Mendocino County Today: Thursday 1/29/2026

Warming | Brothers Missing | Grocery Outlet | Shel Story | Rain Puddles | Cinemas Rocks | Killing Natives | Pomo Men | Yesterday's Catch | Giants Lineup | Visiting Paris | Avoiding Probate | Cliche Support | Weight Loss | Renata Symonds | Psychiatric Hospitals | Not Needed | Good Work | Paid Agitators | ICE Quiz | Therapy | Lean Years | Paul Robeson | The Shape | Henry Teel | Neither Politics | Lord Haw-Haw | Never Voted | Lead Stories | Every Empire | Not Scared | War Justifications | Haven't Finished | Doomsday Clock | Handle With Care

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 41F with partly cloudy skies this Thursday morning on the coast. A mix of fog & sun thru Saturday then showers on Sunday. Looks like more roofing weather next week !

A WARM UP for the next few days will be gradual. Moisture will make its way into the area towards the end of the weekend with the arrival of a frontal boundary and dynamic forcing, light rain is likely Sunday. (NWS)

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TWO TEENAGE BROTHERS MISSING OUT OF LAKE COUNTY

by Madison Smalstig

Authorities are continuing to search for two Lake County teenage brothers who have been missing for just under two weeks.

Wesley Charlo Jr., 17, and Xavier Charlo, 15, were last seen about 9 a.m. Jan. 12 on Butte Street in Nice, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. They are believed to be on foot.

On Jan. 14, the California Highway Patrol issued a feather alert — a notification alerting the public about missing Indigenous people — that extended into lake, Napa, Mendocino and Colusa counties.

Wesley Charlo Jr. was described by authorities as 5 feet, 9 inches tall, 140 pounds, with long black hair and brown eyes. He has the tattoo of an “A” on his right shoulder, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Xavier Charlo is described as 5 foot, 9 inches tall and 125 pounds with medium-length hair and brown eyes.

Authorities do not know what they were wearing when they were last seen.

The Sheriff’s Office and CHP are asking that anyone with information on the teenager’s whereabouts to call 911 or the Sheriff’s Office dispatch 707-263-2690.

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GROUNDBREAKING DATE FOR FORT BRAGG GROCERY OUTLET SLIPS

Construction now targeted to begin in May.

by Elise Cox

Construction of a new Grocery Outlet on South Franklin Street in Fort Bragg has been pushed back to May, council member Lindy Peters said Monday.

“I know a lot of people are concerned about grocery outlet,” Peters said at the City Council meeting Monday. “I understand they have now selected a contractor that they are moving forward with their business license application, and they hope to break ground in May.”

Construction of the store on the site of the old Mendocino County Social Services building has been held up for more than four years. Originally proposed in 2019, the project was delayed after local business group Fort Bragg Local Business Matters challenged a mitigated negative declaration under the California Environmental Quality Act in July 2021.

After three and a half years of legal battles, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christine Van Aken in February dismissed a lawsuit brought by Fort Bragg Local Business Matters against the California Coastal Commission, the city of Fort Bragg and Best Development Group. The suit claimed the commission failed to follow its own rules on community impact, citing traffic concerns and the loss of views.

According to documents filed with the commission, the new store will be on the far north side of the site. When it opens, the store will employ 25 full-time employees and 10 part-time employees.

The owners plan to include a 53-space parking lot with parking for recreational vehicles, electric vehicles and priority spots for clean-air vehicles. Other improvements include internal walkways and crosswalks, perimeter sidewalks, utility infrastructure and stormwater drainage.

In addition to the 16,157-square-foot store, the site will include 19,265 square feet of landscaping that will leave the site permeable to stormwater.

(Mendolocal.news)

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FORT BRAGG'S MOST SUCCESSFUL DOPE DEALER? (By Far, Maybe Even A Fort Bragg All-Timer) In 2026?

Siskiyou County Sheriff's Deputies arrested 55 year old Shel Saunders of Fort Bragg after he was found to be transporting 1,363 pounds of illegally cultivated marijuana flower from the Mount Shasta Vista area.

Saunders was driving a sprinter van containing 74 bags of marijuana and $253,870 in US currency when he was pulled over for a traffic violation. A probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted and investigators could not locate any paperwork or licensure that indicated the marijuana was legally grown or certified for sale on the legal market. The large amount of US currency was believed to be connected to the sales of the illicit product, and a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun was located in the engine compartment. Saunders was then arrested for the transportation and possession of marijuana for sale and booked in the Siskiyou County jail.

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Eleven Days Later, Siskiyou County Offers a Bizarre Account of a Fort Bragg man’s Marijuana Arrest.

Huh? Story repeated Verbatim Across News Sites

by Frank Hartzell

A Fort Bragg man, Shel Saunders, 55, was arrested in Siskiyou County on Jan. 16 on marijuanatransportation charges. This is old news and normally wouldn’t merit coverage — he’s likely home by now and may have already retrieved his property. But for reasons unexplained, the sheriff’s office issued a press release Tuesday night, 11 days after the arrest.

That release is now circulating across Redding and Sacramento TV outlets and being re-posted by regional aggregators. Few seemed to notice that the press release didn’t include the date of the arrest. It claims Saunders had 1,363 pounds of cultivated marijuana flower and no proof it was legally grown.

We’re increasingly frustrated by this kind of incomplete, delayed information being issued — and then rubberstamped by newsrooms that no longer question official narratives. The decline in crime reporting is a serious problem. Fortunately, in our region, law enforcement generally does not engage in deliberate deception, but the media’s failure to scrutinize basic details is becoming impossible to ignore.

It’s our job as journalists to ask questions, and we’re failing badly at it. The “news” game in 2026 has become little more than repeating official statements without scrutiny. Every site in this region — except us and the fading AVA — operates this way. We’re not looking for credit; we just want our profession back, not replaced by cheerleading websites.

The first outlet to slap up a press release now gets all the clicks, and readers have been conditioned to value immediacy over accuracy or context. That’s the disturbing part. A quick check of the county’s jailpopulation search shows Saunders is no longer in custody — if he ever was.

The outdated crime report appeared on Siskiyou County’s website Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 27, and was quickly picked up by television newscasts, all using the same “public safety risk” framing. At this point, the information deserves serious scrutiny. The sheriff’s office claims the man was transporting 1,363 pounds of marijuana flower in 74 bags — roughly 18 pounds per bag. That would be extraordinarily dense “flower.” The accompanying photo shows thin black plastic bags stacked loosely on top of one another, raising even more questions. The whole thing feels, at best, very strange.

You can question the facts here, but one thing is certain: none of the other news outlets will. Most have become pressrelease PR sites, posting whatever officials hand them without a single followup. Questioning authority is no longer part of the job description in much of today’s media landscape. That may be why a federal shooting team in Minnesota now seems caught off guard by the sudden pushback they’re facing — they’re simply not used to being challenged.

The criminal case may already have been dismissed. Another troubling reality in 2026 is that court records are no longer accessible unless you physically drive to a courthouse and sift through heavily redacted files. And no — a bare list of charges is not the same as reading the actual documents or reviewing true “public” records.

Most news outlets are content to call the district attorney and treat that single perspective as the entire story. That’s deeply concerning. The old principle of “innocent until proven guilty” has largely vanished from the journalism landscape, replaced by a rush to publish whatever officials say first.

Here is the press release — take it as you will. We chose not to insert the Jan. 16 arrest date into the Jan. 27 release. The authorities failed to put any dates in. We had to track it down.

“Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Deputies arrested 55-year-old Shel Saunders of Fort Bragg, CA after he was found to be transporting 1,363 pounds of illegally cultivated marijuana flower from the Mount Shasta Vista area. Saunders was driving a sprinter van containing 74 bags of marijuana and $253,870 in US currency when he was pulled over for a traffic violation. A probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted and investigators could not locate any paperwork or licensure that indicated the marijuana was legally grown or certified for sale on the legal market. The large amount of US currency was believed to be connected to the sales of the illicit product, and a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun was located in the engine compartment. Saunders was then arrested for the transportation and possession of marijuana for sale and booked in the Siskiyou County jail.”

We’ll try to follow up on this — but don’t hold your breath. If the department ever decides to release actual facts, we’ll update the story, so check back. Until then, this is where the truth lives: in the only newsroom still bothering to ask basic questions while everyone else sprints to repost whatever lands in their inbox so check back.

The dateless press release is now circulating madly around the Internet and social media. We tried to tell people it was very old news and they refused to believe it. LOL. Plus it comes with this strange ending, which makes us think the county may have pushed this to scare people into getting all their permits.

Important to note that marijuana grown illegally in Siskiyou County is not held to the same quality and safety standards as marijuana products that comply with California regulations. Concerningly, illegal marijuana is often grown using toxic, banned pesticides that remain on the product after it is harvested and processed. Therefore, we encourage the public to visit the DCC Product Safety Portal: https://recalls.cannabis.ca.gov/ to verify whether or not they are consuming legally-sourced products.

Yes, the cartels made a horrific mess of California 5-10 years ago when prices of weed were high. Most of them left when the prices dropped and everything got way safer pretty quick. The authorities still want you to be scared and there are places where illegal growers are a nuisance, but legalization was as big of a disappointment to county coffers as to the criminals, the bottom fell out of everything, money, our economy and the crime wave.

(MendocinoCoast.News)

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COAST CINEMAS ROCKS

This is my first set of movies that I requested. Who is going to join me to watch all three.

Crank up the volume and pull out your best concert t-shirt.

Introducing Coast Cinemas Rocks, a two-day celebration of rock and roll on the big screen, January 31 and February 1.

Three legendary films. Three very different visions of music, performance, and cultural moment:

The Last Waltz

Martin Scorsese’s cinematic farewell to The Band, featuring unforgettable performances and surprise guests. Intimate, elegant, and often called the greatest concert film ever made.

The Song Remains the Same

Led Zeppelin at their most mythic. Massive concert footage, fantasy sequences, and pure arena-filling power, built for the biggest screen and loudest speakers.

Pink Floyd The Wall

A visceral rock opera that blurs music, film, and psychology. Bold, surreal, and unforgettable, this one hits differently in a dark theater.

Big sound. Bigger screens. Pure cinema volume. Coast Cinemas Rocks January 31 — February 1 Big Movies. Small Town Magic.

Visit www.thecoastcinemas.com for tickets and showtimes.

Terry Ramos

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ROUND VALLEY KILLINGS, November 1858 to April 1859

While campaigns against Native Americans raged in the northwest territories of Oregon and Washington, vigilantes and federal officials killed even greater numbers in and around the Round Valley Reservation.

In November or early December of 1858 — after cattle, horses, and hogs went missing from Round Valley ranches — whites killed nine Indians. The next day, federal Indian agent Simon Storms “ordered the Indians to produce among them those who had been engaged in the stealing. Twenty-one were given up.” Storms planned to hang “some of the worst,” but when the prisoners allegedly ran, “fourteen of them were killed.”

On December 31, after Indians stole six or seven horses from nearby Eden Valley and killed them for food — amid the starvation conditions caused by white hunting, stock grazing, and exclusion from traditional hunting and gathering areas —ranchers “went to the rancheria of the robbers” and massacred fourteen or fifteen Yuki people. On New Year's Day, Round Valley whites massacred another “forty Indians, for stealing stock and killing their hogs.” The following day, they slew at least twelve other Indians in the valley.

These five massacres were part of a loosely organized regional campaign. By January 13, 1859, the Sacramento Daily Union published reports that “more than one hundred Indians have been killed by whites within three or four months” in the Eden Valley region. J. Ross Browne later wrote: “At Round Valley, during the winter of 1858-59, more than a hundred and fifty peaceable Indians, including women and children, were cruelly slaughtered by the whites who had settled there under official authority.” He explained, “Armed parties went into the rancherias in open day, when no evil was apprehended, and shot the Indians down — weak, harmless, and defenseless as they were — without distinction of age or sex; they shot down women with sucking babes at their breasts; killed or crippled the naked children that were running about.” On January 20, the Daily Alta California reported “the slaughter of one hundred and seventy Indians, in the locality of Round Valley, since November last.”

As in some other instances in the 1850s, the army temporarily stopped this rampant slaughter. In January, the Sixth Infantry deployed seventeen dragoons to Round Valley. Yet, these soldiers soon learned that neither state nor federal authorities supported their peacekeeping mission. In February, commanding officer lieutenant Edward Dillon arrested a white man for beating a reservation Indian with a club. The news spread, and twenty-five angry whites soon surrounded Dillon's house, threatening violence if the accused was not released by the following morning. Dillon stood his ground for two days. Then, inexplicably, his prisoner escaped. The incident seemed over, but Superintendent Henley complained to Washington that the dragoons were overstepping their authority by protecting California Indians. Army command in San Francisco then ordered Dillon to avoid confronting or incarcerating whites. Despite deploying seventeen soldiers, US Army commanders ordered Dillon to stop protecting Round Valley Indians from a now profoundly lethal killing machine, thus underscoring federal culpability in the expanding Round Valley region genocide. The results were disastrous.

On April 2, Dillon reported from Round Valley that “the party that went to Eden Valley to hunt Yuki Indians… have been for nearly two weeks hunting Indians and it is currently reported here, that two hundred and forty Indians were killed.” By mid-April, an informant who had just arrived from Round Valley reported that “in the vicinity of Round Valley within the past three weeks, from three to four hundred bucks, squaws and children, have been killed by the whites.” In total, these reports suggest the killing, primarily by vigilantes, of at least 550 and perhaps as many as 910 Indian people in the Round Valley region between November 1858 and mid-April 1859.

Vigilantes killed more Indians elsewhere in early 1859. On January 23, after an attempted stock theft on Battle Creek, vigilantes massacred “not less than ten” Yana people without suffering a single casualty. Ten days later, three men attacked a Pomo village “near the head of the Russian River Valley, and killed fourteen of them, on the supposition that the Indians had been stealing their cattle.” Occasional Indian resistance to such attacks, which was often nothing more than self-defense against a relentless killing machine, soon triggered even more vigilante and army massacres in the Mad River Basin to the north.

— Benjamin Madley, ‘An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe,’ Yale University Press, 2017

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POMO MEN with a traditional hand drill.

Near Ukiah in Mendocino County, California - circa 1895

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday & Wednesday, January 27& 28

JOSEPH BUCKINGHAM, 46, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CRISTOBAL CUESTA-CASTRO, 51, Covelo. Concealed handgun in vehicle not registered owner.

ROCKY DUMAN, 34, Ukiah. County parole violation.

NEGIE FALLIS IV, 45, Covelo. Attempted murder, controlled substance with two or more priors.

SANTANA GARCIA, 24, Ukiah. Probation revocation, resisting court order

HECTOR GARCIA-VAZQUEZ, 35, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, false ID, vehicle registration tampering.

VERONICA HERMOSILLO, 31, Ukiah. Under influence, contempt of court.

JEREMY HOLZ, 52, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

DANIEL HUNT, 42, Fairfield/Ukiah. Attempted car theft, narcotics for sale.

ASHTON KORC, 38, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

JAIME MARIN-JUAREZ, 28, Ukiah. Controlled substance, concealed dirk-dagger.

DENA MORRIS, 63, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

STEVEN MUNOS, 42, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

VINCE MUSSET, 46, Ukiah. Burglary, vandalism.

RICHARD ORTIZ, 40, Ukiah. Battery with serious bodily injury, petty theft with two or more priors.

SHALA PUGH, 35, Boonville. Failure to obey lawful law enforcement order, resisting.

GERRELL SCRIBNER, 40, Covelo. Failure to appear.

DONALD SHARP, 39, Hopland. County parole violation.

VINCENT SIMMONS JR., 32, Ukiah. Controlled substance, failure to appear, smuggling controlled substance into jail.

AMICA WETZLER, 45, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

APRIL WHITE, 54, Cloverdale/Ukiah. DUI.

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SOME THOUGHTS ON VISITING PARIS, Part 3

by Terry Sites

It was a month ago today that I stepped on a plane in Los Angeles headed for Paris. This month has allowed time to reflect. When my cousin and I toasted the New Year on the Seine the DJ was playing “Oh What a Night” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. That song keeps playing in my head when I look back and it becomes “Oh What a Week” — my new theme song.

There was an opportunity for our group to have dinner in a French home and who knew what that might entail? We had no idea. As it turned out our hosts were both expatriates. The hostess, a former assistant at Paris Match Magazine, has lived 35 years in Paris. Our host was a Romanian artist with 30 years under his belt. Their home was in a former jewelry-manufacturing atelier (workshop). She met us curbside and guided us down a warren of dark stone passageways to their front door. It was easy to imagine rats scurrying along but we did not see any. Inside, the high-ceilinged room served as kitchen, living and dining room. Antiques, artwork and different intriguing but difficult to identify objects surrounded us. One small skylight above the front door was the only natural light; all of us were fascinated peering here and there exploring.

The meal prepared by the hostess was served in courses and delicious. Our host spoke of his escape from Romania and his career as an artist in Paris. Both of them put us completely at ease.

A large painting dominated the room and when I guessed that it was Nijinsky (the famous ballet dancer) our hostess flattered me by saying, “Over 2000 people have had dinner here and you are the first to recognize him.” I was very pleased with myself. As dinner wrapped up she asked us if we would like some “white coffee.” This turned out to be orange blossom essence dissolved in hot water served in tiny cups. She asked us to say “Frommage” and took our picture. Needless to say we were all charmed.

A New Years eve morning food tasting tour brought us to a market street. Many prepared parcels were bundled in front of the stalls waiting for pick-ups by people having parties that night. Lavish seafood platters were especially prevalent. Our first stop was at a chocolatiers. Everything was looking gorgeous inside fancy glass bell cases. We tasted it and it was very good but we mostly agreed that California’s “Sees” was better. French chocolate is snappier while Sees is creamier. We tasted cheese and sausage then finally fruit. Our guide was very worked up about something she called “Kak,i” which turned out to be persimmon. To our surprise most of the people on the excursion had never encountered persimmons!

Paris is known for its luxury goods. We visited a huge department store, the Layfayette. It was filled with beautiful perfumes, famous designer clothes and spectacular holiday displays. All six floors opened onto a towering atrium topped by an intricate stained glass dome. The central display was a huge Christmas tree formed from red plush velvet and gold metallic swathes and covered in twinkling lights. On the hour it started to undulate prettily as it launched into a twinkly light show with music. Impressive. We visited Lafayette on our own but remembered an earlier guide explaining to us that many Parisians were, “Window Lickers” (looking but not buying) like our window shoppers.

The evening of New Years Day we boarded a long narrow boat for a nighttime cruise on the Seine. The lights onshore were lovely as we slid along. We passed many dark houseboats and empty restaurant boats. Everyone was resting after their big New Years eve (Bonne Annee!) celebrations. As we floated under bridges I wished I could return for a day cruise to see them better.

The Moulin Rouge was an important stop for my cousin. We had both watched a TV documentary on how their dancers audition and train to break into working there. The Parisians see the show as a complete tourist trap, but we didn’t care. Waiting outside it felt like a cross between Las Vegas and Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles with a little Disneyland thrown in for good measure. It was cheesy, yes, but just so over the top in a good way with all that red neon and spangly signage. Eight hundred and fifty people are seated nightclub style in the showroom. You file in and out slowly — a fire would be a disaster.

After we were wedged into our chairs our anticipation built. I doubt that anyone present felt blasé when the show started and row after row of bare breasted, feathered, beaded and bedazzling women appeared. WOW! The show is a real hodgepodge with numbers ranging from French homage to Indonesian masks to a rock and roll sock hop with giant jukebox. Say what? But, logic is not the point. For two hours we suspended our disbelief while 25 very athletic but feminine women and 8 supporting feminine men pranced and smiled. When they got to the can can and started jumping up in the air to land hard in full splits you just had to love them. Ooh La La.

My favorite memory of all was lunch at Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon train station. Built in 1900 for the Universal Exhibition during the Belle Époque (beautiful era), it is considered one of the five most beautiful restaurants in all of Paris. The décor and ambiance sweeps you back in time. Our experience included impeccable service, the best food we had anywhere and that artful setting… It was wonderful from start to finish. No trip to Paris would be complete without a meal at Le Train Bleu. My cousin ordered scallops, which were served with a garnish of caviar — little dark blue balls that exploded in our mouths like “pop rocks.” I asked our waiter what kind of caviar it was and he just kept making flapping motions with his hands above his shoulders. It turned out to be flying fish “caviar” known for its tiny crunchy eggs with their signature pop. While not true caviar it is described as “a versatile fish roe prized for adding a briny burst to meals.” Amen.

And so my personal tour of Paris ended not with a bang but with the pop of flying fish “caviar.” Trite as it may be, it truly was (for me) the trip of a lifetime. And to my cousin Dianne who made it possible may I just say one last heartfelt time, “Merci Beaucoup!”

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MAKING A TRUST AND WILL

by Paul Modic

The main reason you put your house, and/or other assets, into a trust is to avoid probate when you die, thus making the process easier and less expensive for your heirs to navigate. Probate is a complicated process: your estate is appraised, lawyers are appointed who get a percentage of the estate for their work, there are public announcements in the newspapers, the process can take months or years and then the state takes a cut of the estate. (Having a trust keeps the process private.)

I had been thinking of making a revocable living trust for years and finally felt ready to call a lawyer to make an appointment and pay the price, which had been about $1500 when my friend had recommended a trust attorney a few years ago. I asked the first one I called for a list of what I needed to bring to the appointment and other questions about the process but the receptionist or legal aid wouldn’t tell me anything and said I’d have to find out at the first $400 appointment. (The package deal, trust and will, would cost $3000, plus fees.)

That was a law firm with multiple partners, next I called a solo practitioner, recommended by another friend, and the young guy who answered the phone for the old lawyer was very helpful, answering all my questions about the process and I learned a lot. (That one would cost $450 for the first hour and $2800 for the whole thing.)

I had handwritten a couple of holographic wills before going into the hospital for operations the last few years, wrote another one recently and then wondered if I could also make a trust on my own? (That seemed like a stretch for someone who’d never even done his taxes by himself, always paying someone a small fee to do them.)

I checked online and some sites came up offering free trust and wills. I picked one called freewill (https://www.freewill.com/learn/how-to-make-a-living-trust-in-california), checked that it was approved by the Better Business Bureau and within an hour I had the template produced and ready to print. (Freewill is financed by charities and gives you multiple opportunities to leave money to a list of them, though I just kept my trust simple, just for the house.)

To complete the process I brought it to the local credit union where it was notarized, a couple employees signed the will as witnesses and I had my trust. (The main things to choose are your beneficiaries, who will be your trustee(s), and what properties and/or money is going to be distributed upon your death. You can also designate how you want your body disposed of but I skipped that part, not sure.)

The next step was to get the deed of my house taken out of my name and put into the name of the trust, which also had my full name in its title. I also had to file a form notifying the assessor that the transfer was to a trust so the property wouldn’t be reassessed and taxed.

I called the county recorder’s office (707.445.7382), four times one day trying to find out the name of the form and where to find it. I got varying degrees of help, one said he couldn’t tell me anything because of liability issues but I could come into the office and use their resources. Another directed me to a site called Saclaw, a Sacramento law library which had all the forms, but I couldn’t navigate the site easily and gave up. This was starting to feel challenging.

I called back a couple days later and finally got someone in the recorder’s office who was very helpful, told me the name of the form (Preliminary Change of Ownership Report, form BOE-502-A), and where to find a printable copy on the county government website. (humboldt.gov.)

Next I needed a quitclaim form to fill out and notarize, which would transfer the deed from my name to the trust’s name. The internet sent me to some free sites but after filling out the info they wanted my credit card and asked me to pay a small fee from only one dollar to thirty-seven. I abandoned those sites, asked google for the third or fourth time and finally a printable quitclaim form popped up from Saclaw.

I filled out the forms, printed them off, called the recorder’s office with some followup questions and the very helpful person said I could scan it to them so they could check that it was recordable, ie filled out correctly. Within an hour I got a message back with useful corrections including that I had to look up the correct R/T code (Revenue and Taxation), and state the reason no taxes are to be paid, which is that the deed is going into a trust.

Once again I didn’t know where to find that code and felt a little lost but I knew I was getting close. I looked around on humboldt.gov, found the code number (11930), made the other change (listing my name as the trustee next to the trust name which would receive the property tax bill), and then called them back to doublecheck that I had done it all correctly.

The fifth or sixth person I talked to approved my additions, I went back to the credit union to get the quitclaim deed notarized and mailed the forms to the recorder’s office along with a $94 fee. The whole project cost $154 including four notary fees of $15 each. I’ll soon get my new deed in the mail and notify my insurance company to change the name of the property from mine to the trust name.

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How To Make A Trust For Your House If You Are Sole Owner With No Mortgage

(You can do this with as many financial assets, properties, partners and mortgages you have, but for this purpose I kept it simple: one house, one owner, no mortgage.)

Choose a free online site (BBB-approved is best), list your beneficiaries, the trustee who will deal with your estate when you die and answer the other questions.

Get the trust notarized and the will witnessed.

Fill out the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report, marking NO for most options and YES for Question L: “This is a transfer of property to form a revocable trust.”

Fill out the quitclaim form (Use R/T code number 11930, write NONE for the amount of taxes to be paid) and state that the reason for no taxes or reappraisal is that the deed is going into a living trust.

Find your existing deed, make a copy of the property description, and attach it to the quitclaim form.

Scan the forms and email them to the recorders office to make sure they are filled out correctly. ([email protected])

Get the quitclaim deed notarized.

Send all the property forms to the recorder’s office and notify your homeowners’s insurance company of the name change, from yours to the trust’s name.

You are the trustee until you die, you can change anything in the trust and will (such as beneficiaries or trustees), add or take out any assets or revoke it for any reason at any time.

https://humboldtgov.org/DocumentCenter/View/244/BOE-502A---Preliminary-Change-of-Ownership-Report-PDF?bidId=

https://saclaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/form-quitclaim-deed.pdf

(When the trust-owner dies, the succeeding trustee settles the estate by doing the following (from Nolo.com):

• get death certificates (obtain 8-12 certified copies)
• find and file the will with the local probate court
• notify the Social Security Administration of the death
• notify the state Department of Health
• identify the trust beneficiaries
• notify the trust beneficiaries
• make an inventory of trust assets
• protect trust property (such as by securing and maintaining a home until it's transferred or sold)
• get a Taxpayer Identification Number
• transfer property into your name as trustee
• review trust investments
• set up a record-keeping system
• get assets appraised, and pay debts

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/trustees-job-first-six-months-32452.html)

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AM I NOT PRETTY ENOUGH?

by Marilyn Davin

I recently attended a dinner that included a 40-something woman I have known for years as part of my extended family. I looked forward to hearing how she was doing as a mother, a wife, and a hard-working professional woman. I’ll call her Lily here. None of those topics came up; what she talked about mostly was her weight loss, courtesy of a new GLP1 weight loss drug. As background, Lily was never noticeably overweight, and was neither pre-diabetic nor diabetic. Standing in the kitchen in her pre-pregnancy skinny jeans, she just wanted to look better, though she never put it that way. She spoke instead of the 20 or so pounds as she lost in psychological terms, that her thinner self made her feel differently about herself as a person: more confident, less ashamed of her body.

I kept my mouth shut; the last thing young adults want to hear is knowledge or advice from somebody their mothers’ ages. But I became sadder and sadder as she described her pharmaceutical weight-loss journey: the drug’s price, its dosages, its overall wonderfulness. I asked myself, How did this talented young woman, a product of this country’s 50-year struggle to ensure that women receive equal educational opportunities, equal pay, birth control, and equality before the law, end up in a suburban kitchen half a century later describing how she felt like a lesser person because she was a few pounds shy of today’s wholly unrealistic beauty norms?

There’s nothing new about a young woman’s desire to be attractive; archeologists discovered recently that even Cleopatra had lipstick. It’s the “feeling better about yourself as a person” part that is so sad to me. Are we really no more than the appearance of our outer shells?

A recent study described on forbes.com stated that 7% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for these weight-loss drugs; medicalexpress.com found that one-fifth of American women aged 50 to 64 are taking them, predictably creating skyrocketing earnings for the corporations that manufacture them. Graphs appearing on yahoo.com show over a 5-year period just how much of a boom for share prices for two major corporations between 2019 and 2024: Novo Nordisk (Wegovy) $100 to over $550, Eli Lilly (Zepbound) $100 to over $600 (though today there is volatile cutthroat competition between those two largest GLP-1 for coveted market share).

Healthline.com recently consolidated data from Medicaid, Medicare, and 1.9 billion claims from private insurers to also determine which states have the highest GLP-1 prescription rates. Unsurprisingly, the poorest states, with West Virginia and Kentucky topping the list, have the highest numbers. These data do not specify for what purpose these drugs were prescribed so there is a lack of granular detail, and poor southern states also have high rates of diabetes, an American epidemic for which these drugs were designed. It should also be noted that Medicaid does not prescribe these drugs for weight loss, and that available data does not include those who pay cash for their prescriptions, bypassing insurance and its data. Given that limitation, the actual numbers of Americans taking these drugs, coupled with the lightning speed of the ever-nimble American pharmaceutical industry to come up with easier methods to administer them, would almost certainly push those numbers much higher.

We unconsciously absorb the culture around us, especially when we’re young and competing in that culture’s marketplace. What we see today, on thousands of media sites, are successful women emulating the Trump harem of thin, designer-dressed women tottering on 5-inch heels, sporting highlighted, flowing locks framing faces caked with makeup.

At our annual Christmas celebration, I gave the women in our group copies of former first lady Michelle Obama’s book “The Look,” which describes the pressures she faced to conform to that beauty ideal (especially as an African American), frying her natural hair in the process and ultimately requiring that she wear wigs in public. When I handed her book out I said that my favorite first-lady comment was made by the senior Barbara Bush, who declared upon moving to the White House that she would not lose weight, color her hair, or buy new clothes. That’s confidence.

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CALIFORNIA MENTAL HEALTH HOSPITALS WARN OF CUTS AFTER STATE HANDS DOWN STAFFING RULES

by Kristen Hwang

Psychiatric hospitals could close beds under proposed state rules if regulators don’t allow implementation time, facilities warn.

The California Department of Public Health delayed emergency staffing rules for acute psychiatric hospitals after significant outcry from hospitals, nurses, law enforcement and lawmakers.

The proposed rules, which would increase the required number of health workers on staff, were set to take effect Jan. 31, roughly one month after the department first published them.

Instead, the department said in a letter to health care facilities that the rules will go into effect June 1.

The emergency rules stem from a San Francisco Chronicle investigation that linked cases of physical assault, sexual assault and death to low staffing levels at for-profit acute psychiatric hospitals. The investigation revealed a loophole in state regulations that allowed acute psychiatric hospitals to employ fewer staff than general hospitals.

Acute psychiatric hospitals treat people — sometimes involuntarily — experiencing mental health crises and who pose an immediate threat to themselves or others.

The proposed rules would require acute psychiatric hospitals to have at all times at least one licensed nurse per six adult patients or one licensed nurse per five pediatric patients. The health department would also fine hospitals $15,000 to $30,000 for each day they are out of compliance.

But hospitals, law enforcement organizations and behavioral health groups say the state’s aggressive implementation timeline will inadvertently lead to the closure of dozens, if not hundreds, of psychiatric beds throughout the state.

Carmela Coyle, president and chief executive of the California Hospital Association, said the four-month delay “averts an immediate crisis in the availability of psychiatric hospital care in California” but still leaves the system vulnerable to closures.

The hospital association had previously estimated that more than 800 acute psychiatric beds would close Saturday if the state did not delay implementation and allow facilities adequate time to hire more staff.

The delay gives hospitals some time to prepare but falls short of the one-year phase-in period many facilities had sought.

Le Ondra Clark Harvey, chief executive of the California Behavioral Health Association, said the emergency regulations don’t account for the behavioral health workforce shortage that has plagued California for years.

Over the next five years, the state’s Department of Health Care Access and Information projects that all 58 counties in California will face shortages of behavioral health professionals. State prisons, state hospitals and developmental centers also face persistent difficulties in hiring enough behavioral health staff, in part because of workforce trends.

Clark Harvey said the regulations need to protect patients and preserve access to existing behavioral health services. “We don’t need rules that risk worsening an already very, very fragile system,” she said.

When psychiatric beds aren’t available, patients get stuck in emergency rooms, causing backlogs, said Jesse Tamplen, executive administrator of behavioral health at John Muir Health.

John Muir Health, a not-for-profit health system in the Bay Area, operates roughly 10% of all pediatric psychiatric beds in the state and takes patients routinely from as far as San Diego and even Oregon. The hospital will need to hire about 30 more nurses by June. If it can’t, it will have to reduce the number of inpatient psychiatric beds available.

“I support CDPH creating regulations to improve safety and quality. That’s not a question,” Tamplen said. “Our regulators are there to support safety and quality. My concern is the speed and the likelihood of unintended consequences.”

The California Nurses Association, which helped pass the state’s first hospital staffing requirements in 1999, takes a different issue with the state’s proposed regulations. The proposed rules allow acute psychiatric hospitals to count licensed vocational nurses and psychiatric technicians toward the staffing ratio. The nurses association, which represents more than 100,000 nurses in the state, argues that only registered nurses should qualify.

“The state is proposing an inferior staffing standard for acute psychiatric hospitals compared to general acute-care hospitals, and that’s unacceptable to California Nurses Association nurses,” the group said in a statement.

(CalMatters.org)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

TDS is just a way to avoid ever having to do something about any problem, because instead the sufferers just throw up their hands and say, “It’s Trump and the MAGA’s! The sky is falling! Take shelter or prepare to martyr!” It’s a lot more challenging, and would be much more effective, to stay grounded, focused, and on task with some good work. Choose a cause you can work on that will make a difference, and do it. Regain some mental health by returning to relevant realities.

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PAID AGITATORS?

Editor:

The Trump administration and other Republican officials have frequently claimed protesters, such as those in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and other cities are “paid agitators.” They continue to say this without ever providing an iota of proof. Conversely, the Trump administration has hired thousands of ICE agents and sent them, along with Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen, to U.S. cities. And now they are even considering sending American troops to Minneapolis. It is the actions of these ICE agents and Border Patrol agents that seem to be agitating the citizens of this country. I would like to remind your readers that these agents and troops are paid using American citizens’ tax dollars. It seems that Trump and his supporters have got the story backward regarding paid agitators.

Chris Carpenter

Petaluma

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TAKE THE ICE QUIZ

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THERAPY

There were only two men in the therapy workshop. One was a young man from another country, whose means and modes of self-expression troubled the rest of the group, but we could not be sure to what extent this sense of trouble was prejudicial and based on our poor understanding of cultural mores which in this young man’s country of origin were considered perfectly standard. He was always drawing up overflowing buckets from his deep wells of sadness and then dropping them back down again almost before anyone had got a glimpse of them. At least, that was our guess, because he generally maintained a deep, impermeable silence which had the queasy atmosphere of a lake that was so still as to appear to be a solid, or perhaps a gel, something 
sealed with a film, a film which—one had the impression—had formed through the substance’s fear of contamination through exposure to air.

— Emily Berry

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JACK DEMPSEY: “By the time I was eleven years old, I was already getting ready to be a prizefighter. Life was hard back then. In those lean years, I slept rough, worked the road, did whatever I had to do. I chewed pine and bathed in brine just to toughen myself up, it became habit.

“That habit stayed with me. Even after I became champion. Even when I was living in big houses, mixing with movie stars, Broadway’s beautiful women, and powerful men with money. No matter where I was, I made time every day to stay ready.

“When the horses were gone, the rifle was gone, and the hunting days were just memories, fighting was all I had left. Any chance I got, I fought.

“I lived to fight, just as later I would fight to live.”

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PAUL ROBESON was the first Black-American football player at Rutgers University.

On 14 October 1916, sophomore Paul Robeson was excluded from the Rutgers Football team.

Robeson was one of their best players, but Washington and Lee University refused to play against a Black player. Instead of standing by their full team, Rutgers pulled Robeson from the game.

Robeson went on to be named a football All-American twice, class valedictorian both years.

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THE SHAPE I'M IN

Go out yonder, peace in the valley
Come downtown, have to rumble in the alley
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

Has anybody seen my lady
This living alone will drive me crazy
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

I'm gonna go down by the water
But I ain't gonna jump in, no, no
I'll just be looking for my maker
And I hear that that's where she's been? Oh!

Out of nine lives, I spent seven
Now, how in the world do you get to Heaven
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

I just spent 60 days in the jailhouse
For the crime of having no dough
Now here I am back out on the street
For the crime of having nowhere to go

Save your neck or save your brother
Looks like it's one or the other
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

Now two young kids might start a ruckus
You know they feel you trying to shuck us
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

— Robbie Robertson (1970)

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THE POLITICS OF NEITHER

Polls are increasingly clear: both Republicans and Democrats are rapidly losing the public's confidence. Do more people want to end the culture war than win it?

by Matt Taibbi

Within hours of the shooting of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis Saturday, Trump administration officials rolled out an ancient playbook, which preaches attack in every situation. Pretti, said Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, looked like someone trying do “maximum damage.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called him a “would-be assassin” and Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem insisted Pretti was trying to inflict maximum damage.

Some Trump supporters were aghast.

“It’s almost like they’re trying to lose votes,” one Republican strategist sighed over the weekend.

“Escalating the rhetoric doesn’t help, and it actually loses credibility,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz Monday.

Utah Republican John Curtis criticized Noem and others, saying “officials who rush to judgment before all the facts are known undermine public trust and the law-enforcement mission.” Former Congressman Trey Gowdy went on Fox to say “this guy is not a domestic terrorist” and “I don’t understand why it is so hard for those of us in public service to say from time to time, ‘I got it wrong. I was given bad information.’”

Consternation among Republicans is palpable. How bad is it? “Abolish ICE” is now a statistically significant portion of the GOP electorate, with 19 percent saying they somewhat or strongly support the idea, a ten percent hike over June, while 61% of Americans think ICE has gone “too far.” The same YouGov pollsters in June 2024 found 62% of the country favored a “national program to deport all undocumented immigrants,” suggesting Trump in two years went from far ahead to underwater on his signature issue. Comments from Treasury chief Scott Bessent and FBI Director Kash Patel (who said “no one who wants to be peaceful shows up to a protest with a firearm”) had the NRA denouncing officials for “demonizing law-abiding citizens.” As the Republican strategist noted, it’s “not every day” the NRA takes a shot at a GOP president, presenting a historic political opportunity.

Democrats are not gaining, though. In real terms, both parties have been losing support for a while. The phenomenon has been confirmed by enough independent studies of late that even the New York Times wrote about it this week.

While the Minnesota unrest is a genuine high-stakes clash centered on profound moral/ideological issues (pitting anger about Trump’s deportation program and methodology against national discontent about illegal immigration and protest methods), it’s being covered as if its every development correlates to the blue-red battle for political supremacy. That may not be true.

Increasingly, all-consuming controversies like the Minnesota mayhem take place in parallel to a separate, bigger story about broad defection of the whole electorate away from both parties, especially among younger Americans. The future will belong to neither-aligned voters:

Lost amid furious coverage of Minnesota this month was publication of a Gallup survey showing that the share of Americans who identify as Independent is skyrocketing compared to traditional affiliation:

As Gallup itself notes, a bottom-line conclusion about Trump’s first year involves recognizing loss of support for the new administration without a commensurate bump for Democrats:

“Importantly, these party shifts do not indicate that Americans are warming to the Democratic Party. In fact, favorable ratings of the Democratic Party are no better than those of the Republican Party, and are among the worst Gallup has recorded for the Democratic Party historically.”

When you adjust for age factors — new voters are less likely than ever to identify with one of the two parties, and Gen-Z and Gen-Z voters who’ve already defected aren’t coming back — the prognosis for the two-party system looks worse. Democrats traditionally dominated among young voters, to the point where turnout among 18-29-year-olds was once considered a key to national races.

Last Spring’s Yale poll showed a sharp divide between 18-21 year olds, who favored Republicans by 12 points, and 22-29-year olds, who favored Democrats by six. The University of Chicago’s GenForward survey showed majority-unfavorable ratings for both parties among white, Latin, and Asian voters, with only young black voters still majority-favorable toward Democrats, and there just barely (52%).

The reason Democrats aren’t gaining is put down to a variety of factors: failures on Gaza-Israel, that Democrats haven’t “pushed back hard enough” against Trump (according to a Pew survey), trans issues, the defund movement, wokeness, not-woke-enoughness, and the perception that even in the age of Trump, the parties remain substantially and ineffectually aligned.

Dennis Kucinich, who became Mayor of Cleveland running as an outsider and twice ran for higher office as an Independent, put it this way: “When you look at Israel, the differences are non-existent. When you look at the financial world and the lack of regulation, the differences and the advocacy are non-existent. When you look at where the money’s coming from, there are certain interest groups financing both parties.”

The issues with Trump need less explanation. In 2024 Trump gained among a group that Politico described as a “specific combination of young, minority, male voters” that came into being in “a big way” for the first time. A lot of those voters have retreated, upset about a range of things, from execution of the deportation policy to a perception that he’s spent too much time on foreign matters to general worries about competence and democratic values (an issue for people who voted against Democrats in 2024). When Trump took office the number of unaffiliated voters was higher than it ever had been, and with the fracturing of Trump’s coalition, the trend has deepened. Still, you’re still not likely to hear much about it.

Like a similarly underreported phenomenon about the reversed economics of Democratic and Republican voter bases, this story doesn’t fit the basic mainstream theory of American politics. When I first covered presidential races among the first things I noticed was that non-voters, third-party voters, and independents were often absent. In places like Iowa, reporters would throw back man-on-the-street interviews, like fish that don’t weigh enough, if they didn’t fit blue-red narratives. Between election seasons, political news from Fox to MSNOW remains a sports-like formula that tells audiences what’s bad for Republicans is good for Democrats, and vice versa. The idea that both parties can lose in any controversy, or that both can lose over a period of time, is implicitly rejected.

National rejection of those assumptions would be a huge story. In the age of Trump and the attention economy, there’s more hostility articulated every day toward people who aren’t glued to their phones and making partisan battles central to their identities. Once, conventional wisdom accepted that huge chunks of voters care more about their cats than elections, and infrequent attention to politics was the reason pundits had to invent loony schemes like the “beer test” to help voters choose. That pendulum has swung all the way in the opposite direction. Now terms like “fence-sitter” and “both sides” are epithets on both left and the right, and pundits once mocked for being milquetoast centrists have (often ridiculously) rebranded themselves as bomb-tossers. Politicians no longer even experiment with conciliatory or cross-party appeals. But these surveys suggest exhaustion with culture war and a desire to re-unify the country.

Kucinich believes 2028 offers an opening on this front. “I’m going to guess, that in 2028, for the first time since Perot, there’s going to be an opening for a real independent who just tells both parties, ‘I’ll work with you, but I am running for the people, not for the party,’” he said.

The way out for Americans may be to stop trying to win the culture war, and to kill it instead.

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BEFORE MOVING to Nazi Germany to spread propaganda to the English-speaking world, William Joyce was a member of the British Union of Fascists under Sir Oswald Mosley, whom Joyce criticized for not being antisemitic and radical enough for his liking: "Mosley was hopeless. He was the worst leader of what should have been the best cause in the world."

Unsurprisingly, Joyce's militancy was welcomed by Joseph Goebbels, who was hoping to find foreign fascists willing to promote the cause to Allied countries. Joyce was given his own English-language radio show, "Germany Calling," which soon drew attention thanks to his dramatic, caustic delivery. Though many Brits found his fiery nature more entertaining than inspiring, he still attracted 6 million regular listeners in the U.K. by 1940 and became nationally known as "Lord Haw-Haw" because of "the sneering character of his speech." But after Germany lost World War II, Joyce's notoriety proved to be his ultimate undoing.

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LORD HAW-HAW'S FINAL BROADCAST, 30 April 1945: https://youtu.be/BtJQNRyoNv8?si=EUXCmCLrUyTgp1Qg

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“I HAVE NEVER VOTED in my life… I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it's certain they will win.”

― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Democrats Demand Unmasked Agents, New Limits to Fund D.H.S.

Trump and Schumer Move Toward Possible Deal to Avert a Shutdown

Judge in Minnesota Says ICE Has Violated Nearly 100 Court Orders

Judge Orders Release of Minnesota Refugees Targeted in ICE Crackdown

Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Massive Armada’ and Presses a Set of Demands

Rubio Says Venezuela Will Submit Monthly Budget to White House

Move to Seize Ballots Thrusts F.B.I. Into Trump’s Election Conspiracy Claim

Silver Prices Are Surging Even Faster Than Gold

Amazon’s Promotion of ‘Melania’ Has Critics Questioning Its Motives

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“EVERY EMPIRE tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."

― Edward W. Said, Palestinian-American academic and literary critic

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THE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR WAR WITH IRAN KEEP CHANGING

by Caitlin Johnstone

The justifications for war with Iran keep changing. First it’s nukes, then it’s conventional missiles, then it’s protesters, and now it’s back to nukes again. Kinda seems like war with Iran is itself the objective, and they’re just making up excuses to get there.

As the US moves war machinery to the middle east and holds multi-day war games throughout the region, President Trump and his handlers have been posting threats to the Iranian government on social media warning them to “make a deal” on nuclear weapons.

The following appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account on Wednesday:

“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

It’s interesting that we’re back on the subject of needing to bomb Iran because of nuclear weapons, given that just a couple of weeks ago we were being told it was very, very important for the US to bomb Iran because of Iran’s mistreatment of protesters. Earlier this month Trump was openly saying “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY” while issuing threats to the Iranian government not to respond violently to the uprising. The president then backed off of these threats, reportedly at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu who told him Israel needed more time to prepare for war.

Prior to that, Trump was saying he would bomb Iran if it continued expanding its conventional missile program. Asked about reports that the US and Israel were discussing plans to strike Iran to stop it from building on its ballistic missile arsenal and reconstructing its air defenses that were damaged in the Twelve Day War, the president told the press “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”

The US justified its airstrikes on Iranian energy infrastructure during the Twelve Day War by citing concerns that Tehran was building a nuclear weapon, after which Trump confidently proclaimed that “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service.”

And yet here we are a few months later back on the subject of nuclear weapons, with the US president citing urgent concerns over nukes to justify its renewed brinkmanship with Iran.

I kinda think they’re lying to us, folks.

When someone’s feeding you all sorts of reasons for why they need to bomb a country, and the reasons are all different and unrelated to each other, then those aren’t reasons. They’re excuses.

It’s just like they did with Venezuela. It’s because of fentanyl! Okay it’s not because of fentanyl, but it’s definitely about cocaine! Wait, no, it’s because of the tyrannical dictator! Also this is happening in the western hemisphere so it’s fine and good for us to intervene!

Both Venezuela and Iran are oil-rich nations which have been disobedient to the will of the US empire. Both Venezuela and Iran have presented obstacles to US global hegemony. It’s not about nukes or protesters or dictators or drugs, it’s about ruling the world.

That’s all it’s ever about. They just move the arguments around to get what they want.

Despite all Trump’s showmanship about nuclear weapons, behind the scenes the US is reportedly trying to get Iran to agree to limit its conventional ballistic missiles, which, as The New York Times notes, “are the last deterrent in Iran’s arsenal against a renewed attack by Israel.”

What this means is that the Trump administration is trying to get Iran to consent to becoming a neutered subject who must forever submit to the US and Israel’s demands, because it won’t be able to defend itself if they decide Tehran isn’t being sufficiently compliant.

They’re trying to frame this as being about humanitarian concerns and nuclear weapons, but it’s actually about domination. They either get a submissive vassal, or they get their regime change war.

The more tense things get with Iran, the more the empire is going to lie to us.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS: DOOMSDAY CLOCK SET CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN

by Dan Bacher

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is set closer to midnight than it has been ever since 1947. It’s no surprise that we are now closer to nuclear and ecological Armageddon than we have ever been when you consider the war-mongering and climate change-denying regime currently in power in the U.S. under President Donald Trump.

Yes, we’re closer to the threat of a nuclear and ecological holocaust than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the darkest days of the Cold War, when students like myself were forced to participate in “duck and hide” drills in the event of the outbreak of nuclear war.

At the same time, the world, including the majority of the world’s people, especially in this country and even on this website, don’t seem to be concerned about the scientists’ warning that life as we know it is close than ever to being extinguished on this planet. And under the regime of Trump, very few folks, even those who are strongly opposed to Trump’s dangerous policies and actions, appear to be concerned about the ecological catastrophe that is inevitable unless immediate action is taken.

The Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history,” according to an announcement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), which sets the Clock, called for “urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI, and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats.”

Alexandra Bell, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “The Doomsday Clock’s message cannot be clearer. Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time. Change is both necessary and possible, but the global community must demand swift action from their leaders.”

”The Doomsday Clock time is annually determined by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes eight Nobel Laureates. Major factors in 2026 included growing nuclear weapons threats, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), multiple biological security concerns, and the continuing climate crisis. The Clock’s time changed most recently in January 2025, when the Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight,” the Bulletin continued.

Daniel Holz, PhD, professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and SASB chair, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “The dangerous trends in nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and biosecurity are accompanied by another frightening development: the rise of nationalistic autocracies in countries around the world. Our greatest challenges require international trust and cooperation, and a world splintering into ‘us versus them’ will leave all of humanity more vulnerable.”

Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler, professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, said: “Without facts, there is no truth. Without truth, there is no trust. And without these, the radical collaboration this moment demands is impossible. We are living through an information Armageddon — the crisis beneath all crises — driven by extractive and predatory technology that spreads lies faster than facts and profits from our division. We cannot solve problems we cannot agree exist. We cannot cooperate across borders when we cannot even share the same facts. Nuclear threats, climate collapse, AI risks: none can be addressed without first rebuilding our shared reality. The clock is ticking.”

The 2026 Doomsday Clock statement says:

“A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe…”

Even as the hands of the Doomsday Clock move closer to midnight, there are many actions that could pull humanity back from the brink, according to the Bulletin:

“The United States and Russia can resume dialogue about limiting their nuclear arsenals. All nuclear-armed states can avoid destabilizing investments in missile defense and observe the existing moratorium on explosive nuclear testing. - “Through both multilateral agreements and national regulations, the international community can take all feasible steps to prevent the creation of mirror life and cooperate on meaningful measures to reduce the prospect that AI be used to create biological threats. - “The United States Congress can repudiate President Trump’s war on renewable energy, instead providing incentives and investments that will enable rapid reduction in fossil fuel use. - “The United States, Russia, and China can engage in bilateral and multilateral dialogue on meaningful guidelines regarding the incorporation of artificial intelligence in their militaries, particularly in nuclear command and control systems.”

Nuclear Weapons: Sliding further down a slippery nuclear slope

Jon B. Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “In 2025, it was almost impossible to identify a nuclear issue that got better. More states are relying more intently on nuclear weapons, multiple states are openly talking about using nuclear weapons for not only deterrence but for coercion. Hundreds of billions are being spent to modernize and expand nuclear arsenals all over the world, and more and more non-nuclear states are considering whether they should acquire their own nuclear weapons or are hedging their nuclear bets.”

“Instead of stoking the fires of the nuclear arms competition, nuclear states are reducing their own security and putting the entire planet at risk. Leaders of all states must relearn the lessons of the Cold War — no one wins a nuclear arms race, and the only way to reduce nuclear dangers is through binding agreement to limit the size and shape of their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear states and their partners need to invest now in proven crisis communication and risk reduction tools, recommit to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, refrain from nuclear threats, and pursue a more predictable and stable global security system,” Wolfsthal warned.

Disruptive Technologies: Competition crowds out cooperation

Steve Fetter, PhD, professor of public policy and former dean, University of Maryland, fellow, American Physical Society (APS), member, National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “As uses of AI expand and concerns grow about potential risks, Trump revoked Biden’s AI safety initiative and banned states from crafting their own AI regulation, reflecting a ‘damn the torpedoes’ approach to AI development. The emphasis on technological competition is making it increasingly difficult to foster the cooperation that will be needed to identify and mitigate risks, and attacks against universities and cuts in federal funding are eroding our ability to come up with effective solutions.”

Climate Change: A troubling outlook

Inez Fung, ScD, professor emerita of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and SASB member, ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,’ said: “Reducing the threat of climate catastrophe requires actions both to address the cause and to deal with the damage of climate change. First and foremost come reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy. Many technologies for renewable energy are now mature and cost effective, and governments should ramp up the wide deployment of these clean energy technologies by providing incentives to produce them on a large scale and to create markets for them. Equally important in the fight against climate change is renewed reliance on science that tracks and guides emission reduction and mitigation efforts. This return to science-based climate policy includes the collection, validation, and sharing of climate and greenhouse gas information around the world, as well as the enhancement of model projections of climate impacts on the wellbeing of all inhabitants of the planet.”

Biological Threats: Degraded Capacity And Major Concerns

Asha M. George, DrPH, executive director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at the Atlantic Council, and SASB member, ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,’ said: “This year featured degraded capacity to respond to biological events, further development and pursuit of biological weapons, poorly restrained synthetic biology activities, increasingly convergent AI and biology, and the specter of life-ending mirror biology. Partnerships — between countries, between industry and government, and between the public health and national security communities — will be key to managing these risks. With the right tools and determination, we need not fall prey to the diseases that threaten us.”

“The ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The Bulletin created the Doomsday Clock two years later to convey man-made threats to human existence and the planet. The Clock is a reminder of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe and a symbol that there is still time left to act,” the Bulletin concluded.

It is unfortunate that the profound warning that the planet is in its biggest-ever existential crisis since humans first appeared in Africa appears to go unheeded by the vast majority of the world’s governments and corporations in their mad race towards nuclear and ecological catastrophe.

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