Christ what an asshole

Global temperatures in 2026 are on track to be the second warmest on record, at around 1.47C above preindustrial levels across the five different records assessed by Carbon Brief. Read more in our latest State of the Climate update for Q1 2026 here: www.carbonbrief.org/...

How New Mexico is ‘building a forest’ by solving a seedling shortage - High Country News What it takes to replant a burn scar post-wildfire.

What it takes to replant a burn scar post-wildfire.

Pete Hegseth, when he was an Army National Guard major, was one of 12 Guard members removed from duty at President Joe Biden's inauguration in January 2021 following vetting by the FBI and military officials.

Those were all the credentials he needed for Trump to appoint him Defense Secretary.

It’s in keeping with the basic idea of the original Colorado River Compact, which was to manage the basin’s water through some negotiation and compromise, rather than strictly following the letter of the law. But the legal foundation of prior appropriation hamstrings negotiations at every turn. Farmers account for the overwhelming majority of Colorado water use—almost a third goes to cattle feed alone—and thanks to how the system was initially designed, their prices are absurdly subsidized. One recent study found that while municipal districts pay an average of $512.01 per acre-foot, agricultural irrigation districts paid an average of $30.32 per acre-foot. Fully a quarter of all Colorado water diversions, all to farmers, cost nothing at all. Such a subsidy is difficult to unwind.

TIL that while Colorado basin municipal water districts pay an average of $512 per acre-foot, irrigation districts pay an average of $30--and fully a quarter of all water diversions, all going to farms, pay nothing at all prospect.org/2026/04/17/w...

In unfortunate news, one of the missions I work on, NASA TRACERS, is on the chopping block in the budget proposed by Trump and Vought.

A functional pair of sats that would just outright be shut off because the current federal government is anti science and anti exploration.

Idaho farmers grapple with surging fertilizer prices Conflict in the Middle East means 65% of Idaho farmers can’t afford the fertilizer they need.

Conflict in the Middle East means 65% of Idaho farmers can’t afford the fertilizer they need.

A reminder:

BREAKING: Federal Bill Would Put Big Oil Above the Law | Center for Climate Integrity Republicans Introduce Legislation to Give Fossil Fuel Companies Immunity from Any Laws or Lawsuits Seeking to Hold them Accountable for their Role in the Climate Crisis

Republicans know they are about to lose the House and are trying to give Big Oil its holy grail: legal immunity from any futures actions that would hold the industry responsible for the climate crisis it knowingly caused and is making worse every day.

climateintegrity.org/news/view/br...

16 years ago, the BP oil spill devastated the environment and the communities in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, Interior is green-lighting BP’s even riskier, even deeper Kaskida offshore oil project to drill up profits and export oil abroad—all at the expense of our environment.

Democrats should make the confirmation hearing on the nominee to be U.S. Attorney General all about the Epstein files.

If you won’t commit to release the files without redactions and prosecute the Epstein class, then you’re obstructing justice, not enforcing it.

Newly released records detail police response to lawmaker attacks Authorities first identified Vance Boelter as a suspect within three hours of the start of the politically motivated rampage.

Newly released records on the police response to the assassination of Melissa Hortman show officers knew a woman was lying motionless on the top of the stairs inside the Hortman home but waited 30 minutes to physically check on her.

Like... no. Their job, if they win in November, is to spend the next two years making Donald Trump's life a living hell and prevent him from making things worse for the rest of the time he's in office. They are there to gum up the works.

The jet-fuel surge is making global flight connections disappear | Fortune The International Energy Agency says Europe has “maybe six weeks” of supplies left.

4/ “Any flying that we’re doing that’s on the margin, maybe not producing the yields we’d like, is likely going to be reconsidered,” Delta Air Lines Inc. CEO Ed Bastian said while announcing an extra $2.5 billion in fuel costs this quarter. “This is going to be a test for the industry.”"

While the Constitution says that the President can be impeached for various "high crimes and misdemeanors", it did explicitly state two specific crimes that are grounds for impeachment, and one of them is "Bribery." The remedy for this scenario was anticipated and does exist. So that being said...

whats so crazy to me is the only job that chatbots could actually eliminate right now is ceo, every company could save millions today right now by replacing their ceo with a computer program that just parrots what other ceos say

Since the Constitution empowers the President only to pardon "Offences," lawyers should invoke a “specificity” requirement, on the theory that a blanket pardon for unnamed acts is not a pardon for an "offence" but a grant of general immunity, which the President does not have the power to give.

The chief weapon of MAGA is the frivolous lawsuit - Lawyers, Guns & Money Apparently Kash Patel, who may well still be the FBI director as you read this, does not like stories being published about how he needs a whole lot of medicine to pretend that he’s somebody else: Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing the magazine and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of […]

The chief weapon of MAGA is the frivolous lawsuit

The visionaries As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon…

new toon!
www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

Victoria Toensing @VicToensing Hubby being sworn in as Counsel to the Attorney General. 4:04 PM · Apr 20, 2026 · 6,199 Views Jason Reding Quiñones, the US Attorney in Miami, swearing in a much shorter Joe DiGenova.

Joe DiGenova, whose wife once solicited payments from foreigners to lie about Joe Biden in 2019, just got sworn in to investigate things those things he lied about in the past.

Over the weekend I laid out why this is so problematic.

emptywheel.net/2026/04/19/t...

The ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative ($38 billion to convert commercial warehouses into a network of massive detention centers) is not being built primarily by GEO Group and CoreCivic. ICE is turning to a crop of relatively untested contractors. A look at who. 🧵

How We’re All Now Paying the Price for the Myth of Trump’s Competence The administration’s war with Iran is setting a mountain of taxpayer dollars on fire every day—mostly because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

We’ve seen numerous examples in these last 13 months of Trump’s mendacity and malevolence. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans will never see him that way.

Published March 9, 2026. trib.al/yHE4i97

SEN. @ossoff.senate.gov : “The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice… Remember — While you pay more for everything, the First Family’s wealth is growing by billions. Because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.”

We have a bunch of passion fruit vine in our CA back yard, and consequently, we have many many Gulf Fritillary butterflies.

Have never eaten the fruit.
You've motivated me to try it.

It Was on Your Table Every Morning Growing Up. It’s Dying Before Our Eyes. No One Wants to Face It. The powerhouse of American citrus is suffering a brutal decline. Everyone has a theory about why.

An excellent piece about the total collapse of Florida oranges. If you've read John McPhee's Oranges you kind of have to read this to see how it turned out (extremely badly).

slate.com/business/202...

Did Donald Trump Promise Iran $20 Billion? If So—Is that Treason? On Earth One, no—it’s Iran’s money, after all. But on MAGA Earth, if Biden or Obama had done it …

"This all could have been avoided if Trump had just stayed in the JCPOA...but it was Obama’s brainchild, which meant it had to be torn up, simply because Trump is such an insanely insecure and vindictive man."

Important refresher on Iran deal from @mjtoma.bsky.social
newrepublic.com/article/2092...

The media blackout of Jared Kushner’s historic, ongoing corruption scandal As Trump's son-in-law returns to Pakistan for more talks with Iran, major news outlets are largely ignoring an egregious conflict of interest.

What we already know about Jared Kushner is infinitely worse, from any possible angle, than anything we ever learned about Hunter Biden. And yet the media is completely ignoring it.

Open corruption is tolerated from one of the two parties. But only one.

We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification The damage he and his cronies have wrought could take decades to repair, particularly when it comes to science and public health.

The task of de-Trumpification of science and public health will take a generation and a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild. Without a bold, expansive vision to guide us, there is no coming back. Small-bore, poll-tested versions of the future will not help us. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

A news headline with the following text: The Slick As Prices Climb, California Imports More Gasoline Made From Russian Oil The state’s failure to reduce driving and to stockpile fuel led to dependence on sanctioned oil refined elsewhere. A photo of tankers in the Port of LA is the featured image.

NEW STORY!

As a heat wave hit the West and the price of a gasoline gallon rose sharply, California faced the pain of dependence on climate-warming oil priced by the global market.

As refineries close, the state is getting a lifeline from a surprising source: Fuel imports made from Russian oil. 🧵:

Through a sanctions loophole, the U.S. imports fuel made from Russian crude oil refined elsewhere. California’s top foreign refinery supplier of gasoline is the Reliance Industries refinery in western India, whose biggest oil supplier since 2022 has been Russia. Imports correspond w/ gas prices.

Through a sanctions loophole, the U.S. imports fuel made from Russian crude oil refined elsewhere.

California’s top foreign refinery supplier of gasoline is the Reliance Industries refinery in western India, whose biggest oil supplier since 2022 has been Russia.

Imports corresponded w/ gas prices.