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Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 21:39
The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.“This included abandoning their economic and diplomatic bullying and coercion for more inductive engagement, laced with charm and flattery,” Morrison said. “That said, the PRC still continues to engage in intimidatory behaviour by their military against Australia when it suits them without remorse.”Morrison said while China’s diplomatic tactics had changed, its objectives were unaltered: to isolate US influence in the Indo-Pacific and weaken efforts at countering Beijing’s “potential security threat”.He said Australia should boost its defence spending to the 3.5% of GDP demanded of it by the US, arguing “the world has changed” and that Chinese leaders sought to “recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.Morrison accused the current Labor government of scrimping on defence spending in order to pay for the Aukus submarine deal, which will cost $358bn to the 2050s.Morrison later told reporters Australian defence spending parsimony – in particular the “displacement” of funds to prioritise Aukus – had been raised by the US in its review of the agreement.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“It wasn’t [meant to be] ‘Aukus instead’, it was ‘Aukus as well’,” he said. “And ‘Aukus as well’ was at least going to add another half a percent of GDP, at least.”Morrison said Australia should raise its defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. The government spends a little over 2% of GDP on defence currently, with forecasts to lift that to 2.3% by 2033. To prioritise Aukus, significant cuts have reportedly been made to defence programs, training budgets and to senior defence ranks.Australia has already paid $1.6bn to the US as part of the Aukus agreement. However, the future of the massive nuclear submarine deal remains uncertain as the Pentagon undertakes a review to ensure it does not weaken US naval capacity or diminish America’s force posture to contain China.Morrison, whose leadership between 2018 and 2022 endured a low in relations with Beijing, told the committee it was vital for western nations to resist Chinese attempts to interfere in politics and curb free speech.Citing polling of Australians by the Lowy Institute, the former prime minister told US lawmakers that “for the first time in quite a number of years there is a greater value on the economic partnership with China than concerns about the security threat”.“That is an objective of the CCP [Chinese communist party], that western democracies go to sleep on the threat,” Morrison said.“You need to build the internal resilience, and that means an appreciation of the potential threat. And that is somewhat in jeopardy in Australia.”Morrison said the liberal world order faced a “rising threat from authoritarian states who, not content with absolute control over their own populations to preserve their regimes, also seek hegemonic control over their own regions and to recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Chinese Communist party government of the People’s Republic of China is such a regime.”And Morrison said Western countries were “kidding themselves” if they thought dialogue would change Beijing’s pursuit of their objectives.“A free and open Indo-Pacific – that is a threat and a challenge to regime security in China,” he said.“Discussion is fine, engagement is good – it’s better than the alternative. But if we think that is going to produce change in the mindset of Beijing then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.”Appearing alongside Morrison before the committee hearing was Rahm Emanuel, formerly president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and US ambassador to Japan. Emanuel is widely considered to be a leading Democratic contender contemplating a run for the White House in 2028.He argued the US – in a significant shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine – should lead a strong “anti-coercion coalition” along with allies like Australia to counter Beijing’s growing influence.He cited China’s trade sanctions on beef, wine and barley, imposed after Australia led calls for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, as examples of economic coercion, China’s most “pernicious and persistent tool”.“Australia is the best kind of blueprint of what you want to replicate worldwide. They did it on their own,” Emanuel said. “And China realised they couldn’t isolate Australia.” More
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Justice department reportedly told Trump in May that his name is in Epstein files – live
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 20:53
“When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general Pam Bondi called a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials.I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.An independent Pentagon inspector general reportedly has evidence that the detailed attack plans for strikes on Yemen shared in at least two Signal group chats by defense secretary Pete Hegseth in March were, in fact, classified, contradicting repeated claims to the contrary from Trump administration officials.“The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has received evidence that messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal account previewing a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen derived from a classified email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN”, the Washington Post reports.According to the Post, the Pentagon watchdog discovered that the 15 March strike plans Hegseth dropped in one Signal group that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic, and a second chat that included his wife, had first been shared “in a classified email with more than a dozen defense officials” sent through a secure, government system by General Michael Erik Kurilla, the top commander overseeing US military operations in the Middle East.After the revelation that Hegseth had shared the secret attack plans on Signal with a journalist before the strikes, the defense secretary told reporters “nobody was texting war plans”. His chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said at the time: “there were no classified materials or war plans shared”.Another participant in the Signal group, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to congress in March that “there was no classified material that was shared” in the chat.A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García must be released from jail as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges.The decision from judge Waverly Crenshaw means that Donald Trump’s administration can potentially attempt to deport the Maryland father of two to his native El Salvador or a third country for a second time.Crenshaw, sitting in Nashville, agreed with an earlier decision by a magistrate judge, concluding that prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to show Ábrego is either a danger to the public or a flight risk.The judge said in his decision that the government “fails to show by a preponderance of the evidence – let alone clear and convincing evidence – that Ábrego is such a danger to others or the community that such concerns cannot be mitigated by conditions of release”.Despite the bail ruling, Ábrego is not expected to walk free. His legal team has requested a 30-day delay in implementing the decision, opting to keep him in criminal detention while they consider next steps.Meanwhile, in a separate courtroom in Maryland, US district judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a civil case Ábrego filed, issued a 72-hour freeze on any further attempts by the Trump administration to deport him. Xinis ruled that Ábrego must be returned to Maryland on an order of supervision.The House oversight committee has officially subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on 11 August.“The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Republican chairman James Comer, of Kentucky, wrote, addressing Maxwell.“While the justice department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr Epstein.”An oversight subcommittee voted yesterday to subpoena Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker who was a close associate of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to testify amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration’s decision not to release its remaining Epstein files.“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement in response to the WSJ’s report that the justice department informed Donald Trump in May about his name being in the Epstein files.In the WSJ’s report (paywall), according to the officials, attorney general Pam Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House in May that his name was in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile figures.“The meeting set the stage for the high-profile review to come to an end,” the WSJ reports.The publication notes that being mentioned in the documents is not a sign of wrongdoing:
The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
They also told Trump that senior justice department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the justice department’s decision to not release any further files.
Trump denied last week in response to a journalist’s question that Bondi had told him that his name was in the files.“When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general Pam Bondi called a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials.I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.US district judge Robin Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied” and said the government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, pointing out that district courts in the US are largely prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in very narrow circumstances.The ruling mentioned in my last post stems from federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in Florida in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents.It doesn’t affect two other pending requests by the Department of Justice that seek to obtain transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York, both of which led to separate criminal indictments.Yesterday, the New York federal court said it would like to “expeditiously” resolve the Trump administration’s request, but it could not do so due to a number of missing submissions.The Trump administration filed the petitions to unseal transcripts of the grand jury proceedings last week. It followed days of mounting pressure and criticism across the political spectrum over the DoJ’s decision not to release any further investigative evidence about Epstein despite many earlier promises that it would be released.A US judge has denied a justice department bid to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in South Florida, the first ruling in a series of attempts by Donald Trump’s administration to release more information on the case.Reuters reports that US district judge Robin Rosenberg found that the justice department’s request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.The new photos and videos published by CNN have emerged today in a context of ever-rising frustration in Trump’s White House over its inability to make the Epstein story go away. Per Politico:
Donald Trump is angry. His team is exasperated. The Republican-controlled House is in near rebellion.
Trump and his closest allies thought they’d spend the summer taking a victory lap, having coaxed Congress into passing the megabill, bullied foreign governments into a slew of new trade arrangements, convinced Nato allies to spend billions more on collective defense and pressed world leaders to bow to various other demands from Doha to The Hague.
Instead, questions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his jail cell by suicide nearly six years ago, are overshadowing almost everything else.”
“POTUS is clearly furious,” a person close to the White House told Politico. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them sort of paralyzed.”
A senior White House official said the president is frustrated with his staff’s inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread and by the wall of media coverage that started when attorney general Pam Bondi released information from the Epstein case that was already in the public domain.
“He feels there are way bigger stories that deserve attention,” the senior White House official said.
The frustration stems, in part, from an understanding that this is “a vulnerability,” said a White House ally. Trump has famously had his finger on the pulse of the Republican base for more than a decade but has, for now, lost the ability to dominate the narrative. That threatens to undermine the momentum and sense of invincibility the GOP felt at the beginning of the month when they were getting ready to boast about a slew of new tax cuts and border funding as their opening pitch to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Newly uncovered photos and video footage published by CNN show more links between the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, including Epstein’s attendance at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993.The media organization said on Wednesday that Epstein’s attendance at the wedding ceremony was not widely known.CNN also published footage from 1999 of Trump and Epstein attending a Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York, where they are seen talking and laughing alongside Trump’s future wife, Melania Trump.The outlet noted that the newly published material pre-dates any of Epstein’s known legal troubles.CNN also published photos of Trump and Epstein at the 1993 opening of the Harley-Davidson Cafe in New York, where Trump is seen with his arm around two of his children, Eric and Ivanka, while Epstein stands beside them.When asked for comment by CNN on the newly unearthed videos and photos, Trump reportedly responded: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He then reportedly called CNN “fake news” and hung up the phone.Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement to CNN that the videos and photos were “nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious”.“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” Cheung added. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”The Trump administration’s Department of Education announced on Wednesday that it has opened national-origin discrimination investigations into five US universities over what it described as “alleged exclusionary scholarships referencing foreign-born students”.According to the announcement, the department’s office for civil rights has opened investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.The department said that the investigations will determine whether these universities are granting scholarships exclusively to students who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, who came to the US as children, or who are undocumented “in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s (Title VI) prohibition against national origin discrimination”.The investigation stems from complaints submitted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, a conservative legal group.The group alleges in the complaints that certain scholarships at these schools are limited to students with Daca status or who are undocumented, which they argue is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “and its implementing regulations by illegally discriminating against students based on their national origin”.For the full story, click here: More
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Climate advocates outraged at Trump administration plans to fast-track AI sector
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 20:27
The Trump administration has unveiled plans to speed the development of the highly polluting artificial intelligence sector, sparking outrage from climate advocates.Rolled out on Wednesday, the 28-page scheme pledges to remove so-called “bureaucratic red tape” and streamline permitting for datacenters, semiconductor manufacturing facilities and fossil fuel infrastructure.To do so, it will dismantle some environmental and land-use regulations, roll back some Biden-era rules for subsidies for semiconductor plants related to climate requirements, and seek to establish exclusions for datacenters from the National Environmental Policy Act and streamline permits under the Clean Water Act.“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day,” the plan says. “Simply put, we need to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’”Trump is also expected to sign three AI-related executive orders on Wednesday during a keynote address at a summit in DC. The announcement will be co-hosted by bipartisan lawmakers with the Hill and Valley Forum and a business and technology podcast hosted by four technology investors and businessmen, including Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks.The AI sector is already depleting land and water resources and taking a massive toll on the climate, with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT taking up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search, according to an estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute. Last year, ChatGPT used more than half a million kilowatts of electricity every day, equivalent to the daily power use of 180,000 US households.The training of a single AI model can lead to an emissions footprint that is almost five times larger than the lifetime carbon footprint of the average American car. Recent research from Food and Water Watch also found that energy demand from AI servers and datacenters in the US is expected to increase up to threefold from 2023 to 2028, which could lead the US sector to, by 2028, annually consume enough water to fill more than 1m Olympic-size swimming pools and enough electricity to power more than 28m American households.“At its core, President Trump’s AI agenda is nothing more than a thinly veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people,” said Mitch Jones, a managing director Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group.The new plan recommends that regulators review states’ AI laws to see whether they interfere with the agency’s authority. It also says federal agencies will “consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions” and “limit funding if the state’s AI regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding or award”.Republicans earlier this year attempted to enact a version of this by placing a moratorium on states’ ability to impose regulations on artificial intelligence into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the provision was stripped at the last minute.“Under this plan, tech giants get sweetheart deals while everyday Americans will see their electricity bills rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI datacenters,” said JB Branch, a big-tech accountability advocate with the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “States are held hostage: either stop protecting their residents from dangerous, untested AI products, or lose federal funding.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs a counterweight to the new Trump plan, a broad coalition of more than 90 advocacy groups – including climate and environmental justice non-profits, consumer protection organizations and labor advocates – published an open letter calling for a “people’s AI action plan” that prioritizes “public wellbeing, shared prosperity, a sustainable future and security”.“We can’t let big tech and big oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families’ wellbeing,” the coalition wrote.Research shows that many datacenters used for AI are placed near low-income communities of color, which are already often overburdened by pollution.“People sacrifice their health, their wellbeing and, too often, their future, so that others can benefit,” said Sharon Lewis, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice. “We’re told these datacenters are harmless, but even though they might seem like they pose no risk, in reality, these energy-hungry, pollution-intensive facilities are just as damaging to our environment and health.” More
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‘Wells Fargo is complicit’: seven arrested at climate protests outside bank’s offices
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 20:10
Seven people were arrested as hundreds of climate and Indigenous rights activists participated in non-violent demonstrations at Wells Fargo’s corporate offices in New York City and San Francisco on Wednesday, in what marks the launch of a summer of civil disobedience against billionaires and corporations accused of cowering to Donald Trump.In New York City, dozens of protesters stormed the lobby of the bank’s corporate offices, disrupting employees by blocking the entrance and calling out what they describe as Wells Fargo’s complicity in the climate crisis.Wells Fargo, currently ranked 33rd in the Fortune 500 list, became the first major bank to abandon its climate commitments – just weeks after the president signed a slew of executive orders to boost fossil fuels and derail climate action. The US bank is among the biggest financiers of planet-warming oil and gas companies, with $39bn in fossil fuel investments in 2024 – a 30% rise on the previous year, according to the most recent annual Banking on Climate Chaos report.“As dozens of teenagers die in climate-driven floods in Texas and thousands die in heatwaves around the world, it’s unconscionable that a bank like Wells Fargo would just completely walk away from its climate goals,” said Liv Senghor with Planet Over Profit, the non-profit group that led the New York protests.In San Francisco, seven people were arrested as activists blocked every entrance of the bank’s global headquarters for several hours, with members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribal nation locked themselves to a sleeping dragon tripod.The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribes spearheaded the 2016 and 2017 fight against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) – the opposed fossil fuel pipeline built through Lakota lands that Wells Fargo helped finance.“DAPL was built through the Lakota Unceded Treaty Territory, without proper consent. That land holds our history, our spirit, and our ancestors. We’re in a time where we should be protecting the Earth, not pushing more oil through it. We owe that to our people and the future generations,” said Trent Ouellettefrom Waste Wakpa Grassroots.Wednesday’s protests were part of the Stop Billionaires Summer campaign – a series of planned civil disobedience to disrupt the tech billionaires and corporations backing the Trump administration’s dismantling of democratic rights and climate action. It follows last year’s summer of heat campaign targeting Citibank, another major fossil fuel funder.This year Wells Fargo is being specifically targeted by a coalition of non-profit organizations, who accuse the bank of capitulating to Trump and supporting the rise of planetary destruction, autocracy and land occupation – in the US and Palestinian territories.In San Francisco, about 150 activists also painted a giant community mural outside the bank’s headquarters with the words “Wells Fargo Funds Genocide”, pointing to the bank’s investment in companies that provide tech and/or AI to the state of Israel including Palantir – which also has contracts with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“Today’s actions are just the beginning of a response to Wells Fargo’s enabling of the rise of authoritarianism,” said Leah Redwood with the Oil and Gas Action Network, who helped organize the San Francisco protest. “Wells Fargo is complicit in so many injustices … the climate crisis or union busting or Trump’s mass deportations or the atrocities in Gaza.”Last week, protesters across the US targeted Palantir, accusing the tech company of facilitating Trump’s expanding surveillance, immigration crackdown and Israel’s human rights violations across the occupied Palestinian territories.Wells Fargo is among the US’s largest banks, worth almost $270bn, and with more than 4,000 branches across 39 US states and territories.It is also among the biggest financiers of fossil fuels since 2021 – the year that the International Energy Agency warned the world that there could be no more fossil fuel expansion – if there was any hope of avoiding total climate catastrophe. Since then, the bank’s investments in fossil fuels have topped $143bn, according to Banking on Climate Chaos.In 2021, Wells Fargo’s chief executive, Charles Scharf, described the climate crisis as “one of the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time”.In February, Wells Fargo dropped two key commitments – the sector-specific 2030 financed and facilitated emissions reductions targets and its goal to achieve net zero emissions in its lending and underwriting by 2050.At the time, the bank said: “When we set our financed emissions goal and targets, we said that achieving them was dependent on many factors outside our control,” adding that “many of the conditions necessary to facilitate our clients’ transitions have not occurred.”The announcement comes just months after Wells Fargo quit the world’s biggest climate coalition for banks – the Net-Zero Banking Alliance – followed by the rest of its US banking peers. That exodus started one month after last year’s election victory for Trump.According to a recent investigation by Rolling Stone, the Texas attorney general boasted about how his office “bullied” Wells Fargo into abandoning the alliance and other climate pledges.In addition to dropping its climate pledges, the bank has also abandoned its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals – ending policies requiring diverse candidates for senior-level roles.A summer of non-violent disruption is planned for Wells Fargo including a national day of coordinated action on 15 August, in an effort, activists say, to pressure the bank to reinstate its climate targets, stop union busting, and end its financial ties with companies accused of destroying both people and the planet.Climate activists are also preparing to support unionization efforts at the bank, where workers have already voted to unionize at 28 branches. Wells Fargo currently faces more than 30 allegations of union-busting.Wells Fargo declined to comment on the protests or any of the allegations about its investments and policies. More
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US judge rejects Trump administration’s bid to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 19:24
A US federal judge on Wednesday denied a justice department request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to a criminal investigation of the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein in south Florida from the mid-2000s.The move is the first ruling in a series of attempts to release more information on the case by Donald Trump’s administration, which has been mired in a scandal in recent weeks, after the justice department announced it would not be releasing any additional files related to the Epstein case – despite earlier promises from the president and the the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.The justice department’s memo sparked renewed focus on and scrutiny of Trump’s past ties to Epstein and drew backlash from some Trump supporters and conservative commentators.On Friday, the justice department filed a motion asking the court to unseal the grand jury transcripts related to the federal investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents.But on Wednesday, US district judge Robin Rosenberg ruled that the department’s request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied” and said the government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, pointing out that district courts in the US are largely prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in very narrow circumstances.“Eleventh circuit law does not permit this court to grant the government’s request,” Rosenberg wrote. “The court’s hands are tied – a point that the Government concedes.”The justice department still has pending requests to unseal transcripts in Manhattan federal court related to a later indictment brought against Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial, and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. More
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The nefarious message behind the DHS ‘manifest destiny’ painting: ‘four pillars of propaganda’
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 15:01
In Morgan Weistling’s oil painting A Prayer for a New Life, a young, white pioneer couple sit inside a covered wagon, sharing a quiet moment with their swaddled newborn as prairie stretches out behind them. The work could be interpreted as a western take on the birth of Jesus; Mary and Joseph on the Oregon trail. One might imagine it decorating the oak-walled office of an oil executive in a Yellowstone spin-off show – though it is probably too schmaltzy even for that.Last week, Weistling’s painting took on a darker meaning when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s official X account posted, to the artist’s consternation, an image of the painting with the caption: “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.”To some, the post seemed like authoritarian propaganda, similar to what was put out by Joseph Goebbels about Aryan motherhood in 1930s Nazi Germany. “In case you had any doubts about the white supremacist thing,” one X user responded to the post.Others nakedly applauded its perceived subtext, a celebration of the right’s vision for America, in which families of strong men and maternal women usher in a pronatalist baby boom. “Our people. Our place,” responded Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab, a social network popular among alt-right, neo-Nazi and white nationalist users.Under Trump’s second administration, the DHS has orchestrated sweeping immigration raids across the US, and Ice is reportedly detaining a record number of migrants. A scroll through the department’s X account shows videos of families torn apart by immigration officers, and then this post, which seems to say: we’re fine with migration and movement – so long as the families doing it are white.View image in fullscreenExperts say the benign look on the couple’s faces and the presence of an innocent newborn distract from the real problem: what’s not in the painting’s frame.“The main stories that are told through art of the American west tend to focus on white settlers, which omits the suppression of other populations,” said Emily C Burns, director of the Charles M Russell center for the study of art of the American west and an associate professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s challenging when a single image of something that is incredibly complicated is placed in the foreground. What stories are lost in that?”Those stories include the US government’s violent expulsion and genocide of Indigenous people to clear land for settlers, and the Black cowboys, many of them formerly enslaved or one generation removed from slavery, who went west on horseback and helped develop the country’s nascent ranching industry. Also omitted are the Chinese immigrants who built the west’s railroads and worked its goldmines and factories, and who, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, could not legally gain US citizenship.Adam Klein, associate professor at Pace University, studies how extremist movements infiltrate American media and politics. “The [Weistling] painting isn’t violent at all,” he said. “On the surface, it’s a beautiful image. But when you look at where it’s coming from, with [DHS using] language like ‘homeland’ and ‘heritage’, that’s really evocative of anti-immigrant sentiment.”Klein said the post brought to mind similar themes used by VDare, a far-right, anti-immigration website that launched in 1999 and suspended operations last year. VDare was named after Virginia Dare, the first child born to European settlers in the “new world”. Since the 1800s, white supremacists have glorified her memory, though all we know of her is her birthdate and the fact that she disappeared as part of the “lost colony” of Roanoke. Dare’s image and disappearance are ripe for racist projections, including the conspiracy theory of a “white genocide” perpetrated by non-white immigrants.In 2018, the VDare founder Peter Brimelow told the Washington Post that he chose the name “to focus attention on the very specific cultural origins of America, at a time when mass nontraditional immigration is threatening to swamp it”.Klein also noted that the DHS’s post seemed like “an attempt to stir the pot and be divisive”.Under the leadership of Kristi Noem, the DHS has taken up Donald Trump’s orders for mass deportation with militant aplomb and an all-out publicity blitz. Noem looked glamorous as she livestreamed pre-dawn Ice raids in New York and toured the southern border on horseback. Meanwhile, the department shares mugshots of migrants and reminders from Uncle Sam to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.” Last month, it posted AI-rendered art hyping Alligator Alcatraz, thumbing its nose at critics horrified by the detention center’s reported conditions.View image in fullscreenOn a less aggressive artistic note, it also shared the late artist Thomas Kinkade’s Morning Pledge, a pastoral painting showing two boys walking to their small-town schoolhouse underneath a fluttering American flag. “Protect the Homeland,” the DHS captioned this post.Both Kinkade’s perfectly manicured Americana and Weistling’s “manifest destiny” daydream belie the chaos DHS has sown through its often violent immigration crackdown. But they do align with the retrograde America Trump 2.0 desires, and is ordering US universities, museums and national parks to teach.Weistling, who did not respond to a request for comment, wrote on his website that DHS used his 2020 painting without permission. He described the work as two parents with their baby, “depicted here praying to God for his fragile life on their perilous journey”. His style often canonizes traditional domestic roles: girls and young women cook and clean, while men ride on horseback and build things.When asked about its social media strategy, including the use of Weistling’s work, a DHS spokesperson wrote via email: “If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails, forded the rivers, and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook. This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it.”Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island and founder of the Media Education Lab, says that she teaches her students “the four pillars of propaganda”: activating strong emotions; simplifying information and ideas; appealing to people’s deepest hopes, fears and dreams; and attacking opponents. The DHS’s post hits all of these pillars.“This could be an image from a children’s book,” Hobbs said. “It’s a vision of America that was sold to generations. I’m a boomer, and I read these kinds of stories as a child. Now I have a critical perspective on manifest destiny, but this taps into my memory, which can bypass critical thinking.”Those feelings, good or bad, are the whole point: “DHS is looking for engagement, and the use of emotional imagery gets people to react, whether they love it or hate it,” Hobbs said. “So from a PR strategy, these posts are actually working quite well.” More
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Joe Rogan anoints a new progressive star – can James Talarico triumph in Texas?
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 13:00
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In late May, four of Texas’s top Democrats convened on Zoom to strategize about the 2026 election. The upcoming Republican primary battle for Senate pits incumbent senator John Cornyn against the state’s more right-leaning attorney general, Ken Paxton, and is expected to be bruising – greasing the skids for a potential Democratic pickup. With governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor also in play, the question the liberal quartet aimed to answer was whether they might divvy up these contests, thereby avoiding a contentious primary of their own.On the call were three fixtures of Lone Star Democratic politics: Beto O’Rourke, Colin Allred and Representative Joaquin Castro. Less well-known was the fourth man, a 36-year-old member of the state’s house of representatives from Austin’s district 50 named James Talarico. A former middle-school language arts teacher and aspiring Presbyterian minister with the earnest demeanor and yearbook-ready countenance of a young Ron Howard, Talarico had begun his political career in 2018, flipping a swing district to become the youngest member of the house. A good bit greener than his colleagues, Talarico seemed an unlikely aspirant for the Senate run.Then along came Joe Rogan.The world’s most influential podcast host had learned of Talarico from comedian Brian Simpson, who had been awestruck by a viral clip of the state senator taking a Republican colleague to task for her “idolatrous” bill forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments. A producer reached out, and within a few weeks the virtually unknown official was stepping into Rogan’s Austin studio to offer his gloss on the radical teachings of Jesus. If the conversation was friendly – about two hours in, Rogan was practically begging Talarico to run for president – the reviews from Rogan’s right-leaning, MMA-loving fanboys were less so. Many took particular issue with Talarico’s reading of the Bible as arguably pro-choice or at least ambivalent about abortion.Even so, Daniel had entered the lion’s den and held his own. Within hours of the show’s airing, Politico was enthusing that “Joe Rogan’s Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue” and Talarico’s beaming choirboy mug was front and center on the Drudge Report.“I learned this when I flipped the Trump district at the beginning of my career,” Talarico said. “It’s almost like asking someone on a date, or any relationship in your life – you have to put effort into it. If we’re not going to make the effort to show up in these places where people are, then we can’t be surprised when they don’t make the effort to get off the couch and vote for us.”The week marked a notable turnaround for a politician who just a few years ago hit what he calls his political “rock bottom”. It was the fall of 2021, a year that had begun with the January 6 insurrection and a catastrophic winter storm that killed hundreds of Texans. Meanwhile, “Maga” was ascendant in the Lone Star state. Officials rammed through the nation’s most unforgiving abortion ban, legalized permitless carry and implemented a new civics curriculum Talarico describes as a “historical whitewash”.Then came an aggressive attempt to curtail voting rights that led him and dozens of Democratic lawmakers to flee the state in an attempt to deny the legislature a quorum. After 38 days, Talarico was among a handful who saw the writing on the wall and returned to Austin. As he explained in a lengthy op-ed, Texas Democrats held a dwindling stack of cards, and Congress would need to address the problem at the federal level. (The House delivered, but the bill failed in the Senate due to opposition from senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.)Despite Talarico’s hopes that ending the standoff might preserve a modicum of bipartisanship, it was not to be. In October, the legislature voted to redraw the state’s congressional districts – an attempt to dilute the political power of Black and Latino voters and “kill me off politically”, he said. “Walking on to that floor and realizing that my [Republican] colleagues weren’t looking me in the eye, I felt like I had lost hope, not just in my colleagues and the institution, but in whether democracy was even possible in such polarized and divided times. It was my lowest point in public service so far.”Overcoming an urge to pack it in, he opted to fight. As it happened, a seat in solid-blue Austin, where he’d grown up, was open. Talarico moved home and won handily. (Now, Texan Republicans are contemplating another redistricting as a way to further dilute the Democratic vote. “Clearly their gerrymandering didn’t hold from five years ago, and so now they’re having to get back in there and do some touch-ups and fortifying,” Talarico said.)Following his crisis of political faith, he made another critical life decision, enrolling in the seminary with the goal of becoming a minister. “Jesus gave us these two commandments, to love God and love your neighbor,” he explained, noting that he considers his political career a vehicle for doing the latter. Now he understood: the two injunctions went hand in hand. Getting in touch with God, “or whatever you consider to be the ground of your being”, is what Talarico says makes love of neighbor sustainable. “Whether that’s in public service, as a teacher or a nurse or a firefighter or a police officer, or whether it’s with activism or volunteering or just being a good person in your community, it is difficult and sometimes exhausting work, and that’s why we have to be connected to something deeper.”An outspoken progressive Christian is something of a unicorn in today’s political environment – a sign not only of the secularism that has characterized the Democratic party since the Reagan years but of the ever-increasing ties between the far right and the evangelical movement. Perhaps nowhere is this alliance more pronounced than in Texas, where the last legislative session saw a flurry of bills that would, among other things, allow prayer in public schools, fund parochial schools with taxpayer money and outlaw the provision of litter boxes for students – an actual bill based on a debunked rightwing hoax. The latter proposal stalled after Talarico’s polite if methodical humiliation of the bill’s author became one of his many viral TikToks; the others, including the Ten Commandments bill, became law.Talarico has done more than simply oppose what he considers to be bad legislation. He regularly calls out fossil fuel barons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who backed the legislative crusade. “They basically own every Republican member of the state senate,” he said, noting that they are by far the state’s biggest political donors. “They own a majority of Republicans in the state house. They own every statewide elected official. And they run a massive network of thinktanks and advocacy organizations and media outlets. So their empire has really taken over state government. And they have a pretty extreme theocratic vision for for the state and the country.” Asked whether a Handmaid’s Tale-style dystopia seemed possible, he said, “We’re a lot closer than people think.”Talarico defines the effort to wed government with biblical ideology as Christian nationalism, “the worship of power – social power, economic power, political power, in the name of Christ”, as he put it in a 2023 guest sermon. Accusing adherents of turning Jesus “into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist,” he declared it “incumbent on all Christians to confront it and denounce it”. Posted to YouTube, the sermon has since garnered 1m views.The question now is not merely whether Talarico can translate that kind of social media buzz into votes but whether he wants to. He expects to obtain his master’s in divinity next year, and he often speaks of his desire to one day take over the ministry at his home church, St Andrew’s Presbyterian.But a slight detour to the US Senate seems increasingly possible – an indication of his growing popularity and ambition as well as a notable vibe shift on the left. A recent poll found that 62% of Democrats wanted their party’s leadership replaced. And a strong contingent has shown a hunger for candidates, such as Talarico, who are willing to lean into progressive values without apology (he has, for example, mounted a forceful defense of gender-affirming care for trans kids).While Talarico makes a strong case for the undercurrent of wealth redistribution inherent in Jesus’ teachings, he doesn’t call himself a socialist – certainly not in Texas. Still it’s not hard to see parallels between his meteoric rise and that of New York City’s socialist mayoral hopeful, Zohran Mamdani, another young state legislator whose online savvy, bold progressivism and evident sincerity have endeared him to liberal voters. (In 2019, Talarico walked across his 25-mile district – nearly double the distance of Mamdani’s recent Manhattan hike.)For Talarico, the key to winning over the electorate is authenticity. “Voters can sniff out that consultant-driven messaging,” he said. “The poll-tested stuff is just not going to cut it.”Moreover, voters are spoiling for a fight. One quality they appreciated in Trump, he said, was the aggression he’d shown on behalf of his vision, however malevolent. Democrats, he said, need to bring that kind of energy to the fight for a better world. And while Jesus Christ was famous for his humility and pacifism, Talarico noted, he was also an uncompromising radical who could tap into a combative side when needed.“If we are doing our best to mimic Jesus, being kind and humble and meek are all part of it,” he said. “But when the powerful are abusing people, we have to stand in the way, and that requires courage and bravery, and speaking truth to power.”In late June, Talarico appeared at a town hall in San Antonio alongside Castro and O’Rourke, a show of unity before what may well turn into a heated primary race. Befitting his status as the youngest and least seasoned politician on the stage, he spoke first. But as Talarico recalled the story of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, when he ejected the money-changers and merchants from the Lord’s house, he didn’t sound like a man inclined meekly to wait his turn to run for higher office. “To those who love democracy, to those who love our neighbors,” he proclaimed, “it’s time to start flipping tables.”As for the Senate race, Talarico is praying on it. He’ll make a decision this summer, he said. More
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Why are we so fascinated by the Coldplay couple? | Jessica Ciencin Henriquez
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 12:00
It wasn’t just that a man got caught cheating on his wife. It was that he did it in public. With the whole stadium watching. With Chris Martin, unknowingly, teeing it up. With a camera zooming in at the exact wrong – or maybe karmically perfect – moment. The CEO. The HR director. The affair. The panic. The humiliation. All of it caught, dissected and shared a million times over.We didn’t watch that video because we love Coldplay (though, don’t we?). We didn’t watch just for the scandal. We watched because – despite our small steps toward enlightenment – we’re all starving for the satisfaction of seeing someone finally get what they deserve.That’s the part we need to talk about.According to a 2023 study in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, the satisfaction we feel during public shaming isn’t just about justice – it’s about pleasure. Their research found that people experience schadenfreude not only because they believe the person deserved it, but because it simply feels good to watch someone face consequences. We’re not just looking for moral clarity. We’re chasing the emotional high that comes with it. We don’t just want closure, we want content. And cheating, exposed in public, has become the most satisfying genre of all.We as a culture are obsessed with catching cheaters – not just for the drama, but for the justice. We want to see betrayal punished. We want the liar exposed, the philanderer humiliated, the partner who was faithful and trusting to be vindicated. And if we can’t get that in our own lives, we’ll take it from strangers.This hunger has only grown over the years as the morally hollow have made careers out of turning scandal into spectacle and walking away untouched. But when the deception is undeniable, and the exposure unfiltered, it gives us something we rarely get: visible accountability.Within hours of that five-second clip surfacing, the internet did what it does best: turned a private moment into public symbolism. Their names were revealed along with their titles. Until the camera found them, they looked unbothered, cozy. Then her hand flew to cover her face. He ducked and waddled behind the seats. Then the entire internet gasped, and reached for their popcorn and pitchforks.You could feel the collective applause ripple through the comments section. We all know the feeling of being deceived. We know the sharp loneliness of loving someone who’s looking elsewhere, of having suspicions but not proof, accusations returned with a side of gaslighting. So when someone gets caught in 4K, we devour the moment. The visuals were almost too perfect: the Coldplay ballad, the cheering crowd turning confused, the abrupt shift from smug to stunned.Don’t we all wish we had that experience? A camera that didn’t look away. A crowd that said: “We see it, too.” Because in our own lives, we confront; they deflect. We cry; they move on. And there’s no applause, no witness. Just you and an unrelenting ache, their version of what happened and the truth.The CEO and the HR director are merely serving as stand-ins for the guy who ghosted you after two years, the woman who swore nothing was going on with her co-worker, the husband who moved on so fast you wondered if you hallucinated your entire marriage. Watching those two squirm on screen is a kind of spiritual revenge. We tell ourselves it’s about ethics, boundaries, accountability. But at the end of the day, don’t we just want someone to answer for the betrayal we never got closure for?Of course, pain is not performance. And justice is not the same as humiliation. Public shaming feels like accountability – but it rarely is accountability. As Jon Ronson warns in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: “An instant digital mob justice can devastate without offering redemption.” Watching strangers get exposed might feel good temporarily. We nod at the cosmic slap, but it doesn’t fix the trust broken in a marriage or the respect damaged in a workplace. It doesn’t change who they were when no one was watching.There’s a flip side to witnessing this embarrassment that flickers just below the surface. We might laugh, but something in us recoils as we imagine the real cost to those involved: lost jobs, fractured marriages, psychological fallout for their children. A hyperlink trail that will follow them to the grave.As Evan Nierman, author of The Cancel Culture Curse and CEO of the crisis PR firm Red Banyan, puts it: “The internet has a way of locking people into their worst moment. When a misstep goes viral, the court of public opinion rarely allows space for explanation, nuance, or repair.”And once the pile-on begins, it escalates fast. “Digital shame operates at a scale and speed our psychology isn’t built for,” he warns. “What starts as a laugh can quickly spiral into character assassination, with consequences that long outlast a viral moment.”Yet this moment – our collective gasp at betrayal made universal – revealed something crucial: we’re craving truth, acknowledgment. We’re craving slow, messy, quiet reckoning with accountability that extends beyond the tap-and-scroll. But in a world where real accountability is rare, a viral headline like this feels close enough – as though love, loyalty and truth might still mean something, even if only for a moment on the Jumbotron.
Jessica Ciencin Henriquez is a writer in Ojai, California, and the author of the forthcoming essay collection, If You Loved Me, You Would Know. You can find her on social media @TheWriterJess More

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Why are we so fascinated by the Coldplay couple? | Jessica Ciencin Henriquez

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