08/14/26
Title
None Of This Is Chill
Good morning! It’s Friday, August 14th.
It’s both National Financial Awareness Day AND Love Your Bookshop Day
That… doesn’t work. For me at least. If I’m loving a bookshop, the LAST thing I need is to be aware of my financials.
And now, the news.
U.S.S. Lincoln
-via NY Times, BBC, The Hill, and Navy Times
Startin out talking ship…
The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which is an America’s Finest City-based aircraft carrier that holds a crew of about 5,000 sailors, has been at sea in the Middle East for about eight and a half months.
Typically, a standard deployment is 6 to 8 months. This deployment, which began November 21st, was originally anticipated to end in May. There is no known return date since its extension.
The Lincoln has been a cause for concern for a little while, with Senator Blumenthal writing Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary to say: “There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months.”
They’re running out of fresh food, they don’t always have access to clean clothes, and their port visits are infrequent, with troops not always able to leave the ship when they do.
The family member of one sailor said he’s lost 65lbs since May.
House Rep Mike Levin, who represents, among other areas, Camp Pendleton (and Oceanside – the hometown of a certain, shining, podcast host), painted the bleak picture in more detail: "moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste."
One sailor described the vibration of the ship to his family like this: "Without a port, without stepping foot on lands, without any kind of decompression. It's a constant vibration. Morning, noon, and night when you sleep, when you eat, when you shower. There's never a moment of peace in your mind."
There are stories of at least two sailors, but it’s unclear if that’s the actual number or if the actual number is higher.
Either way, the number of suicide attempts and ideation has increased.
And amongst all of this coming out, Democratic Senators have begun demanding formal inquiries and accountability from the Pentagon.
And what does Pete Hegseth have to say about all of this? About these horrific conditions he’s helped create, and conditions he CERTAINLY can fix?
He said the conditions have been “completely misrepresented,” which is the closest he got to actually commenting on those conditions, and then added, in a conversation with Newsmax, “Listen, we make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. What they do in those high seas and those austere conditions with less port calls, it’s incredible.”
Ohhhhh….. I don’t think you have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. That can’t possibly be true. If you did, you’d, you know… try and fix this issue.
Last week, the USS Washington began making its way to the Middle East, to replace the Lincoln. So… that’ll fix it! (It helps the soldiers aboard the Lincoln, absolutely, but it doesn’t solve the problems that the Lincoln had. It just, possibly, transfers those problems to the crew of the Washington.)
All of this, because Donald Trump started a war in the Middle East to distract from the fact that he’s in the Epstein Files.
Judge Tosses Trump Case
Moving over to Harvard, (whatdathink, ya better than me? That’s an INCREDIBLY accurate impression of Amy Poehler doing her Boston voice) – a Boston judge has tossed the Trump administration’s multi-billion dollar suit against the Crimson, which alleged that the school didn’t do enough to protect its Jewish students from discrimination, in general but specifically after Hamas’ October 7th 2023 attack on Israel.
The judge wrote in his ruling that the administration had presented incidents that were concerning but “too isolated and episodic” to say that Harvard had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Heeeeere’s the thing…
One – an administration led by a white supremacist who has dined with nazis and allowed, not condemned, a nazi salute to celebrate Trump’s swearing in, does not get to say they’re protecting Jewish people.
Antisemitism in this country is growing. According to the Anti-Defamation League, in the three months following the start of the Israeli government’s war on Hamas, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. grew 361%.
According to the State of Antisemitism in America 2024 report, 33% of American Jews said they have been the personal target of antisemitism, either in-person or virtually, at least once in 2024. That same year, 56% of American Jews said they altered their behavior out of fear of antisemitism. It was 46% in 2023 and 38% in 2022.
Neither the Trump Administration nor the Department of Justice has taken meaningful action to curb the rise of antisemitism in this country.
In January of 2025, Trump signed an executive order called "Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” Great name! It specifically targets college campuses, calls for the investigation of pro-Palestinian protests, as well as potentially deporting people who are deemed to be supporting Hamas.
The administration has also frozen, delayed, or reduced funding for broader federal hate-crime prevention and Nonprofit Security Grant programs used by Jewish community facilities.
In December of 2025, it downgraded nooses and the swastika from a hate symbol to “potentially divisive.”
This administration is no friend to Jewish people. Do not conflate Israel, the government of Israel, and the Jewish religion. This administration is VERY friendly to the government of Israel. But they are using Jewish people, like, the idea of Jewish people, as a way to push other groups down. And as soon as that isn’t working anymore? They’re going to turn against Jewish people.
Also – they don’t get to complain that something is a violation of the Civil Rights Act, while they reduce staffing and scale back the enforcement of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Harvard investigated themselves and did acknowledge that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias had affected coursework, social life, and campus culture, which left Jewish and Israeli students feeling alienated or unsafe.
In April of this year, they announced the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. And absolutely someone, a third party, needs to make sure Harvard follows through on their promise to make change.
But anyone who trusts this administration to care for and protect Jewish people, specifically Jewish Americans, has been fooled.
All they wanted to do here was take billions away from Harvard and change what they can, and more importantly, can’t, teach students.
This is the right ruling.
iSpy
-via The Guardian and Cornell
Thanks to nearly thirty internal law enforcement reports that were released on Thursday, we learned that the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York, infiltrated Signal chats, and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning nonprofit groups.
The reports were dropped thanks to a DOJ criminal case filed against 15 Minneapolis protestors that are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” immigration officers.
They started doing this AFTER the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Didn’t want to investigate the murders that happened in broad daylight and in cold blood. But as soon as the community came out about it, they were like… there’s something shady about this.
In the filing, the government alleged that national labor unions AFL-CIO and SEIU; local unions Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees; and several large left-leaning groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, and Showing Up for Racial Justice, were all connected to the criminal conspiracy of… community organizing.
And what did they find when they sent agents into those monstrous meetings? During trainings, although they’d ask people not to record the meetings, they said if there were any immigration agents or officers in the room, they were welcome to stay because they had nothing to hide.
One former FBI agent said: “You’re talking about meetings that are open to the public, where they are recruiting among the public, saying, ‘Please come to this protest.’ It’s hardly a challenge to ‘infiltrate’ this kind of meeting, and that should be a clue this isn’t a criminal group. It’s very rare for criminals to [publicize] discussion of their criminal activities.”
One undercover agent told an attendee that he worked construction and could build things that might assist groups with more “direct-action” protests. That’s not illegal on its own, but it’s a lean towards entrapment.
None of the organizations have been charged with any crimes and, what’s especially worrisome about all of this – in the 94-page indictment against the fifteen defendants in the criminal case that started all of this, there are no allegations that they injured individual ICE officers and no serious-violence charges.
Criminal case… no serious-violence charges.
They were originally arrested on fairly minor charges related to anti-ICE protests, some of which were later dismissed. Then in June, the DOJ charged all 15 with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers, with some facing additional charges that include threats, stalking, assault, and destruction of property. No one in that group is charged with terrorism or attempted murder, and the indictment does not allege that any defendant injured an ICE officer.
So… we’ve got some major issues here – The DHS creating dossiers that document lawful political activity? That’s a classic First Amendment problem, as well as a potential violation of the Privacy Act.
Surveillance that’s based on political ideology/association, not criminal acts? Another classic First Amendment issue.
DHS sought the financials of the groups with a subpoena that doesn’t require a judge? Potentially a violation of the Right to Financial Privacy Act.
Going back to that agent that said he worked construction and could build things that might assist groups with more “direct-action” protests – some potential entrapment/due-process issues there.
And then the whole thing – the fact that this investigation was started because people oppose ICE? Three 1A violations in one! Freedom of speech, freedom of association, and a First Amendment retaliation.
I say potential because, thanks to a 1972 Supreme Court case, the mere existence of government surveillance and just the vibe that your freedom of speech had been chilled (fun fact – chilled is the legal term!), doesn’t mean the First has been violated.
You have to be able to show objective or specific threatened harm.
In other words – you have to prove that the government did the surveying in order to chill the speech.
And let me be the first to say – none of this is chill.
I’m sure no one’s made that joke before. What an innovator I am.
Anyway, in summary – the government is charging 15 people in Minneapolis in a criminal case even though no one was physically hurt and then they used that as an excuse to spy on national and local unions and groups simply based on political leanings.
Just another day under the eye of this small-government-loving party.
Kennedy Center Board Votes
-via NPR
And finally… on Thursday, the Kennedy Center board, you’re going to be SHOCKED to hear this so please brace yourself… the board that Trump put together himself, voted to put Trump’s name back on the Center. But now, the way they’re trying to get away with it, is by having it say: "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump."
They also voted to close it for 2 years to shut down the center, in order to carry out the $250 million in renovations.
They voted for this once already, but a judge said no because the board members didn’t have "sufficient information" to make the decision.
To which the board replied… yeah, no, we don’t need the information. Boss wants it? Boss gets it. I mean, uh, not—he’s not. He’s not our boss. That’s illegal. He’s just… a guy we want to impress and please because if not he’ll replace us.
Imagine wanting to suck up to TRUMP. Yucky.
Bummer for these people. Bummer for their souls and corazóns.
A judge still needs to approve this – I wonder how that’s going to go.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of… looking back over this episode, I’ll start with – no one in this administration! That’s for sure! I’m proud of books.
I read em. I like em.
But more than books, because if I wrote a book about you it would be the world’s longest book and it would be filled with compliments and it would actually never end…
I’m proud of you.