The sign proudly announces that the roundabout near Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary was built with 500 million forints (about $1.5 million) of funds from the European Union.

The roundabout was built to service a container terminal on a new railway line that would help provide this landlocked part of central Europe with better access to the sea. Rather than having to pass through Budapest, Hungary’s capital, goods arriving from the Adriatic coast would transit quickly through the west of the country into Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and beyond.

But there’s a problem. Years after the roundabout was built, there’s still no railway. Instead, the roundabout lies unused in a field, waiting for the Hungarian government to build the railway that would make it useful.

Critics of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán say EU-funded construction projects like these are a monument to the economic system his government has built over its 16 years in office. Orbán’s electoral success, they say, has combined relentlessly demonizing the EU – painting it as a decadent, liberal, corrupting force in Hungary – while happily accepting vast amounts of money from it.

The phrase that I think is going to be jumping out at our allies here in the region is that the Strait of Hormuz is going to open up naturally at the end of this war. That is just not the understanding of anyone here in the Gulf region.

Before the war, 110 ships were passing through every day; Iranian oil was coming out, Iraqi oil, Saudi oil, Qatari gas, passing through a recognized passageway through the middle of the Strait of Hormuz. Today, something like five to 10 ships are passing through every day, and those ships are no longer going unmolested through the middle of the strait.

They are being forced into Iranian waters between a series of islands. This has been nicknamed the Tehran toll booth. The Iranians are inspecting these ships as they come by. They are charging some of them $2 million to pass through, and every indication is that the Iranians want to make this into a long-term arrangement, even after the war continues.

The idea that the U.S. is going to step away and basically leave the Iranians in control of the Strait of Hormuz, in the hope that they are just going to naturally give up this level of control that they have asserted, is going to be very worrying for people here in the Middle East.

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Trump said in an interview earlier today that he was absolutely considering withdrawing from NATO — a significant step he could not take unilaterally. Trump would potentially have to ask Congress to do that, and right now, there are no indications that something like that could make it through. 

Despite that, Trump did not mention that prospect doring his address, though he did have some criticism for these countries, saying he believes they should step up and do more.

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As Trump addressed the nation, markets reacted negatively to what he had to say about his plan for the war with Iran.

S&P 500 futures slid 0.75%, Nasdaq futures sold off by 1%, and Dow futures dropped more than 310 points.

Oil prices also shot higher, with U.S. crude oil rising from around $98 to nearly $104. Brent, the international oil benchmark, soared from $99 to $106.

The move in oil prices will directly translate into higher gas prices. Already, since the war began Feb. 28, prices at the pump for U.S. consumers have risen from an average $2.46 per gallon to more than $4 today.

GOP Sen. Steve Daines made the last-minute decision to to prevent Democrats from fielding a top recruit for the open Montana seat, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Daines was aware that if he withdrew too soon then Democrats would have a chance at fielding one of several potential Democrats — namely former Sen. Jon Tester or former Govs. Brian Schweitzer or Steve Bullock. Any of those Democrats could have put the state on the map in the midterms and likely have sucked up enormous cash, as Democrats have done in red states like Alaska and Ohio, scrambling the race for the majority in the fall.

Instead, Daines withdrew from the race minutes before the Wednesday evening filing deadline. Kurt Alme, who was US attorney in Montana, filed to run eight minutes before the deadline. With the deadline closed, no top-tier Democrat can now jump in the race.

U.S. Navy could soon be escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, where maritime traffic has effectively stopped due to the current conflict with Iran, according to President Donald Trump. Doing so would demand that American naval vessels transit through the Strait, shifting them away from other duties. More importantly, it would also mean putting them right in a super weapons engagement zone full of Iranian threats that could include cruise and ballistic missiles, one-way-attack drones, explosive-laden kamikaze boats, and naval mines.

“If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible,” President Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media network.

“Effective IMMEDIATELY, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade, especially Energy, traveling through the Gulf,” he also wrote. “This will be available to all Shipping Lines.”

“No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD. The United States’ ECONOMIC and MILITARY MIGHT is the GREATEST ON EARTH,” he added. “More actions to come.”

U.S. Central Command declined to comment when reached for more details. TWZ has also reached out to the White House.

...

This is not the first time that the United States has been faced with this predicament or decided to start escorting commercial vessels through the region as a result. The U.S. Navy did just this in the late 1980s during the Tanker War sideshow to the Iran-Iraq War. At the same time, that experience underscores the immense amount of resources such a campaign could require, as well as the risks.

At the peak of those operations, there were some 30 American warships escorting commercial vessels to and from the Persian Gulf. Aircraft, special operations forces, and other assets were also deployed in support. The risks to American service members, as well as the ships they were tasked to safeguard, were very real.

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Minnesota and the two Twin Cities are among the jurisdictions that have “sanctuary policies” restricting state and local law enforcement assistance to federal immigration enforcement operations. Sanctuary jurisdictions have, for good reason, concluded that their law enforcement resources are better used to combat violent and property crime, rather than helping deport undocumented immigrants. As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey puts it, “The job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce fed immigration laws. I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to [Minneapolis] & is from Ecuador.” The latter actually have much lower crime rates than native-born citizens, and many of those the administration seeks to deport have no criminal records at all. Local and state participation in deportation efforts also makes it more difficult to combat crime by poisoning relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities.

Part of the purpose of the federal “surge” is to coerce Minnesota jurisdictions into giving up their sanctuary policies and using their resources to assist federal deportation efforts. As federal District Judge Katherine Menendez noted in a hearing in the case on Jan. 26, Trump administration officials have repeatedly indicated that this is one of their objectives. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested as much in a Jan. 24 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. A Jan. 16 White House statement explicitly indicates that Minnesota’s “sanctuary defiance” is “responsibl[e] for the enhanced enforcement operations in Minnesota.” A recent statement by Trump “border czar” Tom Homan indicates that the administration will not withdraw immigration enforcement officers from Minnesota unless state and local governments curb sanctuary policies and extend “cooperation” to federal immigration enforcers.

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In its legal filing responding to the lawsuit, the Justice Department claims the administration is not trying to coerce Minnesota state and local governments, but merely enforcing the law. But this claim is refuted by administration officials’ numerous statements to the contrary. And if the administration were truly focused on law enforcement, its agents would not be constantly breaking the law themselves. Moreover, there is no other plausible justification for such a massive federal deployment in a state where the percentage of illegal migrants is only about half the national average.

If allowed to stand by the courts, the federal action in Minnesota would set an extremely dangerous precedent. It could easily be used against a variety of state policies, including those of conservative “gun sanctuaries”—such as Montana and Missouri—which restrict state and local assistance efforts to enforce federal gun control laws. A future Democratic administration could send thousands of armed agents to harass gun owners and disrupt state and local government operations until gun sanctuary jurisdictions drop their restrictions.

Indeed, the Minnesota operation has already threatened gun rights traditionally prized by conservatives. Administration officials have defended the killing of Alex Pretti on the grounds that he was carrying a gun at the time—even though he had a legal permit to do so, never drew the weapon, and federal agents took it from him before they shot him.

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Many liberals have traditionally been wary of enforcing constitutional constraints on federal power, given that “states’ rights” arguments were used to defend slavery and segregation. But there is a fundamental difference between situations where state governments are themselves violating constitutional rights—as with state-imposed racial segregation—and cases where they merely refuse to help the federal government enforce federal law against private parties. Moreover, the political world has changed since the civil rights era. Today, state governments often help protect minorities against federal oppression, rather than vice versa. The sanctuary city movement dramatically illustrates this dynamic, as these jurisdictions protect vulnerable migrants and minorities subject to racial profiling by immigration enforcers. These are among the reasons why “blue” jurisdictions effectively used federalism litigation to curb federal abuses of power during the first Trump administration. Minnesota and others are right to continue doing so now.

The Constitution can help protect us against oppression by both state and federal authorities. The 10th Amendment is a valuable tool for countering the latter.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued by the Trump administration in September 2025, relies on logic from the lady and the fly. It frames “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence” as national security crises. It tells federal agencies to work together to investigate and stop suspected threats, a framework that enlarges the set of things the state can plausibly treat as suspect, including the freedoms of association and belief.

The language in the memorandum affirms legitimate counterterrorism work while leaving room to treat political dissent as out of bounds. But the First Amendment protects protest speech.

Still, if the language of the Trump memo is somewhat abstract, Minneapolis has provided a brutally concrete example.

...

The state has two choices when a death occurs that’s politically dangerous to the government.

It can investigate the killing with transparency and center the victim’s rights alongside public accountability as organizing principles. Or it can treat the killing as an opportunity to put the victim on trial in the court of public legitimacy.

The second choice avoids holding government accountable, shifts conversation toward the target’s supposed behavior and character, and expands the blame to include the people who loved and stood with the dead.

When this happens, the government does not have to win in court. It only has to keep the stigma circulating by asserting that a particular speaker undermines respect for elected officials. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons Trump offered for Good’s shooting by the ICE officer: “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” he told reporters.

The United States has been here before. Around EG: During? World War I, the U.S. Supreme Court issued several free speech decisions in cases mostly remembered as disputes over protest and draft resistance. But their underlying engine was the swallow-a-fly theory. Opposing the war might ruin the nation, so political dissidents had to be stopped, and the court affirmed the government’s right to silence strident speakers.

From: https://x.com/GovofCO/status/2007524695625859351

Today is a moment to celebrate the ouster of the brutal socialist dictator of Venezuela, who has cruelly impoverished this once-prosperous country that sits on greater oil wealth than Saudi Arabia.  I join our fellow Coloradans who have suffered so severely from this thug in calling for a democratic Venezuela where freedom and opportunity can again flourish. This is a time of great uncertainty, promise, and peril across dangerous political terrain as the regime’s Vice President and Minister of Interior seek to retain power with violence and repression. In July 2024, the people of Venezuela overwhelmingly elected as their president Unity Democratic Platform candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who succeeded the party’s candidate María Corina Machado after she was unlawfully disqualified from running.  Now is the time for President-elect González to receive the support he deserves from the U.S. in cooperation with the international community and the people of Venezuela to assume his rightful place and powers as president. Venezuelans deserve to determine their own future and select their own government. Today, I stand with the Venezuelan people in Colorado and in Venezuela.

Following the President’s remarks today and the actions taken by the United States overnight, it is not at all clear what the plan actually is, or even who is in charge. I am further troubled by the lack of Congressional oversight and engagement up to this point. It is crucial that the United States present a clear plan for what a transition to genuine democracy and self-rule entails, and involve Congress in planning next steps to help ensure stability and freedom for the long oppressed people of Venezuela. We cannot have a failed foreign policy misadventure; the Venezuelan people and region deserve better.

We respect everyone’s right to peaceful demonstration including celebrating the fall of Maduro and ask all to do so without violence.

What happens when we let a multimillionaire govern... invading a sovereign country and capturing it's leader without authorization or input is a good thing?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.11532

New study preprint quantifies what we've suspected: Trump's Truth Social posting becomes measurably more erratic after Epstein coverage spiking on Fox News.

In the wake of the Chicago South Shore raid—which reportedly saw masked U.S. agents rappelling down from a Black Hawk helicopter, bursting into a 130-unit building, kicking down doors, zip-tying and holding American citizens at gunpoint, and the detention of 37 Venezuelan nationals—a law school classmate asked me: Why isn’t every one of these raids—where officers trash property and terrorize residents—a potential Bivens case?

The answer, chilling, at least to me, is: Because my team and I spent decades at the Department of Justice making sure that such lawsuits would be dismissed, typically without trial, and often even without discovery.

For half a century, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents has been hailed as the primary safeguard against unconstitutional actions by federal officers. Bivens permitted victims of these actions to seek money damages from individual federal officers directly under the Constitution. These actions are often analogized to the far more common “Section 1983” claims available against state and local officials under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. But accountability under Bivens is far more constrained than many lawyers might assume. Certainly, if you ask the general public whether they think there is a way to file a civil suit and receive compensation—whether from individual officers or the United States more broadly—for constitutional violations such as excessive or deadly force by federal actors, the general belief is: of course. Yet constitutional violations hardly ever result in the payment of damages. The reality is the behemoth that was Bivens now no longer serves victims of constitutional harms, the federal workforce as a whole, individual officers in particular, or society at large. Those in the United States must look somewhere else for recompense, deterrence, settled litigation expectations, and institutional and jurisprudential order.

Here’s why.

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The stakes are high: Foreign products have been increasingly linked to outbreaks of foodborne illness. In recent years, FDA investigators have uncovered disturbing lapses in facilities producing food bound for American supermarkets. In Indonesia, cookie factory workers hauled dough in soiled buckets. In China, seafood processors slid crawfish along cracked, stained conveyor belts. Investigators have reported crawling insects, dripping pipes and fake testing data purporting to show food products were pathogen free.

In 2011, Congress — concerned about the different standards of overseas food operations — gave the FDA new authority to hold foreign food producers to the same safety standards as domestic ones. Although the agency’s small team remained unable to visit every overseas facility, inspections rose sharply after the mandate — sometimes doubling or tripling previous rates.

Now, the U.S. is on track to have the fewest inspections on record since 2011, except during the global pandemic.

Fewer inspections have taken place than at any time since 2011, excluding 2020 to 2022, when inspections slowed significantly because of the coronavirus pandemic.

...

With such limitations, the agency’s inspections have often been reactive instead of proactive. In 2023, for example, FDA investigators did not descend on a Mexican strawberry farm until about 20 people had been hospitalized with hepatitis A, a highly contagious infection that causes liver inflammation and, in some cases, liver failure and death.

Hepatitis A is spread through the consumption of small or even microscopic bits of feces. Farm workers can shed the virus when picking fruit, or it can be transmitted through contaminated water.

At the Mexican berry farm, federal investigators found significant safety violations, including sanitation facilities with hand-washing water that was dirty, gray and leaking throughout the growing area; one toilet offered no ability to wash one’s hands. The FDA censured the company, citing 11 violations of American food safety regulations. According to public data, the agency did not reinspect the farm to ensure it had made corrections even as its products kept entering the United States.

You give us Bivens federally, we'll stop throwing sandwiches.

The Department of Homeland Security says it intends to add state driver’s license information to a swiftly expanding federal system envisioned as a one-stop shop for checking citizenship.

The plan, outlined in a public notice posted Thursday, is the latest step in an unprecedented Trump administration initiative to pool confidential data from varied sources that it claims will help identify noncitizens on voter rolls, tighten immigration enforcement and expose public benefit fraud.

According to emails obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, DHS approached Texas officials in June about a pilot program to add the state’s driver license data, but it’s not clear if the state participated.

Earlier this year, DHS added millions of Americans’ Social Security data to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system, allowing officials to use the tool to conduct bulk searches of voter rolls for the first time. According to the document filed Thursday, SAVE also recently expanded to include passport and visa information.

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands — The European Union’s rules on artificial intelligence are driving tech workers and companies to Silicon Valley, a top executive from the Dutch chipmaking giant ASML has said.

“Why is it so difficult to get AI done in Europe? Simply because we started with regulating, to keep AI under the thumb,” ASML’s Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen told an event in Eindhoven on Monday evening.

“Someone who has a talent for artificial intelligence, the first thing they do with their hard-earned money … is buying a ticket to Silicon Valley,” Dassen said.

The comments — made during a campaign event for Dutch center-right party Christian Democratic Appeal ahead of national elections Oct. 29 — are another shot across the bow of the EU’s embattled artificial intelligence law.

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With friends who work in AI, I can tell you not all are motivated by money alone, some of them actually do want the scary potential (aka Flock, etc) regulated and are working from Europe.

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NOAA’s Office of Satellite and Product Operations described the reason for turning off the flow of data as a need to mitigate “a significant cybersecurity risk.”

The three satellites have already operated for longer than planned.

The DMSP satellites were launched between 1999 and 2009 and were designed to last for five years. They have now been operating for more than 15 years. The United States Space Force recently concluded that the DMSP satellites would reach the end of their lives between 2023 and 2026, so the data would likely have gone dark soon.

Are there replacements for the DMSP satellites?

Three other satellites in orbit – NOAA-20, NOAA-21 and Suomi NPP – have a microwave instrument known as the advanced technology microwave sounder.

The advanced technology microwave sounder, or ATMS, can provide data similar to the special sensor microwave imager/sounder, or SSMIS, but at a lower resolution. It provides a more washed-out view that is less useful than the SSMIS for pinpointing a storm’s location or estimating its intensity.

Alternative link

Looking at the unintended consequences of tariffs and found this little tidbit.

Tariffs have long been a contentious tool of economic policy in the United States. Proponents argue they shield domestic industries from foreign competition, enabling growth and job creation. Yet, the historical record, as illuminated by scholars like Douglas Irwin in his study “Tariffs and Growth in Late Nineteenth Century America,” demonstrates that tariffs often hinder economic progress more than they help.

During the late nineteenth century, the United States maintained some of the highest tariff rates in its history. While this period coincided with rapid industrial growth, Irwin argues that tariffs were not the primary driver of economic expansion. Instead, technological innovation, abundant natural resources, and a growing domestic market played far more significant roles. High tariffs distorted resource allocation, favoring inefficient industries over more competitive sectors. This misallocation led to higher consumer prices and suppressed overall economic welfare.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23500333

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We now finally have the ugly truth on these fake artists—but no thanks to Spotify. Or to that prestigious newspaper whose editor I petitioned.

Instead journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

Mood Machine will show up in bookstores in January and may finally wake up the music industry to the dangers it faces.

Pelly started by knocking on the doors of these mysterious viral artists in Sweden.

Guess what? Nobody wanted to talk. At least not at first.

But Pelly kept pursuing this story for a year. She convinced former employees to reveal what they knew. She got her hands on internal documents. She read Slack messages from the company. And she slowly put the pieces together.

Now she writes:

What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.

In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels.

At Spotify they call this the “Perfect Fit Content” (PFC) program. Musicians who provide PFC tracks “must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative.”

Spotify apparently targeted genres where they could promote passive consumption. They identified situations in which listeners use playlists for background music. That’s why I noticed the fake artists problem first in my jazz listening.

According to Pelly, the focal points of PFC were “ambient, classical, electronic, jazz, and lo-fi beats.”

When some employees expressed concerns about this, Spotify managers replied (according to Pelly’s sources) that “listeners wouldn’t know the difference.”

They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit.

Music fans got angry and demanded action. In 1959, both the US Senate and House launched investigations. Famous deejay Alan Freed got fired from WABC after refusing to sign a statement claiming that he had never taken bribes.

Transactions nowadays are handled more delicately—and seemingly in full compliance with the laws. Nobody gives Spotify execs an envelope filled with cash.

But this is better than payola:

• On February 7, Spotify’s CEO sold 250K shares for $57.5 million.

• On April 24, Spotify’s CEO sold 400K shares for $118.8 million.

• On November 15, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $35.8 million.

• On November 20, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $34.8 million.

• On November 26, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $36.1 million.

• On December 4, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $37 million.

• On December 11, Spotify’s CEO sold 60K shares for $28.3 million.

Deejay Alan Freed couldn’t dream of such riches. In fact, nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify.

Taylor Swift doesn’t earn that much. Even after fifty years of concertizing, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger can’t match this kind of wealth

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The Police Department has released two new images of the man it believes fatally shot the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, including one showing him in the back seat of a taxi on the day of the shooting.

The images were released late Saturday night as the frantic investigation continued to identify and track down the killer of Brian Thompson, 50, the health care executive gunned down outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan on Wednesday.

One image, captured from the front of the cab, appears to show the unidentified suspect peering forward from the vehicle’s back seat with his face partially obscured by a blue surgical mask, a dark hat and a black hood. The other image, apparently recorded through a window, shows the man walking on the street wearing the same mask, a black puffer jacket and a hood pulled over his head.

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Going back a few years, but worth documenting. Alternative link

[2022], Pfizer forecasts it will generate $29bn from the vaccine, based on contracts it had already signed in mid-October. In an earnings call in February 2021, Pfizer predicted that after the pandemic ends, its current margins — in the high 20 percentage points — will increase, as costs are likely to fall.

“There’s a significant opportunity for those margins to improve once we get beyond the pandemic environment that we’re in,” said Frank D’Amelio, chief financial officer.

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Winnie Byanyima, the Ugandan who runs the UN’s global effort to end Aids, shuddered when she read that interview. “He hasn’t saved the world. He could have done it but he hasn’t,” she says, pointing to the very low vaccination rates in Africa.

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Yet even if that makes the doses more affordable, many leaders feel Pfizer is forcing them to navigate a labyrinth in order to obtain them. While western leaders had Bourla on speed dial, the first challenge for some nations was getting his — or anyone at Pfizer’s — ear.

“Countries reported to us that they had been trying to get hold of Pfizer and no one returned their calls,” says a person familiar with the African Union’s vaccine-purchasing operation.

Before deals could be agreed, Pfizer demanded countries change national laws to protect vaccine makers from lawsuits, which many western jurisdictions already had. From Lebanon to the Philippines, national governments changed laws to guarantee their supply of vaccines.

Jarbas Barbosa, the assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, says Pfizer’s conditions were “abusive, during a time when due to the emergency [governments] have no space to say no”.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/10153234

Down around 80% on bases from prewar.

Invidious alt link.