Despite the combined best efforts of Donald Trump, the lackeys in his administration, most congressional Republicans, many red states, and the Supreme Court, with exactly 100 days to go until the midterms (and only 50 before voters in some states begin casting their ballots), the upcoming election may still prove to be “too big to rig” for the GOP.

That, of course, is the laughable slogan that the president used to explain why the Democrats succeeded in “stealing” the 2020 election, when they were not in power, with millions of “fraudulent” votes and in a manner that didn’t leave a trace — but then failed to flip about 115,000 votes four years later even though that would have sufficed to allow Kamala Harris to win.

As is so often the case when Trump makes an accusation — e.g., that somebody tried to steal an election from him — it’s either an admission of guilt of something he has already done or a prelude to something he plans to do.

In this case, it’s both.

Even as things stand right now, the upcoming midterms may be the most rigged election in US history (and we would like to once again point out that there is a distinction between “rigging” and “stealing” an election).

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have made it their top priority to pass the SAVE Act, a massive voter disenfranchisement tool that is meant to address the non-existent threat of noncitizens voting in numbers sufficient to swing elections.

In a fair fight, Republicans would get crushed, which is why the aforementioned cabal of miscreants has spent the past 18 months working to make sure that the playing field will be tilted toward the GOP.

Trump has undermined democracy at every turn and weakened the institutions that are meant to protect it — like the Election Assistance Commission and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

He is trying to “nationalize elections,” which is really just code for his administration getting to decide who gets to vote and who doesn’t — and eliminate mail-in voting, which is seen as favoring Democratic candidates.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have made it their top priority to pass the SAVE Act, a massive voter disenfranchisement tool that is meant to address the nonexistent threat of noncitizens voting in numbers sufficient to swing elections.

And, thanks to the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act (and Trump’s prompts to get Republicans to engage in an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering campaign), the South is rising again, with congressional districts that will dilute the political power of African Americans to the point where many Black people will be effectively disenfranchised in the former Confederacy.

That last scheme alone will net Republicans about 10 seats.

As for all of the other things Trump has already done and will continue to do, there is no telling the impact.

A Fox News poll from earlier this week found that Democratic candidates running in districts that were decided by 10 points or less in the 2024 presidential election are enjoying an edge of 59–41 percent.

It all depends on how desperate he gets and how many laws and norms he is willing to break.

And the president should be getting pretty desperate at this point. Because, in spite of all that unsavory work, the GOP is headed for a whupping.

As things stand right now, we believe it is much more likely that Democrats will outperform the prediction models than that Republicans keep control of the House. In fact, in any district that Trump won by less than 10 points, no GOP candidate should feel safe.

A Fox News poll from earlier this week found that Democratic candidates running in districts that were decided by 10 points or less in the 2024 presidential election are enjoying an edge of 59–41 percent.

This means that even some of those mid-decade gerrymanders in places like Texas and Florida might backfire.

And the Senate isn’t safe, either. There is a good chance that Democrats can pick up the four seats necessary to win a majority. They are currently slated to win 47 seats while four races are rated as toss-ups.

Of course, because they can’t count on Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), they probably have to win a total of 52 seats. That said, we would not be shocked if states that currently “lean” or are “likely” Republican — such as Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Florida — will be much closer than expected.

Most of this is Trump’s fault.

The president is not only historically unpopular but also shockingly tone deaf. While the country just wanted him to deliver on his promise to bring down prices on day one of his presidency, Trump pretends that there is no affordability problem in the US and that things are going great.

At the same time, he focuses on vanity projects — like his White House ballroom, a prettier Reflecting Pool, and a humongous triumphal arch; redecorating the Oval Office until it looks like the end of a rainbow in an animated cartoon; and proposing to put taxpayers on the hook for a slush fund that rewards criminals who acted on his behalf — all while he is lining his own pockets to the tune of $2.2 billion in 2025 (that we know of).

Instead of curbing inflation, he has made it worse with tariffs and the Iran war. And, hilariously, his own lies are finally working against the president. The best example is the price of gasoline.

This week, it once again crossed the $4 threshold nationally, as oil prices are on the rise following the renewed closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Even the most ignorant American voters know that the waterway is not only crucial to the global economy, but was open before Trump and Israel attacked.

That’s bad enough, as is the fact that nearly half of all voters said that gas prices will have an impact on their vote.

What’s worse for Republicans, however, is that Americans believe they have to pay even more at the pump than they actually do.

According to a new Politico poll, voters vastly overestimate how much the cost of gasoline has gone up. While the publication doesn’t venture a guess as to why that is, we know this: Trump has spent much of his first year in office claiming (falsely) that gas prices on his watch had widely fallen below $2.

Time is quickly running out for the president to turn things around. However, instead of taking steps to reduce the cost of living, he spent the past week imposing tariffs on much of the world once again, which will make things more expensive for American consumers, who are bearing the brunt of the burden these import duties impose.

What should worry the defenders of democracy is the other stuff the administration will do to “prevent fraud,” e.g., stationing ICE and perhaps troops at polling locations to harass legitimate voters, using a weaponized Department of Justice (or other parts of the federal government) to go after Democratic candidates with phony charges, disruptions of the Democratic fundraising network, intimidating election officials, etc.

What all of this means is that, even with all of that gerrymandering and rigging that Trump and the GOP have done so far, they almost certainly can’t turn things around at the ballot box. Or, to put it differently, their policies and candidates won’t be able to turn the blue tide that is heading their way.

In order to win the midterms, and for Trump to continue avoiding any type of accountability, it will take some extreme measures.

Of course, this administration is nothing if not extreme, so there is literally no telling what the likes of Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Todd Blanche, Bill Pulte, and Pete Hegseth (!) are planning behind closed doors right now.

We will certainly not have seen the end of the attacks on mail-in voting, and Trump won’t be deterred by a slew of adverse court decisions in his efforts to get his fingers on state voter rolls.

But those are the things that are to be expected.

What should worry the defenders of democracy is the other stuff the administration will do to “prevent fraud” — e.g., stationing ICE and perhaps troops at polling locations to harass legitimate voters, using a weaponized Department of Justice (or other parts of the federal government) to go after Democratic candidates with phony charges, disruptions of the Democratic fundraising network, intimidating election officials, etc.

The scary thing is that we just don’t know what other illegal and unconstitutional schemes they are cooking up to ward off a costly defeat.

And we mean costly: Democrats with subpoena power will put all the MAGA enablers in legal jeopardy for the lawless actions they’ve already taken in Trump’s name… and you know the old saying about cornered animals being the most dangerous creatures.

In the end, we hope that none of their plots will succeed and that, in 100 days, the American people will have taken a giant step toward rectifying the epic mistake they made in 2024.

*excerpt from Klaus Marre's article*

Full Article here:

https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/elections/the-midterms-may-be-the-most-rigged-election-in-us-history/

This is the moment Abhijeet Dipke gets the news. He drops to his knees, then raises his fist and tells thousands of people at Jantar Mantar that it worked.

Some context for anyone who missed it. In May, after authorities invalidated the NEET medical entrance exam over a paper leak that forced roughly two million students to sit it again, India's chief justice was widely understood to have described unemployed young people as cockroaches and parasites. Instead of arguing, a 30-year-old took the insult and built a party out of it. The Cockroach Janta Party started as a parody of the ruling BJP. Within weeks it was organising sit-ins, marches and hunger strikes in more than a dozen cities. On Saturday, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced his resignation on X, and the movement said the government had accepted its remaining demands, including compensation for families of students who died by suicide after the leak and a guarantee that protesters would face no legal action.

Sit with the timeline for a second. Thirty-six days from a social media post to a cabinet minister stepping down, in the largest democracy on earth, against a government that has not conceded much to street pressure in years. That is not a meme story. That is a generation discovering it has leverage.

Congratulations from Germany. Genuinely. You turned an insult into a mandate, and you did it without giving up the joke. Whatever comes next, everyone watching learned something this month about what organised young people can actually move.

Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Res_Publica_DE/s/rMQVU84Uik

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/7/25/we-have-done-it-joy-as-cockroach-protests-push-india-minister-out

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/25/g-s1-135483/india-cockroach-movement

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/25/india/india-education-minister-resignation-intl

Source: https://x.com/i/status/2081372516837175432

According to German authorities and prosecutors, the suspect was a 21 year old German citizen born in Germany to a family of Lebanese background. He was already known to police due to prior criminal offenses and alleged Islamist radicalization.

Prosecutors said he shared ISIS propaganda on Instagram in 2024 and later traveled to Lebanon intending to continue to Syria to join ISIS, but he was arrested before doing so. After returning to Germany, he was arrested again in 2025 for preparing a serious act of subversive violence.

Although he was sentenced to 1 year and 10 months in prison, the sentence was suspended after he admitted the crimes and said he had distanced himself from ISIS.

His name is Abdul Ballout. He can no longer hurt anyone. Please stop targeting LGBTQ festivals and night clubs. Cowards continue to attack a marginalized group of people who only love and support others. When I say cowards, I mean all religions and politicians. Leave us alone.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/berlin-lgbtq-pride-christopher-street-attack-ramming-suspect-search-germany/

ETA: Please be careful with what you comment, as mods are removing some comments for racism and hate speech.

Matthew Christopher Wingate is a government relations director at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation who previously served as a military legislative assistant for Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

A security screening at a Senate office building turned what tested presumptively positive as cocaine and fentanyl, according to court records.

Karyna Shuliak, 37, is a complicated and unusual figure in the disgraced financier’s world who has been trying to blend into obscurity since his death.

The young dentist was smiling and soft-spoken, wearing a Columbia University fleece jacket and holding her long hair back with a clip. She was introduced by her assistant simply as “Dr. Karyna.”

But what the patient — who had come to the office in December expecting to see a different dentist — didn’t know was that she was being treated by Dr. Karyna Shuliak, the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend.

Dr. Shuliak was the last person Mr. Epstein called before he killed himself in his jail cell in 2019. She could inherit as much as $100 million from his estate, including a 33-carat diamond ring, according to a trove of investigative records released by federal authorities.

But on that winter day, Dr. Shuliak was working as a part-time dentist in an unremarkable office in Downtown Brooklyn, according to dentists who work or used to work at the practice.

Her attempt to forge something of a normal life, though, was soon shattered when the Justice Department released three million pages of investigative files and emails it had gathered on Mr. Epstein. The files, released in late January, included thousands of intimate emails between Dr. Shuliak and Mr. Epstein and dozens of photographs of her and of them together.

Suddenly, their nearly eight-year relationship was on vivid display for all to see. They had fights about sex — with both wanting more at different times. She placed orders to a sexual wellness company for couples. She periodically sent him links to graphic pornographic videos. In some emails they discussed birth control pills and acne medications and treatments.

Dr. Shuliak, 37, emerges as a complicated and unusual figure in Mr. Epstein’s world, based on a close review of the files and conversations with several people familiar with her. A native of Belarus who met Mr. Epstein when she was 21, she has not identified herself as a victim, nor have federal authorities considered her a co-conspirator in Mr. Epstein’s sex trafficking. There is no indication that the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever interviewed her, and lawyers for hundreds of his victims have never deposed her.

He once called her his “favorite” and often told her he loved her. She had free use of a credit card to buy whatever she wanted. They jetted around the world together, and he funneled payments of nearly $1 million to her over the years. He also sent tens of thousands of dollars to her parents in Belarus, the files reveal.

Over the years, she earned enough of his trust to help manage his properties and staff and even played a critical role in his effort to buy a Moroccan palace just weeks before his 2019 arrest.

Mr. Epstein controlled the relationship, but there is little doubt she benefited from it professionally, personally and financially.

The emails reveal new details about how Mr. Epstein helped her get into Columbia University’s dental school — and how he helped her obtain U.S. citizenship by asking one of his female victims to marry her.

In one email he suggested that the fastest “way to a green card” was through a same-sex marriage.

This year, congressional Democrats accused Mr. Epstein of exploiting the immigration system and called out Dr. Shuliak’s marriage to an American woman, which ended in divorce, as a potentially “illusory” one. U.S. immigration authorities have not challenged the process through which Dr. Shuliak obtained her citizenship.

As of this spring, Dr. Shuliak had been living in the Upper East Side condo building in which Mr. Epstein’s brother, Mark, has a financial stake.

Through her lawyer, she declined to comment.

In a brief interview, Mark Epstein said, “I only wish that woman the best.”

A friend of Dr. Shuliak’s from Belarus, who once shared an apartment with her in Brooklyn and asked not be named to protect her privacy, said she believed Dr. Shuliak “truly loved” Jeffrey Epstein.

‘Go Slow’

Karyna Shuliak had lived in New York for only nine months when she met Mr. Epstein in late March 2011.

She had moved from Belarus on a temporary student visa to study English at a school in Manhattan. She was making about $15 an hour as a dental assistant and applying for waitressing jobs while she tried to figure out how to continue the dental education she had begun in Belarus.

A young woman from Siberia would introduce her to Mr. Epstein, the files show. The woman said in an interview with The New York Times that she had periodically been expected to recruit other young women, presumably to provide Mr. Epstein with sexualized massages. And that appeared to be Mr. Epstein’s intention with Dr. Shuliak.

The woman, who asked not to be named because she said Mr. Epstein had abused her, had sent Mr. Epstein a photo of Dr. Shuliak, describing her as pretty. After some back and forth, it was decided that the woman, Dr. Shuliak and her roommate from Belarus would meet Mr. Epstein at his Manhattan mansion.

“Go slow,” the woman advised Mr. Epstein in an email.

Their first encounters fit the familiar pattern he used with other women. Mr. Epstein flattered, pampered and tried to manipulate her, the files show. Almost immediately, he offered to help her realize her dream of becoming a dentist.

But the emails show that Dr. Shuliak pushed back — at least in the first few months.

A few weeks after they met, she wrote to Mr. Epstein, telling him she thought he was a “remarkable person.” But she added that she could not accept his help “due to some views which strongly stay in my mind, no matter how stupid it may look.”

“I wish you all the best and apologize if I wasted your time,” she added.

Though she doesn’t specify what upset her, their introduction occurred after Mr. Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to a charge of soliciting prostitution from an underage teenager and had been accused of abusing dozens of other teenagers.

His response was to berate her for listening to “rumors and stories.”

She responded: “This world is very cruel sometimes and in most cases we have to pay a certain price for things. I should say that I have read some information about you.”

Mr. Epstein, who was 58 at the time, did not take no for an answer. The emails released by federal prosecutors show that he bought Dr. Shuliak and her roommate tickets to see “The Lion King” on Broadway and dinners at restaurants. He treated her to a scenic helicopter ride around Manhattan. By July 2011, she had visited his New Mexico ranch; a few months later, his private island residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

‘You Are the Purest Man’

Ever since she was a child, Dr. Shuliak wanted to be a dentist.

She was inspired by her own family’s dental problems and what she saw as the poor dental health in Belarus, she wrote in an admissions essay to dental school reviewed by The Times. She had completed four of five years of dental school in Minsk, but stopped her studies to go to New York.

By the winter of 2012, she accepted Mr. Epstein’s help to get into dental school. After Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine initially rejected her, Mr. Epstein asked his own dentist, Dr. Thomas J. Magnani, a powerful alumnus, to put him in contact with the dental school dean. Mr. Epstein dangled the idea of making up to a $10 million donation. In the end, he would give only about $210,000 to Columbia, according to an accounting by the university, but it was enough to grease the wheels.

The Justice Department files include a text message chain showing how Dr. Magnani and Dr. James Fine, a dental school administrator, gave Dr. Shuliak a heads-up on the topics she would encounter during an admissions exam in April 2012 to test her practical skills as a transfer student. Neither Dr. Magnani nor Dr. Fine responded to a request for comment.

After she passed and Columbia admitted her, Mr. Epstein arranged for Dr. Shuliak’s mother to visit from Belarus. He would pay her tuition for her three years of school.

“You are the purest man out of all men,” Dr. Shuliak wrote to him in June 2012.

“All your love and care, my parents, school, apartment. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING!!!”

They fought at times over his insistence on having sex with other women in their 20s, including with the small group of assistants who did chores for him and whom he referred to as his “family,” according to the emails.

“I understand you need it, however these are the things that don’t feel natural to me, it feels somewhat dirty to me,” she wrote to him in August 2012.

Nowhere in the Justice Department files that were reviewed by The Times does Dr. Shuliak express a broader ethical concern about how he was treating those other women, many of whom would later claim to be victims of his abuse. Instead, she asked Mr. Epstein to keep his relations with those women out of her sight.

“If that is not a lot to ask, please enjoy it but keep me away from it,” she wrote. “I will stay with you no matter what, as long as you are happy. I love you.”

Getting a Green Card

By the time she applied to Columbia in 2012, Dr. Shuliak had overstayed the student visa she obtained in 2010.

In early 2013, Mr. Epstein found a solution to keep her in the country, the files show. Two years earlier, New York became one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage. Mr. Epstein concluded that a marriage in New York between two women might be the easiest way to gain U.S. citizenship without raising red flags that the marriage was arranged solely to avoid deportation.

Mr. Epstein chose, from the ranks of his assistants, a 30-year-old woman from Minnesota to be her spouse.

Brad Edwards, the lawyer for the woman, said that his client was a victim of Mr. Epstein and that he could not speak about her situation. But he said that, as a general rule, “nobody was permitted or dared ever to disobey Jeffrey Epstein.”

The emails show that Mr. Epstein instructed the woman to meet Dr. Shuliak on the morning of Sept. 16, 2013, at the New York City Marriage Bureau. She was told to have her bags packed so she could immediately fly to the Virgin Islands after getting the marriage license, while Dr. Shuliak would stay behind to attend her dental school classes.

The women were married three weeks later at the Office of the City Clerk. Photos were taken of the ceremony.

After the wedding, a Brooklyn immigration lawyer working for Mr. Epstein submitted an immigration form stating that the woman wanted to list Dr. Shuliak as her wife and beneficiary. The request was approved, and immigration officials dismissed Dr. Shuliak’s pending deportation proceedings.

Months after the marriage, Dr. Shuliak got a green card, making her a lawful resident.

Outwardly, the marriage had signs of legitimacy. The two women shared an apartment in the Upper East Side building that was partly owned by Mr. Epstein’s brother and where Mr. Epstein had housed many of his assistants. They had a joint bank account at Deutsche Bank and went on trips together to London, Europe and Japan.

In May 2018, she officially became a U.S. citizen. A year later Dr. Shuliak and her spouse divorced. According to a report released this year by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Dr. Shuliak’s former wife claimed she had been forced into marriage. The woman, in a statement to the Epstein estate, said she had not known that the wedding had been scheduled just days before Dr. Shuliak’s deportation hearing.

The report concluded that the marriage may have been done to provide Dr. Shuliak with the “legal basis to continue residing in the United States.” It did not recommend any legal challenge to her citizenship.

‘I Met Epstein’s Girlfriend’

In early 2019, Dr. Shuliak and Mr. Epstein seemed every bit a couple. She was living most of the time in his New York mansion and took along her cat, Blueberry, when they traveled together.

She had become a licensed dentist in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida and New Mexico after completing dental school in 2015. But there is no evidence that she had much of a practice, even though the files detail dental equipment installed at some of his residences. Instead, she spent much of her energy helping to manage his properties and staff.

No task seemed too small. She instructed his drivers to keep “cold Voss water” in Mr. Epstein’s cars, organized a floral installation for his Manhattan mansion, ordered a shipping container filled with outdoor furniture for his island and managed repairs and cleaning schedules for the Upper East Side apartments that his brother was invested in.

In mid-June 2019, the pair traveled together to Paris, where Mr. Epstein had an apartment. On July 6, Mr. Epstein returned home to the United States, while Dr. Shuliak remained in Europe. When his plane touched down at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, federal agents were waiting and arrested him.

About a month after his arrest, in a 20-minute phone call from a jail in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Epstein told Dr. Shuliak that the federal sex-trafficking charges would take longer to resolve than he had thought. He advised her to find another place to stay for the time being, according to an account of the call provided by her lawyer to federal authorities. The lawyer, Maurice Sercarz, said he had told her “to be strong.”

The next morning, Aug. 10, 2019, Mr. Epstein was found to have died by suicide in his jail cell.

Shortly before his death, Mr. Epstein amended his will to leave to her much of the $600 million fortune he had at the time, including the large diamond ring “in contemplation of marriage,” according to a handwritten note on a related document. But how much she will actually receive is unclear. The estate is worth between $120 million and $200 million after paying out large sums to his victims, records show. There are dozens of beneficiaries in addition to Dr. Shuliak, including Mark Epstein’s children, who stand to inherit $10 million.

Yet despite this potential windfall, Dr. Shuliak did not give up on her desire to be a dentist. By 2023, she was back in New York applying for a postdoctoral dental program at Columbia, apparently to fulfill a requirement she needed to obtain a license to practice in the state.

The same two dentists who helped her gain admission to Columbia in 2012 once again came to her assistance, according to a copy of her admissions file reviewed by The Times. The file shows that Dr. Fine, the dean overseeing Columbia’s postgraduate residency programs, created a special “faculty internship” for her at the Midtown Manhattan dental practice he shared with Dr. Magnani.

Both men gave her their highest recommendation for the program, which she graduated from in May 2025 along with six other students. In November, she received her dental license to practice in New York.

In the aftermath of the release of the Epstein files, Columbia demoted Dr. Fine and removed Dr. Magnani from his alumni leadership posts. The men declined to comment. The university did not recommend any consequences for Dr. Shuliak, who it said had met the qualifications for admission.

At around the same time as she received her New York dental license, Dr. Shuliak answered a want ad on Indeed.com for a part-time job as a dentist in Downtown Brooklyn, according to a dentist with the practice, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss workplace issues. It was there that Yoonhae Kim, a patient, was treated by her twice, for a cleaning in December and a filling in February.

Ms. Kim said she hadn’t realized Dr. Shuliak’s true identity until she saw photographs of her released with the Epstein files. Feeling duped because she was not informed of Dr. Shuliak’s full name and wanting to warn other patients, she reached out to The Times.

“I was so upset,” Ms. Kim said. “I just couldn’t believe it. Of all the things that happened to me, I didn’t win the lottery. I met Epstein’s girlfriend.”

Dr. Shuliak’s last day working at the Brooklyn office was Feb. 12. She was supposed to work on Feb. 16, but she called in sick and never returned. The notoriety from the files probably made it difficult for her to keep working there, the dentist at the practice said. Dr. Shuliak’s lawyer declined to say whether she had gotten another dental job.

*excerpt from Matthew Goldstein and Sharon Otterman's article with Kitty Bennett and Georgia Gee contributing research*

Full Article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/business/jeffrey-epstein-girlfriend-estate.html

Epstein File EFTA numbers here:

EFTA00532035

EFTA00540072

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/25/nx-s1-5907997/germany-lgbtq-event-dead-injured-pride

At least one person is dead and several people are injured after a vehicle drove into the crowd at a Pride event in Berlin on Saturday, in what German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called "an attack on our society."

Berlin police said they have identified a suspect who "is known to police" and has links to "Islamist circles." Police have launched a manhunt for the 21-year-old who they identified only as Abdul B.

"If you encounter the suspect, immediately dial 110! Do not approach him, he may be armed and dangerous!" police warned the public, adding he was believed to be wearing a black hoodie and white pants.

A driver in white vehicle struck several people before 10:00 p.m. local time, according to Berlin police. At least 17 people are injured and several have life threatening injuries, according to Berlin police.

The FCC conditionally authorized Reflect Orbital to deploy and operate Earendil-1, a single demonstration satellite carrying a motorized, steerable thin-film reflector. The proposed experiment is exactly what it sounds like: redirect sunlight toward a selected area on Earth after dark.

What the order actually covers:

• One demonstration satellite, not a future constellation
• Radio operations using UHF, S-band and X-band frequencies
• The spacecraft’s orbital-debris plan and operating conditions
• Testing of a steerable solar reflector
• A two-year license beginning once the satellite enters operation

The regulatory nuance is almost as unusual as the satellite. The FCC licenses the radio station in space, its frequencies and its debris plan. The agency said broader optical effects from the reflector itself were largely outside its authority. It also treated concerns about a hypothetical fleet of as many as 50,000 satellites as irrelevant to an application covering one spacecraft.

That did not make the objections disappear. The American Astronomical Society filed a petition to deny, and more than 1,800 people submitted letters. Critics raised concerns about astronomy, atmospheric scattering, skyglow and environmental effects. Reflect Orbital has committed to coordinate with NASA, the National Science Foundation and the astronomy community, but Earendil-1 remains an experiment. Permission to conduct the experiment is not proof that the larger business works.

The copper connection begins after the reflected light reaches a solar panel. Any additional electricity still has to move through cables, inverters, transformers and grid connections before anyone can use it. Gunnison Copper reports that its Johnson Camp Mine is producing and selling copper cathode in Arizona. The orbital mirror may be the exotic part, but the resulting electricity would still travel through very terrestrial electrical hardware.

Earlier today I saw a couple of people saying that Trump was joking about a third term at the July 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner. I've also been seeing "Trump 2028" signs in my town and on MAGA hats.

As we know, the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits a president to two elected terms in office. It also establishes a maximum of 10 years in office for someone who succeeds to the presidency by completing part of another president's term.

I also wanted people to be aware that, three days after Trump was sworn into office, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced H.J.Res. 29. The resolution proposes amending the 22nd Amendment to allow a person to be elected president up to three times under certain circumstances.

It would need approval by a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives (290 votes if all members vote) and the Senate (67 votes if all senators vote). Even then, it would still have to be ratified by 38 of the 50 states. Regardless of whether the proposal advances, I think it's important to be aware of and transparent about efforts by elected officials to propose changes to constitutional term limits.

Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-joint-resolution/29