George W. Bush: “I’m going to effect regime change in Iraq without much of a plan and we’ll figure out the details later” Trump: “Hold my Diet Coke”

Article says private jets are 1/6 of all traffic handled by FAA and entire reduction in FAA load could be shouldered by grounding private jets. No need to affect commercial flights.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “This is truly a war with no limits,” our columnist Lydia Polgreen writes of the war in Gaza, “and soon there may be no journalists left to document its horror.”

More women have nearly bled to death during miscarriage under Texas’ abortion ban. Experts say the trend paints a troubling picture of the harms of unnecessary delays in care. “This is striking,” one doctor said. “The trend is very clear.”

Blue Cross had refused to pay thousands of claims for the center’s patients, but on several occasions executives at the insurance company had signed special one-time deals with the center to pay for their wives’ cancer treatment. By @tchristianmiller.bsky.social

If the old saying is true, that you are known by who your friends are, then Trump may be telling the world something about who he plans to be in this second term. The friends he teamed up with this week? Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Syria and Sudan. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/u...

Whose side was Trump's America on when it came to a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Russia, North Korea and Belarus. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/w...

Thread on the influence of Russian and Asadist disinformation on Syria over the past decade. bsky.app/profile/geor...

yesterday?

The White House has kept the wire service from covering key events because it refuses to call the body of water between Mexico and Florida the Gulf of America, as the Trump administration prefers.

The Associated Press has asked a federal judge to restore its access to the White House press pool, saying in a lawsuit that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by limiting its reporters’ movements

You know it's getting bad when Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer are saying all the Nazi salutes at MAGA events has gotten a "little excessive" and to tone it down a notch. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

And there it is

In Trump’s telling, Ukraine, not Russia, is to blame for being invaded because it didn't surrender territory on the front end to Moscow. “You should have never started it,” Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it.

New: The Energy Department is seeking to bring back nuclear energy specialists after abruptly telling hundreds of workers that their jobs were eliminated, according to two people familiar with the matter

things are going great, just great

Top USAID officials are trying to create a false narrative that life-saving aid has continued despite Trump’s blanket halt to foreign aid. Our @nytimes.com reporting shows the exact opposite. USAID even issued an internal email to stop applications for waivers: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/u...

NEW: Elon Musk's friends have infiltrated the GSA and they're looking for ways to use White House credentials to access agency tech, potentially allowing them to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say. w/ @zoeschiffer.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Scores of senior career diplomats are resigning from the State Department effective at noon on Monday after receiving instructions to do so from President-elect Donald Trump’s aides www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

The case of the Canadian teen and the death of a Louisiana man are stark reminders of bird flu’s capacity to ignite serious illness.

Elon Musk secretly negotiated a prisoner swap directly with Iran and Italy that prevented a terrorism suspect indicted by DOJ, who allegedly participated in a drone attack on American servicemen, from being extradited to the United States. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/w...

The Washington Post began trying out a new mission statement this week: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.” It comes amid turmoil in the newsroom.

NEW: Mass heat mortality events are coming. In our new preprint, we project tens of thousands of deaths per week in Europe, if the weather patterns that produced heat waves historically happen again at future -- or even current -- global temperatures. eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

"For journalists, including me, Spencer was a cherished source of wisdom and a reminder of how fun and freewheeling politics used to be," @ktumulty.bsky.social writes. Eternally grateful to Karen for letting me tag along on a visit to see Stu in Palm Desert. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Prospect Medical announced -- at 11:02 p.m. on Saturday -- that it's filed for bankruptcy. At @propublica, we've been writing since 2020 about how private equity and Prospect's founders sucked hundreds of millions out of the troubled hospital company. www.propublica.org/article/inve...

The National Weather Service is now warning of another round of "particularly dangerous" fire weather in the Los Angeles area. Starting early Tuesday, wind gusts could reach up to 70 mph. "EXTREME RISK"

The Post’s analysis offers evidence that the Palisades Fire started in the area where firefighters had spent hours using helicopters to knock down a blaze six days earlier.

In 2020, we mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years — combining climate data with wildfire projections by US Forest Service researchers. See what changes are in store for your county. By @shaw.al , @abrahm.bsky.social & Jeremy W. Goldsmith

“In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy,” Hitler destroyed “a constitutional republic through constitutional means,” writes Timothy W. Ryback. Read about how Hitler overcame democracy in just 53 days:

Shawn Hubler, who covers California for The New York Times, details the personal, psychological toll of the wildfires. "Fires like the ones this week also take landscapes that, when they go, can take a piece of you with them." nyti.ms/3PvxOEp

Read this www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

One neighborhood in Altadena, before and after.

Getty Villa Museum catching fire, LAFD says

Mohsena al-Maithawi has been appointed by the new Syrian government to be the governor of the majority-Druze As-Suwayda Province. Al-Maithawi, who is Druze, is the first female Syrian governor in history.

Global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives – that is 6 lives every minute – since the founding of the Expanded Programme on Immunization, 50 years ago. bit.ly/4gpxQJK

Russia behaving as Russia does.

Not great.

I love how Denmark isn’t taking any shit from Donald Trump. 🇩🇰 🤣

"Two Syrian doctors and a nurse told AFP in a series of interviews over the weekend that Bashar al-Assad's government coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators after a deadly 2018 chlorine attack." by AFP's Layal Abou Rahal: www.yahoo.com/news/syrian-...

Concerning

@nytimes.com's Raja Abdulrahim and Ivor Prickett on the experience of life in Idlib under HTS: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/w...

Dare I say, wise words from Ahmad Al Shara'a in the presence of Walid Joumblat today: "If we want to think with the mindset of state-building and the construction of its institutions, the mentality of revenge and retribution should not be present because it is destructive."

After US meeting with HTS leader today, Barbara Leaf said Ahmad al-Sharaa (AKA Jolani) had committed to not allowing terror groups to operate in Syria and threaten US or neighbouring countries. As a result, US won’t pursue $10 million “reward for justice” on al-Sharaa. www.axios.com/2024/12/20/u...

BIG: Senior US official Barbara Leaf is traveling to Damascus #Syria in next few days. Strong signal of early engagement by US in post-Assad Syria. @barakravid.bsky.social scoop: www.axios.com/2024/12/19/u...

To fund a war with the U.S., the Taliban reaped millions from boom towns trading opium, heroin and meth. Once victorious, the group crushed the trade, leaving ghost towns in its wake.

Syria’s new Islamist government aims to rebuild the economy on free market principles, doing away with the legacy of Baathist state socialism. Timour Azhari, @reuters.com, Dec. 10: www.reuters.com/world/middle...