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The House Ethics Committee recommended a censure of Republican Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina Monday following reports of sexual harassment.

The Committee released a 25-page report on its investigation, and concluded that Edwards had violated House rules related to “sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.”

“Edwards engaged in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers,” the report states.

This result follows reporting from Axios in May, which alleged that Edwards had singled out two young female staffers for special attention.

This is a developing story.

Founded by the creators of viral offline events like San Francisco’s citywide scavenger hunt Pursuit, Outernet's app helps users save places and events they discover online, then nudges them to actually go.

The Department of Homeland Security has drastically ramped up efforts to add DNA from nearly one million immigrants to a massive criminal database. Most of them have no criminal history; some of them are kids.

In 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement added up to roughly 920,000 DNA profiles into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, a database used for conducting criminal investigations, WIRED reported Monday. That’s equivalent to more than 2,700 new profiles every day for an entire year.

We know that most of the people added to the database have no criminal record because most of the people who have been detained by ICE as part of President Donald Trump’s massive deportation crusade have no criminal record.

New research from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, published in a report titled “Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing” uncovered a huge increase in the rate of DNA collection from undocumented immigrants. Customs and Border Protection has historically been responsible for collecting DNA from immigrants entering through the U.S.-Mexico border.

Between October 2020 and December 2024, CBP collected the DNA of at least 1.36 million people, more than one dozen times the rate of ICE’s DNA collection during the same period. Even so, CBP’s prior collection rate has been dwarfed by the new data provided by ICE.

Among the scores of immigrants whose genomes are now being tracked by the government are the children held at the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, the source of multiple reports documenting unsafe living conditions.

“None of the families at Dilley have been convicted of a crime,” Representatives Joaquin Castro, Greg Stanton, and Nanette Barragán said in a joint statement to WIRED. “They do not belong in a database meant for violent criminals, especially children.”

The ICE facility in Dilley has been the source of horrific reports about living conditions. Records released to Georgetown by CBP identified 492 children under age 14 whose DNA was sent to the FBI in 2025—including 33 seven-year-olds, 32 six-year-olds, and 21 five-year-olds, WIRED reported.

And breaking with past precedent, ICE has also begun charging immigrants who refuse to submit a DNA sample when they are taken into custody. WIRED identified two prosecutions filed in 2025 against people in immigration custody who’d refused DNA collection.

In response to questions from WIRED, a DHS spokesperson defended DNA collection and claimed the agency had collected DNA from children in order to verify family relationships. That program is distinct, however, from the DNA collection program centered in WIRED’s reporting.

Meta says it’s restoring access to WhatsApp accounts that were mistakenly flagged and placed “under review” after users reported being unexpectedly locked out of the messaging app.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s supposed deal to end President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in his settlement with the IRS has a lot of loopholes.

As Blanche seems to have stifled a Republican revolt and secured his Senate confirmation, Democrats on Capitol Hill sounded off against the settlement revision, which was announced late Sunday night.

As Democrats pointed out, there are some major problems with the rewritten IRS settlement. First, there is no guarantee that Trump won’t later create a separate fund to reward his allies. Second, the IRS agreement granting Trump, his family, and Trump Organization immunity from IRS audits is still in place. Blanche’s only revision is that the immunity deal can’t apply to the future. And third, Blanche’s deal wasn’t signed by all parties, namely Trump, as the original IRS settlement was.

“Nothing here stops DOJ from using taxpayer money to pay off January 6th insurrectionists. And it leaves the IRS shield protecting Trump and his family from past audits fully intact,” Democratic Senator Alex Padilla posted on X Monday. “Todd Blanche has always been Trump’s personal lawyer—and this ‘deal’ proves he’s unfit to serve as Attorney General. Congress must pass my legislation to permanently ban any payouts to J6ers.”

California’s other Democratic senator, Adam Schiff, also criticized the deal, pointing out that it “doesn’t prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future.”

“It doesn’t prevent the admin from bringing the slush fund back from the dead next week or using DOJ’s Judgment Fund for the same illicit purpose,” Schiff posted on X. “It leaves in place a tax-immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes on the $2.3 billion he made last year, and still leaves it vague who and what is covered.”

Representative Daniel Goldman echoed concerns about the IRS audit immunity provision, pointing out that “the ridiculous tax immunity deal still applies to all tax years up to and including this year.

“Remember, the lawsuit was a total sham that was withdrawn and this was an addendum that had no relevance or connection to the lawsuit ‘settlement,’” Goldman posted.

Trump does not want the weaponization fund to die, complaining that people who were “horribly treated” deserve compensation. Sunday’s deal seems aimed at placating superficial opposition from Republicans who are on their way out of the Senate at the end of this year, without actually addressing the many corrupt issues with Trump’s IRS settlement.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is no doubt a happy guy. His boss—no, not the American people, silly, as President Donald Trump is the only person Blanche really works for—finally gave him permission to cut a deal that will allow him to drop that whole “acting” part from his title. After lame duck GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina pretended they…

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Trump caught hiding true carnage of Iran war…

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Now AI is making fake vulnerabilities and polluting the ecosystem. A batch of critical- and high-rated SQLite CVEs that appeared in the NVD with CISA-supplied enrichment last week turned out to be technically bogus, according to security researchers, and their path into widely used databases exposes weaknesses in the CVE pipeline. Software supply chain security outfit JFrog reported last week that six supposed SQLite vulnerabilities published in a larger batch by a new, obscure GitHub repository were all complete garbage. Running the advisories through an AI checker suggested they were likely AI generated, JFrog said, and, upon testing, it found that none of the six SQLite reports, which carried CVSS scores ranging from 9.8 to 7.5, described a reproducible vulnerability. One, an alleged use-after-free vulnerability in the open source database that Red Hat initially assigned a maximum 10.0 CVSS score to before lowering it, relied on a function that didn't exist in the affected SQLite version. Another UAF vulnerability with a 9.1 CVSS score cited source lines that weren't even related to the supposed flaw. When JFrog tested the accompanying proof-of-concept, it executed a valid query with no memory leaks or errors. The other four SQLite CVEs from the repo that JFrog tested were similarly fake. The other 49 CVEs in the questionable GitHub repo claimed to be security vulnerabilities in the open-source RAW image processing library libraw and Arduino audio decoding library ESP32-audioI2S. While JFrog didn't test those as extensively, it said all are just as fake as the rest, aside from one which “contained a real bug wrapped in unverified CVE metadata.” A message posted to Openwall’s OSS-Security mailing list on Friday indicated that MITRE had rejected the whole repo’s worth of vaporous vulnerabilities, but the whole thing should serve as an important lesson, poster and Oracle Solaris engineer Alan Coopersmith pointed out. “MITRE and most other CNAs which assign CVEs for code they don't produce themselves operate on the honor system, and trust CVE requesters to have verified the information they provide,” Coopersmith noted in the OSS-Security post. “The CNA is often not in a position of being able to verify the report themselves.” As JFrog points out, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which manages the US National Vulnerability Database (NVD), used to provide a reliable backstop by manually reviewing and enriching CVE records after they entered the database. That process slowed dramatically in 2024 after a surge in vulnerability submissions, coupled with operational challenges, left the agency with a growing backlog of records it was unable to process. By late 2024, the backlog had grown to more than 17,000 unprocessed CVEs, despite NIST's plan to clear it by the end of fiscal year 2024 with contractor help. It continued to grow, reaching more than 27,000 by the end of 2025, according to a Department of Commerce Inspector General report published in May 2026. To make matters worse, the DoC IG concluded that NIST had been wasting money allocated to fixing the backlog due to a “lack of strategic planning and decisive action” that has led to the stack of unresolved issues continuing to grow. In other words, the pipeline has no mandatory checkpoint at which every claimed vulnerability must be independently reproduced. “Because no step in today's system actually requires a proof-of-concept or bug reproduction, a plausible-sounding fake advisory can slide right through the pipeline and end up in GitHub Security Advisories, downstream databases, and enterprise scanners,” JFrog said. “This incident demonstrates a systemic issue with automated vulnerability ingestion.” What that means for security professionals, aside from having to deal with polluted vulnerability databases, is that bad advisories could waste time better spent chasing real issues. Because reputable databases can ingest unverified records, JFrog recommended several checks before defenders act on a newly published CVE. First off, if the vendor hasn’t corroborated the issue (SQLite maintainers don’t list the fake CVEs, for instance) it’s probably not legitimate. A lack of commit hash or pull request in the reference fields of a repo is also indicative of AI slop, as is suspicious metadata (i.e., missing CPE product definitions). Lastly, if the code references don’t appear to match real functions or point to parts of the code that don’t involve the supposed issue, that’s a good sign it’s just an AI hallucination. JFrog reported its findings to the GitHub Security Advisory team, Red Hat, and NVD, all of whom the company told us have flagged or removed the CVEs. GitHub hasn't yet, JFrog told us. We reached out to GitHub to inquire why the repo is still up, but didn’t hear back. As for why someone might do this, JFrog speculates that it could be an attempt for someone to boost their research experience with fake reports, or to influence what automated CVE identification tools flag as actual vulnerabilities. In both cases, JFrog told us, that's just speculation. Either way, these 54 apparently bogus CVEs, JFrog security researcher Afek Berger said, are just one example of a problem they expect to see more often. "Generative AI has lowered the effort required to produce a plausible-looking advisory to close to zero, while the effort required to verify one, review the source code, build the affected version, reproduce the PoC, is unchanged," Berger told us in an email. "That asymmetry means that even well-resourced defenders and maintainers cannot manually validate every incoming report … this is a challenge the whole industry is facing in the AI era." ®

Valar Atomics raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation after signing a development deal with Nvidia in June.

Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin committed the ultimate sin in the eyes of MAGA personalities, triggering vicious attacks and even calls for his ouster. What was this grave transgression? Well, Mullin dared to suggest that if handled correctly, immigration can be made to work in the national interest, which is something MAGA cannot permit to be true or uttered anywhere in public.

That’s not how these MAGA figures put it, of course. Instead, they’re claiming Mullin revealed that he’s falling woefully short of Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. But if you scratch the surface of this dustup, it lays bare the true ideological aims of the MAGA white nationalist project with unusual vividness—and exposes a deep political weakness in the whole Trump-MAGA immigration agenda.

Mullin’s comments came during a meeting on Saturday of the bipartisan National Governors Association in Oklahoma. In a long monologue, Mullin talked about why immigration reform is so hard, then discussed the need for changes to visa processes that currently facilitate seasonal labor even as much farmwork is now year-round.

“If we’re looking to grow our economy, then we need to look at making more permanent solutions on this,” Mullin said, adding that the “narrative” that immigrants steal Americans’ jobs is “not true for all industries,” such as agriculture. Mullin added:

It is America First. We want to take care of Americans first. It’s our economy. It’s our homeland. But there’s a way to utilize labor where we’re not having the participation rate where we need to. And we can plug those holes.

These remarks triggered extraordinary offense among MAGA figures. Fox News personality Tomi Lahren raged that Mullin is out to “appease liberal media.” Laura Loomer called on Trump to fire Mullin immediately. Podcasters Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec both told Politico that MAGA wants Trump to replace Mullin with someone who, as Posobiec put it, “puts deportations first.”

The key tell here lies in what Mullin actually said. By “utilize labor” to “plug holes,” Mullin meant we should make it easier for migrant workers to fill currently unfilled jobs, particularly in agriculture. In other words, Mullin let slip a very dirty secret indeed: By reforming governing processes, we can broaden legal pathways for immigrants to work in the United States in ways that would benefit our economy and our country.

Ask yourself this: Why exactly does MAGA cast this suggestion as a threat to the broader project of mass deportations? It’s not as if Mullin’s Department of Homeland Security has backed down on them: Migrant detentions just hit a new high, arrests have surged, and deportations appear to be escalating.

What’s actually threatening to the MAGA project, then, is the underlying idea that Mullin endorsed: that immigration can be made to function in the national interest—and more to the point, that the right reforms actually can accomplish this and make it a reality.

A darkly amusing cycle has kicked in here. The Trump administration keeps accidentally admitting that more immigration can indeed benefit our economy—and then quickly suppressing that truth when MAGA erupts over it.

In June 2025, for instance, Trump openly declared that due to mass deportations—his own policy—the agriculture and hospitality industries were losing many “good” and “longtime” workers, and he pledged to carve out deportation exceptions for them. But Stephen Miller quickly prevailed on Trump to reverse the decision—just as MAGA is now raging at Mullin for making a similar suggestion.

It’s easy to see why this keeps happening: The admission wrecks MAGA mythology on a very deep level. A core MAGA idea is that mass purgings of immigrants are needed because they take the jobs of Americans, of course. But the deeper idea here is that this deprives young American men of good, honest, breadwinning work, leaving them moldering away in left-behind areas of the heartland.

In short, immigrants are a primary cause of the social crisis afflicting young MAGA men. Indeed, this social crisis has been deliberately engineered by liberal elites—it’s a key component of the “great replacement” of MAGA America with the “Third World.” In this story, mass deportations and putting the brakes on mass unskilled immigration should mean all these young American men will come stampeding into new jobs left vacant by now-deported invaders, and their families and communities will flourish.

But it isn’t happening. Paul Krugman recently illustrated that this economic story is now in shambles:

The virtual end of net immigration hasn’t led to a boom in jobs for the native-born. Growth in the working-age population has stalled, but so has job creation, and the employment rate for native-born adults is lower, not higher, than it was before the pogroms began.

Meanwhile, studies have found that recent surges in mass deportations have cost Americans jobs in local economies without boosting wages for the native-born.

Indeed, if anything, Mullin’s admission was far too narrow. He insisted immigrants are taking American jobs in some areas (a story that, again, is simply unsupported), while allowing that in agriculture, deportations are hurting the economy.

Yet even this qualified admission triggered MAGA. Because every time someone like Mullin effectively admits, even in a limited way, that deporting immigrant laborers is not resulting in more work for Americans—that creating more legal pathways would boost the economy—it casts doubt on the larger MAGA ruse behind it all.

It’s the coup de grâce that Mullin described his suggestions as the actual “America First” stance. I suspect he doesn’t grasp just how dangerous a heresy this truly is. After all, it neatly exposes MAGA’s real position: Mass deportations must be carried out even if they hurt the economy. Mullin must “put deportations first”—that is, he must put them before economic concerns. The goal is not primarily an economic one: It’s about ethnically purging the country.

Trump’s deportations are badly underwater in polls, including in swing states. If more voters understood the actual Trump-MAGA position to be that deportations must be maximized regardless of their economic impact—that maximal removals are preferable to having a better economy—Americans would recoil even more. No wonder MAGA wants Mullin to shut up and stop giving away its vile scam in public.

Team BOLO (Be On The Lookout) is gathering and curating all of Santa Cruz County’s biggest and best happenings from now until forever — or at least until the latest gigs are officially announced.

Latest additions are marked as NEW below.

Use the following links to see the major events happening by month:

• August
• September
• October
• November
• December
• January 2027
• April

And away we go with Down The Line …

August

Aug. 3: Kim Nalley, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 3: Heart tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Aug. 6: Sylvia Cuenca’s Bridging Generations, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 7: Bria Skonberg, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 7: ALO, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 8: Shawn Colvin, The Rio

Aug. 8: Mickey Avalon, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 8: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “Control,” Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 9: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “Hope As Our Banner,” Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 9: The Beat Farmers, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 10: David Bowie tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Aug. 11: Clifford Henderson, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 12: John-Robert, The Crepe Place

Aug. 12: Angelo De Augustine, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 13: Marina Crouse, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 14: Death & Saxes, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 14: The Polish Ambassador, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 14: Atmosphere, Quarry Amphitheater

Aug. 15: Snail, The Rio

Aug. 15: Ani DiFranco/Valerie June, Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 16: The Blues Project, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 17: Jazz Mafia, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 17: Nina Simon, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 19: Bill O’Connell Trio, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 19: Steve Hawk, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 20: Jon Dryden, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 21: Willie Watson & Erin Rae, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 21: Frankie Moreno Trio, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 22: Earthless, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 22: “Music, Hope & Insight,” Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 23: Mighty Mike Schermer, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 24: Keyon Harrold, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 25: La Luz, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 25: “Winter in America,” Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 26: Duane Betts, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 26: The Kirtan Love Experience, The Rio

Aug. 26: Built to Spill, The Rio

Aug. 27: Simon Phillips, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 27: Dave Evans, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 28: Tim Flannery & the Lunatic Fringe, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 29: Greyboy All-Stars, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 31: Eagles of Death Metal, The Catalyst

September

Sept. 1: Rehash, The Catalyst

Sept. 3: Paula Arai, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 4: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 5: Clinton Fearon & the Boogie Brown Band, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 5: Public Image Ltd., The Rio

Sept. 6: Tommy Castro & the Painkillers, Moe’s Alley

NEW: Sept. 6: Stephen Malkmus, The Rio

Sept. 7: Tom Petty tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 9: PawPaw Rod, The Catalyst

Sept. 9: Laurie R. King, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 10: Nduduzo Makhathini, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 11: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last 5 Years,” Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 12: Black Uhuru, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 14: John Pizzarelli, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 15: “Smoke Cabaret,” Laurie Rivera, Audrey Stanley Grove

NEW: Sept. 16: Pedro Martín, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 17: The Growlers, The Catalyst

Sept. 17: Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Sept. 18: Old Blind Dogs, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 19: Rayland Baxter, Moe’s Alley

NEW: Sept. 19: Santa Cruz Guitar Company 50th anniversary, The Rio

Sept. 20: Vieux Farka Toure, Felton Music Hall

Sept. 20: Stick Men, UCSC Music Center

Sept. 22: Al DiMeola, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 22: Welcome Week Rave, Santa Cruz Civic

Sept. 23: Brass Queens, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 23: Curtis Reliford, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 24: Bill Frisell & Harmony Five, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 26: Laurie Anderson, The Rio

Sept. 27: Sleep, The Catalyst

Sept. 28: Linda Ronstadt tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 29: Aldous Harding, The Rio

Sept. 29: Teada, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 30: Cyrille Aimee & Mathis Picard, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

October

Oct. 1: El Khat, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 1: Groundation, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 1: Pearl & the Oysters, The Crepe Place

NEW: Oct. 1: Miriam Pawel, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Oct. 2: Soda Blonde, The Crepe Place

Oct. 2: Fruit Bats, The Rio

NEW: Oct. 2: Twin Temple, The Catalyst

Oct. 3: The Bends, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 4: Mike Dawes, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 5: Hiromi, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 6: Kishi Bashi, The Rio

Oct. 8: Rickie Lee Jones, The Rio

Oct. 8: Ben Flocks, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Oct. 8: The Guitarsonists, The Crepe Place

NEW: Oct. 9: The Breaks, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 10: Damien Jurado, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 10: Banff Center Mountain Film, The Rio

Oct. 10: Acid Bath, Quarry Amphitheater

Oct. 11: Yellowjackets, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 12: Somi, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 14: Bonnie Raitt, Santa Cruz Civic

Oct. 14: Acoustic Alchemy, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 14: Alborosie & Shengen Clan, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 15: Bumpin’ Uglies, The Catalyst

Oct. 16: Young Dubliners, Moe’s Alley

NEW: Oct. 16: Xavier Wulf, The Catalyst

Oct. 17: B-Side Players, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 17: Megan Woods, The Rio

Oct. 19: Buster Williams, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 21: Jerry Douglas Band, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 21: Hannah Mayree, The Crepe Place

Oct. 22: Todd Rundgren, The Rio

Oct. 23: Black Flag, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 23: Lyrics Born, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 26: Fonville & Fribush, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 27: Great Lake Swimmers, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 28: Lyle Lovett, Santa Cruz Civic

Oct. 29: Laura Anglade, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Oct. 29: Michael Franti, The Rio

Oct. 30: The Mother Hips, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 30-31: Jerry’s Middle Finger, Felton Music Hall

NEW: Oct. 31: AJ Lee & Blue Summit, The Rio

November

Nov. 1: Andrew Duhon, Moe’s Alley

Nov. 2: Helen Sung, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 4: Joshua Redman, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 5: Gabrille Cavassa, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 6: Elijah Scott, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 7: Henry Diltz: Behind the Lens, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 8: Southern Culture on the Skids, Moe’s Alley

Nov. 9: Alex Cameron, The Crepe Place

Nov. 9: “Birth of the Cool” Revisited, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Nov. 10: Donavon Frankenreiter, The Rio

Nov. 12: Jake Xerxes Fussell, Felton Music Hall

NEW: Nov. 12: Ken Okada, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 14: Nick Shoulders, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 14: Jon Spencer, Moe’s Alley

Nov. 15: The Cactus Blossoms, Felton Music Hall

NEW: Nov. 15: California Honeydrops, The Catalyst

Nov. 16: Las Migas, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 18: As I Lay Dying, The Catalyst

NEW: Nov. 18: Michael Nau, The Crepe Place

Nov. 19: James Gordon Williams, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 20: Andrew McMahon, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 23: The Residents, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 29: Sandra Bernhard, The Rio

Nov. 30: Benny Green, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

December

Dec. 2: Kassa Overall, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 3: Isaiah Sharkey, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 4: Dragon Smoke, Moe’s Alley

NEW: Dec. 5: Hell’s Belles, Moe’s Alley

Dec. 7: The Bad Plus, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 8: Buck Meek, Moe’s Alley

Dec. 8: A Guaraldi Holiday, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 9: Mike Renwick, Felton Music Hall

Dec. 10: Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Dec. 11: Jonathan Richman, The Rio

Dec. 12: The Wooten Brothers, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 14: Christian Sands, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Dec. 17: Pokey LaFarge, Felton Music Hall

Dec. 17: Skylar Tang, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

January 2027

Jan. 21: Jesse Cook, The Rio

April

April 21: “Alice in Wonderland,” Santa Cruz Civic

April 23: Fashion Teens, The Rio

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF BOLO

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The post Down The Line: All the biggest and best shows, gigs & events ahead in Santa Cruz County appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

The first time I was hospitalized at 18 for my then-undiagnosed chronic illness—with an extremely puffy face, hives, nausea, and trouble breathing—I was told the cause was anxiety. I know firsthand how frustrating it is to be undiagnosed with serious symptoms, and how tempting it can be to reach for any explanation that promises answers. What I actually had was an autoimmune disorder called vasculitis that causes my blood vessels to become inflamed. I’ve dealt with chronic inflammation where my immune system attacks itself ever since.

My dad heard from someone whose kid also had vasculitis. He claimed that the kid was able to move out of a wheelchair because of a diet promoted by former cardiothoracic surgeon and Goop contributor Dr. Steven Gundry. I told him this was likely an example of the placebo effect; my dad pushed Gundry’s book onto me for a year and asked me to speak to my doctors about it. My dad believed it would curb my inflammatory autoimmune disorder.

There is no rigorous evidence that Gundry’s lectin-free diet works and may actually be harmful, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Gundry has also pushed questionable theories about other health topics too. In an episode on the popular Doctor Mike’s YouTube channel in defense of his diet, Gundry argued that smoking can actually make some people live longer. It finally took my pro-vaccine dad reading Gundry’s Wikipedia page—which includes Gundry’s claim in an abstract that mRNA Covid vaccines “dramatically increase” inflammation—for him to leave me alone on this topic. A Reuters report says that Gundry’s abstract, which also received an extensive correction, doesn’t contain “reliable evidence.” Conversely, research does show that Covid vaccines decrease inflammatory markers when people get a Covid infection.

A video from Doctor Mike’s YouTube channel.

In a statement, Gundry acknowledged that “large, long-term randomized controlled trials of this [lectin-free] dietary approach do not yet exist,” and he welcomes researchers to look further into his diet. Gundry also said he does not endorse smoking and “nothing in my work suggests anyone should smoke.” Gundry also said he is not anti-vaccine and that he asks “only that my work be represented as what it is: an observational finding, reported transparently, that invites further research.”

My dad is not an outlier when it comes to being sucked into promises of health improvement. He’s one node in a much larger web of inflammation misinformation—one that now stretches from wellness podcasts all the way to the highest levels of the federal government.

At a press conference in August 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that when he watches children walking through airports, he can tell that they are “overburdened” with “inflammation” as evidence that children have more health problems today.

Inflammation also makes an appearance in the executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission, with President Donald Trump ordering that the committee “assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation.”

While some health advocates believe raising awareness about inflammation is important, the MAHA movement has twisted it, devaluing the struggles chronically ill people with inflammatory disorders actually face.The children may not be alright, but the root cause of their problems, for the most part, is not inflammation.

This inflammation craze did not start with the MAHA movement. It has been present in wellness circles for years. Current Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Dr. Mehmet Oz has promoted a wide variety of unproven supplements and diets that supposedly reduce inflammation. If you scroll on TikTok, you’ll find absurd claims that people to need to be brought into ketosis to bring down inflammation, as well as promotion of many supplements. 

“They just keep taking medical and research-related terms and concepts to sort of gaslight us and increase their wellness grift,” Dr. Jean Liew, a rheumatologist based in Boston, told me.

Inflammation is not inherently bad. We would die if we did not have any inflammation, immunologist and biomedical scientist Andrea Love told me. People have inflammation around cuts, for instance, as it is our body’s way of healing itself.

“A lot of the times that stuff that’s probably been circulating in the wellness community, the first time I hear about it is when the patient asks me about it, and all I can say is, ‘I have never heard of that before. ‘”

“It’s constantly occurring in your body at all times, and it’s actually critical for processes,” said Love, who runs the informational website Immunologic. “Normally, your immune system does a really good job of regulating it with all the anti-inflammatory processes.”

However, “there’s often this nugget of truth,” Love said, when it comes to popular discourse around inflammation. There are people like me who legitimately do have negative inflammatory problems, but we’re not the majority of the population. That’s what helps make pseudoscience around inflammation so effective.

Me, dealing with bad inflammation levels, during the hospitalization that led to my vasculitis diagnosis when I was 20.Daniel Métraux

Scrolling through TikTok, one may come across an influencer talking about leaky gut, which is not a real diagnosis. They will probably be talking about how important it is to manage inflammation. Love says they are probably going to sell you a product or encourage you to detox, which your body does on its own. The reason these wellness influencers may be so effective is that they borrow from phenomena that actually happen to people.

“In things like celiac disease or ulcerative colitis, pathology is legitimate inflammation in the GI tracts because there’s tissue damage occurring,” Love said. But that’s not what happens in a pseudoscience diagnosis. Of course, people who cling to this diagnosis may actually be chronically ill, but the pseudoscience-for-profit will not actually help them manage their chronic illness for the long term.

Love said that experiences like the one I had with my dad show that “most of these people have good intentions” when spreading pseudoscience directly to people they care about. “They’re trying to empathize in the way that they know how,” Love said, “and it’s because they heard from a friend.”

And for chronically ill people themselves who fall down pseudoscience rabbit holes, their doctors can play an important role in addressing disinformation in a kind way. But there is a problem: there is so much out there that doctors cannot simply know all of it.

“A lot of the times that stuff that’s probably been circulating in the wellness community, the first time I hear about it is when the patient asks me about it, and all I can say is, ‘I have never heard of that before,'” Liew told me. “I can say, ‘I’ve never heard of that before. I’m not aware of any data on that, so I can’t advise you on that,’ and then I can say, ‘I’ll look into it and see what I find and get back to you.'”

MAHA and wellness circles’ idea of inflammation also hurts people, whether or not they deal with legitimate chronic inflammatory problems, medical anthropologist Laura Gilchrest told me.

“It creates hierarchies of deserving and undeserving people,” said Gilchrest, who lives with chronic illnesses herself. “It creates this non-medically valid division of healthy and unhealthy.”

We live in a country that has long had a relationship with eugenics, which Trump and Kennedy have very much made visible. If someone isn’t considered healthy—including if they exist in a bigger body—they bring less value to society, or so the MAHA narrative goes. Even the risk of being seen as a potential burden to the government by being sick should be avoided by bringing down inflammation. Except the tips and tricks promoted by MAHA and wellness influencers to bring down inflammation are often just placebo effects at best. Because I reject this twisted version of what inflammation means, I’ll eat what makes me happy. If I’m enjoying a meal, that doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong.

Some people with chronic conditions are stuck in a hellhole of unmanaged inflammation because their conditions have been historically brushed aside by doctors and have lacked comprehensive biomedical funding. Gilchrest raises polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, which is a common hormonal disorder, as an example.

“People who suffer with this complex disease, which is characterized by inflammation, are in the states that they’re in because it was ignored for so long, because it was disregarded,” Gilchrest said.

By gutting National Institutes of Health funding, the administration has made it harder to find new ways to bring down inflammation in those with inflammatory diseases. I know a lot of chronically ill people, for instance, who would like a biomedical alternative as effective as prednisone—on which some people like me experience serious psychiatric side effects—to bring down acute chronic inflammation. There also needs to be more research into how neuroinflammation in the brain contributes to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition in which many people with Long Covid have. We’re not likely going to get there for either of the two with what the Trump administration is doing, especially with Kennedy’s HHS closing down the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice.

Inflammation has also become a buzzword among a lot of anti-vaxxers. On the Joe Rogan Experience in June 2023, Kennedy claimed that an animal study showed mercury from vaccines caused “severe inflammation” in monkeys’ brains. Kennedy also claimed that he spoke about this with vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, who refutes this narrative in a Substack: “But RFK Jr. lied when he said that the mercury had caused ‘severe inflammation.’ Burbacher didn’t report any evidence of inflammation, writing, ‘no serious medical complications were observed in any of the monkeys.’”

From a March 2026 protest in New York CityGina M Randazzo/Zuma

I’ve also seen inflammation panic spread by people who are at least somewhat critical of Kennedy and MAHA. On social media, I’ve seen the repeated claim that all Covid is airborne vasculitis. It’s just not, though it can mimic vasculitis in some instances. Not all serious vascular problems are vasculitis, although they can have overlapping properties. However, Covid infections can trigger vasculitis on rare occasions.

While data scientists or self-proclaimed health communication experts may not be selling anything, spreading misinformation about inflammation doesn’t do anything to make the general public understand how my debilitating condition works. We can talk about Covid in serious ways that are accurate, which does include the devastating impacts of Long Covid.

Living with inflammatory diseases can absolutely suck, but inflammation is not the downfall of American public health. Turning it into a buzzword just makes it a gimmick, instead of truly understanding what it does well and also makes people feel guilty that they must not be doing enough to be healthy.

Base Power’s $1 billion round will help the startup ramp production of its home batteries.

House spending records show OpenAI's ChatGPT dominates paid AI use on Capitol Hill, with congressional offices relying on the chatbot to draft memos, summarize legislation, and assist constituent communications.

Wispr Flow's new terms of service indicate it will introduce a notetaker that generates meeting summaries and action items.

⚡ Quick Take

• Charles Edwards will return as Celebrimbor in The Rings of Power season 3.
• Celebrimbor will not be alive since Sauron killed him in The Rings of Power season two.
• Instead, Charles Edwards will play a memory/ghost of Celebrimbor that haunts an insecure Sauron as he tries to forge the One Ring.

Sauron manipulated and used Celebrimbor in The Rings of Power‘s second season. The dark lord then killed the legendary smith. Eregion’s ruler refused to tell Sauron where he’d hidden the rings they’d forged together. It was a sad end for one of Middle-earth’s most celebrated elves. But it turns out it wasn’t the end of his time on the show. Co-Showrunner JD Payne revealed that Charles Edwards will return as Celebrimbor in The Rings of Power season three. Celebrimbor’s memory will haunt an insecure Sauron as he tries to forge the One Ring.

Prime Video How Will Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor Return in The Rings of Power Season 3?

In a group interview with Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff ahead of The Rings of Power‘s third season, star Charlie Vickers talked about the internal doubt and limitations Sauron will deal with as he sets out to craft the One Ring in Barad-dûr. Vickers said Sauron can recreate, but he can’t create something on his own, when it comes to manifesting the power of the rings. But sadly, the one person who could create, Celebrimbor, was killed by his own hand. And Sauron clearly knows that because it’s that tension and insecurity that will allow Charles Edwards to return as Celebrimbor in the world of The Rings of Power season three.

Paybe jumped in to explain that those doubts in Sauron’s mind will physically manifest in the form of Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor, who will appear as a type of ghost/memory, haunting Sauron. The dead craftsman will “give voice” to Sauron’s feelings.

Nerdist Take: We’re Excited to See Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor Haunting Sauron

Payne shared a memorable line that Celebrimbor’s memory/ghost will say to Sauron in The Rings of Power season three. He will tell the dark lord, “The work simply isn’t in you.”

Prime Video

That’s a really good line. Since Celebrimbor is really just Sauron’s own feelings about his inadequacy and shortcomings, the words offer real insight into his internal struggle while trying to forge the most powerful item in the history of Middle-earth. The line is actually so good; we really wish we got to hear Charles Edwards say it for the first time while watching the show, not in an interview that aired months earlier. But hopefully, there are a ton more where that came from.

Hearing it now won’t change the inevitable, though. No matter how much the memory of Celebrimbor hinders him, and no matter how limited his own skills, Sauron will forge the One Ring in season three. The question will be how much more powerful it could have been with Celebrimbor helping him rather than haunting him.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on November 11 on Prime Video. Seasons one and two are streaming today. If you’d like to get yourself ready for this return to Middle-earth, you can pick up The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth and read more about Tolkien’s vision of the time when the show takes place.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor Returns in THE RINGS OF POWER Season 3 appeared first on Nerdist.

President Trump’s giant “triumphal arch” project is not only going to be big and ugly, it’ll also be in your way.

According to a recent assessment by the National Park Service, the proposed arch design will irrevocably detract from Washington, D.C.’s carefully planned views and historic properties.The assessment lists, in detail, 37 significant historic sites in the capital city at risk for adverse effects.

“Adverse effects” mean “you’re building something that will irreversibly harm the experience in these other locations,” National Parks Conservation Association vice president for government affairs Ed Stierli told The New York Times.

“These adverse effects are intentional and inherent in the design of the arch; it is intended to dominate the surrounding landscape,” Virginia State Historic Preservation Officer Roger W. Kitchen wrote in a letter to the Park Service in June.

The Memorial Avenue Corridor—the stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, which includes Robert E. Lee’s historic Arlington House and the Kennedy Gravesite—is most at risk, as the 250-foot triumphal arch will alter and obstruct views from each site, the assessment explains.

“The entirety of the corridor forms a major component of the monumental core of Washington, D.C. and was conceived as both a ceremonial gateway to the nation’s Capital and a symbolic landscape commemorating national unity and reconciliation following the Civil War,” the document reads. “The bridge alignment and associated ceremonial landscape were intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River.”

And now there will be a big Trump shrine smack in the middle of it.

This latest Park Service assessment on the proposed project’s impact on the surrounding landscape is an essential step in the administration’s mission to receive final approval for construction from the National Capital Planning Commission.

As a federal undertaking, the arch project is subject to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which mandates an adverse effects assessment, but does not require any particular outcome or changes to the project. Instead, the assessment is “meant to get agencies to pause, consult experts and the public, and consider alternatives or design changes,” The New York Times’ Emily Badger explains.

There have been alternative designs proposed—smaller arches, which were not considered sufficiently “representative” of the 250-year American independence milestone, and alternative locations beyond the historic heart of the city—but the project is expected to move forward as originally planned.

Incidentally, the Park Service assessment comes as the Trump administration pushes to dramatically overhaul the process under which construction projects in historical areas are reviewed—a thinly-veiled attempt to make it easier for Trump to redesign the nation’s capital in his own image. Under the proposed rules, “visual, atmospheric, or audible” adverse effects of building projects would be of no consequence, and federal agencies would be empowered to approve projects without the input of historical experts or the public.

On Friday, the Department of Justice dropped its charges against former Olympian David Hearn, whom it had accused of vandalism at the site of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The Department’s action was almost immediately repudiated by President Donald Trump and has apparently endangered the job of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a longtime Trump cheerleader. In its filing…

Source

This story is a collaboration between Mother Jones, POGO Investigates, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

William Walters is fighting to hang on to a massive government contract. Since last year, Walters’ firm—Salus Worldwide Solutions—has been running a high-profile Trump administration program that offers free flights and cash to undocumented immigrants who agree to “self-deport.” And for nearly as long, Walters’ detractors and competitors have been trying to pry this work away from his firm.

The lucrative contract—worth up to $915 million—has drawn backlash on Capitol Hill following allegations that Salus won the award through a procurement process that seemed to favor the company. In response, Walters has asserted that his company’s troubles are being ginned up by rival contractors. He has taken aim at the private prison giant GEO Group and CSI Aviation, a firm that handles non-voluntary deportation flights. Those companies, Walters argues, are working to undermine Salus’ self-deportation efforts because they will make more money if migrants remain behind bars for longer periods of time, before being forcibly deported.

“GEO Group and CSI Aviation…stand to profit the most from longer detention and custodial deportation of immigrants in chains,” Walters recently charged after Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, urged the Department of Homeland Security to cancel Salus’ contract.

So far, Walters has not provided direct evidence proving his claims that these companies have “engineered” congressional or media scrutiny of Salus, although CSI Aviation and GEO Group do lobby Congress on issues related to immigration. GEO Group and CSI Aviation did not respond to multiple requests for comment; Navigators Global, a DC lobbying firm that works with both companies, did not respond to a query.

“The Trump administration opened the floodgates for these predatory companies to come in and profit off of detaining human beings.”

But there is little question that Salus, CSI, and GEO are fighting over portions of the Trump-era mass-deportation industry. In this growing market, people facing deportation—whether they are detained in squalid camps, forcibly flown out of the country, or agree to leave under the threat of detention—are seen as commodities.

“The Trump administration opened the floodgates for these predatory companies to come in and profit off of detaining human beings,” said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel with the National Immigration Law Center. She noted that beyond aviation and private prison companies, firms are profiting by providing food, laundry, and varied other services to the tens of thousands of people in ICE confinement every day. “There is so much money right now in detaining people,” she said.

DHS’s self-deportation campaign has become a central pillar of the administration’s efforts to remove millions of immigrants from the country. In theory, the idea is relatively straightforward: faced with the specter of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, undocumented immigrants can choose to end their legal efforts to remain in the United States and voluntarily return to their countries of origin. Since the White House launched Project Homecoming in May of last year, the administration has used a barrage of social media posts, television appearances, and flyers in immigration courts and detention facilities to push immigrants to “leave on their own terms.”

Salus, the sole company with a federal contract to facilitate self-deportations, has taken the campaign to dozens of ICE detention centers around the country. The company’s DHS contract tasks it with supporting Project Homecoming by signing up detained people to self-deport, buying them plane tickets, processing “exit payments,” chartering flights, and delivering other services. Salus provides the “only on-site personnel dedicated to identifying and assisting with processing voluntary departure candidates,” according to a court filing.

Salus says that, compared to the harsh realities of prolonged ICE detention, its self-deportation program offers a “more humane and dignified approach to the departure of illegal aliens.” Yet some critics, including attorneys for migrants who have been approached by the company’s representatives, say the choice being offered to detainees can be coercive.

The administration has often touted harsh detention as a feature, not a bug.

According to Emilie Raber, a senior attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, conditions in ICE facilities are one of the most significant factors detainees tend to weigh when deciding whether to continue pursuing their immigration cases in court or voluntarily leave the country. Those conditions can be dismal, even deadly; fatalities in ICE facilities this year are on track to exceed the number of deaths in 2004, the highest number in a year to date. The administration has often touted harsh detention as a feature, not a bug, notably in the case of Florida’s now-shuttered “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The implicit threat is hard to miss. “Leave on your OWN terms,” ICE warned migrants in a social media post last September. “AVOID THE JAIL CELL. AVOID THE HUMILIATION.” Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem last year launched a $220 million ad campaign touting that message with images of cuffed detainees being forcibly placed on planes.

Salus’ self-deportation operations stretch far and wide. A review of job postings shows the company and its subcontractor, BDR Strategic Services, have been hiring “facility enrollment managers” and “detainee support officers” near detention centers across the country. In a December court filing, Salus said it had dispatched two-person “enrollment management teams” to facilities to recruit migrants for the program. As of early July, its employees have entered at least 50 facilities across the country, according to a document that Walters shared. The company claims it has facilitated nearly 80,000 self-deportations.

In mid-April, a Salus employee approached a Central American immigrant with a set of self-deportation papers in a Louisiana ICE detention facility, according to Raber and Amelia Dagen, who represent the detainee. The attorneys declined to name the client over concerns for his privacy and because his case is sensitive. In an email to Raber, an assistant US attorney confirmed Salus’ involvement. 

According to Raber, Salus was pitching its program to many detainees in the facility as a way to leave detention. The papers weren’t in her client’s native Spanish, but the client understood that Salus was offering “voluntary departure.” Raber said her client had a preexisting medical issue, which went untreated while he was detained. (We could not independently verify the detainee’s medical condition, but inadequate health care is common in ICE detention facilities.) Still, the client declined to sign the papers.

A Salus spokesperson said the company did not have enough information to comment on this specific case but added in an email that “while DHS-specific forms are in English, forms specific to Project Homecoming are presented in English and Spanish.” The company spokesperson also said all eligibility decisions are ultimately the government’s: “Salus does not determine eligibility for or authorize voluntary departure. Those decisions are made exclusively by DHS.”

Voluntary departures existed before Trump reentered office, but the administration’s self-deportation push has drawn concerns from some immigration attorneys who say that, in practice, it does not appear to have the same procedural guardrails as before. Dagen says it’s unclear whether self-deportation, as it now exists, always enables detainees to exercise their right to an attorney or holds ICE to the benefits, like exit payments and legal relief, that the government is promising them. “If self-deportation is asking people to give up their opportunity to go to court,” Dagen cautions, “they are also giving up the right to hear their rights and then pursue them.”

“Given that detention is inherently coercive, the best way for an individual to make an informed decision is by getting a chance to speak to an immigration attorney about the details of their specific case,” adds Whitlock of the National Immigration Law Center. “It is highly unlikely that a private government contractor, who isn’t an attorney, is acting in the best interest of someone in detention.”

In response to questions, a DHS spokesperson asserted that ICE gives all detainees a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys and access to law libraries, translation services, and phones to contact their lawyers. But attorneys for detainees have said their clients don’t always receive sufficient access to counsel while in detention. In a January court declaration, for example, one Minnesota-based attorney recounted spending many hours calling the ICE field officer number they’d been instructed to use to locate and get access to their clients. Only once did someone pick up, according to the declaration.

Salus’ contract quickly ran into controversy. Walters, critics noted, has cultivated MAGA ties, including an October 2024 donation to a PAC linked to Noem, who was DHS secretary when the contract was awarded. As Mother Jones and POGO Investigates reported, CSI Aviation last year sued DHS in an attempt to nullify the contract, arguing that the department had conducted a “sham” competition to award this work to Salus. CSI claimed DHS actions blocked it from competing and improperly benefited Salus.

The suit turned up a government acknowledgement that, prior to awarding the contract, DHS officials had “shared high-level budget and task information with Salus that was not available to the public.” According to a government court filing, a DHS official at one point observed that the department’s actions “created an appearance of favoritism toward Salus.” (That official ultimately concluded the department had taken sufficient steps to mitigate the problems.)

In May 2026, a judge ruled against CSI after finding CSI hadn’t shown it could have performed the work. The judge also wrote that he was “confident” DHS’s actions were proper, “at least based on the administrative record before this Court.” Still, the deal faced skepticism from congressional Democrats and even some Trump administration officials. In July, DHS announced plans for a new competition to replace the contract Salus currently holds.

Salus has blamed the scrutiny in part on its corporate rivals.

Walters and the web of companies linked to him have faced other controversy. Mother Jones and POGO Investigates reported in March on the role of Walters-connected firms in procuring luxury jets and other planes for DHS. That includes the now-infamous “Big, Beautiful Jet” that Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski, flew on. The jet became a focal point of criticism of Noem during congressional hearings in March that precipitated her firing.

Salus has blamed the scrutiny in part on its corporate rivals. In a letter to Congress in April, Walters noted that these competitors control a far larger portion of the deportation industry than Salus does, and he argued that their dominance is costing taxpayers billions of dollars and increasing the amount of time immigrants spend in detention. “Between 2022 and 2025, four of those companies that have built their business around private detention centers and forced deportation flights, have received more than $7 billion in contract awards which is more than the next 43 ICE contractors combined,” he wrote.

According to Walters, Salus’ work facilitating self-deportations since May 2025 “has saved DHS more than $2 billion over forced deportation.” This, he said, was a direct threat to the bottom line of companies like GEO and CSI that “take a less humane approach.”

For its part, GEO Group has consistently denied that it lobbies to increase the time that detainees spend in its facilities. “We do not take a position on nor have we ever advocated for or against criminal justice or immigration policies such as whether to criminalize behavior, the length of criminal sentences, or the basis for or length of an individual’s incarceration or detention,” the company says on its website.

In his letter to lawmakers, Walters also took aim at a March 19 NBC News story that cited an anonymous source who alleged that Salus had pressured an unidentified “marketing firm” seeking a subcontract to partner with a company linked to Lewandowski. That story had prompted Rep. Robert Garcia, the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, to ask Walters if Lewandowski or anyone tied to Lewandowski had ever solicited anything of value from Salus in exchange for favorable treatment, or if Salus had offered or delivered anything of value to Lewandowski. Lewandowski and Salus have denied doing so.

Responding to the lawmakers, Walters implied that his rivals were behind negative stories about his company. “When those competitors could not win in a fair contract competition that they were not qualified for, and when DHS had the temerity to push back against their bid protest in federal court, they turned to lobbyists and unethical ‘reporters’ to mislead you and accuse us of crimes as implausible as they are outrageous,” Walters wrote. (Salus has not alleged that any reporting by Mother Jones and POGO is inaccurate.)

Walters also provided lawmakers emails that Salus’ lawyer David Panzer sent to an NBC reporter prior to the NBC story’s publication, including one calling the claims the reporter asked about “entirely false.”

“Salus has concerns that you may be being fed false information,” Panzer wrote to the reporter on March 16. After the story ran, Panzer wrote to NBC’s general counsel, demanding the network retract its reporting and threatening a lawsuit. Days later, NBC updated its story with additional comments from Salus.

NBC News did not respond to a request for comment.

Among the reasons Walters bristles at accusations that his company has benefited from government favoritism is that, in his view, the system is actually rigged against him. GEO and CSI Aviation have extensive ties to the administration. ICE’s new acting director is former GEO Group executive David Venturella. White House Border Czar Tom Homan formerly worked as a GEO consultant. CSI CEO Allen Weh hosted a campaign rally for Trump days before the 2024 election.

“The record shows the same recurring pattern,” Salus argued in a document attached to Walters’ letter to Congress, “the repeated use of sole-source, limited source, follow-on bridge contracts, solicitations with one offeror, or other materially noncompetitive vehicles” that benefit CSI and other Salus competitors.

One of those no-bid “interim” contracts has been singled out for criticism in a new class-action lawsuit against CSI and its subcontractor GlobalX brought by Venezuelans deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. The lawsuit notes that CSI and ICE agreed to modify their contract the day before the rendition planes took off. The no-bid contract and the modification, the suit says, “were plainly aimed at implementing the U.S.–El Salvador agreement to render Venezuelan migrants to CECOT.” Neither company responded to a request for comment on the suit.

But for all the bad blood and legal brawling, Salus’ self-deportation business seems to benefit from his rivals’ harsh detention and deportation tactics. In an email, a DHS spokesperson disputed the notion that the arrangement was coercive, declaring it “categorically false [that] we would pressure someone to self-deport.”  

But in the same email, the spokesperson wrote that “being in detention is a choice,” adding, “We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App.” The spokesperson wrote that immigrants should “take advantage” of the $2,600 and free flights. “If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”

And the public messaging campaign continues. In a July 23 press release, DHS claimed it had imposed $84 billion in fines on “illegal aliens who refuse to leave the United States.”

“Our message to illegal aliens is clear,” a department official said in the release. “LEAVE NOW. If you don’t you will face the consequences, including fines, arrest, and deportation.”

Darline Graham is planning to take her late brother Lindsey Graham’s public office in a very different direction.

The temporary lawmaker received Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement last month to represent South Carolinians in the upper chamber after her 71-year-old brother suddenly passed away from heart issues. In the weeks since, Graham has decided that her short-term placement could be permanent, tossing her hat in the ring to formally run for South Carolina’s vacant Senate seat.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday evening, the younger Graham revealed that her campaign and legislative priorities would not line up with her brother’s legacy—or even with the White House’s interests.

“Lindsey was focused on national security, and I know that’s important, but I will probably be focused more on affordability and what matters to families in South Carolina, the struggling families,” Graham explained.

“I know what it is to struggle from week to week, paycheck to paycheck,” she said, referring to her and her brother’s tumultuous childhood. “So definitely affordability.”

She noted that her “first priority” would be to “fight for South Carolina and … help President Trump achieve his agenda.”

Graham also mentioned that she would like to get the Russian sanctions bill “across the finish line” because it was “extremely important” to her departed brother.

A focus on affordability would surely win over Graham’s recently acquired constituents, but it would also highlight the Trump administration’s myriad failures in that department.

Affordability is the chief concern for Americans heading into the midterm elections, according to an April Gallup poll. In January, a New York Times/Siena poll found that 65 percent of American voters felt that a middle-class lifestyle was out of reach, while 77 percent said that a middle-class life was more difficult to attain than it was a generation before. All in all, a majority of Americans feel that they’ve been priced out of a broad range of necessities, including education, health care, and having a family.

Those sentiments have surely only been exacerbated in the months since. The cost of oil and gas has skyrocketed since the onset of the Iran war; utility bills have continued to climb; health insurance premiums have drastically outpaced the growth of employee paychecks; and homeownership seems like an increasingly unattainable dream due to low market availability and astronomical prices.

Meanwhile, the White House has repeatedly detached itself from efforts that would aid America’s middle and lower classes. Case in point: Trump’s decision last month to divorce his office from a bipartisan housing bill. Trump did so in yet another futile attempt to force through his unpopular voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act.