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Corruption, greed, and the strategic misuse of executive pardons have converged in a chilling display of unaccountability, exemplified by the recent, secretive dismissal of a $10 billion IRS lawsuit in favor of a $1.776 billion "Truth and Justice Commission" fund. This multi-billion dollar slush fund, drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s permanent Judgment Fund without congressional oversight, is managed by an executive-appointed committee that operates in total shadows, signaling a dangerous shift where public assets are repurposed to insulate political allies from the consequences of the January 6th insurrection. 

In a move that has drawn sharp condemnation from legal experts and lawmakers, President Donald Trump has filed to dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. While the dismissal closes one legal chapter, it opens a far more troubling one: a reported $1.776 billion "President Donald J. Trump Commission" fund, finalized by his Department of Justice. 

Lebanese humanitarian worker Zahraa Kobeissi, who is in her late thirties, drives across the country every day to evacuate civilians and deliver aid—undeterred by the threat of Israeli airstrikes.

“I will continue to help the displaced people until my last breath,” she told the Press TV website, exuding confidence and determination even as the Israeli regime announced a full‑fledged ground offensive in the country.

Kobeissi’s journey began during the 2024 Battles, when she first started evacuating civilians under fire. She recalled that she was injured during one of her humanitarian missions, which has since become her full‑time volunteer work. Her days follow a relentless routine: each morning, she drives evacuees out of the war zone.

“On my return trips,” Zahraa said, “I bring groceries, diapers, milk, and supplies for those who choose to remain in the south. Then I rest briefly before repeating the cycle.”

Kobeissi said she has no fear. “I remain steadfast in the South. I sleep here every night after hours of driving to transport the displaced or deliver aid.”

The death penalty is not justice. It is the deliberate, calculated killing of a human being by a government that claims moral authority through law. Every execution is an assertion that the state possesses not only the power to govern life, but the authority to extinguish it. The consequences of granting governments that authority are visible around the world today.

According to Amnesty International, at least 2,707 people were executed across 17 countries in 2025 — the highest figure recorded in more than four decades. Executions rose by 78% in a single year. Iran alone carried out at least 2,159 executions, more than double its previous year’s total and roughly 80% of all recorded executions worldwide.

The global rise in executions was not driven by justice systems becoming more effective or societies becoming safer. It was driven largely by authoritarian governments using death as an instrument of fear, repression, and political control. No country illustrates this more clearly than Iran.

This article was originally published by Truthout.

Perhaps some things should never be spoken — for, when they are, they leave us aghast, in a state of horror. Think here of the ghostly figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” During the height of the war on Iran, Donald Trump threatened: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Those are words that elicit something frightening, terrifying. Let’s be frank. The words, which clearly constitute a genocidal threat, are atrocious and should make all of us want to scream.

That threat came after Trump also threatened the Iranian government to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Not only is this not “presidential,” but it’s characteristic of someone who has a warped moral compass; it is indicative of someone who has failed to understand the dignity and preciousness of human life.

Solar generation to surpass coal in Texas

Utility-scale solar power is projected to surpass coal-fired generation on the Texas grid this year as the region shifts generation away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.

Data from the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) indicates a structural shift within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT} market. Solar generation is forecast to reach 78,000 Gigiwatts per hour (GWh) in 2026, surpassing the 60,000 GWh projected for coal.

Texas remains at the front of the domestic energy transition, accounting for 12.9 GW or 53 percent of the utility-scale battery storage planned for the U.S. grid in 2026. It is also anticipated that Texas will account for approximately 40 percent of all new U.S. solar capacity additions this year.

I’ve been reading Truth and Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope. It’s a collections of things Daniel Ellsberg wrote and didn’t publish. I come to it having read what he did publish, having spoken with him about some of it, having debated him — publicly and privately — on some of it, and generally and extremely admiring what he had to offer and wishing the whole world would catch up to him. But, apart from some aspects of his personal story and other details here and there, it’s familiar stuff that I agreed with and still agree with. It’s mostly timeless, if not ahead of its time, apart from things Ellsberg didn’t have the benefit of when he was writing, such as the full debunking of the Milgram experiments.

But reading a great writer can get you thinking, even if it’s along a line of thought you were already on, and even if it’s along a line of thought the writer might himself not have gone down with you. In this new book is a note that Ellsberg wrote in 2017:

Here are some examples.

#1 - As U.S. Debt Hits a Worrying Milestone, Washington Barely Notices

This is the title of Tony Romm’s article, New York Times, May 7 2026

(https://nytimes.com/2026/05/07/business/us-debt-trump-policies-budget.html). Here’s some of what he writes. 

“The debt is outgrowing the size of America’s economy. The president’s policies could accelerate the country’s fiscal headaches, experts say, unless policymakers intervene.

The debt problem.

Romm writes this. “The U.S. government learned last week that it may have reached an unfortunate milestone: The size of its debt surpassed the nation’s total economic output.

“It was a striking imbalance, according to early estimates, one that the country has experienced only in rare circumstances — briefly during the pandemic, and in the aftermath of World War II.” 

The source of the problem.

President Donald Trump is back from his business trip to China which had a lot of ambiguity over issues like Taiwan without having done either much discernible damage or benefit to American interests. The trip ended with the American participants dropping all the gifts that they had received from the Chinese into a large garbage bin on the tarmac before they boarded their plane. And while the president was gone Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to everyone’s surprised announced that he was canceling plans to deploy an additional 4,000 Texas-based US soldiers to Poland for a long-planned nine month rotation that includes training with NATO allies. The assignment was also originally intended to serve as a possible resource should the situation with Russia-Ukraine happen to spill over into adjacent NATO countries.