Bad Baldwin vote re NASA

+ The Trump administration is pulling the plug on one of the world’s leading climate research stations, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Known as the “Global Mothership” for climate and weather forecasting, Ross Vought, Trump’s hatchet man at OMB, says the Center needs to be eliminated because its research and forecasts spread “climate alarmism.” This is the climate equivalent of Trump trying to tell people that their food and energy prices have gone down, not up. 

+ The Fish and Wildlife Service has seen a 20% decline in staff since Trump took office. Meanwhile, an internal report from the Forest Service shows dilapidated bridges and eroding and blocked trails across the national forest system due to a lack of staffing.

+ A new research paper (Optimal Urban Transportation Policy: Evidence from Chicago) using detailed data on Chicago’s transportation system, determined that the optimal pricing for public transport is…ZERO.

+ On Thursday, the US House made the politically vindictive and ecologically illiterate decision to arbitrarily remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act, even though the wolf’s population remains well below the already suspect recovery levels set by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

+ Alexander Metcalf, lead researcher in a University of Montana study of human tolerance for wolves in Montana:

Contrary to many assumptions and media narratives, most people have positive attitudes toward wolves and are tolerant of them. This is true around the world and even here in Montana, where we estimate 74% of Montanans are tolerant or very tolerant of wolves. In Montana, people also tolerate wolf hunting and lethal control in response to conflict–this sets Montana apart from Europe and elsewhere.

The study, which looked at attitudes toward wolves by Montanans in 2012, 1017 and 2024, found that tolerance of wolves in the state has increased from 41% to 74%, while their tolerance of wolf hunting has declined by 13 points to 58% over the last 10 years.

+ Trump: “Instead of a 4% GDP or 3% GDP, it should be able to be 20 or 25%. I don’t know why it can’t be.” Wharton wants its degree back. Or should.

+ Fox News’ John Roberts queried Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on whether Trump’s math added up. (It doesn’t.) And got smirking sophistry and chop-logic in return.

John Roberts, Fox News: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you to take their product. So it raises the question — how much of last night’s speech was hyperbole?

Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary: No. What he’s saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring the drug down to $13, if you’re looking at it from $13, it’s down 7 times

Roberts: It’s not a 600% cut…

Lutnick: But it’s 700% higher price before. It’s down 700% now. So $13 would have to go up 700% to get back to the old one. So it all depends on when you look at it.

+ Speaking of Lutnick, Senate and House Democrats are probing allegations that he’s promoting government contracts for energy-sucking AI data centers that will benefit his family and former company, Cantor Fitzgerald, in violation of federal ethics rules..

+ If you can follow this logic, you’ll breeze right through Derrida’s Of Grammatology…Trump:

You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don’t need that many. You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we’re doing things right.

+ A new study from the Center for Effective Global Action estimates that ending global poverty is both possible and affordable. The study estimates that the cost of ending extreme poverty using direct income transfers would be only 0.3% of global GDP.

+ As Trump prepares to launch his big crackdown on the Left, here’s how to tell if you may be on the target list. Have you ever espoused opinions that might be interpreted as advocating:

1. “anti-Americanism,”
2. “anti-capitalism,”
3. “anti-Christianity,”
4. “opposition to law and immigration enforcement,”
5. “radical gender ideology,”
6. “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.” 

+ The Left seems a lot more pervasive than I thought…

+ Meanwhile, Rep. Chip Roy has declared war on the Catholic Church, which would seem to put him on the FBI Watch List under both subversive ideology #3 and #6 :

A lot of good Americans give their money to Catholic charities thinking they’re helping people, and it turns out they’re a part of a vast leftist network that is being used to undermine our country.

Whether it’s the open borders, Soros DAs, Arabella, or the ‘Islamification’ of Texas and this country—it’s organized, and this is one example. Look at the Medicaid fraud up in Minneapolis. It was going to Somalis, and it was literally billions of dollars.

This administration is rooting it out; Congress needs to do more. That’s why I called for a special select committee to follow the money of these radical groups. We need to do it.

+ Here at CounterPunch we take our nourishment where we can and we are currently feasting on the news that David Brooks, the moralizing columnist for the New York Times, who has consistently downplayed the Epstein scandal, once comparing it to QAnon conspiracy theories, has now shown up in several photos from the vaults of the Epstein estate released by House Democrats, including this shot of a giddy Brooks sitting next to Google’s Sergey Brin at an Epstein hosted event.

+ Despite polls showing that public support for the death penalty has hit a five-year low, the US will execute more people this year than in the last 15 years. The surge in killings is largely driven by the state of Florida, where the DeSantis death machine has executed 19 people in 2025, 40 percent of the national total. Florida is one of only two states that allow non-unanimous juries to render death verdicts.

+ The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court is “wrestling” with death penalty cases involving “intellectual disabilities,” though I doubt they’re throwing each other to the mat over it. Bill Clinton certainly didn’t. In fact, he saw it as a political opportunity and didn’t hesitate to divert himself off the campaign trail to Little Rock in 1992 to supervise the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who had 3 third-grade reading and writing skills as an adult and suffered severe brain damage after shooting himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt. At his last meal, Rector said he was saving his pudding for later. Clinton made a big show of casually killing Rector to boost his tough-on-crime cred and then-flagging poll numbers. Sick guy. Clinton, I mean…

+ Brown University had to correct a dangerous and incorrect post by the President of the United States, as a mass shooting was taking place on campus. Then Trump blamed Brown, not his own FBI, for his potentially fatal blunder.

+ After Kash Patel’s FBI agents wrongly arrested an Army sniper for the Brown University shooting, leaked his name and photo to the press and bragged about using “advanced cell-phone tracking technology” to enable the (false) arrest, Patel’s incompetence as FBI director is comical, up to the now seemingly inevitable point where it gets someone killed…

+ John Cassidy, writing in the New Yorker, on how the Trump family ventures have cashed in on his presidency:

As the anniversary of Donald Trump’s return to the White House approaches, keeping up with his family’s efforts to cash in is a mighty challenge. It seems like there is a fresh deal, or revelation, every week. Since many of the Trump or Trump-affiliated ventures are privately owned, we don’t have a complete account of their finances. But in tracking company announcements, official filings, and the assiduous reporting of several media outlets, a clear picture emerges: enrichment of the First Family on a scale that is unprecedented in American history…. in terms of the money involved, the geographic reach, and the explicit ties to Presidential actions—particularly Trump’s efforts to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the world”—there has never been anything like the second term of Trump, Inc. 

+ HRC to Rachel Maddow:  “Americans who engage in misinformation should be civilly or criminally charged.” Will Hillary get immunity? 

+ Jacqueline Rose in the LRB on Netanyahu: “Netanyahu is trying to absolve himself of a guilt whose reality he denies. He wants to be declared innocent without being convicted of anything. He seems blithely unaware that the more one tries to repudiate guilt, the more it entrenches itself, bringing the wrath of the gods, so to speak, down on your head: guilt is tenacious, or it is nothing.”

+ NYC council member Vickie Paladino called for the “expulsion of Muslims from Western nations.” Zohran Mamdani’s response was swift: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, said in a statement: “A million Muslims live in New York City. We belong here, as does every other New Yorker. This is vile Islamophobia from the Councilwoman and it has no place in our city.”

+ Mamdani’s message to the Jewish community during Hanukkah

My hope is that in leading this city that it will be a city where Jewish New Yorkers are not only safe to leave their homes and go to work and to spend their lives as they would like to, but also in celebrating their own faith.

Such a ferocious man! You can see why everyone trembles when he pedals his Citi Bike through the neighborhood…

+ 16 Democratic senators colluded with Republicans to confirm billionaire and “private astronaut” Jared Issacman to head NASA. Isaacman is an intimate of Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has billions in contracts with the space agency and is seeking billions more.

Baldwin
Cantwell
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Schiff
Shaheen
Slotkin
Warner

 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/19/roaming-charges-the-politics-of-cruelty-and-crudity/