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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.
Criminal Trump is the only political leader in any country who is congratulating criminal Putin on making the better deal on the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It tells us a great deal about MAGAt worldthat he said this to a mass of MAGAt supporters and no one seems to find it weird. I certainly do.
Criminal Trump Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
U.S. Republican nominee Donald Trump commended Russian President Vladimir Putin over a historic prisoner swap deal struck last week, suggesting the Russian leader got the better end of the agreement.
“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally in Atlanta on Saturday as he criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the swap.
The former U.S. president, who is bidding for a second term in the White House amid a string of court cases against him, said the prisoner exchange led to the release of “some of the greatest killers” in the world.
“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” Trump said. “It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?” he added.
For over a decade the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party has been trying to dismantle public education. In Project 2025 they go so far as to propose to eliminate the Department of Education. And in Red states like Oklahoma, as this article describes, MAGAt legislators and state officials as actively breaching the Founders fundamental firewall between church and state. As a result teachers are revolting, and many are just walking away from their careers. To give some context to this constant attempt by MAGAts to destroy public education, American children are the least literate and numerate children in the developed world, and there is a growing insufficiency of teachers in public schools, particularly in MAGAt-controlled states. This is going to have long-term generational consequences. Already 54% of Americans can’t read past 6th grade level, and 43% can’t read past 5th grade. Nor can they do fraction or percentage calculations. What does that mean? It means the United States is deliberately abandoning its ability to be a scientific world leader.
Oklahoma christofascist State School Superintendent Ryan Walters Credit: The Oklahoman
Educators in Oklahoma are refusing a state order to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, setting up an inevitable showdown with the start of the school year just weeks away.
Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, last week released guidelines to schools for how they should be integrating the Bible into classrooms, saying educators who are against the initiative “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”
The message from some schools in the state: Bring it on.
“I suspect that the first thing that will happen is he will target a specific school district or multiple school districts who he believes are not complying with his directive, those school districts will then have to make a choice as to whether to bend [to] his whim or to sue,” said Rob Miller, superintendent of Bixby Public Schools.
“And I can tell you that if Bixby was one of those schools that he selected to come after, we would file a lawsuit,” Miller told The Hill.
It is getting harder and harder to vote in the United States, either because of the MAGAt sabotage of the voting system, or because of the incompetent bureaucratic poor design of the ballets, as is happening in Michigan. We are a country that claims to be a democracy but the individual states, as this Michigan article describes, are not doing what they should to make democracy function properly.
A Michigan absentee ballot for the 2024 primary election. Under state law, if a voter selects candidates in different columns of the partisan section of the ballot, those votes will not be counted. Credit: Krishnan Anantharaman / Votebeat
Every other August in Michigan, thousands of votes are rejected because the voters didn’t pay attention to the directions on their primary ballot, or didn’t understand them.
The problem occurs when voters do something called “crossover voting,” where, intentionally or otherwise, they vote for candidates from different parties on the same ballot. In a general election, that would not be a problem. And in a presidential primary, it wouldn’t be possible.
But in the August primary elections — where candidates for federal- and state-level positions are selected — a crossover vote that doesn’t get caught by the voter means officials can’t count the votes on the partisan section of the ballot. And many voters, particularly if they vote absentee, will never know […]
Neil Vigdor, Maggie Haberman and Simon J. Levien, Reporters - Reader SUpported News / The New York Times
Stephan:
I told you criminal Trump would find a way to back out of a debate with Kamala Harris. He is afraid of her because unlike Biden she will call him a liar to his face. So he is trying to rerig a debate using the Fox propaganda network to conduct it, instead of ABC. He expects that Fox staff will only ask him softball questions, and will not challenge his lies. I think Harris is going to show up at the long scheduled ABC conducted debate, and give a talk on Trump’s cowardice and lies. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Criminal Trump speaking at a MAGAt rally. Credit: Intercept
Former President Donald J. Trump declared late on Friday that he was dropping out of an ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10 and presented a counterproposal to Vice President Kamala Harris, his presumptive opponent, to face off on Fox News six days earlier.
The change, which Mr. Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.
A campaign official for Ms. Harris on Saturday accused Mr. Trump of scheming up the Fox News debate to distract from reneging on his commitment to the ABC debate. Mr. Trump had agreed to that debate in May, before President Biden dropped out of the race and before Mr. Biden’s calamitous performance in a CNN debate on June 27.
“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him […]
We are less than 100 days from the weirdest and most important election in any of our lifetimes, and we have one party that is openly and explicitly planning to end democracy, create an oligarch controlled authoritarian country, break the firewall between church and state, and reduce women to permanent second-class status as citizens. If you don’t vote, and vote only for Democrats, you are condemning yourself and your children to live in a country the Founders would not even recognize. As Benjamin Franklin responded to a woman, as he was walking out of what is now called Constitution Hall, when she asked what kind of government had been created, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” I also urge you to get involved with your local voting process because I keep hearing Donald Trump say to people, “I don’t need your vote…. and after I am President again you’ll never have to vote again.” What he is saying is that he believes the Republicans have already rigged the voting process so that they win.
Peter Cvjetanovic (R) along with neo-Nazis, alt-right, and white supremacist demonstrators chant at counterprotestors after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017. Credit: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency / Getty
“Invasion and great replacement theory rhetoric, both deeply rooted in white nationalist and antisemitic tropes, are no longer a bug on the Hill, they are a regular feature,” said one campaigner.
Republican U.S. lawmakers who embrace and amplify racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants are helping to stoke deadly politically motivated violence, according to a report published Friday by a coalition of advocacy groups.
The report—titled Bigoted Conspiracy Caucus—”exposes the normalization of xenophobic ‘great replacement’ and ‘invasion’ conspiracies within the 118th Congress, documenting their historical roots and widespread promotion by members of Congress.”
“The great replacement conspiracy claims Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white Christian Americans with nonwhite immigrants, people of color, or others who they think are inferior and ‘easier to control,’” the report states. […]
Perverted Christianity, fascism, White supremacy, male dominance, and an obsession with guns, that’s the combo of the MAGAt world, and it is all funded by christofascist oligarchs who hire lawyers without honor to play the laws like a banjo to get the American they want. Here’s the story.
Mother Jones illustration / Getty
For decades, McLean Bible Church has served as the place of worship for many of DC’s Republican elite. The sprawling evangelical megachurch in Vienna, Virginia, boasts a roster of former parishioners that includes everyone from Ken Starr to Mike Pence. It’s where Donald Trump once dropped in for a brief prayer after a round of golf.
McLean Bible is also where, in November 2017, a senior pastor named Dale Sutherland formed a nonprofit called Act2Impact. In those days, the organization was described in state records as an “auxiliary” of the church, with a mission to “preach the gospel” and “conduct evangelistic and humanitarian outreach.”
But that mission was short-lived.
Two years later, Sutherland—who had once been an undercover narcotics officer in DC—left McLean Bible and filed papers to rename Act2Impact. It became the Constitutional Defense Fund (CDF), which would “promote and secure” constitutional rights. “We aim to defend and strengthen those rights through methods that will include litigation and […]
Miriam Bergeret , Live Science Contributing Writer - Live Science
Stephan:
Here is some good news concerning research on how to degrade “forever” chemicals (PFAS), that have become a major human-created pollutant with all kinds of negative consequences for the Matrix of Life, including humans.
Scientists have uncovered bacteria with enzymes that can break down various PFAS, also called “forever chemicals.” Credit: Kateryna Kon / Science Photo Library / Getty
Certain bacteria can degrade the strong bonds that give “forever chemicals” their long shelf life, and this hints at potential low-cost treatments that could cleanse water of concerning PFAS.
Now, in a study published July 17 in the journal Science Advances, researchers reported for the first time that four species of Acetobacterium can degrade the bonds in some PFAS. This includes unsaturated PFAS, whose […]
Here is some more transitional good news. As this report says, “The bulk of steelmaking around the world still relies on coal-based blast furnaces.
As a result, the steel and iron industry is responsible for 7% of greenhouse gas emissions and 11% of carbon dioxide emissions globally, according to the consultancy firm Global Efficiency Intelligence….This is more than the total emissions from all the world’s cars and vans.” The conversion of steel-making to non-coal-based blast furnaces will have a huge effect on the matrix of life.
This is more than the total emissions from all the world’s cars and vans.
With steel critical to the building out of decarbonised energy infrastructure, production is expected to continue to rise over the coming years, meaning the potential for decarbonisation is “enormous”, according to not-for-profit data organisation Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
GEM’s annual “Pedal to the Metal” report reveals that 93% of new steelmaking capacity announced thus far in 2024 promises to use lower emission electric arc furnaces (EAFs).
It also shows that 49% of the world’s steelmaking capacity under development now uses EAFs, up from just 43% in 2023 and 33% in 2022.
Of this, nearly all of the capacity announced since the beginning of 2024 operates using EAFs, the non-governmental organisation’s Global Steel Plant Tracker (GSPT) shows.
The tracker covers 2,207m tonnes per year (mtpa) of operating […]
