Republicans caused or did this. We should ban them.
Photo: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro, who also serves as Kennedy Space Center director, a post she assumed in 2021. Trump elevated Petro to lead NASA after he ousted former Sen. Bill Nelson for believing in climate change.
As previously reported here, European governments have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to lure US scientists.
Newly-released data shows that Oklahoma ranks 46th in per-pupil spending, but Walters, who is eyeing a run for governor, has called for cuts to his state’s “wasteful” education spending, including $250,000 to provide school districts with emergency inhalers.
In his KFOR interview, Walters did boast about getting new teachers a signing bonus, but as was widely reported the time, $290,000 of that money had to be clawed back because it had gone to teachers who did not qualify. Some of those teachers had already spent the money.
The SPLC’s report is here. The February 2024 report linked below shows that the same thing is happening in the UK.
Guess who donated to the Texas Republicans behind the new law?
Something something free speech.
Rep. Beth Lear first appeared here in January 2024 when she defended her anti-trans bathroom bill by citing the “millstones” bible verse which calls for drowning anyone who hurts children.
She later blamed “depraved monster” Alfred Kinsey, liberals, and the ACLU for transgender people even existing.
Rep. Josh Williams first appeared here in July 2024 for his bill that would criminalize drag shows in the presence of children. Williams reintroduced his bill last week.
Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Happy Birthday Sir Bertrand Russell, and more in Peace & Justice History for 5/18
May 18, 1872 Bertrand Russell Birthday of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his “Man’s Peril [from the Hydrogen Bomb]” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development of nuclear weapons: “. . . as a human being to other human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” A year later, together with Albert Einstein nine other scientists, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. Text of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. He resigned in 1960, however, and formed the more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting mass civil disobedience, and he himself with Lady Russell led mass sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence, at the age of 89.  Bertrand Russell in front of the British Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, London |
| May 18, 1896 Supreme Court endorsed “separate but equal” facilities for those of different races with its Plessy v. Ferguson decision, a ruling that was overturned 58 years later. |
| May 18, 1972 Margaret (Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change) to consider the common problems faced by retirees — loss of income, loss of contact with associates, and loss of one of society’s most distinguishing social roles, one’s job. The members discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement — the freedom to speak personally and passionately about what they believed in, such as their collective opposition to the Vietnam War.  Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers  Gray Panther history |
| May 18, 1974 In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France. Detailed background on India’s nuclear weapons program and its first test |
| May 18, 1979 A jury in a federal court in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee established a company’s responsibility for damage to the health of a worker in the nuclear industry. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant where plutonium was manufactured. Silkwood had become the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety issues, but had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents. The jury in Judge Frank G. Theis’s court awarded her estate $505,000 in actual damages, and $10 million punitive damages.  Karen Silkwood’s sisters and parents She had died in a car accident on her way to a meeting with a The New York Times reporter five years earlier. Karen Silkwood remembered The Supreme Court upheld the decision and the award |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may18
“Libyan Gov’t Decries Fake News about Taking 1 mn. Palestinian Refugees: ‘Committed to the Palestinian Cause’”
Juan Cole 05/17/2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Abu Dhabi-based Erem News reports that the Prime Minister of Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, has vehemently denied the report in the “American Thinker” by what Libya called the “notorious conspiracy theorist” Jerome Corsi that the Trump administration is negotiating with the Libyan government to take one million Palestinians. It is an absurd allegation on the face of it. Libyans have long been extremely pro-Palestinian and any leader that cooperated with the extremist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in ethnically cleansing so many Palestinians from …
Read More Here: https://www.juancole.com/2025/05/scurrilous-palestinian-committed.html
Sunday political cartoons / memes / news items. I think I held this batch to the right size.
Israeli strikes across Gaza kill dozens and force a main hospital to close, health officials say
https://apnews.com/article/mideast-wars-israel-gaza-hamas-hostages-18-05-2025-f325044576f1ac31e6083622242c9990
Israeli strikes across Gaza kill dozens and force a main hospital to close, health officials say
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
I Keep On Learning
They are doing it. Gross, corrupt, and hateful
Kent, a twice-failed House candidate and self-professed fan of the Proud Boys, last appeared here when he declared that he would be keeping a $8600 campaign donation from a Capitol rioter then-facing felony assault charges. We first heard from Kent in 2022 when he gave an interview to a white nationalist Nazi podcaster.
Fox Host Agrees With Oklahoma Schools Chief That Students Should Be Taught 2020 Election Was Stolen
“And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Look, we’re doing it.’ But all the sodomites are still there and we’re not going to talk about that. And I need a guy there, I need a minister there who’s gonna say, ‘Oh, but we are. Obergefell is next, we’re coming for that,’ so that you calibrate the Christians in DC by the word of God and not by whatever the present administration can tolerate.
“We’re gonna come for feminism. We’re going to go after sodomy. Those are the sins in that town. Those are sins that are acceptable among both parties in that town. And we want to plant that flag and say the Bible has something to say about this.” – Christian nationalist pastor Joe Rigney.
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes.
Those who give to America250, a committee created to support what Trump envisions as a large national celebration next year for America’s 250th birthday, will be given special access to three events, according to a pitch shared with donors. Those include a military parade Trump is planning on his birthday, a “military readiness” event he is leading at Fort Bragg military base with thousands of troops and an Independence Day celebration in Washington, the people said.
https://x.com/jdawsey1/status/1923335215700758761
On his first day on the job, Richardson threatened staffers, telling them “I’ll run right over you” if they object to his orders.
Yesterday Duffy also posted a video about moving a painting of Jesus “out of the basement” at the Merchant Marine Academy.
https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1923120841413521425
Kid Rock: Birth Rate Is Low Due To “Ugly Ass Broke Crazy Deranged TDS Liberal Women” And Gay Men
He continued, “I mean, you look at these rallies, it’s like a bunch of women that no guy wants to sleep with and a bunch of dudes that want to sleep with each other.”
You’ll note that Watters did not ask Kid Rock about sending his undocumented kitchen staff home to evade arrest by ICE.
Trump Admin Fires 600 Voice Of America Employees And Puts Organization’s DC Headquarters Up For Sale
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1923053942759358935
This is as close as Hitler got to the Tower. He couldn’t go up it because the French had cut the elevator cables.
