Trump plays autism expert, slams ‘Dumbocrats’ at unhinged MAHA event
President Donald Trump held a “Make America Healthy Again” event in the Oval Office on Monday that was anything but healthy. Flanked by grinning Cabinet officials and other sycophants, Trump rambled on about topics ranging from fertility and autism to drug prices and—of course—his personal grievances. “I mean every person around who’s gonna have autism,” Trump said during one meandering…
Hateful Hegseth won’t leave Mark Kelly alone
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Dialing in the automod has been a ride, right?
Hi everyone! Since migrating to the new version of the site last month, we’ve seen a ton of comments and a few interesting theories about automated pre-moderation of comments. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain a bit about what the automod is and what it isn’t, why it’s there, why it isn’t as new or as scary a feature as some have theorized, and how we’ve been dialing it in to suit…
Trump stooge gives bonkers take on sputtering economy
Consumer sentiment dropped to a record low in April, with Americans’ pessimism stemming from fears of rising inflation and skyrocketing gas prices. But that doesn’t bother Kevin Hassett, the ever-smiling director of the National Economic Council. “I think that one of the things that’s happening is that the world is changing so fast right now that President Trump has sort of taken every…
Trump threatens using ‘army’ to rig midterm elections
President Donald Trump is being criticized for his call for an “election integrity army” to fight against Democrats concerned about voter suppression. In a post to his Truth Social account on Sunday, Trump fumed that former Attorney General Eric Holder plans to work with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on efforts to suppress the vote in the upcoming midterm elections.
Rein us in
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Republicans are caught between a rock and a ballroom
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Is Trump making TikTok his newest piggybank?
President Donald Trump is a terrible president and a terrible human being, but there’s one thing he is indisputably the best at: getting people and businesses to bribe him. And now, he’s going next-level. Big companies have proved depressingly eager to shower Trump with money, but it looks like no one is gonna do it like TikTok is gonna do it. It appears TikTok is going to settle—er…
What to know about the US military presence in Europe as Trump seeks drawdown of thousands of troops
President Donald Trump’s vow to shrink America’s military deployment in Germany has put a new spotlight on the U.S. role in Europe. There are usually 80,000 to 100,000 troops on the continent, with more than 36,000 in Germany. The Pentagon announced Friday that it would remove 5,000 troops from Germany, and Trump said the next day that he would go “a lot further” than that. The U.S.
Further tributes
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Recent Close Calls for Michigan’s Dams Are a Warning to America
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan.
Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier—a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country.
Nationwide, the average dam is 64 years old and most were built for rainfall patterns that no longer reflect today’s changing climate. Thousands are classified as high hazard, meaning their failure could result in the loss of life. Dam safety experts say inspections are uneven and improvements often underfunded.
About 18 percent of the roughly 92,000 dams in the United States are considered high-hazard.
More than half of Michigan’s dams are beyond their 50-year design life, and the risks became clear as snowmelt and weeks of heavy rain swelled rivers. Rising water came within 5 inches of flowing over Cheboygan Dam in Cheboygan, a city of about 4,700 people, on April 16. In Bellaire, officials deployed about 1,000 sandbags to shore up a century-old dam.
“This needs to be considered not the worst we can experience. This needs to be considered as typical of the future,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies climate change.
There are about 92,000 dams in the United States. About 18 percent are considered high-hazard. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates repairing all of these aging structures will cost more than $165 billion. In Michigan, that estimate is $1 billion.
Communities facing these risks are left with difficult choices. Given the cost of repairing and upgrading dams to withstand stronger storms, removing them is often cheaper. That can reduce long-term risk and restore rivers to a more natural state. But it often faces resistance from property owners and communities with economies built around the reservoirs those dams created.
As floodwaters recede across Michigan, local leaders, dam safety advocates, and experts are renewing calls to bolster safety regulations and deal with aging dams.
Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Commission, considers the April flooding a wake-up call and believes the solution is clear: upgrades where feasible and removal where it makes sense. “I think every opportunity we have to remove an aging dam, we should take advantage of it because it’s not going to get better,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse.”
Officials in Traverse City came to that conclusion in 2024 and removed the Union Street Dam along the Boardman-Ottaway River as part of a decades-long restoration project that includes FishPass, which will allow key species to pass while blocking harmful invaders like sea lamprey. Engineers said that removal and upgrade most likely reduced flooding impacts when waters surged to near-record levels last month, falling just short of a 500-year flood.
Many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts dams create: “There’s this emotional attachment.”
“Upstream would have been under 2 more feet of water, which would have been quite devastating,” said Daniel Zielinski, a principal engineer for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. “We actually had a really great stress test of the system. It functioned really well.”
Removals are increasing across the country, according to data from American Rivers. Since 2000, more dams have come down than gone up, and that pace is accelerating as aging infrastructure, safety concerns, and environmental benefits reshape how communities weigh their value.
In northern Michigan, conservation groups like Huron Pines help dam owners make that decision. It has managed nine removals in the last 13 years and has seen growing interest after the recent flooding, said Josh Leisen, a senior project manager for the organization. Removal reconnects river ecosystems and eliminates the need for expensive upkeep of aging structures, he said.
“There are costs associated with repair and there are risks associated with having a dam,” Leisen said. “Even if it seems to be in good condition, you get extreme weather events like we just had.”
Removing dams is not always straightforward. Beyond the technical challenges, many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts those structures create. “There’s this emotional attachment to that impoundment,” said Daniel Brown, a climate resilience strategist at the Michigan-based Huron River Watershed Council.
In other cases, dismantling isn’t practical. Some dams provide electricity or drinking water, linking them to local economies and infrastructure. Removal “is not really something that’s on the table because they are connected in this very practical way,” Brown said.
Still, Brown said, there are limits to how much aging structures can be adapted to a warming world. “[A dam] is this very long-term, huge, expensive infrastructure that you’ve put on the landscape that’s going to stay there. And that is not how climate change or nature or rivers behave,” Brown said.
Dismantling dams, like upgrading them, can come with steep costs. The Boardman-Ottaway River project—which removed three dams in the largest removal effort in state history—cost $25 million. Huron Pines is managing the removal of Sanback Dam in Rose City next month, at an estimated cost of $4 million.
Half of the expense is funded through a grant program from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, launched in response to the 2020 Edenville Dam failure which overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam. The twin catastrophes forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents, destroyed thousands of homes, and flooded ecosystems in a disaster that investigators later found was avoidable. The $44 million state program funded several dam removals, upgrades, and engineering studies before it ended last year.
Federal funding is available through programs administered by agencies such as FEMA or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But those resources fall short of the estimated $165.2 billion needed to address the issue, and some are at risk of elimination.
State governments regulate roughly 70 percent of the dams in the United States, with the federal government regulating hydropower dams and providing funding and guidance. This means inspection standards, regulations, enforcement, and resources can vary widely.
In Michigan, about 1,000 dams fall under state oversight, while 99 hydroelectric dams are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remaining 1,500 are smaller barriers that don’t fit the criteria for state regulation, according to the Michigan Dam Inventory.
[Dams] are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”
Now, state officials are renewing calls for more money and stronger regulations. “Dam safety may be an issue that isn’t partisan,” said Phil Roos, director of EGLE.
Proposed state legislation would bolster inspection rules, address private ownership, update design standards, and create more funding opportunities for upgrades or removals. “It’s so important to our state that we can come together, and whether it’s passing the legislation that was proposed, or improving procedures, or ultimately funding,” Roos said.
Michigan state Senator John Damoose has expressed concern about private dam ownership since the close call at Cheboygan Dam, which is under both state and private control. About 75 percent of the dams Michigan regulates are privately owned.
“Somebody made a point, ‘Well, we can’t have private companies owning these things.’ I tend to believe in private ownership but they might be right,” Damooose said during a Traverse City roundtable discussion on dam safety.
It’s not just a Michigan issue. Most dams in the United States are privately owned, meaning responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and potential failure falls on individuals, not governmental agencies, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.
Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense storms. As the world warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, fueling more intense precipitation, according to Rood at the University of Michigan.
Recent flooding “has shown an incredible vulnerability,” he said. “[Dams] are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”
Luke Trumble, chief of dam safety for Michigan, said the state is already dealing with conditions that many dams were never designed to withstand. “It’s a little bit of a misconception that if we fix the dam issue, there’ll be no more flooding,” he said. “There’s still going to be flooding on rivers whenever we get rain like this, or rain on snow.
“What we can do with dam safety legislation is help ensure that flooding is not made worse by a dam failure,” Trumble said.
These Democrats shouldn’t have a shot at winning—but they do
Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture. In Iowa, Republicans face a potential bruising that could leave the red state looking pretty purple after November. Once a bellwether, Iowa has jagged to the right recently. In 2024, Donald Trump won it…
Is ‘big donors’ in the room with us right now?
A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Wait, Senate GOP wants to give Trump how much for his dumb ballroom?
CBS journalists are terrified of MAGA-friendly management
As star correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s future at “60 Minutes” remains unclear, journalists at the legendary news show are being careful not to offend their new boss. Following Bari Weiss’ controversial hiring as CBS News’ editor in chief, compliance is the name of the game. A source close to the “60 Minutes” staff told Daily Kos the editorial team is hesitant to pick up the phone…
As drought worsens, Western states brace for wildfires and water shortages
Much of the West is carrying a paltry snowpack into the summer months. By Alex Brown for Stateline From the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierra Nevada, mountainsides across the West are sparsely covered by the snow that usually blankets the high country well into the summer. That snowpack is like a savings account that the West draws on when the hot, dry months arrive.
Nike isn’t playing Trump’s anti-DEI game. What will that cost?
The sportswear company is one of the few that hasn’t caved to Trump on diversity, equity and inclusion. Now it’s under investigation. By Erin Aubry Kaplan for Capital & Main Will Nike save civil rights? Such a question in normal times would be purely rhetorical, maybe the provocative title of a panel discussion about the interplay of capitalism and democracy. But as the Trump…
Ted Turner’s running things
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Trump’s Energy Secretary: “I Can’t Predict the Price of Energy”
President Donald Trump’s energy secretary shrugged when asked on Sunday whether gas prices could rise to $5 per gallon and offered no clear plan to address the affordability predicament the administration has forced upon Americans.
“I can’t predict the price of energy in the short term or even the medium term,” Chris Wright told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. And regarding potential solutions, he said, “we are constantly looking for different ideas.”
As Welker pointed out, in March, Wright said that it was “very possible” that gas prices would drop below $3 a gallon before the summer. He also told CNN’s Jake Tapper in April that “prices have likely peaked and they’ll start going down.”
According to the US Energy Information Administration, the price of regular gas in the US has increased more than 40 cents per gallon since Wright’s April statement.
So now Wright is backtracking his predictions, instead claiming during his Sunday interview that the US is in a “tremendous position,” as it is “by far the largest producer of oil” and “by far the world’s largest producer of natural gas.”
“Gasoline and diesel prices are up, and they’ll remain up while this conflict is in place,” Wright said, but after the war, “they’ll come back down lower than they were before.”
Wright’s claims come as the US and Iran remain locked in negotiations over a new ceasefire proposal. According to a Sunday report from the Associated Press, Iran wants to end the war on all fronts—including Israel’s strikes on Lebanon—and secure safe shipping in the region amid a US blockade of their ports. Iran’s leadership said it would discuss the latest US proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and scale back its nuclear program at a later time.
In other words, it does not look like the war will end any time soon. And even if transit through the Strait of Hormuz resumes to pre-war levels, it will take months to get oil and gas flowing due to the devastating strikes across the region.
How climate change makes your allergies worse
As pollen season gets longer and more severe, allergies can compound with other climate health hazards to cause serious harm. By Keerti Gopal for Inside Climate News It’s not in your head. Climate change is contributing to longer and more severe pollen seasons across the Northern Hemisphere. Dr. Neelima Tummala, an ear, nose and throat doctor at NYU Langone Health…
Voting rights attack
Late last month, the Supreme Court hacked away at the Voting Rights Act, creating an opportunity for Republicans to try to pave the way to a permanent House majority. And while Democrats are fighting back, the attack on voting rights is already causing devastating effects. So as democracy hangs on by a thread, let’s take a moment to share a laugh. Here are some of our favorite cartoons…