What's Next, the League of Women Voters?

While the Trump regime distracts us with its arch, ballroom, and vile UFC tacky-athon desecrating not just the White House but the Lincoln Memorial, they're also working their sick little hearts out to prevent free and fair elections this fall. 

They continue trying to impede access to mail-in balloting, and of course there's all the racist gerrymandering and anti-voting rights work. But the biggest news last week was the FBI raid in Cleveland on Thursday. MSNOW, led by veteran Carol Leonnig, reported agents raided offices of the Ohio Organizing Collective. They also went to the homes of individuals connected to the OOC – without warrants: 

“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask... [they] asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.” 

Benjamin McKean, an associate professor of political science at Ohio State University, said of the raids,  

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is, for lack of a better phrase, a completely normal NGO. For the FBI to raid them – and people who are just associated with them – is a serious attack on ordinary civil society and almost certainly an effort to influence Ohio’s midterm elections. 

And:

[It] sure sounds like the Republicans are planning to run the ACORN playbook, but this time led by the FBI instead of and James O'Keefe 

In his responses to his post, McKean quoted a Cincinnati.com story that said more than 100 agents were deployed across the state of Ohio to question people. 

In its coverage of the raid, the Ohio publication The Rooster positioned it in the context of recent polling that found Republican U.S. Senator Jon Husted 8 points behind his Democratic challenger, former Senator Sherrod Brown.

Hallucinated Citations and the Matthew Effect

A month or so ago, I heard about a study that found 85% of LLM-hallucinated citations in scientific article preprints were also in the later journal versions. That means they were not caught by peer review. Bad, right?

It gets worse. The fake citations also disproportionately gave credit to male scholars, who already have many citations. In the BlueSky post where I saw the study mentioned, this was called "a fake-citation Matthew effect."

I had never heard of the Matthew effect, so looked it up. The term goes back to 1968. Robert Merton and Harriet Zuckerman named it (ironically, Merton is the one usually credited with it). 

The name comes from the Parable of the Talents from the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible. In general, it's the tendency for the rich to get richer, but in academia, it's the way "eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is similar; it also means that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous."

So the fact that LLM-generated fake citations credit more-established, male scholars is just one more thing to hate about them. They can't even hallucinate fairly.

The People on a Bridge Say No!

For the past year and more, there have been dozens and dozens of highway bridges and street corners in the Twin Cities where people show up weekly to protest the Trump regime and what it’s doing to this country. I’ve been participating in one of them since last summer.

We stand during rush hour on a noisy bit of concrete that arches over an urban freeway. We hold long banners with messages in large letters, readable from a distance, created by the person who started the bridge brigade, plus a variety of other signs and flags that people bring with them.

We wave at the drivers going past below us, many of whom honk or flash their lights in return. We celebrate when semi drivers blare their air horns. 

There are about 20 regulars on the bridge, almost all retired, and several over 80 years old. It’s hard for any of us to talk to more than one other person at a time as we line up in a row facing traffic because the vehicles are so loud. The traffic also creates a wind-tunnel effect, which always makes it at least 10°F colder than elsewhere. Yes, we were out there all winter, too. 

We don’t come out to the bridge because it’s comfortable. Why do we do it? Who are we?

I began to think about documenting this place and these people, to record one piece of the resistance to the fascist Trump regime: who we are, and why we’re doing what we’re doing. 

It makes me angry that I have to anonymize this and don’t even feel comfortable saying which bridge it is, because a violent right-winger stabbed a person at a different local bridge brigade last fall. 

But know this: the full record exists, and if it’s ever safe to keep it in a Minnesota state archive, it will be available. One small example of the resistance that exists in this country. 

Who we are

Of the 20 people I interviewed, there are 13 women and seven men (my assumption about genders). Six are from Minnesota originally and grew up in the state. Four are from states close by. There are two immigrants, both who experienced repressive governments in their countries of origin. The other eight are originally from many different parts of the U.S., though all have been in the Twin Cities for at least 15 years except maybe one.

The University of Minnesota was by far the main reason people came to the Twin Cities from out of state, either for education or a job, followed by coming here for a job or school elsewhere — whether for self, a parent, or a spouse. 

I did the interviews on the first anniversary of the bridge brigade. It began in early June 2025, when the founder of the brigade saw two women on the bridge, one wearing an Uncle Sam costume. They had a boom box and were dancing. They told her they would be out there the same day the next week at 7:30 a.m. for an hour, so she went to the bridge to meet them then, carrying her grandfather’s World War II veteran’s flag and a sign that said ENOUGH in large letters:



But they weren’t there — she was alone! Her husband came by after a half hour and stayed for the rest of the hour. This was the week before the Hortmans and Hoffmans were shot at their homes by the right-wing murderer Vance Boelter. 

After that, she let her neighbors know what she was doing, and the gathering has grown from there. She began making banners a month or so later. Some of her closest neighbors were the first to join and still are part of it, and many of the people come from the surrounding neighborhood, but not all. 



Why we do it

There are common threads in the reasons the regulars give for coming to the bridge:

• “I have to do something: your nervous system gets so wired.”
• “This is something I can do.” “There’s so little we can do at our age.” (The bridge is close by and physically accessible.) “I can’t run if I protest in the streets – my hips and knees, I can’t get away.”
• Don’t obey in advance. Make your voice heard. “Heather Cox Richardson says visibility has real power.”
• To spread awareness: “Give the people who go past something to think about, have conversations at work.”
• It gives permission to other people.
• “To be in community with like-minded people.” “It’s selfish, but it helps me deal with it to be with like-minded people.” “To be part of a community resisting Trump, a critical mass.”

More specific reasons:

• “My husband’s aunt was in a prison camp during World War II, and was sent home in winter, wearing only a summer dress. The least I can do is put on a frog costume and stand on an overpass once a week. Another friend was born in a Chinese prison camp in 1941 and lived there until 1943.”
• One person was visiting his adult son in Europe from Christmas through January, including when Renee Good was killed, and seeing it happen from there was shocking. Another of his sons is a nurse at the VA hospital and knew Alex Pretti.
• “I hate authoritarian regimes. I experienced one and suffered from it as a child.”
• “Being here is a tribute to the people of Minneapolis.”

In addition to opposing ICE and Metro Surge, specific issues that were mentioned:

• “Every day this administration does something that should cause people to be out in the streets. My head is going to explode every day.”
• “I am a scientist by trade. The pancreatic cancer breakthrough recently announced is based on 50 years of basic science research [which they are gutting].” He also gave the example of the recent removal of ocean censors and the regime’s graft and corruption.
• “The undermining of democracy, Project 2025.”
• “I’m mad about the corruption.”

What people bring

Signs:

• Long, handmade banners, usually three 6-foot panels wide. Each week they carry a different message, ranging from "Democracy Needs Your Vote" to "Orange Lies Matter" to "Time for the 25th" to "GOP Sold Us Out," and more. For many weeks, there was an Epstein files counter. 
• Peace
• Stop the criminal war regime
• Close the Camps – VOTE (sign made with tape and pins on a flattened popup tent)
• Keep Hope Alive
• No Kings
• ICE Out Now (these signs were given away at a Minnesota Timber Wolves game)
• Stop the Lies

Flags:

• A large hand-painted hand to wave up high, carrying a small American flag
• American flags
• Minnesota state flag: “It’s a symbol of our unified resistance, because Minnesota has been targeted."

Wearables:

• Hand-lettered shirt: “Trump steals from you”
• Inflated frog suit
• A large hand for waving, printed from a photograph of a hand

Intangibles:

• Enthusiasm
• Yourself
• Energy
• Solidarity

Reality:

• A chair to sit in because of a bad knee

We’ll be back out next week, and the next, until this regime is history, when we’ll be working on the reconstruction this country will need. Then we won’t have time for the bridge brigade. 

As one of the banners today said: ONE YEAR – STILL HERE. 

Salah Sarsour: A Political Prisoner

He isn't the first and he won't be the last, but Salah Sarsour is a political prisoner of the Trump regime, and even worse, they're trying to kill him.

Sarsour, 53, is a Palestinian-American who is president of the largest mosque in Wisconsin. He has been in the U.S. since 1993, where he is a permanent resident with citizen children and grandchildren. According to this AP story, his Type 2 diabetes is not being handled at all properly and he has lost 30 pounds. At the Indiana jail where he's being held, he's being told to eat pork products and being deprived of religious freedom in multiple other ways. 

Wisconsin Public Radio reported on his detainment back in April, when it seemed as though this might be a short-term thing, but obviously, that was not to be. 

From the AP story: 

An investigation by KFF Health News and the AP found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed federal lawsuits with similar allegations of medical neglect. Those lawsuits include other detainees who say they were denied medication or had treatment delayed for conditions including cancer, high blood pressure, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, HIV, diabetes, infections, depression and more. 

As with everything the Trump regime does, this is being carried out in our names. 

Sickening Incompetence, Denialism

Two adjacent posts in my BlueSky feed just now:

Five cases of New World screwworm have now been confirmed in the U.S., Texas has declared an emergency, and Canada immediately restricted livestock imports. Most people had never heard of screwworm until last week (or maybe just now). That's because we eradicated it from the U.S. in 1966.
Your Local Epidemiologist

Camp East Montana in El Paso is currently under quarantine following a measles outbreak and cases of tuberculosis.  
Jeff Abbott @palabrasdeabajo.bsky.social

Combine that with the ebola news from Congo as part of the ongoing public health crisis caused by stopping USAID funding for HIV and other chronic illnesses, and reports of RFK Jr.'s total disengagement and the vacancies and acting figures in top roles within our U.S. health infrastructure, and we have a perfect set of circumstances to sicken and kill many people, all while wreaking lots of economic damage along the way.

Oh and then there's the recent raw milk news. As Adam Serwer said today on BlueSky, 

The raw milk thing is proof that you can trick conservatives into literally eating shit and liking it.

But how different is from vaccine denialism, really? They're both just different forms of the naturalistic fallacy. 

Solar for the Future…Except Here

If you put the word "solar" into the search engine on Daughter Number Three, you get a whole lot of results. So much has changed in the world of solar since I started this blog, though, it means posts from 10 or more years ago are probably pretty out-dated.

Here's one from February and another from December 2025, both still relevant.

I bring this up because I just read a Financial Times article about how China's solar product has now exceeded demand, leading to a surplus of solar panels and therefore industry fallout. 

That may sound bad, but get this quote:

Clean power, on a scale that would have seemed utopian at the time of the Paris climate treaty in 2015, is now within reach. The price of solar panels has fallen to rock bottom. 

And:

The real surprise... is that it cost China less than $18 billion in sectoral support over 15 years to build an industry that can now provide more clean power than the world can readily absorb.

As Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò pointed out on BlueSky, 

conservatively, the United States spent two-thirds of that figure in the *first week* of the war on Iran. it's genuinely difficult to overstate how many world-historical own goals US politics has accumulated over the past few decades

How does it feel to be part of a country led by the stupidest, vilest people imaginable while we are in the midst of a civilization-threatening climate crisis? 

Pretty bad. Pretty bad. 

A New Clinic, Medical Censorship

There were two medical stories on the same page of today's Star Tribune, both local, though one with a national focus. One good news, one bad news. 

At the top (page 3 within the local section), the headline is "U expands community clinic in S. Minneapolis." It tells about the new clinic building now under construction at Community-University Health Care Center, which is located on Franklin Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood in the heart of the Native American community. 

CUHCC has been there since 1966, providing health care to people regardless of ability to pay. Last year it served 12,000 patients who, according to the story, speak more than 50 languages. In addition to the clinic's staff, medical students and residents from the University of Minnesota can be found working with patients there. 

The new building is being funded by the University and its foundation. So overall, a good news story, despite the parts that referred to operating funding streams that have been or may be affected by federal policy changes (Medicaid cuts, the Minnesota legislature's decision to stop allowing undocumented people to access MinnesotaCare).

In contrast, at the bottom half of the page was a story that could only happen during the Trump regime. The headline is a bit vague: "U professor ousted from conference." Well, that could be almost anything —  maybe it was for a good reason.

But no. 

This was the national conference of the American Diabetes Association, and the U of M professor, a pediatrician who is co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine, was physically forced to leave the conference because he "violated the event's code of conduct, which requires professional and respectful behavior."

What was the violation? 

He was helping to pass out an editorial from one the ADA's own flagship medical journals. Of course, the editorial criticizes the Trump regime for cutting NIH staff, grants, and "destroying what generations have built." 

The lead author of the editorial (who is editor of the ADA journal as well) was also removed from the conference. He had been scheduled to present and to lead another session. Three other people were removed.

The Star Tribune story quotes the U of M professor as saying he was "chest-bumped by a police officer several times" and cites video that shows him being shoved by a cop.

These are the times we live in: a medical organization lets the federal government say who can attend its conference. It kicks out people who want conference-goers to know what the organization's own publication says. 

This is a gift link to a Washington Post story about the ADA conference with more details, which make it even clearer that this was censorship. 

Saint Paul in a Single Image

On a bad day, this photo can be used to represent the state of the city of Saint Paul:

Okay, I can see that it's a little hard to tell what's what there. 

The roundish brownish thing is a pot hole in one of our city streets. The photo was taken during a street festival, where there were many people on foot. 

Some thoughtful person had placed a tiny orange warning cone (it was no more than 6" high) in the pot hole in hope of keeping people from turning their ankles in it. 

And that's Only One Thing

From a Washington Post story today: "Ballroom donors won $50 billion in contracts after giving to the Trump ballroom project, watchdog group finds."

Georgia State University political scientist Jeff Lazarus noted on BlueSky that $50 billion in contracts is 555,000% larger than Teapot Dome, "the worst scandal in American history prior to Watergate, [which] involved $9 million changing hands. That’s adjusted for inflation."

I can't even comprehend 555,000%. Sometimes the level of depravity hits you all over again. 

A separate Washington Post story reported that DOGE wanted to declare 2.7 million people dead, so that immigrants would be "so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested." This is according to a whistleblower. (Gift link https://wapo.st/4uOlIJt.)

That exact plan didn't happen as DOGE intended, but many other bad things have happened to our immigrant neighbors, as we know. 

Currently mass "asylum" hearings are happening at Trump's deportation courts all over the country. The Star Tribune reported today that they have begun happening here in our local Fort Snelling courtrooms, with up to 73 cases being heard on the same docket. 80% of the people in one judge's list had no representation. That sure is the way to have your case heard fairly. 

Meanwhile, in New Jersey's Delaney Hall, there are people who are begging to "self-deport" [terrible term] because the conditions are so bad, who are not being allowed to do so. 

And reports of ICE smash-and-grabbing people out of vehicles on the streets here in the Twin Cities and in Chicago are ramping up once again.

How quaint is this idea, that there would be outrage over the equivalent of $9 million worth of corruption? 

Sniffing for Fraud

From yesterday's newspaper, a photo from Tuesday's primaries in California:

The caption says that the sheriff's deputy and his dog are "inspecting" ballots at the LA County Ballot Processing Center. 

What does that even mean? How would a sheriff inspect the ballots in any meaningful way, let alone a dog? What does sniffing the ballots do to validate anything? Would a ballot be disqualified if it smelled like drugs? Can the dog sniff out the scent of undocumented voters? Or maybe Republicans who voted twice?

And this is from Los Angeles, not some county in a red part of Arizona or even California. wtf.
 

Is It Latin? Well...

Have you ever wondered about the "Lorem ipsum" words that are frequently used for dummy text?

Emily Zhang, an intrepid YouTube creator whose channel is called Rabbit Hole, found out the full story, and had a beautiful conversation with Hampden-Sydney classics professor Richard McClintock as a major part of it:

I'm very glad I watched this. It's 26 minutes and worth every one. 

We all need something good in our lives these days.
 

One Shirt – Oops

I'm not sure I would have heard about the eye-wateringly offensive T-shirt design offered by IndyCar, if Rachel Maddow hadn't covered it on Monday night.

IndyCar, which runs the Indianapolis 500 race, will be putting on a road race in Washington, D.C., near the end of August. The event is meant to be the final, grand moment of Donald Trump's glorious vision for this country's 250th anniversary. Cage matches, concerts with no one to sing at them, and yes, cars racing through city streets at inappropriate speeds, making it unusable for the people who live there: that's what this country is all about.

Anyway.

The shirt – only available in ivory – looked like this:

And it said those words. 

Here's MotorTrend's write up of the debacle. From what I can tell, knock-offs of the shirt are available for sale on line, so unfortunately anyone who wants to own the libs can still get one.

Aside from the egregious headline, I wanted to talk about the illustration. Possibly a person immersed in IndyCar culture would not see it this way, but contrast that inhumane, Boba Fett-like figure with what the real Lincoln figure looks like:

The person who created this illustration — or the people who were art-directing them — made choices about what to change from the original. They wanted to modify parts of it to look "Indy" and be what they considered clever, but still have it be recognizable as the Lincoln statue. 

Personally, I didn't understand it as referring to the Lincoln Memorial statue when I first saw the shirt on Maddow's show because the figure is so transformed, it thought it was some kind of pilot in a science fiction show. The arms of the chair were not enough of a signifier for me to get the reference right away. In addition to the space-suit-like clothing and the helmet, the figure's body arrangement is part of the reason.

These are small things, but the way the Indy figure's hands and legs are portrayed diverge from the original: both hands are draped, while one of Lincoln's lightly grasps the chair arm and the other rests in a loose fist; the Indy figure's legs are splayed open as wide as they can go within the space, with feet even — something any woman will recognize as manspreading — in contrast with Lincoln's legs, which are parallel to his body, right foot farther forward. 

Generally, the Indy figure appears to be leaning back in the chair more than Lincoln is, possibly a reference to acceleration, but that reinforces my association with science fiction pilots. (The vertical red stripes may also be feeding my association with rockets taking off.) 

And I keep thinking about the feet. Because they are closest to the viewer, they're prominent. Lincoln is wearing boots so simple you almost don't notice them, and his trousers drape over the tops to obscure them further. The pants of the Indy figure, on the other hand, rise high above his ankles and make his much more detailed shoes prominent in the illustration. Which seems strange. (Maybe there was supposed to be an accelerator pedal under the right foot at some point.)

One final point: in addition to the possibly unconscious offensiveness of the headline, the very idea of replacing Abraham Lincoln with an IndyCar driver is offensive on its own. Have you been to the Lincoln Memorial? If there are any secular churches in this country, that is one of them. The thought of replacing him with something as trivial as a race car driver makes me angry, even without the headline. 

Altogether, this design is a perfect fit for the Trump regime. It: 

• shows no respect for anything about the good parts of this country or its history, 
• is unconscious of obvious racism at best or sends out racist messages at worst (take your pick, maybe some of each in this case for the different decision-makers), and 
• is embarrassing to everyone associated with it, except any die-hard believers who want to double down on the racist message.