Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Trump regulators move to curtail lending to undocumented immigrants - POLITICO
In new guidance, regulators said that undocumented immigrants may present an “elevated credit risk” and warned banks to account for the risk that they may lose their job or be deported as they underwrite new loans...
The Mids: Who is paying for all these campaigns?
If you want to know who is giving money to a candidate, the answer depends on which office they’re seeking: federal, state or local. Campaign finance data lives in different places for each seat.
Let’s take them one by one…
US judge nullifies Trump deal to resolve IRS lawsuit in scathing ruling
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” she wrote.
“The court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose – to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” she added.
Her ruling blocks both Trump, his sons, and business, and the government from “using, offering, admitting, or citing” anything from the so-called settlement agreement in any kind of proceeding...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/13/trump-irs-ruling-judge-kathleen-williams
Judge accuses Trump of manipulating courts to justify Anti-Weaponization Fund - POLITICO
“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process,” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in a blistering 56-page ruling. “This was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”…
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/13/trump-irs-lawsuit-judge-00994874
US to take over Strait of Hormuz, charge 20 percent fee for cargo shipped through, Trump says - POLITICO
President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. will take over the Strait of Hormuz — and will be reimbursed “at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped” for overseeing one of the world’s most critical oil passageways that has been at the center of the U.S.’s re-escalating war with Iran.
“We will become guardians of the strait,” Trump said during an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Monday morning. “We’re going to hit [Iran] very hard and keep the strait, and probably run it.”…
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/13/donald-trump-strait-of-hormuz-fee-00994508
ICE Keeps Using the Same Justification for Killing Drivers – Mother Jones
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot dead by immigration agents while on his way to work. DHS claims he was using his vehicle as a weapon...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/ice-houston-lorenzo-salgado-araujo-renee-good-killed/
Michigan health officials identify ‘potential source’ of parasite outbreak
The Michigan health department is urging restaurants and commercial kitchens in the south-east to thoroughly wash leafy greens, snow peas, some herbs and raspberries or, ideally, to cook them. After identifying lettuces as the potential culprit, Michigan officials also recommended purchasing whole heads of lettuce rather than pre-washed, bagged greens, discarding outer layers of leaves and thoroughly washing the inner leaves…
In part, delays have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s funding cuts, Kowalcyk said, citing both grant cuts to state and local health departments and changes to federal surveillance systems that make it harder to get “the whole picture”.
The Trump administration cut in March 2025 $11.4bn in grants to state and local health departments. Although those grants were earmarked for pandemic activities, Kowalcyk said they also built out local health department capacity. Michigan public health labs alone lost $5.5m, according to Bridge Michigan, a local news outlet…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/13/cyclospora-outbreak-parasite-explosive-diarrhea
Johnson campaign calls for apology as some call campaign materials "racist"
An exchange during the Republican gubernatorial debate Thursday is turning into a bigger conversation about political donations and race...
The Taliban’s war on education: ‘Nobody talks about what is happening to the boys’
Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists retook Afghanistan, students describe male pupils being beaten for minor rule breaches and inexperienced teachers struggling to deliver lessons…
Michigan Supreme Court sends bills to Whitmer, who stuns with surprise vetoes
She said she would be willing to work with legislators on new versions of the bills.
“House Republicans spent the last 18 months sitting on these bills, spending taxpayer dollars on costly lawsuits, and creating unnecessary uncertainty and preventing action on issues that matter to Michigan families,” she said. “These bills would have lowered costs for Michiganders and strengthened public safety. Had the House presented these bills to me in a timely manner, as the Constitution requires, today would have looked much different.”..
Lawsuit Accuses ICE and Private Prison Contractors of Abusing a Disabled Detainee – Mother Jones
Ulises Peña López says guards taunted him—telling him he’d never walk again—while withholding the medication he needed...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/ulises-pena-lopez-ice-lawsuit-disabled/
New Mexico AG Calls for School Reform in Gallup-McKinley County — ProPublica
Indigenous and Hispanic students are suspended more often and for longer periods than their white classmates who commit similar infractions at Gallup-McKinley County Schools — a pattern of “substantial racial disparities,” an investigation by the New Mexico attorney general’s office found.
Indigenous students lose eight to 10 times more classroom days to suspensions than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times as many, according to the 47-page report released by the state’s Department of Justice last week…
https://www.propublica.org/article/new-mexico-ag-report-gallup-mckinley-schools
A pattern of shootings by federal agents in Memphis nods to a worrying trend : NPR
The night that her son was having a mental breakdown, Jessica Neal called 911, hoping to save his life.
Jonah Neal, 25, had a handgun and was threatening suicide. Instead of local police, federal agents arrived at her doorstep. Within minutes of entering her home, a special agent had shot her son, Neal said. It would be hours before she found out her son was dead, she added...
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/13/nx-s1-5888618/memphis-safe-task-force-shooting-jonah-neal
California, 11 other states sue to block Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal - POLITICO
“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” Bonta said in a statement, adding that media consolidation in California, the epicenter of the entertainment industry, “not only leads to higher prices — it also leads to fewer opportunities for important stories to come to life, and fewer ways for audiences to encounter stories, ideas, and perspectives beyond their own experiences.”…
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/13/states-sue-block-paramount-warner-bros-00994835
Detroit officials demand ICE end vehicle pursuits of people suspected of not having legal status
"It's not a criminal matter, it is civil," he said. "And also to have these dangerous pursuits happening in our neighborhoods that puts the folks they are chasing in harms way, kids that may be playing outside, folks that are walking down the street, and also to have no recourse for accountability, that is something that we all should be concerned about." …https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2026-07-10/detroit-officials-demand-ice-end-vehicle-pursuits-of-people-suspected-of-not-having-legal-status
Lawmakers Call for CDC to Track Vitamin K Shot Refusal, Cite ProPublica Report — ProPublica
Two members of Congress have called on federal officials to address what they described as “a growing and preventable public health crisis” of families refusing the long-standard vitamin K shot for their newborns, which has led to some of those babies suffering uncontrollable bleeding and even dying…
https://www.propublica.org/article/vitamin-k-cdc-rfk-jr-lawmakers-letter
Trump notifies Congress of new war against Iran - POLITICO
President Donald Trump formally notified lawmakers this weekend that the nation is once again at war with Iran, giving his administration another 60-day clock to use the military in the region without congressional approval...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/13/trump-notifies-congress-of-new-war-against-iran-00995170
Trump dramatically cuts size of two national monuments held sacred by tribes
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah will lose ‘close to a million and a half acres each’ and open land to developers and oil industry…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/13/trump-cuts-national-monuments-utah
Why Should We Believe In Your God? - 2 Jun (Jon Cohen, Unconvinced on YouTiube)
Bring us your best evidence.
All we've heard so far are fallacious arguments.
If you have something better - we'd love to hear it!
Lots of callers in this eight hour show.
Some highlights -- interesting and entertaining -- with some good examples for Muslim, Catholic, and "nondenominational" believers how not to try to win converts:
- 1:37:00 Xkop says the Quran is perfect and completely true word of God, including in matters of science. The hosts show this is not the case.
- 4:29:00 Jabir, Catholic, says he is calling to clarify church teaching on homosexuality. Also says that atheists have no morals. Then says that whatever God says is good because God said it -- those are his "objective" and "absolute" morals, and that includes killing babies as the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded (all the atheists in the forum disagree). After the hosts' explanations of the problems with these positions fall on deaf ears, the hosts sum up: the only thing that makes you different from a religious extremist terrorist group like ISIS is that you have not yet had what you perceive to be a command from your god to commit some atrocity.
- 5:42:00 HaileyLovesBooks gets in trouble early on when she says that it was actually good for God to command the killing of an entire nation, including their children, because God is a loving God and took all the babies to heaven. It goes downhill from there while she dizzyingly parrots all kinds of apologist talking points without actually knowing what is in her Bible, including that atheists ought to decide to believe or they will go to hell. The hosts' responses include a real life example from Buzz -- a member of the atheist community who lost his daughter -- and emphasize their position that no one can choose what they believe if they remain unconvinced.
- 6:46:30 Buzz joins the call to react to HaileyLovesBooks's remarks, and describes what it is like to lose a loved one and be told that his inability to believe is what is supposedly going to keep his daughter miserable in eternity. And that Hailey is an example of how a sincere person can be made stupid by religious indoctrination.
Interview:
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