From FEMA relief to clean energy funding, government resources are becoming political weapons, creating the kind of regional resentment that has shattered nations before… Trump is now officially allocating federal resources based on whether people voted for or against him: any other president in recent history would’ve been impeached for this. One of the most visible differences between authoritarian and democratic governance is how the government treats parts of the country based on their politics.

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Is this going to be Trump‘s and the GOP’s strategy this fall? — Bernie Sanders explains the appeal of democratic socialism to a Fox “News” reporter. — Affordability is tanking under Trump. — Republicans want legislation to force people to work in deadly heat if that’s what their employers demand. — “Explosive Trumparreah” spreads across the US, along with measles, while Bob Kennedy says, “Everything’s under control.” — The Social Security reckoning will become a BFD as the trust fund runs low. — Forever chemicals may be causing ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and colorectal cancer in young people.

For 45 years, billionaires and their political allies have weaponized hate, divided Americans, and quietly dismantled the middle class while we fought each other instead of them… In his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” Apparently “dreadful fear and hate” have won. A new Lloyd’s Register (the institution dates back to the 1760s) Global Risk Poll of citizens of 140 countries around the world found that one-in-ten (10%) Americans say that politics represents the biggest risk in their lives (above disease and accidents, even).

The lettuce outbreak is just the beginning. This is the story of how, thanks to GOP politicians, corporate cash rewrites America's laws and why ordinary people keep paying the price…. As I write this, federal investigators are chasing the worst cyclospora outbreak in decades, thousands of people across more than thirty states doubled over with what the CDC delicately calls “frequent and sometimes explosive diarrhea,” and they still can’t tell you for certain which farm it came from. Over the weekend, after the $7 billion company’s CEO visited the White House, the FDA walked back a positive test on lettuce from Taylor Farms, the largest salad producer in North America, announcing that its own earlier finding of cyclospora had somehow turned out to be a false positive. That leaves thousands of sickened Americans with no confirmed source at all, which is a peculiar place to land in a country that once prided itself on knowing where its dinner came from. The reason nobody can trace it back isn’t much of a mystery. Back in March of 2025 Trump’s FDA and it’s boss, Bob Kennedy, delayed its new Food Traceability Rule by thirty months, shoving the deadline to track high-risk foods like leafy greens from the field to your plate all the way out to 2028. Six days after that delay went public, Taylor Fresh Foods, the parent company of Taylor Farms, cut a million dollar check to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, part of the $2.2 million it has steered to Republican committees this cycle.