Good and thoughtful graphic essay by Matthew Inman, expressing why he dislikes AI-generated art. It’s been widely linked to, largely approvingly. I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Near the start, Inman writes:
When I consume AI art, it also evokes a feeling. Good, bad,
neutral — whatever.
Until I find out that it’s AI art.
Then I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored.
This feeling isn’t a choice.
I think it very much is a choice. If your opinion about a work of art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else. If you refuse to watch Woody Allen movies because of his personal life, that’s a choice, but you’re choosing not to watch some of the bestmovies that have ever been made.
Stanley Kubrick said, “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically. Or whether a movie — or a photograph — was shot using a digital camera or on film. Or whether a novel was written using a computer or with pen and paper.
I think most “AI art” today completely sucks. But not because it was made using AI generation tools. It just sucks period. Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming.
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a
charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K.,
Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway,
and others, according to Apple’s online store. In the U.S. and all
other countries outside of Europe, the new MacBook Pro comes with
Apple’s 70W USB-C Power Adapter, but European customers miss out.
Apple has gradually stopped including chargers with many products
over the years — a decision it has attributed to its
environmental goals.
In this case, an Apple spokesperson told French website
Numerama’s Nicolas Lellouche that the decision to not
include a charger with this particular MacBook Pro was made in
anticipation of a European regulation that will require
Apple to provide customers with the option to purchase certain
devices without a charger in the box, starting in April.
I’m not sure why there’s no power adapter in the box in the UK (I double-checked). The cited regulation is for the EU, and the UK, rather famously, left the EU in 2020.
But, still, amazing stuff continues to happen in Europe.
How far can “other duties as assigned” in a job description stretch?
My company is asking us to do an assignment that is wildly outside our normal job roles. Imagine that we write user manuals for the a vacuum company, and now they’re telling us we have to go out and do 2-5 weeks of door-to-door sales in another city, 12 hours a day, for 6 days a week.
We’re all salaried so the hours are within the legal limits, but the work is nothing like what we were hired to do. We have not been trained in sales and many of us feel very uncomfortable doing this work, especially when it means leaving our lives behind for as much as a month.
When we’ve raised this, management says our job descriptions say “other duties as assigned,” that the main job of the company is to sell vacuums, and since sales are down this is an “all hands on deck” moment.
Does “other duties as assigned” in a job description mean anything goes?
More or less.
Most jobs in the United States are “at will,” meaning that the company can change the terms of your employment at any time. They don’t need to give you a job description at all, and if they do they’re not bound by what it says. Or they could give you a job description with three specific tasks on it and no “other duties as assigned” at all and still randomly require you to do completely different things one day.
Job descriptions do carry legal weight in some circumstances, but not in the way you’re thinking. For example, they come into play if you ask for a medical accommodation and the company says, “Oh, there’s no way we could permit that because doing X is such an essential requirement of your job” and you’re able to argue that X has always been a minor and irregular duty and, look, it’s so unimportant that it has no relation to anything that’s in your written job description. (To be clear, even if it is in your job description, they still might not be able to argue it’s an essential duty of the role; that’s fact-specific. But not having it written down will generally make it harder for them.)
Job descriptions can also matter if you quit because your job changes drastically and then apply for unemployment benefits. You might be more eligible for benefits if you can use the initial job description to show that the change in duties was so significant that it would be intolerable to a reasonable person (although that’s not guaranteed and varies by state).
Job descriptions can also matter a lot if you have a union; your union contract may have rules around what, if anything, you can be asked to do outside of your job description.
But beyond situations like that, job descriptions aren’t legally binding in the way you’re hoping for, whether they say “other duties as assigned” or not.
So where does that leave you and your coworkers?
What your company is asking you to do is ridiculous. They might like for everyone to drop everything and travel around doing door-to-door sales in another city for 12 hours a day, six days a week, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable or realistic for them to expect people will do that. You and your coworkers have a lot of room to push back on basic practicality grounds — meaning that all of you should say, “Sorry, I can’t do that — I have family commitments here that mean I can’t be away more than very rarely” and “I’m not available to travel.” It would also be beyond reasonable to say, “I came on board to do X, and while I’m wiling to help out in a pinch, door-to-door sales isn’t something I am willing to do.” But in this case, just presenting the travel as an impossibility may be your strongest framing.
Your company could choose to fire you all if you don’t comply. They probably won’t do that, although you should be prepared for the reality that they could, and you should read the room as much as possible for a sense of how much leverage you have, both as a group and individually, and also about whether this whole situation reflects a company in such financial shambles that you might not have a job for much longer anyway. But there’s power in numbers and if you all flatly refuse — treating it as if of course this is unreasonable and not possible — you have a decent shot of getting them to back down.
LOS ANGELES—Narrowing his eyes and raising a single finger to silence those around him, local dad Mark Fahlen reportedly shushed his entire family Thursday evening while focusing intently on the jumbotron hat shuffle at Dodger Stadium. “Shut up, shut up, I need to lock in on this,” said Fahlen, snapping at his wife and two children as he stared unblinkingly at the animated hats rapidly switching positions on the screen and tried to keep track of which cap had the ball underneath. “No one talk, I gotta win this. It’s under the left hat—wait, no, middle hat. Back to left hat. Fuck, almost lost it. Everyone please shut up till this is done.” According to witnesses, Fahlen later pumped his fist in triumph and claimed to have correctly chosen the left hat, despite having shouted “Right!” just before the ball was revealed.
WELLS, ME—Stating that citizens had a right to be warned about the types of individuals residing in their area, authorities confirmed Thursday that they had placed 54-year-old William Barry onto a sex offender registry for being a grown man who had licked an ice cream cone. “The perpetrator committed an indecent act towards ice cream in broad daylight, where any child could have seen him,” said state police Capt. Robert Murphy, thanking witnesses who swiftly notified law enforcement after Barry allegedly extended his tongue outside Seaside Scoop Shop and repeatedly licked a scoop of strawberry ice cream. “What he did was wrong anywhere, but this was in a public place. He didn’t even attempt to get the ice cream in a dish. All he cared about was satisfying his deviant cravings. In the coming weeks, residents can expect Mr. Barry to go from door to door and inform them of his age, address, and predilection towards frozen treats.” Authorities added that Barry would also be required by law to stay at least 500 feet away from all ice cream parlors.
WOODS HOLE, MA—Saying they saw no conceivable reason to bother with the bivalve mollusks, biologists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announced Thursday that there was absolutely nothing to be learned from clams. “Our studies have found that while some of their shells look pretty cool, clams really don’t have anything to teach us,” said the organization’s chief scientist, Francis Dawkins, clarifying that it wasn’t simply the case that researchers had already learned everything they could from clams, but rather that there had never been anything to learn from them and never would be. “We certainly can’t teach them anything. It’s not like you can train them to run through a maze the way you would with mice. We’ve tried, and they pretty much just lie there. From what I’ve observed, they have a lot more in common with rocks than they do with us. They’re technically alive, I guess, if you want to call that living. They open and close sometimes, but, I mean, so does a wallet. If you’ve used a wallet, you know more or less all there is to know about clams. Pretty boring.” The finding follows a study conducted by marine biologists last summer that concluded clams don’t have much flavor, either, tasting pretty much the same as everything else on a fried seafood platter.
Agatha Christie: “I bet I could murder them and get away with it.”
Ernest Hemingway: “For sale. Two testicles. Never used.”
George R. R. Martin: “Hold on, I’ll tell you later…”
Cormac McCarthy: “The man stands. Jaw slacked and mouth opened black and round like a charred spider’s egg. Posture twisted. Hair claggy with gel and sweat. The man does not carry the fire.”
Ernest Cline: “They probably don’t even know what PO-024 Field Repair E-Frame is; such a poser.”
Mary Shelley: “Definitely not a real goth. SMDH.”
Ralph Ellison: “Oh god, not them again—quick, hide!”
Jack Kerouac: “Even I think this guy is a bit much.”
Maya Angelou: “When they were asking me about my book, I’m pretty sure they were confusing it with We Bought a Zoo.”
Leo Tolstoy: “I have many thoughts on this person and the matter at hand. Some of which I wish to discuss presently, some I will supplement at a later date in time. For the present moment, I will cede I haven’t put enough thought yet into the exact rhetorical method of presenting such information and impressions, but still I do feel it is important to contribute my voice to the proceedings. What is there even to say but [character limit reached].”
Charlotte and Emily Brontë: “He has no clue which one of us is which.”
Gabriel Garcia Márquez: “Welp, there goes my solitude.”
Vladimir Nabokov: “I’m their favorite? Yikes. Red flag.”
The periodic table has three elements in it, Mike! There’s a volume for the letter Epsilon. There’s a mailing address for Machu Picchu. It’s got a picture of Stonehenge… under construction!
“The annual Awesome Guy With Big Dick And Normal Hair Award goes to…Donald Trump!” Luke and the Panel (Clare Blackwood, Nile Seguin and Craig Fay) discuss the reasons to be optimistic about the Ceasefire Deal, and the many many reasons for pessimism, Trump’s proclamation of a New Dawn in the Middle East, and the Conservatives […]
“Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery, and rape…. Vice President JD Vance downplayed [the] bigoted messages, suggesting they were nothing more than ‘edgy, offensive jokes.’” —Politico
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If you ever needed proof that woke elites are targeting the conservative way of life, well, here it is. Politico, that infamous, Marxist rag, published 2,900 pages of private text messages—all in an attempt to ruin the lives of our youngest eighteen to forty-year-olds.
This is an abomination. This nation’s Young Republicans are more than just veteran political operatives and attorneys: they’re kids. And sometimes, kids say the wrong things. They can’t be held responsible for using slurs two hundred and fifty-one times in just under eight months.
Think about the message this sends. We’re teaching kids that, as soon as they take their first steps in the halls of state government, they can’t say anything racist. Even if it’s in a private conversation. Even when their wife—ah, to be young and in love—says that Jews are liars in the same chat. The Left may hate law enforcement, but clearly, they’ve got no problem with the Thought Police.
Plus, this one-sided coverage ignores all the good ideas that these kids have, like arresting illegal immigrants, arresting legal immigrants, arresting bad mothers, arresting good mothers who aren’t MILFs, and generally arresting people who are mean to them. Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. God forbid those babes accidentally babble out a few hate crimes too.
And it’s not like these kids haven’t learned their lesson already. They’ve even issued heartfelt apologies alleging that the quotes were “deceptively doctored” and part of a “highly coordinated year-long character assassination.” It’s that kind of emotional empathy and grace under pressure that voters crave—which is why the Left is lashing out.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that some of the texts are a bit unsavory. I’ll even concede it’s probably bad to suggest that people who disagree with you are “going to the gas chamber.” But who among us hasn’t said something regrettable as a mid-career youth? If we canceled anyone who gave Hitler offhand praise, our country would be bereft of someofourforemostthoughtleaders.
We don’t need to cherry-pick the remarks of a college group chat, which is essentially what this is, given that most attendees received a college degree within the last two decades. The real story is what’s happening on the actual campuses, where antisemitic Leftists are violently holding signs. Every day, you have cruel eighteen-year-old Democrats—beefy, middle-aged adults—shoving their cruel views down the throats of eighteen-year-old conservatives—defenseless little toddlers, green shoots fresh out of the Garden of Eden. It’s enough to make you sick.
This absurd smear campaign must end before it’s too late. It’s unjust and unfair to ruin the careers of national party chairs and former Small Business Administration professionals before they’ve even got a book deal. After all, do you really think that someone with a documented history of racial slurs and antisemitism can make it in today’s political landscape? Will someone please think of the children?
The dust is still settling at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a mass layoff on Friday, which former employees at the beleaguered agency are describing as a massacre.
In separate press briefings on Tuesday, a network of terminated CDC staff that goes by the name the National Public Health Coalition, and the union representing employees at the agency discussed what the wide-scale cuts mean for the American people, as well as the trauma, despair, and damage they have wreaked on the workers of the once-premier public health agency.
In a normal federal layoff—called a reduction in force, or RIF—the agency would be given a full outline of the roles and branches or divisions affected, as well as some explanation for the cuts, such as alleged fraud, abuse, or redundancy. However, the Trump administration has provided no such information or explanation, leaving current and former employees to essentially crowdsource what has been lost and only guess at the possible reasons.
There’s been a lot going on and we almost forget that the federal government is approaching its third week of shutdown. The administration has used the time to cancel and pause billions in grants in the places you might guess. Tony Romm and Lazaro Gamio for the New York Times have the analysis.
The Times conducted its analysis by examining federal funding records, which include details about the city and state where each grant recipient is based. The projects include new investments in clean energy, upgrades to the electric grid and fixes to the nation’s transportation infrastructure, primarily in Democratic strongholds, such as New York and California.
In a seismic shift for the television industry, TiVo Corporation
has quietly pulled the plug on its storied digital video recorder
line, effectively ending an era that redefined how consumers
interacted with broadcast content. As of early October 2025, the
company’s official website has scrubbed all references
to its hardware DVR products, including the once-revered TiVo
Edge models designed for cable subscribers and over-the-air
antenna users. Visitors searching for these devices now encounter
a streamlined catalog that omits any mention of physical
recording hardware, signaling a complete withdrawal from the
retail DVR market.
This move culminates decades of gradual decline for TiVo’s
hardware ambitions, which peaked in the early 2000s when the brand
became synonymous with effortless time-shifting of television
programming. Launched in 1999, TiVo’s DVRs introduced features
like one-touch recording, commercial skipping, and intuitive
search capabilities that made traditional TV schedules feel
obsolete. At its zenith, the company boasted millions of
subscribers, forcing cable providers and networks to adapt to
empowered viewers who could pause live broadcasts or binge-watch
at will. The TiVo Edge, introduced in 2021 as a hybrid device
supporting both cable cards and streaming, represented the final
evolution of this hardware legacy, blending OTA tuners with 4K
support and expanded storage options. Yet, even as it garnered
praise for superior interface design and reliability, sales
dwindled amid the cord-cutting revolution.
The writing has been on the wall for years. We’ve been a TiVo house for 25 years, but their hardware has gotten worse over the years. I forget what our second-to-last TiVo model was, but it died in 2021, and we bought a TiVo Edge. The Edge was often unreliable, and sometimes needed weekly reboots to keep working. (System software updates eventually fixed that.) But the hardware failed this summer. We’d only had it four years.
And, the Edge system software UI was a disaster, and a huge regression from the old TiVo interface. Almost everything was worse in the new “modern” TiVo interface from the old one: navigating shows you’d already recorded, the live-right-now TV guide, the interface for setting up a show to record — all of that went from really good and intuitive to clunky and confusing and slow. The one and only thing our TiVo Edge remained excellent at was playback. Fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing — nothing else compares to TiVo for that. Even Apple’s own TV app on an Apple TV box doesn’t fast-forward or rewind with anything close to the precision and low latency TiVo’s devices have always offered. My first TiVo from 25 years ago had better fast-forward and rewind than anything on Apple TV (let alone other, lesser streaming boxes) today.
But the overall TiVo experience has been so bad — and getting worse — for so long that I’m not sad at all that they’re getting out of the game. TiVo’s one job was to provide a best-of-breed experience and they lost the plot on that a decade ago. Fuck ’em.
I (F) was in my mid-30s and traveling to work with a client. He had set up a dinner that should have included five or six of us on the project. Everyone backed out except me, which is how I found myself at a cozy, fireside table for two at a dark but excellent Boston restaurant, drinking a glass of champagne. (I was in my bubbles era…) And who should happen to be dining there but his wife’s cousin, who barged up to the table wanting to know why he was sipping bubbly with me rather than hanging out at home with his extremely pregnant wife. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it.
2. The tomato sauce
I once worked at an English language school. The owner was from Brazil and hired a Brazilian woman she knew to cook for the faculty and staff every day. It was mostly a way to pay someone in her community, but the woman always made phenomenal food.
At this stage in my life, I knew next to nothing about Brazilian culture or food. On my second or third day, I went into the breakroom and saw a crockpot of what looked like tomato soup next to some lovely, inviting rolls of fresh bread. I excitedly ladled some of the crockpot contents into a bowl, grabbed a spoon, and sat down with some of my new coworkers (who had just finished eating). I was chattering away, eating my lunch by the spoonful and occasionally dipping in pieces of bread. I noticed that my coworkers were growing silent and some were looking at me a bit awkwardly.
Finally, one of them turned to our cook and said, “Ana, this is so phenomenal, I think I’m going to get seconds!” She then went over to the crockpot … and I realized, to my utter horror, that the crockpot contained meatballs in tomato sauce and the rolls were for making meatball subs. And I had just spent the past 15 minutes sitting there eating tomato sauce with a spoon like a deranged person.
3. The Arnold Palmers
A new salesperson at my husband’s office took a client to lunch. The client ordered an Arnold Palmer to drink. Thinking he should match the energy of the client, the salesperson ordered a Red Bull and vodka. Every time the client got a fresh drink, so did the salesperson. When asked why he was inebriated after a work lunch, he explained the situation to my husband, who in turn explained to him what an Arnold Palmer was. (For those who don’t know, it’s half lemonade and half iced tea.) Lesson learned. Not sure if he got the account, but he certainly made an impression!
4. The cheese bread
I worked for a shoestring budget faith-based nonprofit that decided to do a year-long competition where the prize was a paid meal at a Brazilian steakhouse. I went, but we did not get plus-one’s. My very pregnant wife was jealous because she loves the cheese bread they serve at Brazilian steakhouses. So I put two gallon-size plastic bags in my backpack, stuffed it under the table, and every time the server reloaded a bread basket, I dumped the whole thing into my bag. I came home a hero.
The dinner was also attended by two young right-out-of-college intern men who were sharing a crappy apartment and living off ramen because they made so little. I have never seen two people absolutely gorge like those two did. I think they were getting their calories for the next two weeks.
5. The electric bagpipe machine
At a farewell dinner for a beloved colleague, my company was taking up about half the restaurant. The retired founder of our company decided it would be appropriate to bring out and start up his ELECTRIC BAGPIPE MACHINE, which is a box that basically sounds like a theramin in a kilt. Everyone in the restaurant, including most of us, thought some kind of deranged fire alarm was going off. He then proceeded to distribute handouts with lyrics of comic song he’d written to the tune of the Skye Boat Song about events on a work away-weekend from before most of us worked at the company (and before I was born), and expected us all to sing along with the machine. All the poor normal people who’d just wanted a nice restaurant dinner were staring at us, and I wanted to die.
6. The hibachi place
When I was a newly hired, my new group had a welcome lunch at a hibachi place, similar to Benihana, where the server cooks your food in front of you and puts on a show while doing so. The server called me “sexy lady” and squirted saki directly into people’s mouths. It was awkward and weird. Thankfully the group otherwise had normal standards of professionalism but it was a very weird first impression. That restaurant was to go to for group lunches for years.
7. The conversion
A business dinner actually made me vegetarian. Early in my career, I was connected via networking to a really nice and helpful woman who helped me get an internship at her company. The week before the internship started, she invited me out for drinks and sushi with a few coworkers and outgoing interns so I could hear more about the company and get a heard start on introductions. Super nice!
At the time, I didn’t eat fish (just because I didn’t like the taste) and when the waiter came around to me, I ordered the veggie roll. The woman who invited me turned excitedly to me and said, “Oh, are you a vegetarian too??” In my early-20s eagerness to please and desire to connect further with this really, really nice person, I panicked and said, “Yes!”
Not only was this a weird white lie, my internship at her company started the next week so I was also locking myself into living this lie by bringing vegetarian lunches and eating vegetarian at company events for at least the next four months. This actually turned out surprisingly fine – and I’ve now been vegetarian for eight years.
8. The small amount of tapas
I worked at a company that wanted to be a luxury fashion brand. They announced an all-staff party at a very posh tapas place on the beach, a few hours away from the office. The party was mandatory, so they rented buses to drive the entire company (70+ people) to the restaurant. We had an entire floor to ourselves, which included a beautiful view of the sun slowly setting over the ocean. Five hours of beachside views, appetizers, and quiet chat – what could go wrong?
Somehow, the plates of appetizers ordered ahead of time were not party-sized, but tapas-sized. So “a plate of mini eclairs” meant “two eclairs on a tiny plate.” The executive team ate all the appetizers before they got to anyone else before realizing that, no, that little plate with a single mini quiche on it was the only one coming out. The waitstaff also didn’t bring water to anyone except the executive team, because it was the restaurant’s policy that only diners got water and they were the only ones who ate.
People asked if they could order their own dishes and pay for them on their own, but were repeatedly told no by both the waitstaff and the head of HR. People started wandering around and attempting to leave to get food elsewhere but were dragged back by head of HR. We were all forced to sit at a single long table, without moving from our seats, without food or water, for the rest of the party.
At hour 4, the waitstaff brought out three small baskets of those dry boxed breadsticks. To their credit, all the managers at the section of the table I sat at made sure their staff ate breadsticks first before they did, so the managers ate nothing. Executive staff did get a single breadstick each. This was not considered sufficient enough dining for the waitstaff to bring us water.
I must have looked crazy to the guy who walked into the bathroom and saw me drinking from the bathroom sink before the bus ride.
No one spoke to each other on the hours-long bus ride home.
9. The boor
We were a very social office of about eight people and had two new starters in the same week. One of the new starters had made a couple of comments about being frugal before the meal, but none of us thought anything much about it.
Until it came to paying and leaving. Being the highest paid person there, after everyone had paid for what they had, I left a tip.
The new starter grabbed my arm with dismay and shock as we got up from the table to inform me that I’d left some money behind. I had to explain to a guy in his 30s what tipping was.
10. The rice
At my first day of my first adult job, my boss took me out to lunch. She was an extremely proper, middle-aged woman who I never saw laugh but she was still very kind. We went to a local Thai restaurant, and she asked me a question as I was eating. I finished my bite and began to respond, but a rogue piece of rice shot out of my mouth and ONTO HER PLATE. She blinked, remained unfazed, and then when she took her next bite just gently pushed my single piece of feral rice to the side of her plate.
11. The knife attack
When I worked in B2B services, we’d flown out to work directly with our most difficult client at their office for a few days, and they took us out for dinner at a fancy steakhouse. When the waiter brought us steak knives, he managed to fumble mine and drop it in such a way that it landed, point down, on my foot. I was wearing ballet flats so that part of my foot was completely unprotected and I straight up got shanked in the foot. It wasn’t so bad I needed urgent care or anything but it was bad enough that it was sore and needed to be kept covered for multiple days.
The waiter looked like he was about to throw up due to shame/horror so I reassured him that it was okay, but I was either too reassuring or not reassuring enough because after that he just kind of pretended it didn’t happen? I had to flag down a different waiter to ask for a bandaid so I didn’t bleed on the restaurant floor. I kind of expected them to at least comp my dessert or something, but nope! Which, no skin off my nose financially because the client was paying, but I did low key feel entitled to at least a scoop of ice cream in compensation for being stabbed in the foot.
12. The dark dinner
The owners of our franchise would throw a small holiday dinner for the higher level managers every Christmas (there was also a full staff one, a bit later). So, one year they decided to mix it up and, instead of the usual place, took us to an uptown steakhouse.
The food was fine, but the whole place was dark. We were at a table where you could see the person across and next to you, there was one candle for every two people (think 14 people), and that was it, with some light from the windows. People were pulling out their phones to read the menu, conversations were stilted because you couldn’t see the people at the ends of table, the waiters were carrying a small lamp on every tray, and the various appetizers that were ordered for the table were basically just put down in one place and no way to get it if it was more then a person down. It wasn’t a light outage of some kind, it was just they were used to two-people tables and kind of shoved our group into a section that was mainly used for displaying seasonal items through the windows.
The gifts that the owners handed out were passed out by an owner walking around the table to find the person it went to since they couldn’t see them from the head of the table.
OTTAWA – Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has launched a petition to “end DEI programs and restore merit”, just months after losing his own heavily-favoured seat before running in an even more heavily-tilted by-election. The online petition, titled “DEI spending and government waste needs to DIE”, is endorsed by a leader who demanded a costly by-election […]
Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.
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ATROCITY KEY
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice – Environment – Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct – Lies and Misinformation – Musk Madness – Policy – Public Statements and Social Media Posts – Trump Family Business Dealings – Trump Staff and Administration – White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia
– September 1, 2025 – The Trump administration deported Orville Etoria and five other men with criminal records to a prison in Eswatini despite the fact that none of the men hold Swazi citizenship. A Jamaican citizen with legal residency in the US, Etoria was convicted of murder in 1996. After Etoria’s release from prison in 2021, immigration officials allowed him to stay in the US, provided he completed annual check-ins. As of The New York Times’s publication, Etoria was being held indefinitely without charges, had not seen a lawyer, and had had little contact with his family since arriving in Eswatini. Neither Eswatini nor the US could explain why Etoria was being held, and Jamaican officials contested the Trump administration’s claim that their country had refused to accept Etoria.
– September 1, 2025 – The Trump family made roughly $5 billion when trading opened for a digital token belonging to its primary cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial. Last year, the Trump family helped launch World Liberty Financial along with current presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and a corporate entity owned by the Trump family that holds a 60 percent stake in the company. Since taking office, Trump has pushed for weaker crypto industry regulations, and critics have argued that World Liberty partners and investors have sought to curry favor with the Trump administration. According to public disclosures, Trump family members, including Trump himself, hold 22.5 billion $WLFI tokens, just under a quarter of the total $WLFI tokens in existence. The Wall Street Journal called the trading debut “most likely the biggest financial success for the president’s family since the inauguration” and said that “WLFI is likely now the Trumps’ most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio.”
– September 1, 2025 – Hundreds of Labor Day demonstrations took place across the country to protest against Trump administration policies and in support of workers’ rights. The protests, many of which were organized as part of the “Workers over Billionaires” call to action, denounced the Trump administration’s mass deportations, cuts to the social safety net, efforts to undermine unions, and deployment of National Guard troops in American cities, among other concerns. In Manhattan, activists carrying anti-Trump posters and chanting “lock him up” protested outside Trump Tower. “Protests are how you channel energy into activism,” said Andrew Lisa, chair of the Seminole County Democratic Party in Florida. “We are taking that energy and saying, ‘You’ve protested, you’ve taken two hours out of your day. Can you spend two hours knocking on your neighbors’ doors?’”
– September 2, 2025 – President Trump announced that the US had carried out a strike against a Venezuelan boat with “a lot of drugs” and had killed eleven “terrorists” on board. Trump did not provide any evidence to support his claim about the drugs or the identities of the people on board, and it was unclear whether the people on board were given a chance to surrender. Later that afternoon, Trump posted more details on social media along with a video showing what appeared to be an explosion on a crowded speedboat: “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists… the strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.” Later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio contradicted Trump’s account, claiming that the boat was likely headed to the Caribbean, not the US. The strike represented a major shift in drug interdiction, which typically focuses on seizing drugs and identifying suspects to build a criminal case. Congress has not authorized an armed conflict against Tren de Aragua or Venezuela, and experts have questioned the legality of the attack.
Pentagon Releases Video Showing US Strike on Alleged Drug Boat Near Venezuela (ABC News)
– September 2, 2025 – As President Trump prepared to send National Guard troops to other American cities, US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer was illegal. The judge found that Trump’s actions had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the power of the federal government to use military force in domestic matters. In response, Trump threatened to send troops back to Los Angeles. “President Trump’s recent executive orders and statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California,” wrote Breyer, who further warned that the Trump administration ran the risk of “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”
– September 3, 2025 – The New York Timesreported that the Trump administration had discussed offering jobs to Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa so that they would leave the New York City mayoral race, clearing the field for Andrew Cuomo to take on Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani. According to later reports, Adams was being considered for an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia and, despite Adams’s claims to the contrary, had indicated his openness to ending his campaign in exchange for a formal offer. In response, Mamdani said that he was confident he would win the election but criticized what he described as “backroom deals” and “corrupt agreements,” calling them “an affront to our democracy, an affront to what makes so many of us proud to be Americans, that we choose our own leaders.”
– September 4, 2025 – In what officials have called the largest-ever immigration raid at a single location, nearly five hundred workers, most of them South Korean nationals, were arrested at a construction site for an electric vehicle battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia. The plant, which was still under construction, was owned by two South Korean companies, Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution. Some of those arrested included US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and South Koreans with visas or visa waivers. The move, which was heavily criticized by South Korean newspapers and the South Korean government, also revealed tensions in Trump’s push to seek Korean manufacturing investments amid ongoing tariffs and immigration crackdowns. “The economic activities of our investment companies and the rights and interests of our citizens must not be unjustly violated during US law enforcement proceedings,” said a spokesperson for South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.
Massive ICE Raid Shuts Down Hyundai Battery Site | Hundreds of Korean Workers Arrested (APT)
– September 5, 2025 – During his confirmation hearing, Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to fill a Federal Reserve vacancy, said he did not plan to resign from his White House role if confirmed and would instead take a leave of absence. The current chief of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors, Miran assured the committee he would act independently if confirmed. However, he refused to go on the record to state that Trump had lost the 2020 election, and he ducked questions about whether the president was correct in claiming that officials had faked jobs data for political reasons. Calling Miran a “puppet,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren excoriated the nominee, “You have made clear that you will do or say whatever Donald Trump wants. That may work in a political position, but it will take an axe to Federal Reserve independence.”
– September 5, 2025 – In a stark contrast to Trump’s campaign promises to enact “America First” isolationism, his own self-styling as an “antiwar president,” and his stated desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War,” a name that was used from 1789–1947. “We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to the Department of Defense,” Trump said at the signing. Added Pete Hegseth in an awkward spoken-word performance: “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” Although the move was largely symbolic, critics argued that the name change exposed Trump’s hypocrisy and underlined his increasingly aggressive use of the military. “[Trump] ran as the supposed antiwar candidate, but has proved to be just the opposite,” said Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy. “This stunt underscores that Trump is more interested in belligerent chest-thumping than genuine peacemaking—with dangerous consequences for American security, global standing and the safety of our armed services.”
DEPARTMENT OF WAR (The White House)
– September 5, 2025 – Trump announced that he would host next year’s G-20 summit at his Doral golf resort in Florida. “I think that everybody wants it there because it’s right next to the airport. It’s the best location. It’s beautiful,” Trump said, claiming that he would “not make any money” from hosting. During his first term, he backed down from a similar plan after facing widespread criticism over the possibility that hosting the summit at his property might violate the emoluments prohibition of the Constitution. Asked at the time whether it was appropriate for the European Union to spend public funds on a Trump business at the summit, the European Council President at the time, Donald Tusk, answered simply, “Not at all.”
– September 5, 2025 – A second weak jobs report in as many months undercut Trump’s claims of a booming economy and showed that the labor market was stalling. The economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, and unemployment rose to 4.3 percent, an almost four-year high. Analysts implicated a number of Trump’s policies for the slowdown, including tariffs, immigration crackdowns, federal job cuts, and canceled grants and contracts. “We’ve got a private sector that’s caught in a pinch here between these higher cost pressures and reduced demands,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist for EY-Parthenon. In response to the weak numbers, Trump again attacked the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, in a social media post: “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should have lowered rates long ago. As usual, he’s ‘Too Late!’”
– September 6, 2025 – The president threatened deportations and declared war against Chicago. Alluding to the movie Apocalypse Now, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning.’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The post also included a doctored photo depicting Trump as one of the movie’s antagonists, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, over a background of fire and helicopters with the text “Chipocalypse Now” superimposed in the foreground. In response, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote, “The president’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution. We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
– September 8, 2025 – The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could resume its sweeping ICE raids in Los Angeles, overriding concerns over civil liberties violations. SCOTUS lifted a restraining order from US District Judge Maame E. Frimpong, who found that immigration agents were conducting indiscriminate stops on people solely based on their race, language, job, or location. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.” One of the plaintiffs in the case, Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, was shown in a June 13 video being seized by federal agents as he yelled, “I was born here in the States. East LA, bro!”
– September 9, 2025 – The Trump administration worked to dismantle efforts by the IRS to shut down aggressive tax shelters used by America’s biggest multinational corporations and the wealthiest Americans. The administration bowed to pressure from industry groups and congressional Republicans to roll back IRS law enforcement efforts. The IRS announced plans to rescind Biden administration rules requiring companies to report tax shelter strategies to the agency, a change that will make it more difficult for auditors to identify these transactions. The agency also eased a pair of rules that targeted abusive shelters, including one that imposed penalties on wealthy Americans who used an insurance tax scheme that multiple courts have tossed out. The Biden rules were projected to raise more than $100 billion over ten years.
– September 10, 2025 – Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and ally of Donald Trump, was shot and killed during a speaking event at Utah Valley University in Orem. Kirk was the CEO and cofounder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization that worked to rally young Republican voters. Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence. In an evening video address, Trump blamed “the radical left,” saying, “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” In the video, Trump connected Kirk’s death to other recent attacks on political figures, all of them Republicans. He made no mention of attacks on Democrats, including Melissa Hortman, the former Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, who was shot and killed along with her husband Mark in June.
President Trump Delivers Remarks on Charlie Kirk (The White House)
– September 11, 2025 – Senate Republicans destroyed precedent and changed the rules to break a Democratic blockade of Trump’s executive branch nominees. The move, known as “the nuclear option,” was aimed at undercutting the Senate’s future role in vetting executive branch officials. The change passed along party lines and lowered the existing sixty-vote threshold for considering a group of presidential nominees to a simple majority. Republicans resorted to the move in an effort to weaken the ability of individual senators to block nominees they find objectionable. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the change would do irreparable damage to the Senate and its constitutional prerogatives, rendering it “a conveyor belt for unqualified Trump nominees.”
– September 12, 2025 – Under pressure from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the FDA announced it will examine rare cases involving the deaths of young people after they received COVID vaccines. Kennedy has repeatedly made unfounded claims that the inoculations are deadly. The FDA’s review followed years of exhaustive work by government officials and academic researchers worldwide who have validated the safety of the vaccines. A 2023 analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics reviewed seventeen studies, which included over ten million children ages 5 to 11 who were vaccinated with mRNA shots from Pfizer and Moderna. The shots were shown to reduce the risk of infection and hospitalization in vaccinated children. Kennedy recently fired all the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with his own handpicked members.
– September 12, 2025 – An ICE officer shot and killed a man who resisted arrest and dragged an officer by his car during a vehicle stop in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago. The man, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, was an undocumented immigrant who feared for his safety. An ICE spokesperson alleged the officer suffered severe back injuries, lacerations to his hand, and tears to his knee. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said ICE’s operations “jeopardize the safety of everyone, citizens and non-citizens alike, and disrupt the very fabric of our communities.” ICE officials stated that Gonzalez had a “history of reckless driving.” The only Cook County cases for a man with Villegas-Gonzalez’s name are citations for driving with an expired license, speeding, and driving an uninsured vehicle. Bodycam videos from Franklin Park police officers showed the hurt ICE agent describing his own injuries as “nothing major.”
Surveillance Videos Capture Deadly ICE Shooting in Franklin Park, Illinois (CBS News Chicago)
– September 12, 2025 – The EPA proposed eliminating the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Implemented in 2009, the program required large, industrial polluters to report their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to the government. Since the program started, US industry has collectively reported a 20 percent drop in carbon emissions. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “burdensome.” The proposal would end requirements for thousands of coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities. Zeldin also said, “Alongside President Trump, EPA continues to live up to the promise of unleashing energy dominance that powers the American dream.” He added that ending the program could save American businesses up to $2.4 billion in compliance costs over the next decade.
– September 13, 2025 – Trump announced he was ready to sanction Russia over its three-year war in Ukraine, but only if all NATO allies agree to halt buying oil from Moscow. He chided NATO officials on social media, saying, “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.” The demand followed a visit to Brussels by US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who urged the EU to wean itself off Russian energy and agree to a lopsided trade deal in which the EU would pledge to buy $750 billion of US oil and gas....
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She desperately wanted to get out of the country.
It was mid-May and Pérez, a Venezuelan mother of two, couldn’t survive on her own in Chicago anymore. She’d been relying on charity for food and shelter ever since her partner had been detained by immigration authorities after a traffic stop earlier in the year.
Pérez, 25, thought it’d be safer to return to Venezuela with her children than to stay in the U.S. Her request for asylum was still open and she had a permit to work legally, but so did a lot of other Venezuelans getting picked up on the streets and taken into custody. Authorities were detaining immigrants regardless of whether they’d followed the rules.
She had also seen how President Donald Trump singled out her countrymen, calling them gang members and terrorists, even sending hundreds to a foreign prison. She was terrified of getting detained, deported and, worst of all, separated from her young daughter and son. They were the reason the family had come to the U.S.
Then she heard about Trump’s offer of a safe and dignified way out.
“We are making it as easy as possible for illegal aliens to leave America,” the president said in a video on social media in May announcing the launch of Project Homecoming.
He spoke about a phone app where “illegals can book a free flight to any foreign country.” And he dangled other incentives: Eligible immigrants wouldn’t be barred from returning legally to the U.S. someday, and they’d even get a $1,000 “exit bonus.” Believing the president’s words, Pérez downloaded the CBP Home app and registered to return to Venezuela with her children.
Months passed. Her partner was deported. In July, Pérez said, she got a call from someone in the CBP Home program telling her she’d be on a flight out of the country in mid-August. She began packing.
But as the departure date neared and the plane tickets hadn’t arrived, Pérez got nervous. Again and again, she called the toll-free number she’d been given. Finally, somebody called back to say there might be a delay obtaining the documents she’d need to travel to Venezuela.
Then there was silence. No further information, no plane tickets. Pérez registered on the app again in August, then a third time in September, as immigration arrests ramped up in Chicago.
Today, Pérez feels trapped in a country that doesn’t want her. She’s afraid of leaving her apartment, afraid that she will be detained and that her children will be taken away from her. “I feel so scared, always looking around in every direction,” she said. “I was trying to leave voluntarily, like the president said.”
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is having the intended effect of terrifying people into trying to leave. There have been some 25,000 departures of immigrants from all countries via CBP Home, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data obtained by ProPublica.
The data indicates that of those 25,000 people, a little more than half of them returned home with DHS assistance; nearly all the others who left the U.S. ended up returning on their own.
And it’s not just CBP Home. Applications for voluntary departures — an alternative to deportation granted to some immigrants who leave at their own expense — have skyrocketed to levels not seen since at least 2000, reaching more than 34,000 since Trump’s second administration began, immigration court data shows. (The number is higher than in years past, but nowhere near the number of immigrants the administration has deported this year.)
But for many recent arrivals from Venezuela — arguably the community most targeted by the Trump administration, and whose country is now bracing for the possibility of a U.S. invasion — leaving has not been as simple as the president has made it sound.
ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. But after those dates came and went, these immigrants said they feel betrayed by what the president told them.
Part of the problem is tied to the lack of diplomatic relations between Washington and Caracas. There are no consular services for Venezuelans in the U.S. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who migrated to the U.S. in recent years seeking asylum or other humanitarian relief entered without valid passports, as Pérez did. But to get on a plane for Venezuela, they’re being told they’ll need a special travel document known as a “salvoconducto,” or “safe passage,” from their government.
And relations between the two countries are getting worse. The Trump administration has pushed for regime change in Venezuela, sent warships to the Caribbean and, in recent weeks, blew up four Venezuelan boats it claimed were transporting drugs to the U.S. Bracing for an invasion, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said he’s ready to declare a state of emergency to protect his country, which could make it harder for Venezuelans abroad to return home.
The Venezuelans who want to leave the U.S. described how CBP Home representatives told them that their lack of passports wouldn’t be a problem and that the U.S. government would help them obtain the travel documents they needed. Now they are being told that they’re on their own — if they get any response at all.
The Trump administration was aware of the potential challenges from the start. In his May proclamation, the president directed the State and Homeland Security departments to “take all appropriate actions to enable the rapid departure of illegal aliens from the United States who currently lack a valid travel document from their countries of citizenship or nationality.”
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency is working with the State Department “to acquire travel documents for those who lack safe passage. So far thousands of Venezuelans have already self-departed using CBP Home.” The State Department referred questions to DHS.
The internal DHS records obtained by ProPublica show nearly 3,700 departures of Venezuelans via CBP Home through late September. It’s unclear how many Venezuelans have applied. The DHS spokesperson said the agency could not confirm the numbers and would not say whether the program is meeting projections. (A congressional committee has directed DHS to include information about CBP Home departures in monthly reports the agency previously published, but has not published in this administration.)
An estimated 10,200 Venezuelans were deported between February and early October, according to deportation flight data tracked by the nonprofit Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor.
Many of the Venezuelans interviewed by ProPublica are mothers of young children who say they decided to take the president’s offer after their work permits expired, their temporary protected status was canceled or their spouses were deported. Few are willing to return by land because of the dangers posed by cartel violence and kidnappings in Mexico — dangers many of them experienced when they migrated here.
Nearly all of them, like Pérez, asked not to be identified by their full names because they’re afraid of bringing unwanted attention to themselves and of the potential consequences of such attention. Interviews with Venezuelan immigrants were conducted in Spanish.
Before their departure dates came and went, they had made preparations to leave — turning over the keys to their apartments, pulling their children from school, shipping their belongings to Venezuela. And they have sunk deeper into poverty as the weeks and months pass.
Pérez applied for her family to return to Venezuela through the CBP Home app months ago but has been stuck in limbo in Chicago without a clear path forward.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)
In Los Angeles, a family of four slept in their tiny Toyota Echo for weeks to save on rent as they waited for their departure date. They sold the car and other belongings to pay for bus tickets back the way they’d come. Nearly two months after their return to Venezuela, they said they’re still waiting for the exit bonuses they’d hoped would help them start over.
In Youngstown, Pennsylvania, a mother of two said she didn’t enroll her 8-year-old son in school this fall because she assumed they would be gone by now. She recently moved into a friend’s apartment in New York City and plans to turn herself in to immigration authorities and ask to be deported.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” the woman said, between sobs. “What am I supposed to do?”
Several immigration attorneys and advocates told ProPublica that they don’t trust the CBP Home app or the Trump administration’s promises to help immigrants self-deport. The National Immigration Law Center recently published a guide explaining some of the potential risks of using the app, such as leaving the country without closing an immigration court case and becoming ineligible for a future visa. Some lawyers said they discourage clients from using the app at all.
Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House, a nonprofit in El Paso that supports migrants and refugees, said in the current climate, he understands why some people might consider the administration’s offer to leave. But, he said, the offer has to be backed by action.
“If you’re going to say you’re going to do this,” Garcia added, “then you damn well better make sure that it’s truthful and that it works.”
Emily, a Venezuelan immigrant in Columbus, Ohio, holds her phone showing an email from the CBP Home program.
(Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)
CBP Home replaced an earlier app that the Biden administration had promoted to try to bring order to the soaring numbers of migrants attempting to enter the country. Pérez and other asylum-seekers used that earlier version, CBP One, to make appointments to approach the border. Trump, who campaigned on the promise of mass deportations, ended that option on his first day back in the White House.
In March, he reintroduced the app with the new name and function, allowing immigrants to alert the government of their intention to self-deport. It was part of a $200 million advertising blitz meant to encourage immigrants to “Stay Out and Leave Now.” Two months later, Trump unveiled Project Homecoming and the added incentives of free flights and exit payments. The administration moved State Department funds meant to aid refugees resettling in the U.S. to DHS to help pay for the flights and stipends, according to federal records and newsreports.
DHS officials have mentioned the app in dozens of press releases about policy changes and enforcement operations. For example, in the September announcement that DHS was ending temporary protected status for Venezuelans, officials also encouraged Venezuelans to leave via CBP Home. And immigrants who show up for their hearings at immigration court see posters taped on the walls about the benefits they could get if they “self-deport using CBP Home instead of being deported by ICE.”
Emily and Deybis downloaded the app in June, when it seemed as if their life in the U.S. was collapsing. They said they used the earlier CBP One app to approach the border with their two children in January 2024 and were allowed into the country with protections that were supposed to last two years. They settled in Dallas, applied for asylum and got work permits; Deybis found a job in a hotel laundry and Emily at a Chick-fil-A. Then, this spring, the Trump administration ended protections for immigrants like them and canceled their work permits.
They lost their jobs and could no longer afford their rent. On the app’s sky-blue home screen, they saw a drawing of a smiling man and woman holding hands with a child. “Let us help you easily leave the country,” another screen told them in Spanish. They agreed to share their phone’s geolocation, entered personal information and uploaded selfies.
They received an automated email from “Project Homecoming Support” explaining that they would be contacted soon by someone from a toll-free number who would help coordinate their travel. Within weeks, they got a call from an operator at that number who said she worked on behalf of DHS.
Emily said she made clear the family didn’t have Venezuelan passports but was told that wouldn’t be a problem; the U.S. government would procure any necessary documents for them. They said the operator gave them an Aug. 1 departure date and told them to expect their plane tickets by email.
Emily and Deybis sold their car and moved with their children to Columbus, Ohio, where Deybis’ nephew let them stay in his unfinished basement apartment until their departure. The plane tickets never came.
Then the nephew was detained in a traffic stop and deported. Panicked, Emily and Deybis said they called the toll-free number again and again, leaving messages that went unanswered. Emily submitted a new application and sent more emails.
In mid-September, they got an email from the “CBP Home team” telling them to contact the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico to get travel documents on their own.
“We are working very hard on your case,” the email assured.
When they called the embassy, though, the number was busy. They found travel agencies that offer to procure travel documents at a cost but said they were told the Venezuelan government requires an arrival date and proof that plane tickets have been purchased. Emily and Deybis can’t afford them.
“Thank you so much for your patience and we understand your frustration,” they heard back in another email. “Wait for new instructions from DHS.”
As they wait, they worry about how they’ll survive when winter comes. Most days, Deybis visits local food pantries and looks for discarded items in alleys and on street corners that they can resell. A few weeks ago, they sold their daughter’s bed to help pay the rent.
“We’d rather be in Venezuela with our family than suffer here,” he said.
Emily and Deybis share a basement apartment in Columbus, Ohio with their two children. They’re unable to work and have resorted to selling the few possessions they have to feed the family.
(Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)
Pérez said her daughter was the family’s main motivation to come; the girl had been born with a heart defect and needed surgery they could not find in Venezuela, where hospitals operate through power outages and have limited capacity for advanced surgeries, not to mention supplies.
“We didn’t come for the American dream, or for a house, or for some life of luxury,” said Pérez. “What we wanted is for our daughter to live.”
She and her partner made the trek to the U.S. in 2023, with her daughter, then 6, and their 4-year-old son. Pérez thought they did it “the right away” by waiting in Mexico for weeks until they got an appointment to approach the border via CBP One. After they were processed, the family headed to Chicago, a city they had heard was a sanctuary for immigrants. At first they took shelter inside a police station, as hundreds of new immigrant families were doing at the time. Pérez said medical workers who visited the station learned about her daughter’s condition and connected the family to a hospital charity care program. The following spring, the frail little girl with dark brown eyes got the operation she needed.
In late 2024, the family moved to South Florida, where Pérez’s partner found work rebuilding homes damaged by hurricanes. Then in February, he was arrested for driving without a license or registration. He spent about two months in jail before he was transferred into immigration custody.
Pérez didn’t feel safe in Florida anymore. She returned to Chicago with her children.
But as the months pass without an answer from the CBP Home program, Chicago doesn’t feel safe, either. This fall, the Trump administration zeroed in on the city for immigration enforcement, sending in the U.S. Border Patrol. Pérez recently downloaded another app that tells her whether there’ve been sightings of federal immigration agents nearby, and she watches videos of other immigrants getting arrested. One day in September, a federal agent shot and killed an immigrant in a nearby suburb. Pérez wonders if she might die, too.
On a sunny September afternoon, Pérez peered down the street outside her children’s school, scanning for suspicious vehicles. Her daughter, who is now 8, bounded down the steps first, wearing a pink bow and a broad smile. Her son, now 6, in a Spiderman shirt and a blue cast from a playground accident, appeared next.
They share their mother’s anxiety. On their walk home, Pérez’s daughter leaned over her brother and chided him for speaking Spanish in public. The girl said her teacher had warned her that federal agents might be listening.
It reminded Perez that she now needs to leave the U.S. for the same reason she came: her children. She plans to register yet again on the CBP Home app.
Pérez plays with her two children in Chicago. Her partner was deported earlier this summer, leaving her unable to support the family alone.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)
Representatives of the two largest airports in the Dallas-Fort Worth area say the video, in which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says Democrats "refuse to fund the federal government," goes against their advertising policy. It's unclear whether Houston's two major airports are displaying the video.
In brief: Tropical Storm Lorenzo will dissipate soon. We continue to see hints that the Caribbean would be the place to watch later next week, but we lack any strong model support for this even at this time. Something to watch but not worry over. We also wrap up some weather news from Alaska, Colorado, California, and Mexico.
Lorenzo’s demise and Caribbean development risks next week
Tropical Storm Lorenzo is not long for this world. It is expected to dissipate later today.
Tropical Storm Lorenzo on its last legs. (Tropical Tidbits)
It may have already. Who’s to say? Either way, it’s a non-issue for anyone other than some shipping interests.
We’ve also noted that the Caribbean may see a tropical wave next week, and there has definitely been an uptick in social media postings about this area. Right now, I’m not especially impressed with model support for this area. I think one issue we are seeing is that it enters the Caribbean a little too far south initially. This proximity to South America may hinder any chance it develops. Here’s Google’s AI model ensemble members and the Euro ensemble members on Tuesday.
Perhaps this could develop, or it just may fester for a few days deep south in the Caribbean. (Google Weather Lab)
Once we get to later next week, there are some hints in the AI modeling that a disturbance could set up shop in the far southwest Caribbean, off the coast of Nicaragua or Honduras. As is typical for this time of year, movement would probably be slow and we’d be talking more about a rainfall risk than anything for portions of Central America (which as you’ll see below is not the best of news). But it’s a long way out and mostly speculative at this time. We’ll keep watching of course.
Newsy bits
I’m trying a section I want to call “Newsy bits.” I read a lot of news every day in order to keep up with what’s happening in weather and climate. Inevitably a pile of articles ends up taking up tab real estate, so in order to “keep it clean,” I’m gonna dump the tabs here.
Alaska storm recovery
First off, we noted the massive storm in western Alaska over the weekend. Well, if you want to help victims and survivors of the storm, I imagine it would be greatly appreciated. There is a post from Alaska Public Media explaining how you can help here. Very often, the best way to help is financially. The Alaska Community Foundation has setup a disaster relief fund for those areas impacted. You can access it here.
Defensible space in wildfire country
Unfortunately, the country has experienced numerous wildfire disasters in recent years. It has taught us a lot about resiliency and mitigation, however. One key element of mitigating wildfire impact and spread in communities is expanding defensible space around your home. Monterey is one of my favorite places on earth, and I found this interesting and encouraging. Defensible space inspections in the Monterey area have increased almost 300 percent year over year. The more that people do to help themselves help their communities, the better for everyone.
Colorado flooding
The Colorado Sun has the latest on the flooding in La Plata and Archuleta Counties in southwest Colorado. While the problems have been significant, the upshot is that some reservoirs are refilling after an exceptionally mediocre stretch of weather over the last year or so. Whatever the case, this was an exceptional, historic rain event for this slither of the country. The Land Desk also has a synopsis and more data on the flooding.
Mexico flooding
Major flooding has struck Mexico this month, which has thus far killed over 60 people across the country. This is a really messy story, not just because of the human toll and the disaster itself, but it seems to have been complicated by a bizarre situation with oil coating much of a flooded area in Poza Rica. There seems to be some anger about a lack of warning, and many people were only alerted to disaster by an oil company’s alarm system that they could hear. Not sure if there will be any fallout from this with their version of a national weather service.
30 day rainfall anomalies in Mexico, with parts of the west coast and Gulf of Mexico coast seeing significantly above normal rainfall. (NOAA CPC)
Mexico has been hit hard this summer with heavy rain on the order of 100 to 300 mm (4 to 12 inches) above normal in spots. Hardest hit has been the coast near the Gulf and the northwest part of the country.
I am part of a small team in a global corporation. My team works closely with other teams in the department, and we often have weekly or biweekly catch-ups to update each other on projects. My colleagues are mostly nice and pleasant to work with.
There’s only one problem: everyone is obsessed with Taylor Swift. And I don’t mean it in a “owns a few of her albums and liked them” sort of way. It’s something more akin to religious fervor. They log in from rooms plastered with Taylor Swift posters and talk about her in almost every meeting. They sneak references in marketing content. The passwords we use for our shared software accounts are all Taylor Swift-based. It’s been going on for months.
I seem to be one of the very few people who doesn’t have strong opinions about Taylor Swift, one way or the other: I don’t love her. I don’t hate her. I occasionally bob my head to one of her songs when they come up on the radio. But this is somewhat affecting the way we work.
As everyone knows (whether they like it or not), recently Swift’s new album came out. We had three separate meetings in which the icebreaker was related to this release, such as “which was your favorite song from The Life of a Showgirl?” I found myself scrambling to listen to a few songs just so I could have an answer ready and wouldn’t have to stand there in awkward silence.
Our company is going through a tough time lately, and I’m genuinely happy for these people to have reasons to be excited, so I feel bad about asking them to tone the Taylor Swift talk down a little. But at the same time, I could do with getting 5-10 minutes of my time back by keeping it to private chats, and I am not thrilled about giving myself homework in case of pop quizzes.
How can I opt out from the cult without being a buzzkill?
You need to come out and say you don’t follow Taylor Swift!
By doing things like listening to songs from her new album just so you’ll have an answer ready for Swift-based icebreakers, you’re actually making it worse — because you’re reinforcing that this is an icebreaker everyone can participate in, when that’s the opposite of what you want. It would be far more effective toward your long-term goal if you instead said, “I don’t really listen to Taylor Swift, so I can’t contribute.” Let that truth make the point that that something they’re assuming is universal is in fact not universal. And if they keep making icebreakers Swift-themed after that, you’d have plenty of standing to say, “Could we do icebreakers everyone can participate in?” and maybe, “This is like having every icebreaker be soccer-themed or something else that not everyone follows.”
A similar principle applies to the constant Taylor Swift chat. People definitely get to chat about what they want with coworkers (within reasonable boundaries), but at a certain point it’s also fair game for you to say, “Y’all, this is a lot when not all of us are fans. Can we talk about anything else?”
And if you get people who respond to that by trying to turn you into a fan, you can say, “Truly, I’m good. She’s just not my cup of tea, and this is a very Swift-talk heavy office!” If that doesn’t work, move to: “I would love not to be evangelized at, thank you for understanding.”
On another night, Alienated Majesty Books near the University of Texas at Austin campus might host a conversation with a novelist or a poetry open mic. But on this Saturday, the shelves and tables holding new releases have been pushed to the side, opening up the large polished cement floor. A drum kit sits in the corner, and an electric guitar leans against a microphone stand. When a three-man band takes the makeshift stage, the crowd that had been browsing the shelves turns its attention forward. The singers take turns screaming, “Check,” into the microphones, filling the previously sedate bookshop with the first vibrations of a concert.
The store—which sells books from small and indie publishers, plus works in translation, comics, and poetry—has developed a reputation over the past year for hosting bands from more-obscure musical subgenres: shoegaze, noise, hardcore punk. It’s hosted so many shows of a certain sort that the shop is now known among Austin’s underground music scene as “the screamo bookstore.”
Screamo materialized as a subgenre of emo music in the 1990s, distinct for its experimental nature and—as the name suggests—screamed vocals. The genre is defined by dissonance, and the atypical concert setting continues that tradition. The bookstore’s shelves hold the collected works of Karl Marx, a history of the Black Panther Party, a novel exploring fatherhood and masculinity. The lyrics screamed in the store sometimes echo the same ideas—the genre has been a medium not just for emotional introspection but for political expression.
Bands sell merchandise and music at tables in the back of the store. (Michelle Pitcher)
When the first band, Rose Ceremony, starts to play, the sound resonates through the concrete floor. The energy from the feverish drumming, wailing guitars, and piercing vocals is enough to make my teeth rattle.
Everyone here is young. Teen boys wearing ski caps despite the July heat lounge on a couch; young girls with intricate makeup group together near the front of the crowd.
I’m told the age-inclusivity is by design. In the past, there weren’t many places “baby punks” could go to hear their favorite bands play live. The bookstore’s shows are all-ages, and while some of the older members of the crowd sip Lone Star tall boys bought from the Rio Market across the street, most drink water or energy drinks. The music is rowdy, the crowd energetic, but above all, the space feels safe.
As Rose Ceremony wraps up, one of the singers takes a moment to address the crowd: “We love it here. Respect this space.”
When the second band takes the stage, it becomes clear why the shelves and tables had been pushed to the perimeter ahead of time. As the band creates a wall of sound, members of the crowd spill into the empty space in front of the band, turning it into a mosh pit. They’re balls of limbs and energy, thrashing and bucking, nearly colliding with one another, then rushing back to the perimeter, flushed. Catharsis.
A performance at the Rio Market (Michelle Pitcher)
A tattoo artist named Lola has set up a station in front of the nonfiction section, offering a menu of designs people can select. It’s the first time she’s offered her services at the bookstore, and she, like most other people involved in the night’s logistics, is part of the close-knit emo music community in Austin. Everyone I spoke to was at most a few degrees removed from someone in a band or someone involved in Tiny Sounds Collective, one of the groups in the “DIY music scene” that make shows in atypical venues—like bookstores, highway underpasses, and houses—possible. These shows are unique for the audience and the performers, who take on responsibilities a concert venue might usually handle, like equipment setup, crowd management, and distributing everyone’s cut of the cover fees at the end of the night.
Alienated Majesty is a relatively new DIY music space, but it’s already cemented its place. It fits easily into the existing map of unconventional venues. Between sets at the bookstore, people amble across the street to the convenience store, where another DIY concert is taking place in the store’s aisles.
People spill out into the parking lots to talk, smoke cigarettes, and meet their favorite bands, who tend to stick around after their performances. It feels as though this community—known for its love of extreme music but underappreciated for its camaraderie—has planted its flag on this small strip of Austin.
– September 1, 2025 – The Trump administration deported Orville Etoria and five other men with criminal records to a prison in Eswatini despite the fact that none of the men hold Swazi citizenship. A Jamaican citizen with legal residency in the US, Etoria was convicted of murder in 1996. After Etoria’s release from prison in 2021, immigration officials allowed him to stay in the US, provided he completed annual check-ins. As of The New York Times’s publication, Etoria was being held indefinitely without charges, had not seen a lawyer, and had had little contact with his family since arriving in Eswatini. Neither Eswatini nor the US could explain why Etoria was being held, and Jamaican officials contested the Trump administration’s claim that their country had refused to accept Etoria.
– September 1, 2025 – Hundreds of Labor Day demonstrations took place across the country to protest against Trump administration policies and in support of workers’ rights. The protests, many of which were organized as part of the “Workers over Billionaires” call to action, denounced the Trump administration’s mass deportations, cuts to the social safety net, efforts to undermine unions, and deployment of National Guard troops in American cities, among other concerns. In Manhattan, activists carrying anti-Trump posters and chanting “lock him up” protested outside Trump Tower. “Protests are how you channel energy into activism,” said Andrew Lisa, chair of the Seminole County Democratic Party in Florida. “We are taking that energy and saying, ‘You’ve protested, you’ve taken two hours out of your day. Can you spend two hours knocking on your neighbors’ doors?’”
– September 4, 2025 – In what officials have called the largest-ever immigration raid at a single location, nearly five hundred workers, most of them South Korean nationals, were arrested at a construction site for an electric vehicle battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia. The plant, which was still under construction, was owned by two South Korean companies, Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution. Some of those arrested included US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and South Koreans with visas or visa waivers. The move, which was heavily criticized by South Korean newspapers and the South Korean government, also revealed tensions in Trump’s push to seek Korean manufacturing investments amid ongoing tariffs and immigration crackdowns. “The economic activities of our investment companies and the rights and interests of our citizens must not be unjustly violated during US law enforcement proceedings,” said a spokesperson for South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.
– September 5, 2025 – During his confirmation hearing, Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to fill a Federal Reserve vacancy, said he did not plan to resign from his White House role if confirmed and would instead take a leave of absence. The current chief of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors, Miran assured the committee he would act independently if confirmed. However, he refused to go on the record to state that Trump had lost the 2020 election, and he ducked questions about whether the president was correct in claiming that officials had faked jobs data for political reasons. Calling Miran a “puppet,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren excoriated the nominee, “You have made clear that you will do or say whatever Donald Trump wants. That may work in a political position, but it will take an axe to Federal Reserve independence.”
– September 5, 2025 – In a stark contrast to Trump’s campaign promises to enact “America First” isolationism, his own self-styling as an “antiwar president,” and his stated desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War,” a name that was used from 1789–1947. “We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to the Department of Defense,” Trump said at the signing. Added Pete Hegseth in an awkward spoken-word performance: “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” Although the move was largely symbolic, critics argued that the name change exposed Trump’s hypocrisy and underlined his increasingly aggressive use of the military. “[Trump] ran as the supposed antiwar candidate, but has proved to be just the opposite,” said Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy. “This stunt underscores that Trump is more interested in belligerent chest-thumping than genuine peacemaking—with dangerous consequences for American security, global standing and the safety of our armed services.”
– September 11, 2025 – Senate Republicans destroyed precedent and changed the rules to break a Democratic blockade of Trump’s executive branch nominees. The move, known as “the nuclear option,” was aimed at undercutting the Senate’s future role in vetting executive branch officials. The change passed along party lines and lowered the existing sixty-vote threshold for considering a group of presidential nominees to a simple majority. Republicans resorted to the move in an effort to weaken the ability of individual senators to block nominees they find objectionable. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the change would do irreparable damage to the Senate and its constitutional prerogatives, rendering it “a conveyor belt for unqualified Trump nominees.”
