United States | News & Politics

> There is much to say about Monday’s Border Patrol audition in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park for Call of Duty 9: War Boner!  . . . Oh, the big tough agents of CBP had it all: fully kitted out in desert camo and automatic weapons like they were storming a Taliban-held village in the Hindu Kush; a mounted machine gun on top of one vehicle like they were expecting a suicide charge by enemy soldiers; neck gaiters to hide their shame; even some dipshit wearing a cowboy hat instead of a helmet like the quirkiest character in a movie about the Vietnam War from the ‘80s. > > All so they could bust up a — let's see here — a kids’ summer day camp. That’ll teach those little snots to play outside in a park in warm sunny weather. >

> . . . Anyway, the whole thing was botched, according to Klippenstein: > > > Because ICE and CBP apparently failed to communicate or coordinate effectively, the military showed up too late (and Los Angeles authorities weren’t notified until two hours prior.) > > > > “We were on the objective for 24 minutes,” a National Guard member told me. “Many of the phase lines were not reported because they didn’t happen. So we parked and then left. Soldiers didn’t get out of trucks. \[They] stayed in the back of the 5-tons \[military trucks] sweating in the heat.” > > Then LA Mayor Karen Bass came storming onto the scene and demanded the army men get the hell out of her city’s park, which they did, slowly caravaning away while people jeered them. You can imagine the radio chatter: Echo One, Echo Actual, we have multiple unfriendlies lined up on Wilshire Boulevard calling us names and being really mean. > > Stephen Miller probably called up the commanding officer and bawled him out for retreating, but it really was the smart move. Who knows how much danger those soldiers could have been in? Somebody might have come by pushing an ice cream cart, only to tell them he was out of Creamsicles.

>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. will have to send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after ordering a pause in critical weapons deliveries to Kyiv. > >The comments by Trump appeared to be an abrupt change in posture after the Pentagon announced last week that it would hold back delivering to Ukraine some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons because of what U.S. officials said were concerns that stockpiles have declined too much. > >“We have to,” Trump said. ”They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”

>A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020-2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”. > >The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War program at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark. > >That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration like Vice-President JD Vance, the report said.

>Rescue crews continued on Tuesday to comb through parts of the Texas Hill Country devastated by catastrophic flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend, but with more than 100 dead and hope fading for survivors, efforts have increasingly turned to search and recovery. > >As of Tuesday morning, the death toll across the six affected counties surpassed 100. Most of the deaths were in Kerr county, where officials said 87 bodies had so far been recovered, including 56 adults and 30 children. Identification was pending for 19 adults and seven children with one additional person still unidentified, county sheriff Larry Leitha told a news conference.

>The United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months, an alarming depletion that led to the Trump administration freezing the latest transfer of munitions to Ukraine. > >The stockpile of the Patriot missiles has fallen so low that it raised concern inside the Pentagon that it could jeopardize potential US military operations, and deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, authorized the transfer to be halted while they reviewed where weapons were being sent. > >Donald Trump appeared to reverse at least part of that decision on Monday when he told reporters in advance of a dinner at the White House with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would “send some more weapons” to Ukraine, although he did not disclose whether that would include Patriot systems.

While tourism is booming across the rest of the world, the U.S. is a notable loser this year as tens of millions of international visitors are choosing to travel elsewhere—costing the economy up to $29 billion—and risking millions of jobs.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5482744

> >The Oak Ridge Fire has burned 10,814 acres southwest of Window Rock and remains 42% contained as of Sunday. Crews are bracing for extreme temperatures and critically dry fuels that threaten to spark new fires across the region. > > >Firefighters continue to work the southern edge of the fire near Hunters Point, Oak Springs, and Pine Springs. Operations Chief Tyler Chesarek said infrared maps helped crews locate and suppress hot spots. > > >“Crews were able to get around, get some depth, and hit some of the hot spots of concern,” he said. > > >A controlled burn near Oak Springs was also successful. Teams pushed northward and secured lines near the Klagetoh, Arizona, area > > Full Article

>Shares in Tesla are heading for a sharp fall in the US as investors fear Elon Musk’s launch of a new political party will present further problems for the electric carmaker. > >Tesla stock was down more than 7% in pre-market trading on Monday, threatening to wipe approximately $70bn (£51bn) off the company’s value when Wall Street opens. > >If the shares fell by that much, the value of Musk’s stock would fall by more than $9bn to about $120bn. The Tesla and Space X boss remains comfortably the world’s richest person, with a wealth of about $400bn, according to Forbes.

>Residents in central Texas were observing a day of prayer on Sunday for at least 82 people killed and dozens missing in Friday’s devastating flash flooding, as a search and rescue operation for survivors began to morph into a grim exercise of recovering bodies. > >Relatives continued an anxious wait for news of 10 girls and one camp counselor still unaccounted for from a riverside summer camp that was overwhelmed by flash flooding from the Guadalupe River, which rose 26ft (8 meters) in 45 minutes on Friday morning after torrential pre-dawn rain north of San Antonio. > >Kerr county’s sheriff, Larry Leitha, said at a briefing on Sunday afternoon that 68 people have been confirmed dead there, including 28 children, with the search continuing for the missing girls and their counselor from Camp Mystic, along the river. > >Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said in an earlier briefing that another 10 fatalities have been confirmed in neighboring counties. Abbott said that officials were still searching for 41 known missing persons across the state.

July 5, 2025

"The article below first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 5, 2025. The protest the article describes was a fitting way to mark US Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A. has been the epicenter of many such protests over the last month since the White House picked the city to launch its aggressive dragnet, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, targeting millions of workers across the country.

As a recent article published by the Washington Post revealed, ICE arrests have more than doubled since Trump took office in January, compared to the same period last year."