What Caught My Eye forAugust 20 - 26 (#27)

Of course, if you look at the level of jawboning happening now in the Trump administration, it’s quite incredible and way beyond even what they (falsely) accused Biden of doing. Almost every day we see yet another story of someone in the Trump admin threatening intermediaries to suppress speech.

So, given that backdrop, the JAWBONE Act (silly backronym aside) comes at an interesting time. While in theory the First Amendment already protects against such activities, it’s quite difficult to get your full day in court. So the new bill gives apparent victims of jawboning a direct cause of action, allows for early discovery to try to prove that they were targets, and allows cases to live on after officials involved are out of office. It also would require “transparency” regarding certain government communications with media companies.

The government should not be in the business of telling people and companies what they can and cannot say. Given the current administration and its actions…we needed this well before Trump walked back into the Oval Office.

I’m a little late with this one, but it is absolutely egregious that these convictions and sentences were handed out.

Even if Song was a “known terrorist” (he’s not), that still…. means nothing. Sanchez moved a box of zines. What the fuck does that have to do with Song being on the run? The answer is absolutely nothing.

Yes, the Trump administration has been desperately trying to drum up some sort of violent organized opposition because they need that to justify the suppression of everyone’s rights as part of their continued authoritarian project. That the Trump Justice Department and a couple of famously partisan judges played along with this travesty of a prosecution, doesn’t make it legitimate by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s just another sign that in Trump’s America those who violate the law in support of Trump get told they can do whatever crimes they want, and Trump might even get them paid, but protesting the ongoing fascism, may get you sent to prison for decades. It’s so extreme that it’s almost difficult to believe it has happened in the United States. This case will go down in history among the most ridiculous, partisan, bullshit attacks on free speech, and Judges Pittman and O’Connor will both be remembered for being the judges responsible for this travesty.

But Musk ended up as more wrecking ball than problem solver. His agency did not help the FAA buy or implement any major system upgrades. He wrongly accused Verizon of running the FAA’s communications system, while also failing to turn Starlink into the agency’s telecom provider of choice. Its signature achievement was the termination of 400 FAA employees, including maintenance technicians at 18 different air traffic control centers.

He went in with a chainsaw. Very rarely does a chainsaw actually construct or fix anything.

The nation’s unstable air traffic control system made 2025 the worst year for flight delays in over a decade, according to the US Public Interest Research Group. One in four flights was delayed, diverted, or canceled for a total of almost 1.7 million disruptions. Tarmac delays, where airplanes are held on the ground but passengers must stay on board, were up 64 percent compared to 2024. And an estimated 2.4 million checked bags were lost or damaged on domestic flights alone.

Numbers going up are good…right?

As we reported in February 2025, the nation’s air traffic control system was already unstable even before Musk’s intervention. Almost 90 percent of the nation’s air traffic control centers were chronically understaffed, and the overwhelming majority of technology in those centers was classified as “unsustainable” or “potentially unsustainable” by the FAA. But while the tech is set for an upgrade, staffing remains a huge — and underfunded — issue. The FAA finished 2025 with 14,832 controllers on staff but expects to lose 1,711 of them — more than 10 percent — through retirements, resignations and other attrition this year.

Software can certainly help, but for something as important as air traffic safety, it can’t completely replace the human in control.

Many countries were slow to react, but as they learned about the transmissibility of the virus, and as vaccines became available, they rapidly cut their death rates. Not so America. “The death rate is now about eight times higher in America than in the rest of the rich world,” The Economist reported in September 2021. In all, America lost more than 1.1m people to covid, or roughly 3,500 lives out of every million. This should haunt every official who was in a position to combat the pandemic. Germany’s death rate was about 2,000 per million people and Canada’s fewer than 1,400, notes Donald McNeil in his book “The Wisdom of Plagues”. Had America managed to split that difference, at about 1,700 per million, “We would have lost about 540,000 fewer dead,” he writes. “Who speaks for them?”

We couldn’t even get people to be respectful of others and wear a damned mask. That, combined with Trump shouting nonsensical suggestions from the White House didn’t exactly help matters.

Why did so many Americans die? High rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and elderliness made them more vulnerable. But government bungling meant America was testing 100 people a day in early 2020 when other countries were testing tens of thousands; that masks and lockdowns were deployed erratically; that contact tracing proved too challenging for the country first to the Moon. Most senselessly, so many Americans died because so many failed to take the vaccines that Mr Trump, in his most constructive act as president, succeeded in rushing into existence.

The fact that we’re trying to blame Fauci for all of this is beyond disgusting…and I agree, embarrassing.

His summons before the Senate committee was surely intended to humiliate if not incriminate him. It should embarrass the entire country.

Coates and Klein talked about meeting people where they’re at. But if you not only listen to someone but reinforce their world view—by pretending, for instance, that Charlie Kirk was not a hatemonger—you’re either lying to yourself, or you’re lying to them.

It’s true that the political beliefs Kirk’s audience or MAGA supporters have been sold about trans people (or the border or abortion) have been sold to them in bad faith. They might have likewise accepted those beliefs in bad faith because they actually just want to see violence against vulnerable groups. Or they might genuinely believe them to be true. But the answer isn’t to lie more to those people. And it’s especially not to reinforce the bad-faith lies they’ve been sold.

If you start doing that, you lose your way. Here’s where Coates’ clarity comes in handy. You treat people humanely—everyone.

People can come in the tent without agreeing on every policy. But you have to make the demand that all people will be treated humanely. That belief guides what you yourself will do. You don’t buy into the MAGA lies to get supporters. You give them a vision of what you support, and you call them to it.

Let’s not normalize the views of, or give a podium to people like Charlie Kirk, Christopher Rufo, and the like.

How does a person convince themselves they need to swallow live frogs? They see themselves as being pragmatic in difficult times and willing to make difficult choices. They imagine that doing something unpleasant is the same as doing something effective. They think it will save them. But developing a rational theory of eating live frogs is not going to save anyone.