Hannah Arendt warned us.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating two leading toothpaste makers over their use of fluoride, suggesting that they are “illegally marketing” the teeth cleaners to parents and kids “in ways that are misleading, deceptive, and dangerous.”
The toothpaste makers in the crosshairs are Colgate-Palmolive Company, maker of Colgate toothpastes, and Proctor & Gamble Manufacturing Co., which makes Crest toothpastes. In an announcement Thursday, Paxton said he has sent Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the companies.
The move is an escalation in an ongoing battle over fluoride, which effectively prevents dental cavities and improves oral health. Community water fluoridation has been hailed by health and dental experts as one of the top 10 great public health interventions for advancing oral health across communities, regardless of age, education, or income.
But, despite the success, fluoride has always had detractors—from conspiracy theorists in the past suggesting the naturally occurring mineral is a form of communist mind control, to more recent times, in which low-quality, controversial studies have suggested that high doses may lower IQ in children.
This isn’t a troll. It’s real:
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr… said he plans to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation in communities nationwide. Kennedy said he’s assembling a task force of health experts to study the issue and make new recommendations.
Also on Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is reviewing “new scientific information” on potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water. The EPA sets the maximum level allowed in public water systems.
Kennedy told The Associated Press of his plans after a news conference with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in Salt Lake City.
Kennedy cannot order communities to stop fluoridation, but he can direct the CDC to stop recommending it and work with the EPA to change the allowed amount.
Utah last month became the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water, pushing past opposition from dentists and national health organizations who warned the move would disproportionately hurt low-income residents who can’t afford regular dentist visits.
America’s health is in the hands of youtube conspiracy theorists.
BREAKING: Warren Buffett moments ago at the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting just came out against Trump's Tariffs in a major way:
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) May 3, 2025
"There is no question that trade can be an act of war. It has led to bad things — the attitudes that it has brought out. In the… pic.twitter.com/FOnBYoN9NO
Warren Buffett at the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting just came out against Trump’s Tariffs in a major way:
There is no question that trade can be an act of war. It has led to bad things — the attitudes that it has brought out.
In the United States, we should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. And we should do what we do best and they should do what they do best. That’s what we did originally. We were good at producing tobacco and cotton 250 years ago and we traded it.
We want a prosperous world but with eight countries with nuclear weapons, including a few that I would call quite unstable, I do not think it’s a great idea where a few countries say ‘hahaha we won,” and other countries are envious.
THIS.
We live in a dangerous world with nuclear weapons. It’s the main reason the institutions and alliances formed after WWII have been so important and why impulsively taking a wrecking ball to it is so dangerous. Trade has been part of that and while it’s obviously important that humans benefit from it and are not exploited, it’s one way to at least keep the dialog between countries going. Schoolyard bullying to feed one man’s misguided ego may very well have catastrophic consequences.
Radley Balko is one of the best reporters around, particularly on the subject of our fast encroaching police state. It’s worth a subscription if you’re interested in this subject. This post illustrates why we should be:
I recently wrote about Clay Jackson, the Texas attorney who was visited at his home by law enforcement after giving some pro bono legal advice to an undocumented family. Just a few hours after my post went up, Jackson was fired by his employer, the Fortune 500 insurance company Fidelity National Financial. Judd Legum at Popular Information then followed up and found some internal emails in which an executive at the company accused Jackson of “professional misconduct” that hurt the company. It’s also come out that the CEO of FNF is a big Trump supporter, and that prior to her appointment to DOJ, Pam Bondi worked for the law firm that lobbies on behalf of FNF.
This is straight up Stasi shit except as far as I know, the Stasi did ,at least usually,wear uniforms. You can read the post for yourself bugt in a nutshell it tells the story of a fellow in Texas who gave some pro bono legal advice to a latino family who had a complicated situation with a combination of a U.S. citizen, a DACA recipient and someone who had been detained by ICE. A few days later he was visited at home by a couple of men in plain clothes who refused to identify themselves asking about it and was told ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’” They had apparently shut off his wifi in order to keep from being filmed by his ring camera as well.
As you can read above, after he made the incident public he was fired because the owner of his company is a Trump cultist.
That’s the East German method all the way. Official intimidation, neighbors informing on each other, business acting as an arm of the authoritarian government to help keep the population in line. The right organized itself around opposition to this kind of repression for decades. We knew much of it was just a pose considering Jim Crow and the use of government police agencies to surveil political enemies during the Hoover decades. But still, they used to at least pretend they cared about personal freedom. Not anymore…
I feel as if making Stephen Miller the National Security Advisor could result in us all dying in a really innovative and non-cliched way. Like not a Tom Clancy disaster but like some kind of John Kennedy Toole way where our demise is the manifestation of incel inadequacy.
I can’t believe it could possibly be true but apparently it is:
President Trump‘s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, is garnering buzz inside the White House as a top candidate to be the next national security adviser, five sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.
Miller — the deputy chief of staff and the brain behind Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown — is one of the president’s longest-serving and most-trusted aides.
- Miller’s name surfaced shortly after Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser on Thursday and nominated Waltz to become the next United Nations ambassador.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio is temporarily taking over Waltz’s responsibilities, but sources familiar with his thinking say he’s busy enough running the State Department.
Miller already is the administration’s Homeland Security adviser, and is an aggressive defender of the administration’s legal push for immediate deportations of unauthorized immigrants without court hearings.
- One White House source told Axios via text that Miller has made the Homeland Security Council run “like clockwork,” and that it’s “infinitely more effective than the NSC [National Security Council] with a tiny fraction” of the staff.
This would make Miller the de facto president. He’s already running the domestic agenda, even becoming the public face of the tariff defense lately. This would give him foreign policy. Since Trump is now just a sort of ancient vaudeville performer now, blathering on about whatever crosses his mind, wreaking vengeance, playing golf and redecorating the White House to look like an even cheaper version of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, Miller taking over a pivotal foreign policy and national security role would take us to an even darker place than we already are.
As I have said before, Miller has his hands firmly wrapped around Trump’s id and he knows exactly how to squeeze it.
In matters of geopolitics, failures hardly ever get clearer than this. A mere 3 weeks ago, Scott Bessent’s stated objective for the tariffs was to use them to get Japan to agree to a “grand encirclement” strategy to isolate China . Fast forward to today:
In other words, a policy intended to isolate China is achieving the exact opposite outcome and isolating the United States instead.
Aaaaand:
Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter this morning reminds readers that in March Trump 2.0 officials declared its intention to overwhelm any opposition to a Trump-is-king message with full-time, in-your-face offense (in both senses). She writes:
“We’re here. We’re in your face,” said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team. “It’s irreverent. It’s unapologetic.” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said their goal was “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”
They are engaged in a marketing campaign to establish Trump’s false version of reality as truth. The White House has also brought into the press pool right-wing influencers, who are asking questions that tee up opportunities for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to push administration talking points, which the influencers then amplify on social media.
In case the meaning is too subtle, “full-spectrum dominance” is a war-fighting strategy established by the Department of Defense in 2000.
In case Leavitt and Stephen Miller are too subtle, Trump plans a Red Square-style military parade costing tens of millions of dollars on his 79th birthday (June 14). It coincides (conveniently) with the “the 250th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’s establishment of the Continental Army in 1775.”
The Associated Press reports that plans call for “about 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters to follow a route from Arlington, Virginia, to the National Mall.” There are no reports that the parade will include ballistic missile carriers or that Trump’s troops are practicing goose-stepping.
HCR continues:
The administration’s hunkering down in right-wing ideology showed as well in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s public attack on U.S. ally Germany for declaring the German right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist party that goes against Germany’s “free democratic order.” That designation is the result of a three-year investigation. It allows the government more leeway in monitoring the AfD.
Both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire White House advisor Elon Musk supported the AfD and backed it in a recent election. Rubio took AfD’s side today, writing on social media that that new designation was “tyranny in disguise.” He attacked the current government and urged Germany to “reverse course.”
The German Foreign Office responded publicly. “This is democracy. The decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.”
It says something about the Trump administration that the German government is lecturing the U.S. government about the dangers of right-wing extremism.
Trump’s government has already abandoned our Constitution and the rule of law.
Don Moynihan at the University of Michigan responded, “Both Rubio’s tweet, and the response, are remarkable artifacts. You have a Secretary of State tweeting right wing talking points to defend Neo Nazis, and the country where Nazis originated telling him to sod off.”
Steve Vladeck of Georgetown Law quipped, “When you’re getting lectured by the German government on failing to account for the dangers posed by right-wing extremism, it might be time to take a seat.”
It also says something that Donald Trump intends to rename our Veterans Day and VE Day “Victory Days.” That brings American naming in line with the Russia’s celebration of Victory Day each year on May 9. Trump has an insatiable need to convince everyone (especially the world’s strongmen) that he’s a winner. One wonders how many security blankets (gold, of course) the felon-billionaire has squirreled away in the Residence.
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You may live along the Mississippi River subject to spring floods, or in Tornado Alley (needs no explantaion), or where lake effect snows bury your city, or along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts subject to increasingly powerful hurricanes, or in areas of the west subject to seasonal wildfires. Even in places like my region, still recovering from devastation wrought by Helene’s visit last fall. Or you make your living farming? Or as a mariner or an aviator. One of the first things most of us check every morning and before bed is the weather forecast.
As the Good Book says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust (and on rich and poor). So do Trump 2.0 budget cuts. The White House announced on Friday cuts of $1.5 billion in funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Weather Service’s parent agency. The agency is already looking at a 20 percent cut to staffing.
Guys like Big Balls who’ve spent most of their young lives in cyberspace instead of IRL think the National Weather Service needs a budget haircut.
Former Weather Service leaders issued a public letter warning about the perils of what’s coming (New York Times):
“N.W.S. staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services,” they write in the letter, dated Friday. “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”
Hundreds of Weather Service employees, or about 10 percent of the agency’s total staff, have been terminated or accepted buyout offers since President Trump began his second term, according to the letter.
The letter notes that the coming weeks are “the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes,” and it points to a wide range of activities that rely on accurate forecasting: “Airplanes can’t fly without weather observations and forecasts; ships crossing the oceans rely on storm forecasts to avoid the high seas; farmers rely on seasonal forecasts to plant and harvest their crops which feed us.”
“Perhaps most importantly,” they write, “N.W.S. issues all of the tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, flood warnings, extreme wildfire conditions and other information during extreme weather events.”
But no worries. Elon Musk and his techbro friends surely will sell back to you the weather data your taxes already purchased.
Joe Friday led the Weather Service from 1988 to 1997:
The proposed cuts at NOAA echo a plan laid out in Project 2025, a policy playbook published by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2023 that described the agency as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” It called for NOAA to be “broken up” and for the Weather Service to be privatized.
Dr. Friday said he worried that a forced decline in the accuracy of Weather Service products could eventually offer a pretext for the agency’s privatization.
“If you want to basically wipe out an organization, the personnel policies that are going on right now under DOGE are probably about the best way to do it,” Dr. Friday said. “You destroy the organization from the inside.”
He don’t need a weatherman to know which way DOGE winds blow.
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Have you fought dictatorship today?
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
The San Diego Zoo has the only two platypuses in the world outside of Australia:
Every morning, when the Safari Park’s animal care specialists arrive at the platypus habitat, they try hard not to wake the animals. They quietly peek in the nest boxes to check on the snoozing platypuses. The female, Eve, likes to curl up under her bedding. The male, Birra, sleeps on top of his towels.
While the platypuses keep snoozing, the staff cleans and stocks the pool with food. They put on waders and place three different kinds of crayfish in the water for the platypuses to eat. Around 8 a.m., Eve and Birra leave their nest boxes and start hunting.
Eve likes the small, brightly colored swamp crayfish the best. Birra enjoys the larger, mud-colored crayfish. They both hold their breath, close their eyes and ears as they swim underwater and use special receptors in their bill to find their food.
In addition to crayfish, Eve and Birra will find live crickets, ghost shrimp, and different kinds of worms to eat. The platypuses only eat live food, so the animal care specialists don’t just take care of these mammals, they make sure the prey has clean living areas and healthy food, too!
Birra and Eve hunt for a bit, and when they’re full, they swim about exploring their pools. Their caregivers sometimes put big eucalyptus branches in the water, which gives the animals a different place to dive in and around. Taking care of such special animals is a lot of work, but platypuses are so interesting to watch! Check it out for yourself by watching our Platypus Cam.
These amazing creatures are endangered due to human encroachment on their habitat and climate change. 🙁
They kind of blow my mind:
Reuters found 11 federal judges and their family members who have been threatened by Trump supporters.
When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was immediate.
The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in freezing grants for education and other services. Far-right provocateur Laura Loomer tweeted a photo of the judge’s daughter, who had worked at the U.S. Education Department as a policy advisor, and accused McConnell of protecting her paycheck. Billionaire Elon Musk amplified the post to his 219 million X followers. Neither mentioned the daughter had left her job before Trump’s inauguration.
Loomer continued her attacks with nine more posts in the ensuing days – and more than 600 calls and emails flooded McConnell’s Rhode Island courthouse, including death threats and menacing messages taunting his family, according to a court clerk and another person familiar with the communications.
Boasberg and McConnell are among at least 11 federal judges whose families have faced threats of violence or harassment after they ruled against the new Trump administration, a Reuters investigation found.
The broadsides are part of an intimidation campaign directed at federal judges who have stood in the way of Trump’s moves to dramatically expand presidential authority and slash the federal bureaucracy. As Trump and his allies call for judges to be impeached or attack them as “radical left” political foes, the families of judges are being singled out for harassment.
Lovely folks, just following the lead of their Dear Leader and his henchmen.
And it’s not just the usual online MAGA weirdos:
In a little-noticed lawsuit filed last week, the America First Legal Foundation sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.
The case ostensibly proceeds as a FOIA lawsuit, with the Trump-aligned group seeking access to judiciary records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede massive power to the White House: the bodies that make court policy and manage the judiciary’s day-to-day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the President, under the conservative legal movement’s theories, the power to appoint and dismiss people in key roles.
Multiple legal scholars and attorneys TPM spoke with reacted to the suit with a mixture of dismay, disdain and laughter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the administration launched and has continued to escalate against the courts over the past several months: ignoring a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a wrongly removed Salvadoran man, providing minimal notice to people subject to the Alien Enemies Act, flaunting an aggressive criminal case against a state court judge.
The executive branch has tried to encroach on the power of the judiciary in other ways too, prompting a degree of consternation and alarm unusual for the normally-staid Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. As TPM has documented, DOGE has already caused disorder at the courts and sent out mass emails to judges and other judiciary employees demanding a list of their recent accomplishments. Per one recent report in the New York Times, federal judges have expressed concern that Trump could direct the U.S. Marshals Service — an executive branch agency tasked with protecting judges and carrying out court orders — to withdraw protection.
You know who’s behind all this? You guessed it:
Stephen Miller, the longtime Trump aide, founded the America First Legal Foundation in April 2021, describing it as the “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” Over the next few years, the group succeeded in slowing down or blocking several Biden administration policies, often by filing in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo courthouse, which is presided over by a judge who is notably receptive to conservative arguments. Its priorities often match those of Trump’s second term… Miller himself has been a public driving force in the most aggressive and lawless elements of the second Trump administration’s effort to bulldoze through civil liberties in the name of increasing the tempo of deportations.
Miller has a bunch of plans to ram through his agenda, starting with the Alien Enemies act. This is another one. And in the end, he will simply persuade the addled old megalomaniac at the helm that he doesn’t need to pay any attention to judges at all. He’s ready to destroy the judiciary once and for all.