u/Shizzilx

BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2026 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — A woman just filed a lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump, claiming that she was raped by Trump in a Florida hotel room. Jeffrey Epstein, according to the complaint, was present during the 1997 incident. We are only publishing the complaint as filed with the Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts. The actual document follows this text. We note the Clerk’s office has temporarily put a hold on the case due to a “cover sheet” issue — but a case number has been assigned. A response has not been filed to the complaint.

50-2026-CA-011136-XXXA-MB

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Elyse Relford

Georgetown, KY 40324

Plaintiff, Pro Se

v.

Donald J. Trump

Defendant.

COMPLAINT

Plaintiff, Elyse Relford, appearing pro se, alleges as follows:

I. PARTIES

1. Plaintiff, Elyse Relford, is an individual residing in Georgetown, Kentucky 40324.

2. Defendant Donald J. Trump is an individual who may be served through counsel or as otherwise authorized by applicable law.

II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE

3. This action is brought in the State of Florida because the events giving rise to these claims are alleged to have occurred in Florida.

4. Venue is proper in the appropriate Florida court because the alleged wrongful conduct occurred within the State of Florida.

III. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

5. Plaintiff incorporates the preceding paragraphs as though fully set forth herein.

6. In or about 1997, Plaintiff was present at a hotel in the State of Florida with Jeffrey Epstein and Defendant Donald J. Trump.

7. Plaintiff informed Defendant that her birthday was the following day and that she was disappointed she would not be able to celebrate it.

8. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant then raped her, causing vaginal bleeding and severe physical injury.

9. Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant repeatedly impersonated Plaintiff’s biological father by saying, “I’m Manuel,” intending to taunt Plaintiff because Defendant allegedly knew Plaintiff had been separated from her biological father by Jeffrey Epstein.

10. Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant stated, “Oh, she’s a black girl. What if I get a disease?”

11. Plaintiff alleges that Jeffrey Epstein responded by stating, “She’s rich.”

12. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s conduct caused severe emotional trauma, humiliation, mental anguish, and continuing psychological harm.

13. Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant’s conduct damaged her reputation and caused financial losses.

COUNT I – SEXUAL BATTERY (RAPE)

14. Plaintiff realleges all preceding paragraphs.

15. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant intentionally subjected Plaintiff to nonconsensual sexual intercourse.

16. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s conduct caused physical injury, pain, emotional suffering, and other damages.

COUNT II – INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

17. Plaintiff realleges all preceding paragraphs.

18. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant engaged in extreme and outrageous conduct.

19. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s conduct intentionally or recklessly caused severe emotional distress.

20. As a direct result, Plaintiff has suffered emotional pain, mental anguish, humiliation, and continuing psychological injuries.

COUNT III – DEFAMATION (IF SUPPORTED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND FACTS)

21. Plaintiff realleges all preceding paragraphs.

22. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant made false and defamatory statements that injured Plaintiff’s reputation.

23. Plaintiff alleges that these statements caused reputational and financial damages.

COUNT IV – HARASSMENT (TO THE EXTENT RECOGNIZED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW)

24. Plaintiff realleges all preceding paragraphs.

25. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant engaged in repeated harassing and degrading conduct that caused substantial emotional harm.

DAMAGES

26. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s alleged conduct, Plaintiff has suffered:

a. Emotional distress;

b. Physical injuries;

c. Mental anguish;

d. Damage to reputation;

e. Financial loss; and

f. Other damages to be proven at trial.

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff respectfully requests that the Court:

A. Enter judgment in favor of Plaintiff and against Defendant;

B. Award compensatory damages in the amount of $1,300,000;

C. Award any additional damages authorized by law;

D. Award costs of this action as permitted by law; and

E. Grant such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.

Respectfully submitted,

Elyse Relford

Plaintiff, Pro Se

Georgetown, KY 40324

Full Article here:

https://bocanewsnow.com/2026/10/02/woman-sues-donald-trump-for-alleged-rape-in-florida-hotel-with-jeffrey-epstein-present/

Lawsuit here:

https://bocanewsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Redford-v-Trump.pdf

The Palm Beach County Republican Party of Florida on Monday endorsed Mike Caruso, who is running for clerk of the circuit court and comptroller, The Miami Herald reported.

Police arrested Caruso on August 18 on five felony charges of kidnapping, molestation, and child abuse connected to his alleged sexual abuse of a male relative under the age of five; Caruso has denied the charges and told the aforementioned publication that he intends to win the election.

Investigators said that Caruso sexually molested the child, a male relative under the age of five, several times last year. Caruso allegedly exposed himself to the kid while playing soccer and then played “tickle monster” with him to touch his buttocks and genitals later that day. During a cruise, he allegedly put his penis in the child’s mouth after telling his parents that the two were going to get ice cream. He also reportedly fondled the boy’s penis during a fishing trip.

The boy subsequently acted out sexually at home, leading his parents to question him. The parents then contact the police, and also asked Caruso about the allegations; he reportedly denied them but begged them not to tell others under fear of arrest and jail time.

At an August 28 court hearing, state prosecutors revealed that a female relative alleged that Caruso molested her when she was 4 years old. He was jailed and released on a $160,000 bail.

Caruso’s job as DeSantis’ appointee paid $219,000 a year and oversaw a staff of 670 with an annual budget of around $80 million. A few hours after his arrest, DeSantis issued an executive order suspending him from public office. If Caruso wins, DeSantis could suspend him again.

Caruso coached Little League baseball for 30 years and volunteered for the Boy Scouts for eight.

The Herald reports that past election results favor Democrats in Caruso’s area. His opponent is Democratic candidate Yvette Drucker, a former Boca Raton city council member.

excerpt from Daniel Villarreal's article

Full Article here:

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/10/gop-endorses-man-who-allegedly-a-5-year-old-boy-4-year-old-girl/

Former special counsel Jack Smith testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on allegations of targeting Republican lawmakers during his tenure.

Source here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/FdAjPKquoK4?is=5kn3meIWRDj35uFH

President Donald Trump on Sunday provided a new reason behind his proposal to build a 250-foot triumphal arch directly across Arlington National Cemetery, saying the structure would double as a "top grade Military Complex."

"At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

"There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World," Trump added.

The new justification comes as the Trump administration is preparing to break ground at the arch site amid ongoing litigation. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on September 4

Trump's plan to build the arch has been heavily criticized for several reasons, including its location and potential to obstruct the view of other Washington monuments.

The president has justified the building of the White House ballroom by saying it too would feature military and national security components.

CNN has reached out to the White House and Pentagon for more details about Trump's plan.

excerpt from Logan Schiciano's article

Full Article here:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/20/politics/trump-dc-arch-military-complex

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"What the Netanyahu government is doing in Gaza is a stain on the conscience of the world."

Ed Miliband, UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, criticised the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu in a video statement on Tuesday.

Miliband stated that the British government will be "stronger in standing up for what is right and bolder in the action it takes" to prevent Israel’s continued "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Source:

https://youtube.com/shorts/TSl0fmEaLHI?is=FgOBiOp73BHSA7O5

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Exclusive: Guardian investigation reveals targeting of World Central Kitchen convoy was result of widely used military tactic

Seven aid workers killed in an airstrike in Gaza were marked as targets under an Israeli military practice of establishing guilt by association, a Guardian investigation shows.

A top Israeli military prosecutor announced last month that he would not pursue criminal proceedings for the April 2024 incident in which drones fired missiles at three clearly marked World Central Kitchen (WCK) cars soon after they had escorted a food aid delivery to Gaza. Three British humanitarian workers along with an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a dual US-Canadian national were killed.

The official Israel Defense Forces (IDF) version of events pointed to specific mistakes made by a handful of officers. The victims of the strike were also blamed for hiring armed guards to protect a food aid convoy and for allegedly “deviating” from their agreed route.

However, interviews with senior Israeli officers involved in the incident or familiar with the official Israel investigation suggest it glossed over the role played in the killings by a common IDF practice used to designate targets, which endangers aid workers and civilians in general, especially when combined with the army’s open-ended mission to end Hamas’s civil control in Gaza.

More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in the three years of the Gaza war. The army’s own internal data suggests more than three-quarters of the dead have been civilians.

The reserve colonel who ordered the strikes, Nochi Mendel, said the WCK workers became potential targets after they had a brief encounter, lasting just minutes, with armed guards assumed to be from Hamas (an assumption later shown to be groundless).

He deemed them to have “mixed together” with alleged Hamas militants, where mixing together was defined as being “near them, talking, playing, hanging out and so on”. Asked whether the presence of armed men made the entire convoy a target, Mendel replied: “Certainly.”

He concluded: “They were not innocent because they were connected to Hamas.”

Mendel was referring to a general policy of haflala, “incrimination”, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a “terrorist”, including those “incriminated” by association. The manner in which haflala is to be applied in a given sector is often conveyed in a commander’s mission brief delivered verbally to other officers.

He said his unit had been commended by the army hierarchy for its involvement in several strikes on what were deemed to be Hamas's attempted commandeering of aid. “They applauded us and were pleased with our action,” he said. The difference in the WCK incident was that foreign nationals were killed, he said. “That’s the whole difference. Not a substantive difference.”

When the WCK convoy was destroyed, it was nowhere near Israeli troops. Several Israeli officers familiar with the incident said the strikes were not ordered on the basis of an imminent threat to Israeli lives, but to fulfil the mission to thwart Hamas attempts to control aid deliveries.

An IDF statement said the airstrikes were a result of an “erroneous assessment that Hamas military operatives were present in the vehicles, rather than from an intention to target the organisation’s personnel”.

The statement added that “this assessment was compounded by serious failures to comply with applicable orders and procedures”. However, it said: “Following an in-depth examination of the findings and in light of the standards applicable under criminal law, it was determined that, despite the aforementioned failures, the circumstances of the incident did not give rise to a reasonable suspicion of a criminal offence warranting the opening of a criminal investigation.”

The WCK said the Israeli decision not to pursue criminal proceedings was “inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive”. “At the time of the lethal attacks, our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody,” the WCK said. “The IDF had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple airstrikes. It knew our team’s movements, identities and activities in advance.”

Britain, Australia and Canada denounced the prosecutor’s decision as “shameful”, saying they would “continue to seek answers” on behalf of the slain aid workers. The UK opened an inquest in 2024 into the deaths of the three British team members: James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman.

Saifeddin Abutaha, a Palestinian, Australian Zomi Frankcom, Damian Sobol, a Pole, and a dual Canadian-US citizen, Jacob Flickinger, were the other victims. The UK inquest was adjourned pending the outcome of the Israeli investigation.

Mendel, who is the only officer of such high rank to have been dismissed for his actions in the Gaza war, has been portrayed in army command briefings as a rogue operator. Questions have been raised about a political motive. Mendel is a settler who is reported to have been one of the 130 signatories of a 20 January 2024 letter to the IDF calling for the flow of aid to Gaza to be restricted.

However, the way the Israeli army operates in Gaza – rules of engagement are made contingent on local circumstances and passed on, often verbally, down the chain of command – gives officers at Mendel’s level wide discretion in subjective judgments as to who is a “terrorist” and therefore a target.

The IDF statement said its activity in the Gaza Strip was “regulated by a broad range of binding written orders and standing directives governing the use of force, the approval processes for strikes, strikes against sensitive sites, and other matters” and that these incorporated “the rules of the laws of armed conflict, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”.

The statement said that “a person does not become a lawful target merely because they are in the vicinity of an armed individual, come into contact with them, or travel alongside them”.

The IDF said: “Carrying a weapon may be a relevant factor in such an assessment, but is not sufficient on its own without meeting the definitions described above. In particular, and in the context of the incident in question, security personnel hired to protect a humanitarian convoy from looting do not become lawful targets merely because they are armed.”

An IDF officer familiar with the WCK killings said that given the circumstances and the standing IDF procedures, the overwhelming majority of officers would have acted in the same way. “There were armed men next to them,” the officer said. “If you took qualified people and put them on the call, in 90% of cases this is what would have happened,” the officer said. “In my guess, 99% of the time the first bomb would have been dropped; 90% of the time the second; 80% of the time the third.”

Reserve Brigadier General Oren Solomon, the battle manager of Gaza Division, said that a mistake had been made in determining that an armed man had entered one of the vehicles, but added that once that error had been committed, the incrimination procedure led inevitably to the three missile strikes.

“If I incriminated this vehicle beforehand as Hamas – anyone who escapes from it and enters another vehicle: death comes,” Brig Gen Solomon said. “Together with him they will die. That meets the incrimination rules, no problem.”

A senior officer involved in the initial Israeli military investigation into the WCK case, argued Mendel overstepped in interpreting the rules of incrimination.

“You can’t incriminate 20 people if there’s one armed,” he said. The officer argued that the first strike could have been justified by the initial misidentification, even at the cost of civilian casualties, but not the subsequent missiles.

“You struck someone you suspected, a vehicle you suspected had an armed man in it. The moment two people came out, nobody with a weapon, the second and third strikes are contrary to orders because you don’t know whom you’re striking,” he said.

The other systemic factor that contributed to the deaths of the seven aid workers, and potentially countless more civilians, was one of the missions given to the army in Gaza by Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government: to destroy Hamas’s influence and control. That meant anyone deemed to be involved in – or assisting – the Hamas administration, including by distributing aid, could find themselves in the sights of an Israeli drone operator.

“I remind you that part of our mission was to crush Hamas’s ability to govern,” Mendel said. “Part of the mission was to hit that \[Hamas-controlled aid deliveries\], and we hit it.”

Interviews with IDF officers suggest there was a widespread belief in the ranks that Hamas had wrested control of the bulk of aid deliveries into Gaza. That assumption was unfounded, later analysis showed. It was a period of widespread hunger caused by an Israeli blockade, when food convoys were being mobbed by desperate civilians, criminal gangs and Hamas militia.

The belief that Hamas hijacks were widespread meant that the appearance of armed men in proximity to the WCK vehicle in April 2024 fitted a “pattern of activity” that helped incriminate the whole convoy in the eyes of Mendel and his unit.

The IDF officer familiar with the incident said it was common practice to designate any armed man in Gaza as Hamas or a “terrorist”, as Mendel did. The officer added: “How you define that it’s Hamas – he’s in proximity to weapons, and because he touches the trucks, and because he does all sorts of things that look as if he’s going to take over the trucks.”

The role of the incrimination principle in the WCK killings shows how it has become a factor in the historically high proportion of civilians killed in the Gaza war. This sits alongside the routine acceptance of high “collateral damage” in the targeting of Hamas militants, the designation of large and shifting areas as free-fire zones, and the deliberate levelling of neighbourhoods to prevent the return of Palestinian communities.

The common factor is that constraints on targeting were minimised in the interests of an open-ended mission. Since the start of the war in 2023, no Israeli soldier has been convicted of wrongful death or war crimes in Gaza operations.

“I came to defeat Hamas,” Mendel said. “If such an event came before me again, I would do exactly the same thing.”

He also dismissed the significance of the killings. “I think it’s an idiotic side event,” Mendel said. “It really isn’t a serious event.”

*excerpt from Matan Cohen and Julian Borger's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/05/aid-workers-gaza-killed-in-israel-airstrike-investigation

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to pay a company up to $5 million to collect voter information — including ballot history — for virtually every American as part of the Trump administration’s war on “fraud.”

Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, is hiring a firm to collect “publicly available voter registration files and voter history files” for the agency’s “fraud detection and data segmentation activities,” according to solicitation details for the contract, which were published last week.

A contractor will be asked to “acquire, document, and securely deliver public voter registration files and, when applicable, public voter history files” from all 50 states, according to the draft.

That publicly available information could include names, addresses and whether voters participated in federal elections, though each has its own rules for how that data is collected and stored. In some cases, that information includes party affiliation, which could suggest how voters cast their ballots in each election.

For states that restrict commercial access to voter information, ICE plans to submit authorization letters pressing those states for that data.

“This allows the vendor to act as our designated acquisition agent, clearing the legal hurdle while maintaining the commercial contract structure,” according to the draft.

The contractor for the voter data project won’t be asked to collect and share data about voters’ party affiliation — but that could change if “explicitly directed in writing by the contracting officer,” according to the document.

The request follows the Trump administration’s broader efforts to identify, arrest and deport tens of thousands of people from the country, dovetailing with an expansive effort to restrict access to mail-in ballots, impose nationwide voter ID requirements, and prosecute officials accused of letting ineligible voters cast ballots.

Trump is embroiled in a legal battle over his executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to implement a brand-new ballot-tracking process, an overhaul that election officials from across the country have warned amounts to an unconstitutional attack on election administration that will only sow more confusion and introduce potentially catastrophic errors.

USPS workers could end up wrongly tossing out thousands of ballots if any errors are identified, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The president is simultaneously demanding Senate passage of his SAVE America Act, which would require ID at the ballot box and proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other restrictions.

A federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday on behalf of immigrants’ rights groups accuses Homeland Security and the Department of Justice of interfering with elections by relying on potentially inaccurate federal databases to boost allegations of fraud.

The Trump administration seeks to interfere with the “election rights of citizens, the right of individual states to conduct their own free and fair elections, and to undermine any election results for the upcoming Congressional midterm elections,” according to a lawsuit from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

“They do so by waging a campaign of misinformation and threats, which, combined, severely harms individual voters,” the complaint says.

In July, the president delivered a national address claiming hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were illegally registered to vote in several states, figures that have not been validated and, in at least one state, withdrawn.

“While the continuous unsupported claim of rampant noncitizen voting alone does significant work in undermining voter confidence, continued attacks in the form of threats on both states and naturalized citizens violate core legal principles instilled in our statutes and Constitution,” according to the lawsuit.

“Comparing government databases to try and arrive at a list of noncitizen registrants has been shown to result in erroneous data,” the complaint says. “Anyway, Congress has never authorized such activities and in fact has by statute prohibited invasion of voter privacy through government data matches in this way.”

*excerpt from Alex Woodward's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-voter-data-fraud-investigation-b3044410.html

Leon Black, a billionaire investor with ties to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, declined to show up for his scheduled transcribed interview Thursday with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — choosing instead to file a lawsuit calling the panel’s subpoenas for his participation “invalid.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the subpoenas served to Black compelling his testimony and demanding he turn over certain non-disclosure agreements go beyond the committee’s “delegated authority in seeking private information that bears no legitimate connection to [the committee's] legislative purpose.”

Black's escalation is likely to trigger a corresponding dramatic response from the Oversight Committee, where Republicans are still endeavoring to show they are taking their Epstein investigation seriously more than a year since its launch.

“I would hold him in contempt right now,” House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters. “Of all the powerful billionaires and political people we brought in for interviews and depositions, this is the first time anyone's filed suit.”

But Comer said he wanted to first consult with committee members, the House legislative counsel and “our legal team” to determine the best next steps.

“I don't want to do anything to harm our chances in court,” he said, adding, “the most important priority is to get Mr. Black in to answer questions. He is a very important witness, and the disputes revolve around non-disclosure agreements.”

Democrats, who are eager to send a strong message that those who defy the panel now won't be spared if the party retakes control of the House in 2027, appeared more ready to move forward with a contempt resolution following Black’s legal action and noncompliance.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California — the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat who is poised to take the gavel if Republicans lose their majority in the midterms — told reporters he would make sure Black is held in contempt in the next Congress if he becomes the chair, should Comer decline to proceed.

“We have had survivors tell our committee directly that Leon Black was involved in the abuse of women,” said Garcia. “His lawsuit against the committee is laughable … what he’s trying to do is slow the process down of getting us information.”

The Oversight Committee proceeded with its scheduled transcribed interview with an empty chair Thursday morning.

Black, who founded Apollo Global Management, appeared in a closed door session with the Oversight Committee earlier this summer to discuss his association with Epstein. As a result of that meeting, Black was slapped with a subpoena to produce certain non-disclosure agreements he signed with women tied to Epstein and told to come back for a second grilling.

The panel has been counting on the NDAs to shed further light on how Epstein and his network were able to sexually exploit women and girls and evade liability for decades.

Black has since produced one NDA between himself and a woman with whom he had an affair and to whom he paid $9.5 million. Comer called that insufficient, demanding Black turn over the others and threatening to pursue contempt proceedings if Black did not cooperate.

Black's attorneys contend the subpoenas “would … expose women who value their privacy, who have no known or public connection to Epstein, who bargained for confidentiality and have refused to release it, and who have no ability to protect themselves and their privacy before the Committee.”

Susan Estrich, one of Black’s lawyers, in a statement accused the Oversight Committee of going on “a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority and completely ignores its responsibility. This is no longer about finding the truth about Epstein. It is about trying to destroy Mr. Black. We were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit in response to an abuse of Congressional power.”

Estrich added that Black continues to deny his knowledge of Epstein's misconduct and “feels terrible for Epstein’s victims.”

*excerpt from Chris Marquette's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/03/leon-black-epstein-investigation-ndas-01063482

Mark Ruffalo received support from more than 170 Jewish public figures in an open letter on Tuesday, calling accusations of antisemitism against the actor an "outrageous smear campaign."

The letter was signed by his fellow creatives Hannah Einbinder, Abbi Jacobson, Gina Gershon, Kate Berlant, Joel Coen, Ilana Glazer and more.

Read the full open letter, below:

"We are Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers who have, in response to the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo, a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.

The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies. Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.

But it will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting - and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors. We all saw this after their Trump-brokered takeover of TikTok - a takeover they openly proclaimed was in large part motivated by their desire to boost pro-Israel propaganda. Larry Ellison personally, with his astonishing purported $350 million in funding and pledges to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been Blair's major backer as Blair assumes an influential role in the Trump-concocted "Board of Peace" takeover of Gaza, a territory which has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies like the ones celebrated by former Oracle CEO (and current Oracle and Paramount board member) Safra Catz.

The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting."

Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty. According to a recent Washington Post poll, 61% of American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide. Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too? Or that we don't see the connection between, on the one hand, the criminal impunities that have led the US and Israel into unending disaster and, on the other, the oligarchic powerplays of the Musks, Ellisons, Thiels and others who are working to dismantle our democracy?

But the virulence and falseness of the slanders they direct towards their critics is evidence of the increasing weakness of their position, based as it is on innuendos. Today, more and more people of conscience are joining together, to loudly and univocally proclaim: The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out, this time in the defense of war, oligarchy, and AI domination. That tired playbook has run its course.

We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power."

More to come…

*excerpt from JD Knapp's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.thewrap.com/culture-lifestyle/culture/mark-ruffalo-jewish-support-antisemitism-smear-campaign/

Twenty years later, Mike Judge’s prescient comedy is getting harder to laugh at.

Corporations twist public institutions into thinly veiled cash cows. Unprecedented drought and food insecurity loom. A civil servant who tries to use science to save millions of lives is threatened with death. News and entertainment, religion and profanity, politics and violence, eating and excreting have all collapsed into a singularity of the human condition.

I can’t tell whether I’m remembering the plot of Idiocracy or this is all part of real life in 2026, twenty years after the movie’s release.

Most iconic films that define a generation—its hopes, fears, and fashion—do so by crystallizing a moment in time. It’s a rare trick requiring uncommon insight. Think The Graduate, The Breakfast Club, Slacker. Watching any one of them now is like opening a window on the past. Imagine what it takes to write and direct such a movie, like 2006’s Idiocracy, that captures a moment two decades in the future with startling accuracy.

Mike Judge may be better known as the force behind the lowbrow brilliance of Beavis and Butt-Head, the scathing corporate satire of Office Space and Silicon Valley, and the heartfelt, DFW-coded King of the Hill. But Idiocracy is the Austin-based filmmaker’s most prescient work of all.

In the movie, Luke Wilson gives a sweet and genuine performance as a literal average Joe frozen by the Army in an experiment. Through a series of mishaps, he and Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute escaping jail by agreeing to be a guinea pig in the same test to keep people in suspended animation, are left forgotten in their pods longer than planned.

In the intervening five hundred years, the American populace gets objectively dumber through genetic drift, as intelligent professionals delay starting families and people who are, well, idiots go on to have babies by the dozen. Civilization devolves into chaos as commercial profits overtake the public interest, and the public’s interest is occupied by the pursuit of money, sex, and base entertainment. Corporations corrupt everything from health care to government—just ask Joe’s clueless internist, Dr. Lexus, or President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

When Joe and Rita awake, they are the smartest people on the planet. Unfortunately, that planet is dying. It’s dusty, it’s crumbling, and all of the crops are failing because a corporation has marketed its electrolyte beverage as the perfect irrigation fluid. “Brawndo,” crows every other flyer on America’s grimy streets, “It’s got what plants crave!”

Idiocracy has received criticism for perceived eugenics themes and misogynistic tropes, but if you’ve seen the Beavis and Butt-Head episode“The History of Women” or Silicon Valley’s “Bad Money,” you probably already know that such backlash doesn’t fluster Judge. And just as many praise Idiocracy as satire that pokes fun at the bigoted and cruel, not their targets, and skewers turn-of-the-millennium corporate insensitivity, social disintegration, and government gridlock writ large.

What reportedly did needle Judge and cowriter Etan Cohen to the point of despair was Twentieth Century Fox’s nonexistent marketing and limited distribution for the film’s 2006 debut, allegedly due to poor test screenings and fear of brand reprisals. Despite that, the 2007 DVD release made Idiocracy a sleeper hit.

As a Gen Xer, I couldn’t get enough of the shock humor, cynical take on institutionalized greed, and Rudolph’s sympathetic portrayal of a savvy woman who used others’ underestimation to her advantage. It was like an unvarnished American Monty Python, with pitch-black, absurd, crass, biting hilarity, and I loved it. Now? Well, given our recent history, it’s getting harder to laugh.

Parallels between today’s information fire hose and what used to be a hyperbolic comedy are painfully numerous. Comments under news articles and in online forums have been common for years—“Idiocracy is a documentary” and “Mike Judge is Nostradamus.”

If you haven’t seen the movie, there’s no time like the present. Texan viewers take note: It’s set in Washington, D.C., but as you’ll see from the oak-scrub setting, it certainly wasn’t filmed there. Look for Austin’s old Seaholm Power Plant, San Marcos’s Gary Job Corps Center, and, of course, Pflugerville’s stretch of Interstate 35 in the background.

Locations aren’t the only thing you’ll recognize watching Idiocracy in 2026. There are countless prophetic moments that bear striking resemblances to our contemporary culture. Spotting them at an anniversary/funerary viewing party is both fun and disturbing.

Caution, spoilers ahead.

In the movie, H&R Block is a brothel, and the secretary of state is “brought to you by Carl’s Jr.” It’s an example of what Judge imagined might happen as social contracts degrade and corporations insinuate themselves into places they don’t belong, turning public services into profit-making enterprises and degeneracy. In our real-life timeline, mainstream brands are enthusiastically collaborating with OnlyFans stars, tech is falling over itself to bankroll Trump’s controversial state ballroom, and public-safety services are brought to you by Geico.

When Joe tries to make a call, the pay phone chirps in homage to its corporate megaconglomerate, “Welcome to AOL Time Warner Taco Bell U.S. Government long distance!” Is Unilever Slimfast Vaseline Hellmann’s TRESemmé any different?

In 2505, a desperate woman pounds on a vending kiosk that has stolen her money without giving her the food she needs for her children. “Carl’s Jr. frowns on vandalism,” appears on the machine’s screen before police show up. Corporations may get some blowback now, but they are beginning to wrestle with how to participate in the quelling of protests.

Record drought and the undermining of scientific infrastructure have caused agricultural failure in a second Dust Bowl depicted in the film. Meanwhile, just last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the heat in July of 2026 surpassed the record set during the first Dust Bowl.

The White House’s dead lawn is strewn with debris in the movie. Sure, it’s due to drought and a decrepit above-ground swimming pool instead of UFC fight crowd trampling and demolition waste, but in Judge’s twenty-sixth century, the First Lady’s East Wing office is still intact.

Camacho, played to unhinged perfection by Terry Crews, whips the crowd from the floor of the People’s House. Just like another American president, he is mugging and gyrating as lights and music grind and a fog machine blankets the stage. Both commanders in chief say “bullshit” from the presidential podium and have a closer association with adult films than decorum would normally allow.

Huge banners of Camacho’s signature grimace and peculiar hairdo hang from every vertical surface, just like at today’s Department of Justice, Department of Labor, and, soon, Federal Aviation Administration.

With the gladiator arenas, Stars and Stripes bodysuits, and the president’s five Ultimate Smackdown championships in Idiocracy, it’s hard to tell where government ends and wrestling begins. But was President Camacho also a WWE Hall of Famer who hosted a UFC match at the White House? Did he hire the Smackdown mogul’s wife to be the secretary of education? If so, Judge must have left those scenes on the cutting room floor.

In a literal sign of widespread incompetence, the lettering on the side of St. God’s Memorial Hospital is a typographical nightmare. In Idiocracy, though, there aren’t any competent graphic designers left to decry the spacing and font weight, like real ones did over alterations to signage at the Kennedy Center.

In the world Judge imagined, every available millimeter of every surface is covered with branding. Ads adorn people’s clothes and encircle TV shows as they play, in an assault on the senses as bad as modern gas-pump videos. As our real-life AI mows down marketing design, labeling is becoming even more hideous than the movie conceived.

One of Idiocracy’s most regrettably pedestrian parallels is that the R-word has come roaring back as an everyday, if malignant, insult. And if you don’t think flipping the bird is baseline communication now too, you haven’t been on any dating apps lately.

And then there’s the shirtless, overtanned, overbuilt Fox News anchor who looks uncannily like Joe Rogan.

With Brawndo in every drinking fountain, the scourge of superfluous electrolytes is inescapable. A single, monolithic rehydration company may not employ one half of the population today, but the electrolyte industry is a $40 billion business in the U.S. alone.

When Joe guides the switch from irrigating crops with Brawndo to water, the company’s stock crashes, and automated layoffs like the ones we are already seeing tank the economy. The resultant rioters may be at the gates of the White House instead of the Capitol, but comparisons to January 6 are obvious.

Before people understand that Joe’s scientific approach has worked, he is pilloried by government officials, and the crowd is screaming for blood. This is the fate of many scientists of our time, but perhaps none more so than Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose guidance through the emergence of both HIV and COVID-19 got him a congressional investigation and menacing death threats.

When Joe gets a futuristic ID, it’s a barcode tattooed on his arm, which is slightly less invasive than your employer embedding a radio-frequency chip in your hand. Everything is monitored by cameras (Flock, anyone?), corporations can turn off your car, and justice is swift whether it’s just or not.

In pursuit of Joe at any cost, black-clad law enforcement officers fire into a car on a crowded street. Though the most widely reported story is the death of Minneapolis mom Renée Good, it’s genuinely disturbing that there is more than one news item echoing that shocking scene.

So how did Judge-stradamus do it? How did he predict the dehumanizing nihilism of corporate avarice and the degradation of social norms so emblematic of the Donald J. Trump presidency, when both cheerers and jeerers marvel that he seemed to come out of nowhere, a falling star or an earth-destroying asteroid, depending on your point of view?

Judge was not available for an interview, according to his publicist. But when asked in 2016 about his apparent powers of prediction, the filmmaker acknowledged some similarities even then, saying, “I’m no prophet. I was off by 490 years.”

I don’t believe the genius it took to write Idiocracy has anything to do with foreseeing Trump in particular; the film doesn’t even paint a particularly faithful portrait of the man. President Camacho empathizes with the hungry instead of obsessively pondering the word “groceries,” after all. When the chips are down, Camacho listens to scientists instead of musing about injecting bleach or calling a climate catastrophe a hoax, and he eschews tacking up extravagant gold decorations in favor of tasteful sage drapes.

It might be more precise to say that both the movie and the president are merely natural consequences of the human nature Judge is so famous for astutely observing. His work never fails to shine a light on our depths. He knows our instinctive love for depravity, our capacity for boredom and laziness in the service of comfort, and just how stupid things can get before we’ve had enough.

I don’t think we’re any dumber these days than we were before; many of our predecessors were as shortsighted as we are, living for now, amassing and consuming as much as possible, and pausing only for a slack-jawed huh-huh at the nearest bloodthirsty infotainment. We’re just not hiding it anymore. I also don’t believe Judge could laugh at our nature without loving it, at least a little.

Though Idiocracy has a lot to say about today, what it says about tomorrow remains to be seen, and I take heart that its predictions aren’t totally pessimistic. By the end, our average friends, Joe and Rita, end up where they should be, as the kindest, smartest people on Earth—happily married and leading a society that’s imperfect but fed, and, of course, well hydrated.

If Judge’s judgment is as keen as it seems, though, we’d best keep a watchful eye on Carl’s Jr.’s future plans.

*excerpt from Heather Martin's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/culture/mike-judge-idiocracy-turns-20/

In a TV appearance in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu admits to influencing the U.S. to attack Iran by using 1000 hours on American Television and having intimate knowledge of American leaders on both sides.

The US Postal Service effort to develop a sweeping new system for verifying mail ballots has invited a host of IT concerns among agency officials, with some describing the process internally as a "sh*t show," according to a new whistleblower report released Tuesday by a Democratic senator.

The unnamed whistleblower is alleging that some of the procedures USPS is planning – under mandates put forward by President Donald Trump – have been hidden from the public. Those procedures will make an already complicated and risky plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement, the whistleblower says.

The new report – which was assembled by the whistleblowers' lawyers and released by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal – comes as multiple courts are considering the legality of the proposal, which would require that states submit to USPS lists of their mail-in voters. The agency will not deliver ballots for states if there are any discrepancies between the voter information in the USPS system and what's picked up by agency scanners on the envelopes of the ballots.

"USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation - raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug," said the report.

CNN has reached out to USPS for comment.

Trump signed an executive order in March that gave the USPS an unprecedented role in screening states' mail ballot programs. Election officials have already expressed deep concerns about having to use a system that has not gone through extensive testing and training procedures

Internally, according to the whistleblower, USPS' IT teams were going to be given less than a week to test the system once it was finished, due to the time crunch of the electoral calendar; North Carolina begins sending ballots this week and other states join it later this month.

It's not clear whether the portal is ready to be launched on Tuesday, as was the goal, according to the whistleblower report. A judge last week froze the mandates that the states use the system if they want USPS to deliver their ballots, but said USPS could still offer the portal to states that voluntarily want to upload the mail voter information. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.

Haphazard development and testing process

In the final week of testing, the phrase "sh*t show" was used by multiple people to describe the process, the whistleblower alleges in the report, which identifies other examples of USPS barreling through the process of creating the system. The plans the IT staff were shown for the system were "constantly changing" from the beginning, and systems' requirements were not clearly put in writing for the development staff, the whistleblower says.

USPS leadership was dismissive of concerns, and, according to the report "insisted that it was easy to understand what was needed and also that there was no time to write down the requirements."

The report describes a haphazard effort to test the parts of the system as they became ready. Under the timeline sketched out to meet the September 1 deadline, there would only be four days allotted for it to go through a stage in the development process in which potential users of the system can test it out.

"For a system that manages something as important as handling voting and ballots, 4 days of user testing is entirely unreasonable," the whistleblower report said.

Verification procedures with no room for error

The concerns about the untested nature of the system are particularly acute because if there are any discrepancies between the voter lists that election officials have submitted and the ballots they're seeking to send, USPS could reject the entire batches of ballots – meaning tens of thousands of ballots could go unsent at a time – until the discrepancy is fixed.

The whistleblower says that there will be a first round of verification – in a process not spelled out in the public regulations – comparing the voter information in the portal with "manifests" election officials must also submit for each batch of ballots they intend to drop off. The information on the manifests – including unique bar codes election officials are required, under the rules, to assign each voter – must match perfectly with the information in the portal before election officials are allowed drop off the ballots, the report says.

When election officials bring ballots to their USPS site for delivery, either the entire batch of ballot envelopes or a sampling will be physically scanned – depending on where the ballots are being dropped, according to the whistleblower. If just a single ballot envelope scan does not align with the information in the portal, USPS will refuse to deliver the entire batch of ballots while the discrepancy is being sorted out.

"As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving. It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles - and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots," the report says.

*excerpt from Tierney Sneed's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/01/politics/usps-whistleblower-mail-ballot-rules-trump

Other Sources here:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/27/politics/judge-pauses-usps-plan-restrict-mail-voting

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/24/politics/trump-mail-ballot-supreme-court