Is It Profiteering?

(This reminds me of Halliburton coming into a few lucrative contracts before and during the GWOT. -A.)

Tech, defense and support services companies make millions off new ICE contracts

By Indy Scholtens May 28, 2025 11:09 am

^{Palantir employees, including CEO Alex Karp, made millions in campaign donations in 2024. In April, the company won a $30 million contract to develop software to help ICE manage deportations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)}

In early April, hundreds of military and tech companies exhibited their products at the Border Security Expo, which brought “government leaders, law enforcement officials, and industry innovators” together. During the two-day event in Phoenix, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said he would like ICE to operate more like a business: “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” He added that “the badge and guns” should do “the badge-and-gun stuff, everything else, let’s contract out.”

The event illustrates how companies are rushing to secure government contracts as the Trump administration ramps up its spending on ICE to reach its deportation goals. The House approved a spending bill in early May that sets aside $175 billion for immigration enforcement – about 22 times ICE’s annual budget – and includes $45 billion for detention, $14.4 billion for transportation and removal operations and $8 billion for hiring new ICE staff. The Trump administration ordered DHS to hire an additional 20,000 ICE officers.

OpenSecrets previously reported on the private prisons and air carriers that are poised to benefit from President Donald Trump’s plans to increase deportation. This final article in the series focuses on other for-profit companies benefiting from deportations.

New contracts

In April, ICE awarded software company Palantir Technologies a $29.8 million contract for developing ImmigrationOS, a tool to help ICE with identifying and prioritizing the deportations of individuals who are considered a risk, such as violent criminals; tracking who is self-deporting; and managing cases from the individual’s entry through detention, hearing and deportation. Palantir is expected to provide a prototype of the ImmigrationOS tool by Sept. 25. The tool is an extension of systems that Palantir has already delivered as part of its almost $128 million contract signed in 2022.
Deployed Resources, an emergency management company that has provided mobile restrooms, sinks and tents to music festivals such as Lollapalooza and emergency relief following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Sandy, has been awarded over $4 billion in government contracts to build and operate border tents since 2016, according to ProPublica. The company earned a $3 billion contract with ICE in 2022 for running tent detention facilities around the border. On April 11, ProPublica reported that ICE awarded a new contract worth up to $3.8 billion to Deployed Resources. On April 17, however, the billion-dollar contract was canceled for reasons unknown. The next day, ICE submitted a $5 million proposal for Deployed Resources to deliver unarmed guard services for 30 days at an ICE facility in El Paso, Texas. ProPublica also revealed that ICE has housed detainees at a tent facility in El Paso operated by Deployed Resources since March. The facility was previously used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the Trump administration used the Department of Defense to award Deployed Resources an unannounced $140 million contract to run the site for ICE, citing the declaration of an emergency at the southern border. The facility can house up to 1,000 detainees, and ICE started transferring detainees on March 10, according to ProPublica.
Axon Enterprise, a company that develops technology and weapons for public safety, law enforcement and the military, took part in the Border Expo. The company was awarded a year-long $5.1 million contract on March 10 to deliver body cams and equipment. A day later, the company was awarded a $22,376 contract to deliver tasers that have been used specifically in deportations. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division bought $2.6 million worth of Axon tasers in 2020 and 2021.
Parsons Government Services, a “technology provider,” was also at the Border Expo. The company was awarded a contract worth up to $8.9 million for COVID-19 testing supplies in February, as well as an $87,467 contract in March and a $118,758 contract in April with ICE, both to provide “mobile biometric collection devices in support of the biometric identification transnational migration alert program.” The company is already wrapping up a one-year, $4.2 million contract for the transportation and guard services of ICE detainees in Newark.
General Dynamics, a weapons company, was awarded new $101,034 and $80,050 contracts in March to purchase non-lethal ammunition for training purposes for ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs.
Sig Sauer Inc., a firearms company, was awarded more than $200,000 worth of contracts with ICE for firearms and firearm accessories in the first months of 2025: $57,163 in February, and $19,824, $35,106 and $90,854 contracts in April.
Paragon Professional Services, was awarded a $1.1 million contract on April 1 for transporting people who are detained by ICE in the New York City area and a $458,400 month-long contract to provide transportation of ICE detainees in Baltimore on April 17.

Follow the money

Palantir spent $5.8 million on lobbying the federal government in 2024. The company’s employees also made almost $5 million in campaign contributions during the 2024 elections. The largest contributions included $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc, $1 million to MAGA Inc and $344,914 to the Republican National Committee. Palantir’s CEO, Alexander Karp, contributed to Democratic as well as Republican candidates during the 2024 elections. In 2023, Karp contributed $163,800 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $154,920 to their Republican counterparts. Karp increased his contributions to the Republican Party after Trump was elected: On Dec. 12, 2024, Karp contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-supporting super PAC. In the first months of 2025, Karp contributed $360,000 to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) Grow the Majority PAC and a combined $310,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Palantir also spent $170,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025.
Even though the company has no lobbying history, Deployed Resources has hired more than a dozen former government insiders, according to ProPublica, including some high-ranking ICE officials. Marlen Pineiro joined Deployed recently, after working for the Department of Homeland Security in Central America developing policies with Panama, and a decade as a senior official at ICE, according to her LinkedIn profile. A month after Trump’s victory, former ICE field office director Sean Ervin announced he was joining Deployed Resources as a senior adviser for strategic initiatives.
Axon Enterprise contributed to both the Democratic and Republican parties. The CEO, Patrick Smith, donated $25,000 to the Scalise Leadership Fund of 2024, a joint fundraising committee run by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). James Norton, the vice president of the company, contributed several thousand dollars to Republicans in the past two years. Axon Enterprise spent $1.5 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase compared to Q1 2024. One of Axon’s lobbyists, Helen Tolar, also served as a transition advisor to Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs.
Employees and PACs related to Parsons Government Services’ mother corporation, Parsons Corporation, contributed $592,053 in the 2024 elections, with $27,715 to Kamala Harris and $13,076 to Donald Trump. The company spent $950,000 on lobbying in 2024, mostly on defense issues. In the first quarter of 2025, the company ramped up its lobbying to $590,000, a $370,000 increase from the same quarter in 2024. Parsons Corporation has its own PAC, which spent $247,600 on Republican federal candidates in the 2024 elections, and $151,250 on Democratic candidates.
Sig Sauer Inc.’s PAC contributed $87,715 in the 2024 elections, mostly to Republican candidates. The company’s CEO, Ron Cohen, contributed $25,000 in 2024 to Preserve America, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump. The company spent $530,000 on lobbying in 2024 and $260,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase from the first quarter in 2024. It did not lobby on specific bills in 2024.
General Dynamics contributed $3.4 million in the election, both to Republicans as well as Democrats. The company also spent $12.2 million on lobbying in 2024, mostly regarding defense issues. It spent $3.3 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, a $340,000 increase from the previous year.
Paragon Professional Services LLC is a subsidiary of Bering Straits Assn., which contributed $15,305 in the 2024 elections, both on Democratic as well as Republican candidates. The company lobbied to the tune of $280,000 in 2024, mostly on the Coast Guard Authorization Act and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. It has spent $60,000 on lobbying in 2025 so far. CEO Gail Schubert spent several thousand dollars on Republican candidates in Alaska.

Why does it matter?

(snip-It Matters! MORE on the page; click through above on the article headline.)

This Is Well Said.

(I have a paid subscription to this Substack because it’s worth it. I hope you enjoy this one! -A)

Chris Cillizza’s Tesla Violently Stickered To Death, But Don’t Worry It Got Better by Rebecca Schoenkopf

He needs to talk about some things. Read on Substack Evan Hurst

May 29, 2025

The funniest thing of all time has happened, you can stop looking for funny things. Ageless wonder hack Chris Cillizza has taken to the pages of the Daily Beast to bemoan the brutal recent vandalism committed against his precious Tesla and the concomitant decline and fall of American civility it demonstrates.

Can’t we all just get along? And why we gotta make everything about politics? That’s what Cillizza wants to know. It’s not like one of the major parties is virtually indistinguishable from the Nazis at this point, oh wait, yes it is.

Let’s read this together.

Cutting right to the business, Cillizza says he came out to his car after his son’s soccer game in Virginia this week, and found that the Tesla Model 3 had been ~~windows smashed~~ ~~spray-painted with swastikas~~ ~~keyed~~ ~~egged~~ ~~set on fire~~ violently stickered. He produced a picture of the sticker, TRIGGER WARNING for it’s a sticker:

We are surprised the sticker hooligan didn’t include a piece of candy, just to let people know they were a peaceful sticker hooligan. Maybe a homemade Rice Krispie treat. Cillizza still decided to write a full column about the nonetheless painful incident.

You see, when Cillizza bought his Tesla Model 3 during the first Trump administration, he didn’t buy it to say he was a gay liberal climate change affirmer, which is what Tesla meant then. He bought it because it made him feel cool.

Likewise, when he drives his Tesla around now, he doesn’t drive it to say hey, I love Elon Musk and Donald Trump and being a Nazi! He drives it because it makes him feel cool.

When he first bought his Tesla, he was worried a “bro” was going to key it — you know how the “bros” are — or maybe set a charging station on fire!

And now? Libs with stickers!

To me, the vandalism speaks to the idiocy of trying to make everything political. Five or six years ago, my Tesla symbolized everything MAGA world hated. But now it symbolizes everything the left hates?

Things, how do they change! No, he literally means how do they change, because he doesn’t understand:

Doesn’t that suggest that there’s an inherent ephemeralness to what an inanimate object “means” in a political context? If the meaning of owning a certain kind of car can change 180 degrees in the space of a single administration, give or take, isn’t it possible that ascribing meaning to it in the first place was misguided?

How can Chris Cillizza’s Tesla go from being very cool to being a Nazi mating signal in just one presidential administration? Doesn’t that mean giving meanings to things is wrong?

All of these would be good questions if the answers weren’t so mindfuckingly simple, or if everything existed in a vacuum.

One more example: Anytime I post about going to eat at Chick-Fil-A, I get a few comments of this sort: How does HATE taste????

Ooh, we bet he eats Chick-Fil-A in his Tesla too. Wonder how HATE tastes inside SWASTICARS.

Probably tastes like chicken.

But does a sandwich have to be political?

Well, we don’t imagine all sandwiches have to be political, just like all cars don’t have to be political. If you’re eating Popeye’s in your RAV4, we doubt anybody is going to pull up next to you and shout “Sieg heil, queer-hater!”

At least not without some other context for the story that we don’t know.

But that’s the thing here, isn’t it? Chris Cillizza wants to be able to make whatever choices he wants to make, devoid of context, and also devoid of any kind of public criticism. Because freedom for conservative white men in America is defined as “I get to do anything I want, without consequences, and without ever being criticized.”

I didn’t eat it because I wanted to send a message to gay people. I ate it because it was delicious.

Yes, yes, we get it, it’s fine.

I know there are plenty of people out there who will argue some version of this: By eating the sandwich or buying the Tesla, you are lining the pockets of people with views that should be rejected. You are—in the parlance of the times—“normalizing” them and their views.

Yes, we know, and he just wants to eat the sandwich in the car that makes him feel cool, without even having to think about gay-bashing or the people who are murdering starving and sick babies in Africa by destroying the federal government.

He acts like he’s the first one who’s ever discovered this concept:

To this I would say two things:

I am pretty sure Elon Musk and Chick-Fil-A are going to be just fine whether or not I own a Tesla or buy a #1 meal.
If your bar is that you never interact with or buy anything from a company whose founder has taken a position with which you disagree or which has donated to a cause you don’t support, I find it very hard to believe you are going to make any purchases ever. Breaking news: Giant corporations tend to do what makes them the most money, not always what’s “right.”

Yeah, he’s probably right about the Chick-Fil-A. However, Tesla — the car company, not Elon Musk the man — is really hurting right now. Sales are down 87 percent in Quebec. Sales are down 49 percent in Europe. New headlines like that come out every week. And they’re not going away, even as Elon allegedly prepares to “leave” the government, as the excitable and impressionable New York Times is telling us today.

The #TeslaTakedown isn’t going anywhere. That car has become synonymous with Nazis, with incels, with the self-inflicted destruction of the US government, with firing veterans, with hurting immigrants, with every vile and terrible thing Elon and his boss Stupid Hitler have done to America without its consent since January 20.

That’s gonna stick, and it’s gonna stick forever. The #TeslaTakedown is here to stay. In 50 years people are going to be violently taking magic marker to sticker and writing “Elon Musk is a Nazi” and putting it on whatever godawfully ugly shit cars the company is making then, assuming it still exists, and it might not at this rate.

As for his second thing, yes, we know that policing every purchase for the ideological associations of its manufacturer is pretty impossible. Cillizza seems to believe that, such being the case, no manufacturer should ever reap the consequences of their political behavior or that of their South African apartheid scumbag CEO.

We disagree!

Not everything has to be political. You can buy a car because it’s fun to drive without sending some deep signal about where you stand in politics.

Not a Tesla you can’t.

You can eat a sandwich because it’s delicious, not because you have an anti-gay agenda.

He’s really worried somebody is going to put a sticker on his sandwich.

The obsession with making every little bit of our lives into a political statement is, I think, making us all crazy. And driving us further from any sort of recognition of our common humanity.

That’s the end of it. Please note that in the entire column he only produced two (2) examples of this phenomenon that he describes as “making every little bit of our lives into a political statement.” It sounds more to us like he has two (2) favorite products that make his dick hard without any pharmaceutical intervention, and one of them is a sandwich and one of them is a car, and people keep saying things to him about it.

It would be different if he could have labored to come up with even a third thing. (Three things is a pattern, that’s the rule in journalism, idiots.) If he could even muster up a “And then they said I love slavery because I bought the wrong crock pot!” it might be slightly more convincing. Slightly.

But really, to support “every little bit of our lives,” we’re gonna need more than three.

But that would require Chris Cillizza to put in some effort, and we have never seen evidence that he’s willing or capable in that regard.

So, in summary and in conclusion, wank wank wank wank fuck off, Chris Cillizza can take his Tesla through a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru in hell, we don’t give a care, how’s that for common humanity?

A fucking sticker, Jesus fucking Christ.

He wrote this column about a sticker.

He didn’t even suggest it damaged the paint!

Fuck.

Barbara Gittings, and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/29

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may29

Annoying A.I.

Readers Annoyed When Fantasy Novel Accidentally Leaves AI Prompt in Published Version, Showing Request to Copy Another Writer’s Style

Bot Romance May 23, 9:06 AM EDTby Victor Tangermann

“I just about fell out of my chair when I read this!”

Artificial Intelligence / Ai Chatbots / Amazon / Artificial Intelligence

Readers were annoyed to discover something galling: evidence that an author used AI, right in the middle of a novel.

The novel, titled “Darkhollow Academy : Year 2,” penned by author Lena McDonald, falls under a romance subgenre called “reverse harem,” which conventionally follows a female protagonist with multiple male partners.

But as eagle-eyed fans of the genre were irritated to discover, the author left glaringly obvious evidence of not only using an AI chatbot to write portions of the book — but also of a naked attempt to copy the style of a real fellow writer.

“I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements,” a since-deleted passage in chapter three of the novel reads, as seen in screenshots posted to the ReverseHarem subreddit earlier this month.

J. Bree is the human author of an internationally bestselling series of romance and fantasy novels.

The instance is yet another illustration of how Amazon is being flooded with self-published AI slop, a trend that has been going on ever since the tech went mainstream a few years ago. It’s a real problem for human authors, too, with AI-generated books drowning out their work in search results pages.

In one particularly egregious example, author Jane Friedman discovered back in 2023 that roughly a dozen books were being sold on Amazon with her name on them.

Understandably, the small ReverseHarem community on Reddit was outraged after McDonald was caught blatantly using AI to rip off the voice of a real author.

“I just about fell out of my chair when I read this!” wrote the user who shared the screenshots.

“I got the book to provide secondary confirmation that this is real,” another user chimed in. “Which means everyone has now read part of the book, which qualifies for a Goodreads rating, and possibly even Amazon.”

Readers tore into the book in a storm of one-star reviews.

“This was written with generative AI, as is clear by the prompt that was left in the book before uploading to Amazon,” one disgruntled reviewer wrote. “I will support authors in many, many ways, but generative AI is theft and it’s not a replacement for actual writing.”

“I would assume all of her other writing uses AI as well, as book 1 of this series released 1/24/25, book 2 on 3/13/25, and book 3 on 3/23/25,” one GoodReads reviewer wrote. “That’s faster than Steven King.”

A book reviewer account called Indie Book Spotlight put it a lot more bluntly in a Bluesky post.

“F**k you if you steal and copy authors’ works,” the user wrote. “F**k you if you use gen ai and call yourself a writer. You’re an opportunist hack using a theft machine.”

McDonald’s blunder is just the tip of the iceberg. Two other purported authors identified by Indie Book Spotlight were caught dabbling with generative AI to churn out novels.

Earlier this year, a writer who goes by KC Crowne was also seemingly caught leaving ChatGPT prompts in the text of their work.

“Thought for 13 seconds,” one passage of a book titled “Dark Obsession” on Amazon reads, as seen in screenshots posted to the RomanceBooks subreddit in January. “Certainly! Here’s an enhanced version of your passage, making Elena more relatable and injecting additional humor while providing a brief, sexy description of Grigori.”

Crowne’s Amazon page features a whopping 171 titles, each adorned with an AI-generated cover of topless, tattoo-covered men.

“International Bestselling Author and Amazon Top 8 US Bestseller,” the author’s bio reads.

A third writer, who goes by Rania Faris, was also caught using an AI chatbot.

“This is already quite strong, but it can be tightened for a sharper and more striking delivery while maintaining the intensity and sardonic edge you’re aiming for,” reads a passage one Threads user discovered in a printed copy of Faris’ book.

Oddly enough, Crowne’s novels are getting predominantly positive reviews on GoodReads, indicating they have found their niche, and readers may either not care or not be aware of the use of AI.

Users on Bluesky were sharing theories as to why.

“Oh wow, I just caught up on the KC Crowne AI thing,” award-winning Canadian author Krista Ball wrote in a post back in January. “So setting aside the AI prompt left in the book, I am amazed that this wasn’t mentioned anywhere by the early readers, the street team, etc – which leads into my paranoid theory that a percentage of readers are just skim reading.”

“Remember back in the day when writing fast was like a good reputation builder?” she added. “Now it’s sus as all hell.”

Neither McDonald nor Faris has publicly listed contact information. Crowne, at least, is taking accountability for the situation.

“Earlier this year, I made an honest mistake,” Crowne wrote in an email to Futurism. “I accidentally uploaded the wrong draft file, which included an AI prompt. That error was entirely my responsibility, and that’s why I made the tough decision to address it publicly.”

Crowne claimed that “while I occasionally use AI tools to brainstorm or get past writer’s block, every story I publish is fundamentally my own,” saying that “I only use AI-assisted tools in ways that help me improve my craft while fully complying with the terms of service of publishing platforms, to the best of my ability.”

AI or not, Crowne has somehow published 171 novels over the last seven years.

Whether the use of generative AI in self-published books on Amazon breaks any rules remains somewhat unclear. An Amazon spokesperson pointed us to the company’s content guidelines, which govern “which books can be listed for sale, regardless of how the content was created.”

The guidelines have an entire subsection dedicated to the use of AI, which stipulates that “AI-assisted content” is permitted and sellers aren’t even “required to disclose” its use. However, any “AI-generated images include cover and interior images and artwork” have to be labeled as such.

The internet at large is also facing an existential threat in the shape of an AI slop tsunami. Do we really need to extend that trend to 300-page fantasy novels to read on the subway to work?

Self-published authors who are trying to stand out in an already busy marketplace aren’t hopeful.

“They bring down the reputation of those of us who don’t touch AI to write our books,” author Catherine Arthur tweeted. “Being tarred with the ‘self-published = written by AI’ label is not good, and if they don’t stop, then that’s what may happen.”

More on AI slop: Journalists at Chicago Newspaper “Deeply Disturbed” That “Disaster” AI Slop Was Printed Alongside Their Real Work

Options

I ran Harry Potter tours in Edinburgh – here’s why I’m stopping them for good

May 28 Written by Fraser Horn

Fraser Horn is dropping Harry Potter tours from his roster (Dan Chiu-Lezeau)

Fraser Horn is dropping Harry Potter tours from his roster (Dan Chiu-Lezeau)

The decision to drop Harry Potter tours in Edinburgh was not an easy one to make, but was necessary, says guide and Edinburgh Street Historians founder Fraser Horn, writing exclusively for PinkNews.

I was about 11 when I first got into Harry Potter, the kid looked a lot like me at the time.

My mum gave me a copy [of one of the books] and, like so many others, I felt the series captured the mood at the time: a sense of peril, mixed with optimism that the world could turn out OK if people stood up for what was right against what was wrong.

It was an instant classic of a kids book and that’s probably why so many millennials still hold such affection [for it] to this day. But we all grew after the series finished, some of us into decent people and others into cartoon villainy.

This is why today I’m announcing that following the success of the LGBTQ+ tour replacing Harry Potter, come July, the Harry Potter tour will not be coming back.

This decision was not made lightly. Although I wanted out of Potter ever since JK Rowling’s essay in 2020, the simple fact of the matter is that the story is so deeply ingrained in the Edinburgh tourism industry that it feels almost impossible to dislodge.

The connections between Edinburgh and Harry Potter very clearly involve Rowling, since it was [here] that the series was written. The films make demand stronger, bringing in a new audience, and repeat showings keep young people interested. With the new TV show, I expect Potter tourism to increase [here] and across the UK.

If any of those tourists are queer and want a tour that’s more important, they can book the LGBTQ+ one here.

I have been a guide since 2019 but went independent in February. Street Historians was a name that came from the idea that we would be like street magicians, but of history rather than magic. We’re fun, different and the best way to see Edinburgh, in my view.

The initial plan was to do a couple of tours – Edinburgh’s Old Town and Harry Potter – on a free/pay-what-you-want basis. I planned on doing this because I knew it worked. It was around March that I got in touch with LGBT Health and Wellbeing, a Scottish charity which focuses on supporting the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ adults. I wanted to discuss donating money from my Harry Potter profits to them but I also [said] I had offered an LGBTQ+ tour privately in the past.

They were particularly interested in the LGBTQ+ tour so I decided to run that every Friday at 6pm. It involves medical innovators, spies and [the] Aids [crisis], as well as how activists helped reshape society for the LGBTQ+ community. It is essential stuff.

I was motivated to drop Potter for Pride month because of the recent Supreme Court decision which will make our trans siblings unsafe. Rowling has confirmed she donated money to the organisation that advocated for the court decision and celebrated with a cigar picture on a boat, which made me want to drop Potter even more.

The Harry Potter tour will be replaced with a queer-related one. (Dan Chiu-Lezeau)

The response – both to the original LGBTQ tour and to replacing Potter with it – has been overwhelming.

People who have come on the LGBTQ+ tour love having an event which is a bit different from the standard fare, both in terms of walking tours and queer events. Guests have been making friends and these are the kind of life-long connections from which community is made. The decision to drop Potter for LGBTQ+ history has been a success and most have been positive about it.

However, some thought I was doing it for the wrong reason: rainbow capitalism, or purely to make money for Pride, before switching back to the Potter tours. It’s fair that the community might expect this sort of thing because as we’ve seen, companies change very quickly. A great example of this would be Barclays Bank, which has a very proud LGBTQ+ section. Then I read how they are banning trans people from using the toilets of their gender, based on the court ruling.

To reassure people, Potter will not be coming back to the Street Historians roster. We have been looking for more interesting stories to tell, for example on forgotten women.

Even with significant economic considerations, it seems necessary for me to drop Potter. The series may be a draw for other people but it is proving harder as time goes by to conjure up enthusiasm. Some may be upset, but I guess that’s the lesson I took from the sort of books I read growing up. We have to take a stand eventually or nothing will ever change.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful. (snip)

Women Fasted, Amnesty Int’l Founded, and Much More in Peace & Justice History for 5/28

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may28

My Favorite Sport is Spelling Bees

Leave it to the Republicans to mess up sports. They don’t like anybody, and they don’t want anybody to be happy. The word in question is a word: it’s in the dictionary, is used by people, and it makes sense in a sentence. What a story! Peace and good spelling to all. ☮

How the word ‘womyn’ dragged the National Spelling Bee into the US culture wars

In an age of division where authoritarianism is seeping into every corner of American discourse, the Spelling Bee offers up a reminder of what America should truly be

Scott RemerTue 27 May 2025 05.00 EDTShare

We’re living through turbulent times, to say the least. Authoritarianism and fascism threaten the United States. The conspiracy thinking, paranoia and manufactured outrage so characteristic of QAnon and the big lie about the 2020 election have colonized our political discourse like a fungus. Even the National Spelling Bee, a cultural institution which will be celebrating its centennial this year and which is generally exempted from the far right’s paranoid vitriol, hasn’t been immune. Earlier this year, a foofaraw erupted when right-wing outlets reported on the acceptance of “womyn” as an alternate spelling of “women” in the regional-level wordlist which the National Spelling Bee issues each year.

The reason “womyn” was included in the wordlist wasn’t some shadowy feminist plot by the Bee’s organizers. The competition simply allows any word in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary, unless it is obsolete. “Womyn” is in the dictionary, along with tens of thousands of other words, such as “pointless”, “culture” and “war”.

With zero self-awareness, an anti-trans podcast host raged that the Bee’s uncontroversial decision to allow “womyn” was a manifestation of “fabricated issues” and “totally manufactured outrage.” On Fox News, she snarled, “How lucky are we to live in the United States of America, where the spelling of women, never mind the definition, has become a national debate.” Samantha Poetter-Parshall, a Kansas state representative, joined in the criticism, calling the inclusion of womyn an instance of “crazy indoctrination of our children.” A parent quoted in reportage on the faux scandal shared Poetter-Parshall’s concern, asserting, “This is supposed to be about spelling and language, not ideology.”

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, 1984, and the essay Politics and the English Language, would be startled to hear such a complaint. Orwell deeply understood the intimate relationship between language, thought, and politics. He keenly observed how “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible … Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

In our time, imprisoning and attempting to deport legal residents of the US for their political views and sending legal residents and gay people fleeing persecution in Venezuela – and potentially US citizens – to prisons in El Salvador where torture is widespread based on flimsy evidence from disgraced police officers is called “securing our homeland”. The announcement of economically ruinous tariffs which have wiped trillions off the stock market is called “liberation day.” Orwell believed that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration.” To combat the creep of Orwellian language, he argued that we should “recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end,” aiming to always use “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.

In its emphasis on linguistic precision and its heartfelt delight in words, the National Spelling Bee is already political in Orwell’s sense. The Bee also has an implicit politics of appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Though most spellers are American, the competition has an international flavor: it regularly features participants from Ghana, Canada, Jamaica, South Korea, China, and Nigeria, and spelling bees have sprung up in countries like Zimbabwe too. The welcome which the Bee extends to logophiles from all over the world inculcates in kids an appreciation of other cultures and promotes a cosmopolitan worldview. Spellers study words from Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German; this cultivates their love of linguistic variety. What’s more, the fact that the South Asian community regularly dominates the upper echelons of the competition reaffirms the importance of immigration to our society.

These days, even if many Americans reject the Trump regime’s ugly attitudes and practices, xenophobia and racism are rampant, hearkening back to the bad old days of the Know-Nothing Party and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The US government has become increasingly hostile to international travelers: there have been a spate of horrific stories of tourists, visitors, and legal residents from Germany, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere who have done nothing wrong being arrested, detained, and held for weeks by Ice, or being refused entry to the US and deported. In such a context, the National Spelling Bee’s steadfast commitment to multiculturalism is all the more essential.

Despite its unfortunate Covid-induced cancellation in 2020 and some turbulence from rule changes and regional sponsor attrition in 2021 and 2022, the National Spelling Bee has been a relative constant for students in an age of extreme dislocation and upheaval. In these politically polarized times, it offers Americans an opportunity for joy and collective uplift. It celebrates education, attention, focus, dedication, and quiet, patient effort. It teaches students grit, discipline, and linguistics. It reminds us of the importance of the human in an age of AI. It reinforces the importance of good sportsmanship and fair play. It promotes respect and friendship towards humanity at large. It invites us to honor and remember the values that ought to unite us all. The National Spelling Bee is a reminder of what America has been – and what it must continue to be.

Scott Remer is a professional spelling bee tutor, freelance writer, and the author of the textbooks Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Sesquipedalia!: A Rigorous Vocabulary Study Guide, Regional Bee Ready!, and A Few Final Words of Wisdom.

More Republican “Greatness”

Trump and Pete Hegseth inspiring Islamic State recruitment propaganda

Experts say president’s dismantling of world order, rapport with Netanyahu and choice of Pentagon chief benefiting IS

Donald Trump has a long and colorful history with the Islamic State. He incorrectly blamed the founding of IS on his predecessor, said its infamous leader “died like a dog” while announcing his assassination, and rallied an international coalition that successfully ended its so-called caliphate.

So far, in his second presidency, his administration has much less to do with IS. But the terror group has still benefited from him.

Experts tell the Guardian that IS is capitalizing on Trump’s dismantling of the international order, his affinity for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, and most of all – his most controversial cabinet appointment – in its recruitment propaganda.

In the US, IS supporters consuming that online messaging have become bona fide security threats in recent months, with a string of incidents dating back to before the presidential election.

On New Year’s Day in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a 13-year veteran of the US army, used a truck to kill fourteen partygoers in the name of IS. Earlier in May, Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, an ex-national guardsman, was arrested and charged with plotting a mass shooting at a military base near Detroit, on behalf of the group.

“The January 1 New Orleans attack and subsequent IS-linked arrests in the country demonstrate the continued influence the organization can project into the US,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, who has tracked the terrorist group for several years.

“These incidents also highlight how IS leverages the online space through social media and messaging applications to spread its ideology and inspire supporters to plot attacks.”

Part of that, as Webber explained, was persistently defining the US as a “crusader” state – the name jihadists have long used for all western countries.

But secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, referential to those pan-European medieval invaders, have fueled IS propaganda dispersed on Rocket.Chat – a recruitment platform the terror group uses to communicate with its followers and recruits.

An April IS-article, titled Clear Evidence in Ink, zeroed in on Hegseth’s ink, which features crosses associated with crusaders and another on his arm that reads “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic.

The term also became better known among war on terror soldiers, who, like Hegseth, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a pejorative for themselves.

“This takes us back to the media stir just days ago when the American ‘crusader’ secretary of defense published photos of himself with the word ‘kafir’ written on his arm in Arabic, alongside other explicit phrases glorifying the crusades!” said the IS propaganda, amid a backdrop of Hegseth’s tattooed chest and arms.

“Events like these, orchestrated by Allah’s wisdom, serve as warnings and clear evidence of the true nature of the war waged by Jews and Christians against us – it is a deeply rooted religious war.”

On Rocket.Chat, pro-IS users fervently responded.

“What more do you want as proof that they want to wipe us all together?” wrote one user underneath an image of Hegseth’s tattoos.

Other fodder tapped for its digital propaganda, is Trump’s associations with Netanyahu and the IDF’s continued flattening of Gaza, which several experts and governments have called a modern-day genocide.

IS images and articles call for “revenge for the Muslims in Gaza” and the war, which has become one of its most valuable recruitment topics.

IS also sees the stream of international tariffs unleashed by the Trump administration as a sign the west and its power structures are unravelling. As another IS article described how “the reckless Trump has repeatedly claimed victory over jihad, yet now he is preoccupied with fighting German cars and Chinese goods” and stoking “commercial wars” that would lead to the demise of “kafir nations”.

Combinations of these topics are mainstay recruitment hooks that IS and its predecessor organization, al-Qaida, have used for years attracting men into its ranks. IS is in a rebuilding stage as Syria – once a base for its most successful era – has vowed to banish the group and other jihadist elements from operating within its borders, as the nascent government seeks rapprochement with the US.

But other IS chapters have shown they are attracting Americans, foreigners, and locals to their cause, by peddling anti-US messaging.

“Trump and the US have been monitored by [IS-Khorasan] Pashto, Urdu and Farsi channels specifically referring to developments in Syria and Afghanistan,” said Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Islamabad-based publication the Khorasan Diary and an expert on the group’s Afghan wing.

“[IS-K] continue to foster the idea that there is no difference between Afghanistan and Syria trajectories and that both are puppets in the hands of the US, Russia, and China.”

The IS-K branch has shown its reach inside the US, too. An Afghan national and a co-conspirator were arrested in October, after the FBI disrupted an IS-K sponsored plot to attack a mass gathering on election day.

The justice department also described in 2024 court documents that IS-Somalia, an upstart branch which has become the intense focus of Pentagon airstrikes, had attracted an American foreign fighter who was in contact with their recruiters.

“IS-Somalia is becoming more internationally ambitious in its recruitment, associated online propaganda, and incitement efforts,” Webber said. “Pro-IS Somalia outlets are creating media content focused on US policy in the region and support for governments in the area.”

Milky Way News-

The Milky Way Has a Mysterious ‘Broken Bone’

Galactic bones, filaments of radio-wave-emitting particles, run through our galaxy, and one of them has a fracture. New analysis suggests collision with a neutron star may have caused it.

A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University

If you look at the Milky Way through a powerful telescope, you’ll notice that close to the center of the galaxy there are elongated filaments that seem to outline its spiral shape. Scientists have a nickname for these structures: “galactic bones.” Recently, astronomers found that one of the Milky Way’s bones is “fractured,” and they believe they’ve now found a possible culprit: a neutron star that may have collided with it.

According to NASA, these bones are huge elongated formations of energized particles that spiral along magnetic fields running through the galaxy. The particles release radio waves, and so are detectable using radio telescopes.

Scientists have found several such bones in the galaxy, but one of the most striking is called G359.13142-0.20005, also known as “the Snake.” It is a 230-light-year-long filament that appears to have a fracture. It is also one of the brightest. One of the first explanations was that some as yet undetected body had disturbed the filament.

A study by Harvard University, published in the journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, set out to test this hypothesis. The research team involved found signs of a pulsar, a neutron star spinning at high speed, in the same region as the broken bone. These stars are extremely dense, and are the small remnants left after the explosion of a supermassive star.

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, along with the MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa and the Very Large Array in New Mexico—two systems that detect radio waves—scientists found what appear to be traces of a pulsar in the filament. Based on data from these observatories, they estimate that this pulsar impacted the bone at a speed of between 1,609,000 and 3,218,000 kilometers per hour. The suspected collision is thought to have distorted the magnetic field of the bone, causing its radio signal to deform.

A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake.

The structure G359.13, with the fracture visible on its right-hand side. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University

In the above image provided by NASA, the Snake can be seen, and there is a body that appears to be interacting with the structure, in the middle of its length. It is possibly the aforementioned neutron star.

Pulsars are alternative versions of a neutron star where, in addition to being compact objects, they rotate at high velocities and produce strong magnetic fields. At the moment there is no instrument that can see them directly due to their size and distance, but radio telescopes can detect the electromagnetic waves they emit and hear them by converting these into sound.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

A Bit Of A Sojo Article I Read Earlier

of interest here. Opinion Politics Democracy, Voting, and Governance

The Church Can Offer Trans Refuge From Bad Theology and Bad Legislation

By Oisín Rowe

Snippet:
In the book The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, theologian Jon Paul Sydnor argues that even the apostle Paul calls for an allegorical reading of Genesis by citing his letter to the church in Galatia. In Galatians 4:21-31, Paul explains the significance of Sarah and Hagar. In verse 24, he tells his audience, “These things are being taken figuratively: the women represent two covenants.” If Paul didn’t read Genesis literally, then I think that permits Christians to interpret Genesis from a more open perspective when it comes to gender and sexuality.

I hold out hope that the Bible can be interpreted in such a way as to make room for me and other trans people. I grasp on to the idea that there is a Christianity out there that is safe and committed to fighting anti-trans legislation. Perhaps to my own harm, I even sometimes find myself hoping that fundamentalists and the Far Right can be persuaded. Persuaded to care, persuaded to see the shared humanity between themselves and transgender people, persuaded by their own good book to protect my community and change their ways. Though I know this is unlikely, I continue to cling to hope. As I am literally fed and cared for by a Christian community, I gain a better understanding of what faith looks like. Today, I am choosing to have faith in my identity as something beautiful and chosen, and good.

In Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation, theologians Terese J. Hornsby and Deryn Guest write, “The trans body is not a minority exception to a two-gendered system; it is not an anomaly or a body that exists in the margins. The reality is that there are no margins.” This limitlessness, this abundance, is not only good theology, it is safety, it is belonging.