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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Elizabeth Weise Josh Peter, Staff Writers - USA Today
Stephan:
Texas has a growing secession movement as I have previously reported in SR (see archives) and other MAGAt states do as well. But it isn’t just MAGAt states that are thinking like this. California, a Democrat-controlled state, and the fifth largest economy in the world is thinking about secession as well, as this article describes. I don’t see this happening but what I do see is that the Great Schism Trend is becoming more pronounced as “king” Trump tries to take the American government apart and turn the country into a christofascist White supremacy, female-subordinate oligarchy nation. If Trump is not impeached and stays alive and in power for four years, I think the real power structure is likely to shift to individual states and groups of states, even as the country remains ostensibly a single nation.
To read the actual California secession ballot initiative see: https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2025-news-releases-and-advisories/Proposed-Initiative-Enters-Circulation-Requires-Future-Vote-on-Whether-California-Should-Become-Independent-Country
The California state flag, note “Republic”. Californians watching what Trump is doing to the United States have created a growing movement to secede. Credit: Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – President Donald Trump, long a vocal detractor of California, touched down in Los Angeles on Friday to tour fire ravaged areas, pledging federal support after days of criticizing Democrats over the fires.
The visit came the day after a new ballot initiative asking voters whether the state should become an independent country was cleared by the California Secretary of State’s office to begin gathering signatures.
Could the Golden State just fly the coop, become its own nation and walk away from 175 years of union with the United States?
After all, the idea of California becoming its own country has been around for decades. The state flag still commemorates the 25 days it was once its own republic. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom has slipped and called it a “nation state” more than a few times.
The fires have brought Californians together, said Michael Bryant, 56, whose girlfriend’s Malibu home burned […]
The United States is increasingly becoming a nation where science is considered to be not fact-based, but just a political position. Nowhere has this been made clearer than in the anti-vaxxer movement. Americans are so illiterate and ill-informed that that large numbers of them are actually willing to die for their stupidity. And now in 15 states, as this article describes, politicians who increasingly control healthcare in the United States are trying to discourage vaccinations. And what is happening? As this report describes, “In 2024, whooping cough cases reached a decade-highopens in a new tab or window and 16 measles outbreaks, the largest among them in Chicagoopens in a new tab or window and Minnesotaopens in a new tab or window, put health officials on edgeopens in a new tab or window. Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.”
Many see a political opportunity to rewrite policies in their states after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’sopens in a new tab or window nomination as the next secretaryopens in a new tab or window of HHS. The agency oversees virtually every aspect of vaccination efforts in the U.S., from funding their development to establishing recommendations for medical providers to distributing vaccines and covering them through federal programs.
Sarah Dolgin, Political Reporter - Chattanooga Times Free Press
Stephan:
Tennesse Republican MAGAt women apparently see Hitler as a hero and a model of leadership. As the link at the head of this report shows, it appears that after posting this laudatory reference they were sufficiently embarrassed publicly that they have subsequently taken their Hitler reference off their website. But I don’t think that is the point. What matters is that they put this reference up in the first place with the specific intent of teaching the young by holding up Hitler as an intelligent successful leader. It is yet another data point demonstrating the Great Schism Trend, and how very strange MAGAt world has become
The Tennessee Federation of Republican Women reading list cites Adolf Hitler in discussing the importance of training the youth. Credit: Ricky Young / Chattanooga Times Free Press
The Tennessee Federation of Republican Women is coming under fire for providing parents a reading list for children that cites Adolf Hitler as an example of leadership.
“Hitler and all intelligent leaders throughout history have understood that the way to change a country was through the training of its youth, to get them while they are young,” the group’s reading list says.
The list, dated March 2024, is titled “Growing American Patriots Through Literacy” and posted on the group’s website.
The reference was called out on a social media site dedicated to the Knoxville community. Dozens of commenters found the citation of Hitler as a source on educating youth to be offensive.
“How do we make the changes necessary?” the reading list says, just before the Hitler quote. “Proverbs 22:6 teaches us that if ‘we train up a child in the way […]
While “king” Trump and his vassals express no interest in preparation for climate change and want to “drill baby…drill.” The democracies of Europe and Asia are going in the opposite direction, and preparing to leave the carbon energy era. Here is the latest from Norway making this point.
EV Charging Station in Norway. Credit: AFP
Electric cars accounted for 89 percent of the new cars sold in Norway last year, a report said Thursday, pushing the country closer to reaching its goal of going fully electric by 2025.
“We need only 10 percent more to reach the objective for 2025,” the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said in a statement.
Of the 128,691 new car registrations last year, 114,400 were electric, the highest share of any major national car market and up from an 82-percent share in 2023.
Despite being a major oil and gas producer, Norway aims for all new cars sold to be “zero emission” starting in 2025, which is 10 years ahead of the goal set by the European Union, of which Norway is not a member.
In 2012, electric cars accounted for just 2.8 percent of sales, but they have since exploded thanks to various incentives.
Electric cars were exempted from many taxes, making them competitive against heavily taxed internal combustion cars. They have also benefitted from toll exemptions, free parking in public car parks, and the use of […]
The weaponization of misinformation has become one of the major trends shaping American culture. “king” Trump and the MAGAts in Congress are doing nothing to prepare the United States for climate change, and there isn’t much alarm because a large percentage of Americans, who get their news and commentary from social media think climate change is just a conspiracy scheme.
iPhone social media apps including TikTok, Facebook and X. Credit: Matt Cardy / Getty
With so many media sources these days — commercial television, social media, old-fashioned newspapers — some are bound to be more reliable in terms of accuracy than others.
Researchers have found that people who believe climate change is a conspiracy get most of their news and information about current events from social and commercial media sources.
After Donald Trump was reelected president, chief executive of Meta Mark Zuckerberg fired his company’s social media fact-checkers, with the intention of replacing them with a “community notes” format like the one used by Elon Musk’s platform X. The model relies on corrections added by users to posts that are false or misleading, Mark Andrejevic, a media professor at Monash University’s School of Media, Film, and Journalism, wrote in The Conversation.
The model has been described by Musk as “citizen journalism, where you hear from the people. It’s by the people, for the people.”
However, for this to work, the “citizen journalists,” as well as their readers, must value accuracy, accountability and “good-faith deliberation,” […]
Léonie Chao-Fong and Tom Phillips, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
The incompetence of “king” Trump and his administration is becoming glaringly obvious as you have probably already learned. But let’s not overlook “king” Trump’s scheme to create concentration camps. Here, in a British newspaper, is an account of what is being done in at the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Similar plans are in process at several other military bases. And I can tell you that even in rural areas of the country ICE is in action. On my island today two families were captured by ICE agents.
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The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea. Credit: Miami Herald / TNS
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.
Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Staff Writer - Popular Science / Grist
Stephan:
I have a dozen more stories about the disaster that is occurring as “king” Trump attempts to get confirmation of the utterly incompetent people he is attempting to appoint. I have a dozen stories in my file about Kash Patel, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and a host of other horrors that have been nominated. But there are other trends in the world that are going to affect your life and the lives of millions of people in other countries. Here, for instance, is the latest on what is happening to the world ocean currents, and it is very bad news.
‘There’s been an uptick in that imbalance and that has led to an uptick in the rate of ocean warming.‘ Credit: DepositPhotos
The two years of heat have created a scientific mystery, with 450 straight days of record high global sea surface temperatures from April 2023 to July 2024 — a streak that exceeded climate scientists’ predictions even when accounting for climate change and the natural climate pattern known as El Niño. A study published on Tuesday by researchers at the University of Reading helps solve the puzzle and points to one prominent culprit: the sun.
The study in Environmental Research Letters found that the rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past 40 years, driven by Earth’s growing energy imbalance — accounting for roughly 44 percent of the […]
I have been tracking America’s literacy trend for years (see SR archive) because from the fifth century BCE, the linkage between literacy and democracy was understood; a correlation that still exists. Our democracy is in sharp decline as the news about “king” Trump’s administration reveals daily. And part of the reason for this, I believe, is because we are becoming an increasingly illiterate nation. Fifty four percent of Americans can’t read and comprehend past the 6th grade level and 43% can’t read and comprehend past 5th grade level. Here is the latest study of American public schools. It has a bit of good news and a lot of bad news. I note particularly that there is a growing schism between the literate and illiterate. In my view, this is an indication that the Great Schism Trend is going continue into the next generation.
Eighth-grade students are averaging their lowest-ever reading scores since the Department of Education began tracking nationwide progress in 1992.
The newly released results for the 2024 National Assessment of Student Progress paint a dim picture of reading skills among students who are on the verge of entering high school, even as the data shows that absenteeism rates have begun to trend down since the last NAEP in 2022.
Reading scores for 8th graders have fallen in eight states and seven of the nation’s 25 largest school districts since 2022. The results are even worse compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic tests—8th-grade reading scores were lower in 28 states and 11 of the 25 largest districts compared to the 2019 NAEP.
“Today’s NAEP results reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind,” the Department of Education said in […]
