VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump’s gold statue reveal sparks major controversy
The president unveiled the new statue of himself this weekend at his Doral Golf Club, where it was “blessed” by his psycho MAGA pastor…who very quickly had to clarify that actually, this golden idol of a heathen man who is the closest thing to the anti-Christ on Earth is NOT a golden calf and he totally wasn’t worshipping it bro!

Take Action: Demand Congress REJECT Trump’s appalling 2027 budget!

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The voting rights rollback shows we need a new Constitution
Luke Pickrell, Jacobin: “Louisiana v. Callais represents three issues of major concern for the Left. The first is the unelected Supreme Court, which now includes five justices who were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote (first-term George W. Bush and first-term Donald Trump), and four who were confirmed by a Senate majority that represented a minority of the population. Like its predecessor during Reconstruction, this generation’s court has attacked hard-won civil rights and impeded the struggle for political and social equality. A particularly egregious example came in 2013, when, in Shelby County v. Holder, the court effectively eliminated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of discriminatory voting laws to submit any electoral changes to the federal government for review through a process called ‘preclearance.’ The day of the ruling, Texas, a former preclearance state, implemented a restrictive and long-blocked voter ID law. Since then, states have implemented some one hundred new restrictive voting laws.

The second issue raised by the decision is our federally mandated system of single-member, winner-take-all congressional districts. Louisiana v. Callais only happened because Louisiana, like every state, elects its congressional representatives through winner-take-all, single-member districts. These types of districts make gerrymandering possible. Proportional representation (PR) would largely eliminate the structural distortions that make Callais possible. Rather than drawing partisan single-member districts, PR allocates seats based on each party’s share of the statewide vote; every vote counts equally. Under PR, black voters and other groups would win their fair share of representation without needing race-based districting at all. ‘;/[In 2022, an omnibus voting rights bill that included limits on gerrymandering was supported by more than 60 percent of Americans. But it died in the Senate at the hands of the filibuster. When Democrats attempted to change the rules to allow the bill to pass with a simple majority, fellow Democrats killed it. The ACLU is concerned that representative districts will not survive the Supreme Court. But that concern misses the fundamental point. The real question is whether we can win PR and escape the dead end of competitive gerrymandering currently sweeping the country.

The third issue is the Constitution itself. Any change to the Supreme Court would require a constitutional amendment — which, as George Van Cleve argues in Making a New American Constitution, is as likely as pigs learning to fly. Overturning the federal ban on PR is theoretically easier because Congress could repeal it with a new law. But as with any substantial bill, the ridiculously malapportioned Senate stands in the way. The Senate’s filibuster can be eliminated without a constitutional amendment, but neither party is eager to make the change. This has as much to do with concern for what the other would do without the filibuster while in control of the Senate as it does with taming each party’s radical wing.

The Senate’s system of representation, which gives an equal vote to states regardless of population size (and thus grossly overrepresents small and mostly conservative states), explicitly cannot be changed through a constitutional amendment unless every state agrees. But that’s not going to happen. We need a new political founding. It is time to start fresh with a new constitution drafted by a popular democratic assembly and ratified by a nationwide vote based on universal and equal suffrage. In the lead-up to the decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis struck a defiant tone: ‘We must never back down in the fight to ensure that our communities will continue to be reflected in our nation’s legislature, and our needs will be weighed in important political decision-making. This is a necessary fight for all who believe in a fair, free, and equitable democracy.’ Plenty of Americans are tired and fed up with the Supreme Court. It is time to carry Lewis’s demand for a fair, free, and equitable democracy to its logical conclusion: a new constitution based on legislative supremacy and a unicameral legislature elected by universal, equal, and proportional representation.

Take Action: No war on Cuba! Pass a war powers resolution and end the humanitarian crisis!

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Trump gets nightmare news as his top impeachment witness launches run for Senate
Alexander Vindman for Senate: Alexander Vindman made history as one of the star witnesses in the first impeachment case against Trump — and now he’s running for Senate so he can hold the wannabe dictator accountable from the halls of Congress. Vindman has vowed to take on “a Republican Party that’s failing to deliver accountability and underwriting chaos and corruption,” but to win in Florida, he’s going to need some help. Can you chip in to help kick-start his run?

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“23 atom bombs worth of energy:” Utah’s “hyperscale” data center will create massive heat island near Great Salt Lake
Leia Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune: “Skeptics of the proposed hyperscale data center in Box Elder County are sweating about a lot more than its energy demands and potential toll on water supplies. Turn out, it could create a massive heat island capable of devastating the area’s ecology, said Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University. ‘I suspected it would not be good,’ Davies said. ‘What I’ve found is it’s so much worse than I even thought it would be.”’

News of the proposed sprawling data complex, dubbed the Stratos Project, became public last month. The project’s boosters say it will likely need 9 gigawatts of energy at full build — more than double the electricity currently used by the entire state of Utah. That energy will likely come from a pipeline carrying natural gas from Wyoming to Nevada, Oregon and California. The project’s developer, ‘Shark Tank’ celebrity Kevin O’Leary, specifically chose Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley to build the complex because the pipeline spans it, state officials have said.

All the heat the Stratos Project emits will add up to another 7 to 8 gigawatts of energy in the form of waste heat. Typically, waste heat is generated far from the power plant itself, in homes, businesses or on roads where it dissipates. But for the Stratos project, it will get dumped into the local environment of Hansel Valley, in the same geographic bowl as the power plant.

That actually makes the data complex a 16 gigawatt thermal load project, the ‘equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day,’ Davies said. ‘What happens if you deposit that much energy continuously into a topography like this?’ Davies wondered. ‘Right at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, a watershed that’s in collapse. A high desert environment? A valley?”’

Evaporation would spike. The dewpoint could vanish, with devastating consequences on wildlife, plants and the fertility of land owned by other ranchers in the valley, the scientists said. Abbott suspects Hansel Valley would become another dust source on the Wasatch Front, in addition to the exposed and drying lakebed of the shrinking Great Salt Lake.

Box Elder County commissioners approved the project Monday after declining to hear public comment, noting they had no ‘control’ over environmental concerns like water supplies and air quality.”

Take Action: Make Trader Joe’s a sanctuary from ICE’s violence!

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Trump’s looming defeat in Iran is a personal and political crisis
Robert Reich, The Guardian: “We are witnessing what happens to a person who is consumed with the need to dominate, but cannot. Iran is unlikely to give in. It can withstand the economic pressure of a blockade better than Donald Trump can withstand the political pressure that comes with rising gas prices (now nearly $4.50 a gallon, on average), soon followed by rising food prices. His looming failure in Iran is not just a serious geopolitical defeat for the United States; it’s a personal crisis for Trump.

Those rising prices coupled with an increasingly unpopular war have increased the likelihood that Democrats will take back control of the House and even possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterms. His ego cannot accept a humiliating loss, as we saw after the 2020 election. His need to bully, dominate and gain submission is so hardwired inside his insecure head that the defeats he’s now facing – to Iran and to Democrats – are already setting off explosions. Regardless of what happens in Iran, he’ll claim victory. That will be difficult to do convincingly when gas prices remain more than $4 a gallon, but he’ll undoubtedly try. What if Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms and he claims they lost or cheated?

The nation barely survived the last time Trump’s fragile ego faced a major loss. We’ll also have to cope with Trump as a lame-duck president who can no longer dominate and gain submission as he did before. Will he try to remain president beyond his second term to avoid this? The man is unwell. Seriously unwell. Lame-duck presidents fade away, but injured dictators can be dangerous.”

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Food for thought

The Sunday wrap-up

Hope…

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