Welcome to The Now

 

Sigh. First the bad news : TikTok keeps track of everything you do on its app – no surprises there. What's less obvious is how the company follows you around other parts of the internet that have nothing to do with TikTok.  In fact, TikTok collects sensitive and potentially embarrassing information about you even if you've never used the app. Over the past week, I've watched websites sending TikTok data about cancer diagnoses, fertility and even mental health crises. It's part of a tracking empire that extends far beyond the social media platform. Now, thanks to a new set of features, TikTok is poised to expand its network and see even more details about your life. The change comes just weeks after the sale of TikTok's US operations to a group of companies with ties to US President Donald Trump. The deal has led to fresh privacy concerns from some human rights experts and users, though TikTok says it has transparent guidelines on how it responds to government reques...

 

 

  We may need to make "Walmart Tax" one of the phrases for 2026.

 

  Whenever I hear about France and any African country, I can't help but think about...

 

  More on Onesimus' introduction of inoculation can be found here .

 

 

 They keep trying , but they'll keep failing: Again, explain how Russia benefitted from Epstein. Explain why neither the United States or Europe is calling for regime change in Russia over this, when they've pushed for regime change over less.  

 

 

 If you are to believe these two news articles...possibly. First the Times Now World : Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother, Nancy, went missing from her Tucson home earlier this month, drawing national attention. Speculation arose on social media linking her disappearance to Guthrie's past interviews with Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors, although law enforcement continues to search urgently for Nancy. When Today show co‑anchor Savannah Guthrie’s 84‑year‑old mother, Nancy Guthrie, disappeared from her Tucson home in Arizona, earlier this month, the news quickly became a national headline. In the days since, social media users have dredged up archival footage of Guthrie’s 2019 interviews with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, a line of reporting she pursued as part of her journalistic work. Those clips are now trending online, often shared alongside unfounded speculation that the two events could be connected, even as law enforcement continues an urgent search fo...

  Also, I can't help but think that is by design. American politicians benefit from their voters focusing on Blue/Red domestic policy issues and ignoring foreign policy.

  For more on Mount Bayou, check here .

 

 

 

Everything that the United States of America does abroad will eventually make it home. Every foreign policy is just a domestic policy being tested in another country.  Just for the sake of context, we have BreakThrough News (via Brian Becker and Professor Richard Wolff) and Due Dissidence discussing President Trump's idea that Republicans should essentially be controlling the election process for the 2026 midterms: There are already ways in place to make sure that actual citizens vote. And just to address the hypocrisy of the group advocating bringing a suitcase full of documents with you to vote in a two-party system: these same people, whenever there is a school shooting are so quick to dismiss calls for gun legislation by saying, "just enforce the laws on the books." Why, oh why, can't we use that same logic for voter registration? Anyway, I have to stress that this ploy reinforces the theory that the those in power will not allow the system they've benefitted ...

  More on the ADF here .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If the United States can do it: This is another example of what happens when "rules-based order" and "international law" gives way to "might makes right." The logical conclusion is, "As long as I have the troops and weapons, I can do whatever I want." The AP has more here .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sure, America is trying to compensate for BRICS (and more specifically, China and Russia), but t here's a price to pay for lashing out at "foe" and "friend" alike : Bullied and buffeted by President Donald Trump’s tariffs for the past year, America’s longstanding allies are desperately seeking ways to shield themselves from the president’s impulsive wrath. U.S. trade partners are cutting deals among themselves —- sometimes discarding old differences to do so — in a push to diversify their economies away from a newly protectionist United States. Some European governments and institutions are reducing their use of U.S. digital services such as Zoom and Teams. Central banks and global investors are dumping dollars and buying gold. Together, their actions could diminish U.S. influence and mean higher interest rates and prices for Americans already angry about the high cost of living. Last summer and fall, Trump used the threat of punishing taxes on imports to stron...

 

 

 

 

 

 What is done abroad eventually makes it way back home...

 Seriously...even if this were true, where's the evidence that Russia benefitted at all from this? If you're keeping track of the world leaders involved in the latest leaks (or even the ones before), how many of those countries have been falling over themselves trying to defend or protect Russia? What kind of elaborate blackmail operation gains you essentially no political benefits whatsoever ? 

Confused? Let NPR try to explain : President Donald Trump is suing the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion, as he accuses the federal agencies of a failure to prevent a leak of the president's tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020. The suit, filed in a Florida federal court Thursday, includes the president's sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump organization as plaintiffs. The filing alleges that the leak of Trump and the Trump Organization's confidential tax records caused "reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs' public standing." In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax inf...

 

 

 

 "Political Hubris" is on point: Imagine screwing up so bad, you risk losing the gerrymandering-in-progress state of Texas. It's like in their blind embrace of Donald Trump, Republicans forgot that George W. Bush's overture to Latino Americans helped to rebuild their base . But the facts about immigration escape these people.

 

 

 

 

  "While Republicans began to demur and ruling class chieftains expressed opposition, the so-called leadership of the Democratic Party were largely silent. They claimed to be outraged by the ICE onslaught, but when it was time to show opposition, seven of them joined Republicans to maintain ICE funding. Just two days before Pretti was killed, seven House democrats voted with the Republicans to continue ICE funding. House leader Hakeem Jeffries recommended a vote against funding but there was no whip operation to guarantee that his members would stay in line, a sure sign of a political performance. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Laura Gillen of New York, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Tom Suozzi of New York, and Congressional Black Caucus member Don Davis of North Carolina were the seven who voted against the will of most Democratic Party voters." - - Margaret Kimberly, on the ineffectiveness of Democrats on the issue of ICE...

 

 

 

 

 It's almost like the things that happened abroad are coming home:

 

 

 Withhold your labor, and the employer has few options (yes, even with machines and AI at their disposal):

 

 

 Sounds like it's getting hard to keep those quotas up: A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent tried to get into Ecuador's consulate in Minneapolis on Tuesday but was prevented from entering the premises by consulate staffers, the country's Foreign Ministry said. The attempted entry prompted the Foreign Ministry to send a "note of protest" to the U.S. Embassy in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, demanding such incidents "not be repeated," the ministry said in a statement. The statement carried a headline referring to the incident as an "attempted incursion into the Ecuadorean Consulate in Minneapolis by ICE agents." It said the consulate staff members' actions to prevent ICE entry ensured the protection of Ecuadorean nationals who were in the building at the time. The incident occurred during a mass deportation operation being conducted by some 3,000 heavily armed agents of ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol deployed to Minnesota under ...

 

 Guess they're not going to let a little thing like, "Our AI convinced a child to take their own life" to get in the way of their agenda: Guess running low on cash makes you panic.

 

 A CBS-affiliated journalist is killed, and CBS doesn't bother to ask why:

 

 I would say that the reason is, "OpenAI is a fake business," but that's a layman's interpretation:

 They can't bring themselves to defund a group that the product of 9/11 paranoia: 

 

 

 Black Agenda Report: To say that Denmark's objection of America's desire to take Greenland is interesting would be an understatement .  Prism Reports: ICE's presence is destroying local businesses .  Mint Press News: Kidnapping foreign leaders is something the United States does . CNBC: Nvidia Director retires at 70 with $26 million "to pursue a new professional opportunity" but "not because of a disagreement with company or any matter related to its operations or policies." CNN & USA Today : The latest shooting in Minneapolis has put the spotlight on 2nd Amendment advocacy.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

People seem to forget that there was an overlap of Donald Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters in 2016. Back then, they both spoke to class issues (albeit in different ways) and this resonated with voters...specifically white men.

 

 

 

 Confirming comments made by Prof. Marandi in other spaces:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Ever wonder how in some countries the citizens appear to be more pro-US than supporters of their own nation?

 

 

 

 

There would not be protests/public outcries around the planet, the Democratic Party in the US would not have a precarious chance of "winning back" Congress (let alone the White House), and South Africa would not have been able to make an essentially air-tight case for genocide if not for the fact certain Israeli citizens can't help but brag about it at nearly every turn: And not only was Gazans mocked and ridiculed as they were bombed, shot and tortured, but the venomous vitriol targeted anyone who dare to defend starving children or criticize the bombing of hospitals, leading Israel's most powerful backer (the United States) to accuse South Africa of persecuting Afrikaners (the descendants of colonizers), abduct the leader of Venezuela (who had been a backer of Palestine and their right to sovereignty) and bombed Iran (the last powerful proponent for Palestine due to the limitations of Yemen, the internal politics of Hezbollah and the regime change in Syria). Iran it...