UNDERNEWS

Since Trump took over

2026-08-29T11:21:08.803-04:00

Religion in schools

2026-08-29T11:04:47.332-04:00

Patriotwise - A new federal lawsuit says a public high school’s “social justice” field trip turned into a religious event inside a mosque, raising church–state and student privacy alarms. Parents from multiple faiths sued Palo Alto Unified over a 2025 mosque visit tied to a school program.

The complaint says students were encouraged to wear Islamic attire, given Qurans, and observed prayer. Plaintiffs argue the school promoted one faith and posted student photos without consent.

The superintendent says instruction must be academic, not devotional, and the district is reviewing practices.

Parents and students from Jewish, Hindu, and Zoroastrian backgrounds filed a federal complaint against Palo Alto Unified School District. They say a fall 2025 field trip to the Muslim Community Association mosque went beyond teaching about religion. The complaint says students were encouraged to wear Islamic clothing, were given Qurans, observed prayer, and heard messaging that linked Islam with social justice goals. Plaintiffs also say student photos from inside the mosque later appeared online without parental consent.

Word

2026-08-29T10:54:46.002-04:00

“Arresting journalists. Fatally shooting protestors. Turning the military on citizens. Attempting to rig elections. Toying with the idea of declaring martial law. If this were happening in another country, what would you call it?” ‑Robert Reich

Renaming Lake Ontario violates 225 year old treaty

2026-08-29T10:29:01.235-04:00

The Hill - Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca called Friday for President Trump to rescind his order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” citing a 225-year-old treaty between Native Americans and the U.S. government.

Seneca said in a statement that this name change, which President Trump authorized in a Thursday executive order, violated the terms of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. “The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” he said in a statement.

Black farming

2026-08-29T09:54:48.873-04:00

New Republic – [There are] roughly 46,000 Black farmers in the United States today—just 1.4 percent of all American farmers, down from 14 percent in 1920 (Black farmers themselves contend that even the 1.4 percent figure is inflated). There are today just barely 30,000 Black-owned farms, mostly in the Deep South—with more than 11,000 Black farmers in Texas alone—covering roughly three million acres.

…The first great post-emancipation betrayal of Black Americans was, of course, over land. At the end of the Civil War, the federal government had its earliest chance—of what would later be many—to make a good-faith attempt at recompense for nearly 250 years of brutal chattel slavery by creating a Black landowning class. Instead, it restored the very white planter class that had waged war against the United States to preserve slavery. Thus, the famous promise of “40 acres and mule” to the formerly enslaved went unfulfilled. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman gave the order, and 400,000 confiscated coastal acres were given to freed families….

The famous promise of “40 acres and mule” to the formerly enslaved went unfulfilled. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman gave the order, but within a few months, President Andrew Johnson rescinded it and forced Black families off the land.

That remains this country’s most infamous Black land betrayal, but even that was hardly the first. The 1850 Donation Land Act offered parcels of Oregon Territory land to “every white settler,” but excluded Black people. The citizenship requirement for the 1862 Homestead Act—signed days after Congress created the USDA—implicitly excluded both free and enslaved Black folks, whom the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision had declared incapable of citizenship. An estimated 93 million living Americans descend from those original homesteaders. As sociologist Thomas Shapiro has argued, that means roughly one-quarter of the country’s current population “potentially traces its legacy of property ownership, upward mobility, economic stability, class status, and wealth directly to one national policy—a policy that in practice essentially excluded African Americans.”

Meanwhile. . .

2026-08-29T09:25:20.565-04:00

Pew Research - This week, Meta agreed to change its policies for teens as part of a settlement with nearly every state and Washington, D.C. In our recent survey, 56% of U.S. adults said they would favor banning anyone under the age of 16 from using social media. Large majorities also favored parental consent, age verification and time limits.

Pew Research - Today, 42% of U.S. adults say they don’t use cash for any purchases in a typical week. This is up from 24% in 2015. Fewer – 12% – say they use cash to pay for all or almost all of their purchases in a typical week. Another 46% say they use cash sometimes, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from May 26 to June 1, 2026.

Trump announces big oil plan with Venezuela

2026-08-29T09:20:03.143-04:00

NBC News - President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had reached an agreement with Venezuela to take control of the country’s 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, a move he said would more than double America’s reserves. The announcement comes months after the U.S. military carried out an operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump is also facing increasing pressure ahead of the midterm elections, as gas prices remain high and the war in Iran approaches its six-month mark.

The uncertain role of Kamala Harris

2026-08-29T09:13:21.127-04:00

The Hill - Democratic candidates in competitive election races are taking different tacks this cycle over how close to affiliate themselves with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s lent her support to many of them but whose loss in the 2024 election has made her a more polarizing figure.

Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek (D) told reporters this week he didn’t want Harris to campaign for him as he pursues a Senate seat this cycle — a sentiment Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, the state’s auditor, also shared about Harris and former President Biden.

Former Rep. Mary Peltola’s (D-Alaska) Senate campaign also voiced frustration after Harris’s PAC issued a fundraising email for the red-state Democrat earlier this month.

But not all Democrats are keeping Harris at arm’s length.

The former vice president joined a Women for Ossoff call set up by Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-Ga.) reelection campaign. She also made a fundraising appeal on his Facebook page.

And Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said he was “grateful” to have Harris’s support after she endorsed him following his primary.

While the different tactics likely reflect the political realities of red and purple states, they’ve also raised questions about Harris’s political viability as she mulls a second presidential run.

2026-08-29T09:06:23.749-04:00

Trump’s DHS is using an obscure law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions

Just a spam

2026-08-28T19:31:11.200-04:00

Just a spam - If you got a confusing invitation to a Sam Smith event, ignore it. It's a spam.

Meanwhile....

2026-08-28T13:37:13.557-04:00

ABC - A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity run by his wife and was later used for political purposes.

ABC News - A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity run by his wife and was later used for political purposes.

Mail in voting

2026-08-28T13:01:18.251-04:00

The Hill - A federal judge has again blocked the Trump administration from going forward with its new mail-in voting restrictions from the president’s executive order, pausing the move for at least two weeks. That would extend beyond when the first states start sending out mail-in ballots for the midterms.

RF Kennedy Jr

2026-08-28T12:50:05.599-04:00

The Guardian - A senior Democratic senator has called for a criminal investigation into Robert F Kennedy Jr after reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year. Ron Wyden said in a statement: “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress.”

What did Kennedy purportedly lie about? A Guardian analysis of newly obtained documents found that the US health secretary had lied when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.

ICE

2026-08-28T11:30:24.375-04:00

MS NOW - Last night MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell highlighted the case of Liam Tadeo, a five-year-old boy detained with his father by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas on August 16 as they were on their way to a soccer game and taken to the Dilley detention camp. Representative Greg Casar explained how ICE now routinely uses children as leverage to make parents turn themselves in or self-deport. And sure enough in this case, reports an ABC affiliate in Arizona, the father agreed for himself and Liam to be deported. The Marshall Project estimates that ICE has detained more than 6,000 children so far in Trump’s second term.

48 American scholars taking Canadian jobs

2026-08-28T11:18:30.543-04:00

NY Times - Twenty-one universities in Canada announced on Thursday the hiring of dozens of researchers to join their top academic ranks, poaching the majority of the recruits from the United States. Of the incoming 64 researchers, 48 will leave American campuses including Harvard, Yale and M.I.T., and the remainder are from Europe, Asia and Australia.

Turmoil in American academia, precipitated by a crackdown on prestigious universities by the Trump administration and attacks on scientific research groups, has allowed Canada a rare opportunity to lure some of those schools’ top minds north.

Their hiring is paid for through a Canadian government investment of more than 500 million Canadian dollars (about $364 million) in research fields that are strategically important, from global warming to artificial intelligence.

2026-08-28T09:52:04.967-04:00

Legal exceptions: 10 states with unique regulations

Middle East

2026-08-28T09:39:11.082-04:00

MS NOW - When President Donald Trump launched his war of aggression on Iran earlier this year, he suggested it could end in as little as “two or three days.” The toppling of Iran’s government, he predicted, might take a little longer: within “four to five weeks.”

As of today, the U.S. has been at war against Iran for six months. And there is no end in sight. The White House says it’s not even on speaking terms with Iran after an always-shaky ceasefire collapsed last month.

Trump’s quagmire in Iran is one of the most shameful acts of his presidency. He has failed at what he haughtily presumed would be an easy victory — and left Iran strategically stronger and the world worse off than when he started. And what makes it doubly tragic is how much of this catastrophe was foreseeable. At the heart of his failure was a total incuriosity about the plausibility and the likely consequences of the “little excursion” he decided to embark upon.

Sam Smith – Once again this story fails to mention that it is Congress and not the president who gets to declare war. As US News explains, “The Constitution is pretty clear on the subject of which branch of government gets to decide when the United States is at war. It’s Congress. Only Congress has the power to formally declare war.”

Todd Blanche

2026-08-27T14:37:02.838-04:00

"We will not prosecute the abusers named in the Epstein files or reveal their names to the public." - Todd Blanche, US Attorney General

Nation’s Largest Reservoirs Are Drying Up

2026-08-27T14:35:14.368-04:00

NY Times- Lakes Powell and Mead, the nation’s largest reservoirs, are drying up, sending a Colorado River system that provides water and electricity for millions of people into a state of crisis with no end in sight.

Water levels in Lake Powell, along the Utah-Arizona border, fell to a record low on Saturday. Lake Mead, the larger of the two and farthest downstream on the Colorado River, dropped to its lowest recorded point a week earlier.

The combined reservoir system, an essential water source for cities and farms across Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, has not held so little water since 1957, before Lake Powell was filled. That was long before climate change brought three decades of drought, the worst dry spell for the Southwest in at least 1,200 years, scientists said.

Federal and state officials and communities across the region have taken emergency steps to try to head off catastrophe. They shifted water from a smaller reservoir to try to save Powell and have called for water conservation, though those requests are mostly voluntary so far.

Donald Trump

2026-08-27T14:16:50.018-04:00

Project on Government Oversight - President Donald Trump added $1.4 billion to his personal wealth last year from cryptocurrency ventures: businesses he launched just before taking office - and in an industry he has aggressively shielded from enforcement and personally promoted.

Far from probing the president's self-dealing, his administration is enabling it. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which should be investigating this, appears to be sidestepping a glaringly conflicted deal with AI Financial Corporation (formerly Alt5 Sigma) that netted the president and his family an estimated $500 million.

For years now, POGO has raised the alarm about the glaring loophole in ethics law that creates an exemption for criminal conflicts of interest for presidents and vice presidents. We've urged the closure of this loophole, lest it be abused by powerful officials who put their bottom line above their duty to the public - exactly the infuriating abuse we are seeing right now.

What's even more infuriating: When questioned about his self-dealing, President Trump said he "found out that nobody cared." He couldn't be more wrong.

NBC News - President Donald Trump signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” amid his repeated threats and taunts in an escalating trade war with Canada. Trump made a similar move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Interior Department and Google Maps complied with that directive, while the rest of the world largely has not. “The Americans can call it whatever they want to call it,” a Canadian maritime attorney told NBC News this week. “It is Lake Ontario.”

Trump downplays Moscow visit by CIA

2026-08-27T12:44:38.076-04:00

The Guardian - Donald Trump has downplayed a visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, as "semi-routine" after he turned up in the Russian capital unannounced. The White House, CIA, Pentagon and the US air force all declined to comment on the visit, which was confirmed on Wednesday by a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.

Interviewed by the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Trump said "He's there, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end. We're working very hard to get that war ended, and frankly, they both want to see it ended at this point."

Middle East

2026-08-27T12:09:17.837-04:00

Bold Front News - Washington’s new Iran plan promises the “toughest sanctions in history,” escalating full-blown economic warfare without sending U.S. troops into battle. Treasury signaled sweeping sanctions to choke Iran’s revenue and pressure its backers. Recent actions targeted oil shipping, insurers, and financiers tied to Iran’s military.

Iran vows to resist and calls sanctions an American “addiction”. Experts say sanctions hit the economy hard but rarely change core behavior.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States will impose the “toughest sanctions in history” on Iran. He framed the push as a way to increase pressure while avoiding large new military operations. The plan centers on broader designations, tougher secondary sanctions, and efforts to cut off shippers, insurers, and banks that enable Iran’s oil trade and weapons programs. This move tells allies and rivals that Washington will use financial power to punish Tehran and anyone who helps it.

2026-08-27T11:39:51.483-04:00

The happiest cities of 2026

Business economics

2026-08-27T11:17:37.910-04:00

The Guardian - The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies. IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%. The average CEO compensation among low-wage 100 corporations was $17.5m in 2025, compared to median worker pay of $36,571.

Alaska's name problem

2026-08-27T10:58:21.742-04:00

TNR - The top four vote-getters in Alaska’s nonpartisan primaries make it to the general election. The fourth is yet to be determined. But what we already know about the race is likely causing headaches in the campaign headquarters of incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan. Election officials confirmed this week that Dan J. Sullivan, a fellow Republican and retired teacher, had qualified for the general election. … Sullivan did get a boost last weekend with an endorsement from a former Anchorage mayor. His name? Dan A. Sullivan.

ICE

2026-08-27T10:45:31.703-04:00

Intercept - Anti-ICE activists involved with a protest last July 4 outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas are facing a combined 560+ years in prison. They’re the very first convictions under NSPM-7, Donald Trump’s presidential directive targeting left-wing activists as likely domestic terrorists. Some of the Prairieland defendants did little more than wear all-black clothing to the protest. One didn’t even attend the protest and got 30 years for merely moving a box of leftist zines. But this fight isn’t over. Several Prairieland defendants are appealing their convictions

Donald Trump

2026-08-27T10:42:08.361-04:00

MS NOW - President Donald Trump will not be on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. But in a recent White House strategy meeting, he reportedly decided that as Election Day approaches, he’d like to spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting himself. The tone-deaf strategy serves as yet another example of how Trump’s self-adulation is frequently the source of his biggest strategic mistakes.

According to The Atlantic, citing “three people familiar with the meeting,” Trump gathered his political advisers to figure out how he should spend the $400 million in funds available to his super political action committee, MAGA Inc. He reportedly settled on trying to “lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself” and ordered “a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests.” Trump apparently wants ad makers to “mine his own on-camera statements” for these ads, and focus on his tax breaks, the stock market’s rise and his failed war on fentanyl, among other things.

This reported ad spend decision underscores Trump’s conviction that he alone can carry Republicans to victory at the polls this fall. Last week at a rally for Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, R-S.C., Trump pleaded to the audience, “What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.”

The real cost of data centers

2026-08-27T09:55:08.346-04:00

Hartmann Report - Polling by Gallup finds that 71 percent of Americans are against having an AI data center in their community, and that number includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. They get it that the much-ballyhooed “cloud” is actually a gigantic collection of massive industrial buildings that consume staggering amounts of electricity and water, produce both air and noise pollution, and more often than not jack up local utility bills and buy off corrupt local politicians to get tax abatements.

The Department of Energy says that data centers sucked up 4.4 percent of all the electricity generated in America in 2023; by 2028, DOE says, that number could be 12 percent, or about an eighth of all the power produced in our country. And once the buildings go up, the number of jobs created is negligible.

Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and other tech giants often negotiate special “bulk” electricity rates behind closed doors, sticking homeowners and local small businesses with the cost of expanding the grid and power plant capacity.

Researchers at Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative documented how these data center costs are rapidly being shifted from the companies to the public. For example, Meta/Facebook is planning a new data center in Louisiana that would suck up about twice as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans, and require around $3 billion to build out the gas-fired generator capacity it’ll need.

Word

2026-08-26T17:51:05.116-04:00

Obama: “We’ve handed enormous power to a fool who is making U.S. policy friendlier to our adversaries like North Korea and Russia, while turning his back on longtime allies like Canada.”

If you got a strange mail message from us, it was a spam

2026-08-26T15:19:51.310-04:00