his school — himself included — were actually athletes: "The football coach told [the sportsters], 'You're not going. We've got two-a-day practices — you're not going to go pick strawberries."

Students from across the country began showing up on farms in Texas and California at the beginning of June. Carter and his classmates were assigned to pick cantaloupes near Blythe, a small town on the Colorado River in the middle of California's Colorado Desert.

He remembers the first day vividly. Work started before dawn, the better to avoid the unforgiving desert sun to come. "The wind is in your hair, and you don't think it's bad," Carter says. "Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, 'What did we do?' The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees."

Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe's fine hairs made grabbing them feel like "picking up sandpaper." They got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 fruits. Breakfast was "out of the Navy," Carter says — beans and eggs and bologna sandwiches that literally toasted in the heat, even in the shade.

The University High crew worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in "any kind of defunct housing," according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Problems arose immediately for the A-TEAM nationwide. In California's Salinas Valley, 200 teenagers from New Mexico, Kansas and Wyoming quit after just two weeks on the job. "We worked three days and all of us are broke," the Associated Press quoted one teen as saying. Students elsewhere staged strikes. At the end, the A-TEAM was considered a giant failure and was never tried again.

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SAN BERNARDINO DIOCESE SUSPENDS MASS OBLIGATION FOR THOSE WITH ‘GENUINE FEAR’ OF ICE RAIDS

Amid concern over immigration enforcement raids in the area, the bishop of San Bernardino, California, on July 8 issued a dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass for the faithful if they fear for their well-being.

The Trump administration rescinded in January long-standing restrictions on arrests at sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals. The previous policy had exceptions for public safety or national security threats. The move was part of the Trump administration’s effort to enforce its hardline immigration policies.

Bishop Alberto Rojas previously denounced such immigration enforcement actions after ICE agents entered two Catholic parish properties in Montclair and Highland, detaining multiple people in the parking lot of St. Adelaide Church in Highland, California.

In a July 8 message to the faithful, Bishop Rojas wrote that “in light of the pastoral needs of our diocese and the concerns expressed by many of our brothers and sisters regarding fears of attending Mass due to potential immigration enforcement actions by civil authorities,” he would use his authority under canon law to dispense the obligation from those “who, due to genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions, are unable to attend Sunday Mass or Masses on holy days of obligation.”

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If this is true...oh man. I even asked if they were getting the FEMA aid they were promised because I hadn't heard of any.

FEMA’s response to Texas flood slowed by Noem’s cost controls

As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

Dementia Don has no idea what's going on:

Heather Cox Richardson - July 8, 2025

Just who is in charge of the administration remains unclear. In the New York Times yesterday, Jason Zengerle pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the “final word” on White House policy. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem defers to him. Attorney General Pam Bondi “is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice” to him. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is concentrating on “producing a reality TV show every day,” a Trump advisor told Zengerle.

So Miller, with his knack for flattering his boss, wields power.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he stopped the shipment of weapons to Ukraine last week. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that Hegseth’s lack of a chief of staff or trusted advisors means he has no one to urge him to coordinate with other government partners. Trump has ordered Hegseth to restart some of the shipments. When a reporter asked the president today who had authorized the pause, Trump answered: “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

At today’s press opportunity, Trump was erratic, at one point veering off into a discussion of whether he should put gold leaf on the moldings in the room’s corners.

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Trump Bizarrely Rambles About Florida Instead of Answering Question

Donald Trump took off on a winding rant about his summer vacation plans Tuesday when asked a crucial question about “Alligator Alcatraz.”

During a press conference at the ICE facility in the middle of the Florida Everglades, the president was asked whether there was an “expected time frame” that detainees would be kept at the hastily constructed immigrant detention center, and whether it would depend on the immigration judges staffed there.

“When you say, uh, what was the first part of your question?” Trump asked, clearly confused.

“Is there a specific time frame you expect the detainees to spend here—days, weeks, months?” the reporter repeated.

“In Florida?” Trump asked.

“Yes, here at Alligator Alcatraz,” the reporter responded, but the president had already jumped into a response about how much he loves the Sunshine State.

“I’m gonna spend a lot of—this is my home state. I love it. I love your government. I love all the people around—these are all friends of mine. They know me very well. I mean I’m not surprised that they do so well. They’re great people,” Trump said, singling out Governor Ron DeSantis, who previously campaigned against Trump but now acts as a cheerleader for his new wetland-themed concentration camp.

“I feel very comfortable in the state—I’ll spend a lot of time here,” Trump continued. He said that he would continue to visit despite his current digs at the White House, which had allowed him to “fix up” the “little Oval Office.”

“But I’ll spend as much time as I can here. You know my vacation is generally here ’cause it’s convenient. I live in Palm Beach. That’s my home. And I have a very nice little place—nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun,” Trump continued, joking about his massive estate at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

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Jumbo wrote: Wed Jul 09, 2025 8:33 pm

This belongs here. Fuck these maga sobs. Fuck what's become of the GOP. It's always had huge piles of evil, ignorant, humans in its membership (not that the Dems haven't always been full of serious flaws as a party too) but now it's just a total sewer pipe, effectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opin ... s-nws.html

These MAGA people are idiots who believe random conspiracy theories rather than the truth that about what really happened:

Far-right conspiracy theories spread online in aftermath of the Texas floods

Disasters and tragedies have long been the source of American conspiracy theories, old and new. So when devastating flash floods hit Texas over the Fourth of July weekend, and as the death toll continues to rise, far-right conspiracists online saw their opportunity to come out in full force, blurring the lines of what’s true and untrue.

Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy “deep state” is acting against Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government.

“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS,” posted Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent fixture on the far right who once organized an armed convoy to the Texas border, along with documents he claimed to show government weather operations. “WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”

The same chain of posts on the social media platform X singled out a California-based “precipitation enhancement” company as a potential culprit.

It didn’t take long for one of the most integral figures in the QAnon movement to repost Chambers, which received millions of views on the Elon Musk-owned app.

“Anyone able to answer this?” wrote retired general Mike Flynn, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration and who helped legitimize QAnon after pledging allegiance to the movement in 2020, reposting Chambers.

Conspiracists and grifters on other platforms joined in. One YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of subscribers posted breathless coverage of what he called “The TRUTH of WEATHER MANIPULATION” in a segment which earned him close to 200,000 views alone.

The halls of Congress echoed the sentiment, as Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – a vaccine skeptic and GOP hardliner who has espoused Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies – didn’t waste the moment to say she was introducing a bill of her own after the floods.

“I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,” she wrote on X as the aftermath of the floods continued. “It will be a felony offense.”

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Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order in Class-Action Challenge

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a contentious executive order ending birthright citizenship, reigniting a legal standoff that has been underway since the beginning of President Trump’s second term.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire also allowed the case to proceed as a class action, applying his order nationwide to babies born to undocumented parents. After a recent Supreme Court decision limiting nationwide injunctions, lawsuits structured as class actions are effectively the only ones that can halt the president’s policies across broad sections of the country.

The Trump administration has fought to end the longstanding custom that people born in the United States are automatically citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Judge Laplante’s order ensures a new round of litigation and appeals.

The judge, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said he would issue a written order later in the day. He also stayed his order for seven days, allowing time for an appeal.

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Custom? It's in the fucking Constitution. The media needs to stop the nonsense and call out Trump's bullshit.