08/07/25
Good morning! It’s Thursday, August 7th.
India Pale Ale Day.
Ipa.
Everyone knows IPAs are more bitter but did you know that where your IPA is brewed can make a difference? West Coast IPAs like Firestone are more bitter (which is wild because we are super chill all of the time) while an IPA from New England, like Deschutes Brewery, is going to be a fruitier, less bitter brew.
And now, the news.
Fort Stewart
-via AP News
Once again… we start how we start here in America, after five soldiers were shot at Fort Stewart, the Georgia Army base. All of the soldiers are stable and expected to recover.
The shooter has been identified as 28-year-old Sergeant Quornelius Radford. He used a personal handgun, not a military firearm. He has taken into custody – authorities are not speculating on a motive.
This is the 218th day of the year and the 261st mass shooting of the year.
RFK Jr Ends mRNA Research Funding
-via Washington Post
On Tuesday, Health and Human Service Secretary RFK Jr (cursed sentence) announced a “coordinated wind-down” of 22 mRNA vaccine technology and research projects – including developing therapeutics for respiratory viruses, a vaccine for the bird flu, as well as inhaled treatments for the flu and covid.
mRNA technology is how we got the covid vaccines so quickly, saving hundreds of millions of lives but now Republicans hate it because they think it puts trackers in your body and makes spoons stick to your forehead (two real things that Republicans have said were side effects of the Covid vaccine).
When reasonable people dared to ask, you know – what the hell dude? Why? RFK Jr said “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted.” Yeah, acted like a doofus because study after study shows mRNA vaccines are safe, effective, and work faster than vaccines that put weakened versions of a virus into your body (which is what they’d rather use).
So wash your hands, I guess, because that’s the closest we’ll get to health care in about five minutes.
JD Vance’s Strategy Session
-via ABC News
Apparently JD Vance led a strategy meeting Wednesday night to discuss the best way to handle the Epstein fallout.
This is being recorded before details of the meeting came out, but Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche (who, as a reminder, is number two at the Department of Justice but prior to that was Trump’s personal lawyer), as well as Kash Patel, among others.
And apparently this was a dinner at his house.
Couldn’t pay me enough. There is no dollar figure high enough.
Also – JD is your strategy leader? That’s the best you’ve got? Are you even trying? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care but… these are the big brains you’re bringing in? Jeezers.
I should note that, once CNN reported on this meeting, Vance denied that the meeting was taking place. Sort of.
“There was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the Vice President’s residence to discuss Epstein Strategy.”
So maybe they moved it?
Maybe they’re having dinner at the Cracker Barrell?
But that doesn’t sound like a denial of the meeting itself.
Anyway, the brain trust is looking to craft a unified message regarding the fact that Trump was best friends with a child sex trafficker.
I feel like, and again, I’m not here to help, the first step is to stop being friends with so many child sexual assaulters.
I mean, have the meeting. Don’t have the meeting. Trump will continue to spiral out and say whatever he wants, trying to distract from the fact that he’s in these files and that’s why they don’t want to release them. It’s also why they moved Ghislane Maxwell to a lower security prison. Perks for a sexual assaulter in hopes of protecting the president who is also a sexual assaulter. One of the many dinner topics, I’m sure.
Not sure how they sleep at night. Enjoy your dinner, I guess.
They’re literally doing a coverup.
Trump v DC
-via CBS News
Over the weekend, one of the early DOGE staffers, actually one of the most famous ones - a 19-year-old who chose the screenname Big Balls was allegedly assaulted over the weekend by 10 teenagers, with two fifteen year olds ultimately being arrested for unarmed carjacking.
That’s the backstory.
Listen – bummer. Be careful.
But I do have… questions. 10 unarmed teens. No one was taken to the hospital.
Trump posted about it online, saying he was “beaten mercilessly by local thugs.”
And then added… "If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City."
And the thing is, he’s talked about this before. In February he literally said, “I think we should govern District of Columbia.”
Also, look at what he tried in Los Angeles. He sent in the military. He dreams about stuff like this. He is desperate to invoke the Insurrection Act.
But LA is part of California.
California is a state.
DC is not a state, and under its Home Rule authority Congress vets all of its laws and is able to overturn any of them. But they can go further, which it sounds like Trump would like to do.
And if he’s using incidents like this, and saying it’s a reaction to crime, the DC National Guard reports directly to the president, not the DC mayor.
Incidentally, overall violent crime is down by 26% over the last year and a half. But still. Let’s not get bogged down with details.
The 2nd most notorious DOGE staffer. 10 unarmed teens. No one taken to the hospital.
"If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City."
Hook em Horns
-via CBS News
And finally, the fight for democracy continues (tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow) as Texas House Democrats continue to stay out of state.
As a reminder, they split into three groups and went to three places. One of those places was Chicago, where that group says they were evacuated from their hotel on Wednesday after a bomb threat was called in.
Luckily no device was found but like… you know… this is what happens when you have a political party that calls people they don’t like “enemies of the state” and pardons insurrectionists and laughs when the husband of the Speaker of the House gets beaten nearly to death.
So that’s the big update. Tomorrow marks the deadline for the democrats to return home or Texas AG Ken Paxton is going to tattle to the Texas Supreme Court and ask to have their seats declared vacate. Something Greg Abbott tried to do, but he doesn’t have the authority to do that, so it was literally just legal fan fiction which is just so silly! It’s all just so silly!
Well, it’s all a terrible terrible threat to democracy.
But these dums dums… big loser energy.
And while they’re busy trying to draw headlines to make themselves sound big and strong – people are calling in bomb threats.
It’s escalatingly dangerous – all because the Republicans, in Texas and at-large, do not believe that you do not have a right to a free and fair election, nor do they believe you have a right to have your vote weighed equally against everyone else’s vote.
They do not believe in democracy.
And every day, in escalatingly dangerous ways, they further prove that.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Hey, no news tomorrow or Monday.
Oh no but Kim the Texas democrats have to go home tomorrow! What about that? They’re not going to go home. Paxton will file his order and the court will take up the case. They likely will not rule before Tuesday. It’ll keep.
I’m proud of IPAs. I think it’s good sometimes to be a little bitter.
But more than IPAs. Because you’re not always bitter but you certainly have hops – I’m proud of you.