Observation:

We cannot simply ignore what has happened during this administration and restore the system that existed before it. We should use what we have learned to make American democracy substantially more tamper-resistant. As we argued in The Consent of the Governed Requires Understanding What Is Being Authorized, American governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed, and meaningful consent requires understanding what is being authorized (Defenders of Democracy, 2026). That principle points toward concrete safeguards: elections that are understandable and independently verifiable; protection against the intentional concealment of major governing agendas, which becomes fraud-like when governmental authority is obtained through material deception of voters; protection of reliable governmental, scientific, and statistical information; enforceable limits on executive abuse and self-dealing; reconsideration of Citizens United and the ability of concentrated wealth to dominate the political information environment; and electoral reforms such as ranked-choice voting that allow voters to express their preferences more accurately. The objective should be to make democratic government harder to tamper with, by any President, party, corporation, billionaire, or public official.

https://defendersofdemocracy.substack.com/p/the-consent-of-the-governed-requires?r=104a16&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

Excerpt:

We can make Roosevelt’s promise a reality through a comprehensive program I’ve called the American Security Guarantee, a set of ambitious goals that would eliminate the precarity defining Americans’ lives and ensure that everyone enjoys the economic security that right now feels out of reach. We start by guaranteeing every American access to affordable health care, through their choice of a government or private plan. To fulfill Roosevelt’s vision of a lifelong system of social insurance, we pursue a new economic security agenda. It includes a new federal wage insurance program to help workers maintain their salary levels if they are forced to take positions that pay less, a community-focused job assistance program and a one-stop-shop portal where Americans can check their eligibility across all benefit programs. The goal is to show Americans what they are getting from their government in return for their hard work — and to get higher wages and concrete benefits in the hands of working people, to ensure that in the richest country in the world, nobody falls through the cracks.

archive link:

https://archive.is/bjRnJ

Excerpts:

He hadn’t set foot outside the United States since he was 12, when he arrived on a fishing boat as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba with his mother, a sister and her infant daughter. As a teenager, he joined a Miami gang, and in his 20s, he took a plea deal after being charged with attempted murder for shooting a rival gangster in the leg. That would have been grounds to deport him had he been from almost any other country. But Cuba wasn’t cooperating with the United States on deportations, so Mosquera was allowed to stay, provided he checked in with the authorities each year. He built a new life for himself, becoming a specialty plumber and a born-again Christian; he married and had four daughters.

Then one day in June of last year, Mosquera, who is 59, went to renew his work permit at an immigration office. The appointment was usually short; Mosquera had borrowed the company truck so that he could head to a job when he was done. But it didn’t turn out that way. An immigration official told him that his time in America was up. With President Trump now back in office, Mosquera knew these were not empty words. But if the United States couldn’t send him to Cuba, where would he go?

They were transferred to a military cargo plane at a U.S. air base in the East African nation Djibouti, and more than a day later, the five men landed in Eswatini. Before they could make sense of the situation, they were forced inside a metal cage that was fitted onto a transport truck and driven to the Matsapha Correctional Complex, Eswatini’s maximum-security prison. In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security had called Mosquera and the four other men “depraved monsters” who were “so uniquely barbaric their home countries refuse to take them back.” Now they were met by dozens of guards wielding large sticks.

That was more than a year ago. Mosquera still sits in that same maximum-security prison with nowhere to go. No charges against him. No way to appeal his predicament. No sign that he will ever be freed. Cuba has not signaled any willingness to take him, and Mosquera says he has no desire to go there. Eswatini will not release him from prison, even though he served his time in the United States and committed no crime in Africa.

Mosquera is one of a growing number of people whom the Trump administration has put into a global administrative limbo. For more than a year, it has been offering millions of dollars — often without disclosing the payments — to foreign governments to take immigrants the United States was having trouble deporting to their countries of origin. This includes not only people with criminal pasts like Mosquera but also deportees who were under court protections not to be returned to their homelands because they faced threats there.

Excerpts:

May the United States take a person who is living freely under American supervision and deliberately transfer him into potentially indefinite foreign maximum-security confinement, without a new judicial determination authorizing that deprivation of liberty?

It is in the selfish interest of the United States to send people away with as much goodwill toward the United States as circumstances permit.

Why are we paying to imprison a plumber when we could be helping put the plumber back to work?

Lead Paragraph:

The summer of 2026 has been one of extraordinary fires. In Europe, they have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in France and Spain and destroyed homes across England; they killed 13 people in Spain last month, and an elderly couple in Greece this weekend. In Canada, fires have consumed an expanse of forestland larger than Belgium—which is also battling its biggest recorded wildfire. In the United States, about 7.2 million acres have burned, the largest year-to-date area in the past decade and nearly double what it was at this time last year, according to data from the National Interagency Coordination Center. Allison Rayburn, a program coordinator for the Oregon Department of Forestry, told me that in the eastern part of the state, “you can barely see the sun” through the smoke: “It’s just devastation, and miles and miles and miles of blackened landscapes.”

Excerpt:

Strategically, I believe we are in the most perilous hour of the modern era, and it is peril of our own president’s making. Donald Trump’s real National Security Strategy has been to get revenge against countries that criticize him, to advance his own self interests, and to build bridges to dictators with whom he can work once he leaves office. The great dealmaker has sold us out to the most dangerous nations on earth.

“The resolution calls on Democratic members of Congress to enact legislation dissolving ICE and winding down the immigration detention system. It also calls for restricting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding unless certain enforcement activities end, including workplace raids, mass roundups, arrests at courthouses, arrests at ICE check-ins, enforcement actions near schools and houses of worship, and other operations, as well as terminating contracts with private detention providers.”

Excerpts:

According to Zelensky, Trump had that “accepted that he will give us licenses” for Patriot missile technology. Later that day, Zelensky met with representatives from Lockheed Martin, which produces the Patriot interceptors, and wrote on X/Twitter that they discussed “our joint capabilities related to Patriots and other systems.

But three days later, Trump completely reversed himself at a Camp David Cabinet meeting. “We have not agreed to that,” he said. “... it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.” He added that a country given the technology “can someday turn on you. “ — directly contradicting Zelensky’s account of the White House meeting three days earlier.

Lead Lines:

The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics blasted President Trump’s Monday executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccines.

“As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S. and with cold and flu season quickly approaching, today’s executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” Dr. Andrew Racine said in a release.

“Instead of ensuring every family can access life-saving vaccines for measles, influenza, RSV and more, federal leaders are once again spreading misleading claims,” he added.

Excerpt:

“Consistent with the research base more generally, unauthorized immigration does not drive crime rates in U.S. neighborhoods,” says Kubrin, the study’s lead author. “Honestly, I wasn't too surprised.”

https://www.techspot.com/news/113410-cloudflare-humans-could-become-rounding-error-bots-generate.html

Excerpt:

Just a couple of months after Cloudflare revealed that bots have officially surpassed human traffic online, the company has given its view on what things will look like in five years. It's not good news for us fleshy meatsacks: non-human traffic could be up to 1,000 times higher than human traffic.

A  Scientific and Mathematical Thought Experiment: When Proportions Change What Social Media Is

Cloudflare’s projection concerns total internet traffic. If a comparable bot-to-human ratio develops in activity visible on social media, it would produce a qualitative change in the system. Mathematical thinking directs attention to proportions. When one class of participant becomes 1,000 times as common as another, the minority participant may acquire an entirely different functional role.

From the user’s position, the visible social environment would consist mainly of material produced, selected, or amplified by nonhuman agents. From the platform’s position, identifiable human users would become especially valuable because their responses could be separated, recorded, and analyzed. Machine activity would supply much of the stimulus; human attention, emotion, choices, and subsequent actions would supply the response data.

Imagine a person joining a demonstration of 1,000 apparent protesters. Every other participant is a bot, scripted account, or paid shill. To the genuine participant, the crowd appears to express public opinion. To whoever created or monitors the crowd, there is one independently acting human being.

The apparent opinion of the 999 may influence the attitudes and behavior of the one. The person may interpret apparent agreement as evidence that the crowd is correct, conform to avoid social isolation, become more willing to express agreement, or become less willing to express disagreement. Perceived consensus may influence whether the person repeats a slogan, accepts a sign, makes a donation, leaves, purchases something, joins a political movement, or later votes.

The arrangement can therefore influence behavior as well as measure it. If the apparent size, unanimity, emotional intensity, or identity of the manufactured crowd is deliberately varied, the crowd becomes an independent variable and the human response becomes the dependent measure. Political messages can be tested, refined, and presented again in forms increasingly likely to influence particular people.

Repeated across users, subjects, and situations, this system could produce increasingly refined estimates of product preferences, purchasing behavior, political attitudes, voting likelihood, susceptibility to particular appeals, matters of interest to law enforcement, and psychological characteristics.

Social media thereby changes from an imperfect reflection of public views into a behavioral observation, influence, and testing system. The bot-to-human proportion changes what the activity means, who is observing whom, and ultimately what social media is.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-cannot-defeat-putins-ballistic-blitz-by-defensive-measures-alone/

Excerpts:

The recent surge in missile attacks comes as Ukraine runs short of air defense ammunition, leaving the country virtually defenseless against the Kremlin’s ballistic blitz. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly aims to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability and bomb the country into submission.

Ukraine’s only effective protection against Russian ballistic missiles is the US-made Patriot air defense system. However, the country’s Patriot interceptor missile stocks have now been almost entirely depleted, while Kyiv’s efforts to secure fresh supplies are currently failing.

Possibilities:

The situation is increasingly dire. Some measures that could reduce the destruction and, above all, protect civilian lives:

• Move civilian life underground. Rapidly expand permanent underground shelters into usable living areas, schools, clinics, communications centers, and other essential services.

• Harden and disperse civilian infrastructure. Protect and duplicate power, water, heating, communications, hospitals, and emergency services so that individual strikes do less harm.

• Create extensive decoy or "ghost" targets. Give Russian targeting systems large numbers of convincing false military, industrial, radar, storage, and infrastructure targets on which to waste expensive missiles.

• Confuse missile targeting and guidance. Use electronic warfare, camouflage, obscuration, decoys, altered visual signatures, relocation, and other defensive deception so that even missiles penetrating air defenses are increasingly likely to strike the wrong place.

• Move essential production underground or disperse it. Defense production, repair facilities, ammunition storage, and communications should become progressively harder to locate and destroy.

• Expand direct European defense of Ukrainian airspace. European fighters could intercept drones and cruise missiles, while European ground-based systems help defend against more difficult threats.

• Reserve scarce Patriot-class interceptors for ballistic missiles. Use aircraft, electronic warfare, guns, and less expensive systems against drones and cruise missiles whenever possible.

• Find and destroy ballistic missiles before launch. Concentrate allied satellite, airborne, signals, and Ukrainian reconnaissance capabilities on launchers, missile concentrations, storage, and supporting infrastructure.

• Target the vulnerabilities of the North Korean missile supply. Imported missiles, their limited launchers, transport routes, storage, support equipment, and personnel may be more vulnerable before they disperse.

• Deny Russian forces advanced communications while preserving Ukrainian access. Systems such as Starlink should remain unavailable to Russian forces while authenticated Ukrainian military use is protected and, where possible, expanded.

• Deny Russia access to foreign satellite technology and services, civilian as well as military. Suspend commercial satellite communications, imagery, navigation support, terminals, components, technical services, and related foreign-provided capabilities available inside Russia. Close third-country channels used to circumvent these restrictions. This would constitute a major technological sanction intended to increase the economic and operational cost of continuing the war.

• Reduce future Russian missile production. Tighten restrictions on electronics, machine tools, guidance components, and third-country supply routes supporting missile manufacture.

The central principle should be simple: protect the people first, make real targets harder to destroy, create many false targets, confuse enemy targeting, destroy missiles before they fly, and intercept what remains.