07/14/25
Good morning! It’s Monday, July 14th
Bastille day!
Like the band! Is that the name? I’m not looking it up. My grandma was born in France, so my mom send me a whole article about the French Revolution first thing in the morning on Sunday and me, being the brilliant historian that am I, said… what’s this for?
Anyway!
Bastille day celebrates the toppling of the French monarchy in 1789. At that time, society in France was divided into three parts: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners who paid the taxes but had almost no political power (sound familiar?). This group was called the Third Estate.
Years of deficit spending and war (seriously – sound familiar?) lead food shortages, rising bread prices, and finally – riots.
Here’s where those in power got it twisted – because this was also the period of Enlightenment, which had started about 100 years earlier, and the three main ideas of Enlightenment were reason, individualism, and skepticism.
They only thought the Third Estate had no political power.
Because ego eats brain.
Three days before Bastille day, the king dismissed the popular finance minister who, in addition to limiting royal spending for the first time and making royal finances transparent (also for the first time), he wanted to restructure France’s tax system, so that those at the top paid more than the Third Estate. Can’t have that!
His dismissal was the final straw.
On July 14th, between 800-1000 working-class Parisians stormed the Bastille, which was being used as a state prison where they would imprison people, typically without trial (history doesn’t often repeat, but it sure does rhyme).
It was picked because of the symbolism, the fact that it did imprison people (although on that day, only seven prisoners were inside the Bastille, and because they were about to do revolution… the bastille had had a huge supply of gunpowder and ammunition.
Tensions were already brewing, but July 14th 1789 symbolic beginning of the revolution.
The Bastille was not the biggest threat to Parisians, but it was the clearest symbol of tyranny. The clearest reminder that we always have the power to fight back.
Bastille Day is a French holiday.
And it serves as a worldwide reminder that when power becomes corrupt, we must become the revolution.
And now, the news.
Shooting in Kentucky
-via ABC News
We start how we start here in America, with two women dead, with the shooter also dead after feeling the scene, in a Kentucky church.
Here’s what happened.
It started near the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, where the suspect allegedly shot a Kentucky State Trooper. From there, they carjacked a vehicle and fled to a church, where they shot four more people. The two women he shot were killed, and the two others, both male, were taken to the hospital. One of the men is in critical condition.
The State Trooper is also in stable condition.
The shooter, whose identity was not released by the time I recorded this episode, was killed by law enforcement. Police believe they have a connection to the individuals at the church.
Texas Floods
-via AP News, CNN, Texas Tribune, NY Times, and Texas Monthly
I was off last week, and a couple of big stories broke, so let’s talk about them! Hey - I missed you.
First, of course, the heartbreaking story of the flash floods in Texas that have killed at least 129 people. A number that is expected to possibly more than double, as more than 160 people are missing in Kerr County alone.
The search was paused over the weekend due to the possibility of further flooding in the area.
This time, authorities in the area conducted door-to-door visits to ensure people were aware of the danger of flooding. A service that was not offered in the first flood and would have saved lives.
Let’s talk about a few things here in this story.
First, the flood.
Look, people who live in this area, I can only imagine, probably had two things working against them – the information they were given (which I’ll come back to in a minute) and their own personal history. I can only say this as someone who lives in Los Angeles. A weather mecha! What do I know? But, you know, everyone knows their own area.
We just had catastrophic fires in Los Angeles. Prior to that, we lived through years and decades of fire seasons. We know what to look for in fire season. When to worry and when to, you know… I’ll keep my phone close but it’s fine. That’s what we were doing in January, until all of the sudden – BAM it was different.
There seems to be some conflicting information about when information came to city officials. National Weather Service issued a flood watch around 1pm on Thursday. Around 6:30pm it was upgraded to “considerable flash and urban flash flooding possible.”
Kerrville’s mayor went out that night and noted it wasn’t raining yet, and thought the rain might even skip their town all together. Because, again, one of the things working against them was their own personal history. This is summer in Texas. You float the river. You camp out. How many times had he heard a flash flood warning only to never see a drop of rain?
There is no argument, no reasonable argument, to be made that they should have had more information.
But in an hour, one hour, that water rose more than 22 feet. In total, the Guadalupe River rose more than 32 feet.
In no way am I forgiving what happened here; I only want to offer context.
Now, a lot has been made about the fact that Kerr County didn’t have a mass notification system that could have warned residents about this flood. There’s a video online right now about people in the county saying the county should send $10 million that the county got from the American Rescue Plan back to Biden. That’s not… quite what happened. The county actually wanted it earlier but the Texas Division of Emergency Management denied the application because they didn’t have a hazard mitigation plan.
Then, five years later, when that $10 million was awarded, they were even more divided because of COVID fatigue. So this already very conservative county spent that $10 million in other ways.
And we can look back in anger now, and again I’m not giving them an out, I’m just saying – there is a video online of the residents saying they wanted to give back the $10 million and that’s why what happened happened. It’s not.
Now, if you’re thinking to yourself – I’m being too rational and not giving you a lot of places to be mad. Don’t you worry, I’ve got you covered.
First of all, FEMA didn’t answer almost two-thirds of the calls that came through because their fired hundreds of their contractors on July 5th when their contracts ran out.
For the record – the flood happened on the 4th. Feels like someone should have had some sort of plan in place. But of course, no one’s actually in charge at FEMA because the head of FEMA was fired for saying FEMA should exist and now the there’s only an acting head and he doesn’t have any emergency management experience and didn’t even know there was a hurricane season!
Also, Speaker Johnson said the only thing to do about something like this is to pray. That’s it – just pray. Ted Cruz was in Greece and didn’t come back for 72 hours which he claims was the fastest he could get back (impossible. That’s just impossible).
And then there’s this: “Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, man, we got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we’re going to win this game.’” That is the actual real life, somehow, governor of Texas in reaction to someone asking about mistakes that were made that led to this massive tragedy.
So there are plenty of things to be mad about! Hopefully the leaders in the cities and counties along all water lines can find a way to prevent this from happening in the future, because it’s only going to get worse. Especially since Mr. Every football team blah blah blah and the rest of his dum dum political party refuse to believe in climate change.
Deadly ICE Raids
-via NBC News, PBS, AP News, and CNN
Moving to California, while Los Angeles remains under a hostile government takeover (which oddly got worse over the Fourth of July weekend when about 90 members of the National Guard and some other federal officers that no one’s quite sure who they are. ICE I guess. Anyway, they went all decked out in their tactical gear, guns and all, some on horseback and some in riding in about a dozen military vehicles, through MacArthur Park to intimidate… well the city of Los Angeles – not the parkgoers, since most of the park was empty.
Aside from the kids at the day camp there, of course – but they were taken inside, so they wouldn’t be scared.)
Anyway, while that’s still happening here in LA, in Camarillo – Jaime Alanis Garcia died on Saturday after falling about thirty feet during an immigration raid at the Glass House Farms raid. He was kept on life support until his wife could travel from Mexico to say goodbye.
On the other side of the country, Florida lawmakers have been able to take their first looks at Alligator Alcatraz, two days after being denied entry, and what they’ve found there is… somehow worse than what we thought it would be. Prisoners are being kept in literal cages, packed 32 to a cage. I don’t know how big the actual cage are (they’re not roomy, that’s for sure, but I can’t find the exact size online anywhere).
Each cage has three small toilets, open for all to see. And that toilet has a spicket on top – so the drinking water is the same as the toilet water. The toilets often don’t work, so there was waste spread all over (also I should note that the detention center had a heads up they were coming, so this is like… the good version of what the area normally looks like.)
Lawmakers were only shown empty areas, not cages where people were, but House Rep. Maxwell Frost did say he heard someone shout that he was a US citizen.
There was also evidence of flooding, and, in addition to the oppressive heat and humidity, the whole area was plagued by mosquitoes.
Something to keep an eye out for today – on Friday, a federal judge told the Trump administration that the ICE raids in seven California counties, including Los Angeles, was a violation of the fourth amendment (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”).
The plaintiffs in the case include three detained immigrants and two US citizens. One of those citizens, are you ready for this… was held despite showing his identification.
On Friday, the White House’s response was but but… we wanna!
Actually, laughably they said, “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview (or) jurisdiction of any judge. We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal.”
This White House has quite literally never done anything carefully. The president can’t even blend his foundation carefully.
You literally just look at someone, go: pretty brown and that’s that.
But today you can expect more to be done about that ruling.
Meanwhile, Trump tweeted on his ironically named Twitter-Temu website that he was thinking about revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship which obviously he can’t do but I only bring up because… remember when she used to throw cush balls? What a time.
Epstein List
And finally… while I was on my little week off – Pam Bondi who made such a big deal about how the Epstein list was on her desk and she was reviewing it (that is literally what she said)… casually dropped a memo saying Epstein? I hardly knowstein.
Literally the memo says there’s no client list, no evidence that Epstein blackmailed high-profile figures, and that he died by suicide.
That’s… improbable. Just… improbable.
In fact, probably, instead, Trump’s on the list. Like, this is actually just the evidence that he’s on the list because if he wasn’t… he’d release the list. Do you understand? He’s spent the last few years telling us that it’s Clinton that’s on the list (and it probably is – we want to see that as well. Nobody should be getting away with this. That’s the difference here.) If he’s not on the list, he’d release the list. Therefore, if now suddenly this thing that certainly exists, they’re acting like it doesn’t exist… that’s circumstantial at best but… you know… it’s fair to assume.
Anyway, the MAGAs are fighting and it’s so funny.
Alex Jones got in his car and filmed himself crying about how upset he was about this. Big loser energy in this group, that’s for sure.
Just mere months ago, Bondi handed binders full of heavily redacted Epstein files to a bunch of MAGA influencers. And those dums were taking a bunch of awkwardly angled selfies with them (seriously, I’m not here to help you, but do you now know how to find your angle?). I wish I could have been there to see Pam Bondi’s face when she realized she was going to have to absolutely eat this and pretend like Trump wasn’t on this list.
So now everyone’s mad at Bondi, which is fine but also… we can be mad at both. We can also be mad at Trump who did the sex crimes that got him on the list that they’ve disappeared. So now Trump posted this incoherent post about Bondi, sticking up for her (it’s too insane to talk about, but it opens with “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” STUPID! He’s so stupid! Anyway, there’s this thing that can happen on a post called being ratioed – which is when a post gets more replies than likes or reposts. It’s a sign that there’s more criticism than support.
That happened on this post about Bondi. And it’s never happened on a post of Trump’s since he started his own social media company, which is a site that’s gotta be like 90% his supporters.
So we’ll see how significant this ends up being, but it’s interesting at least.
And that’s it! That’s the news!
Long episode! Sorryyyy
I’m proud of France! And my grandma, who would have loved podcasts! Seriously!
But more than mac and cheese, because it’s also mac and cheese – because you’re also cheesy as all get out but in a fun way – I’m proud of you.