Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalSoy what? 40,000lbs of spilled tofu leads to 'unforgettable' odor in Missouri town
A staggering 40,000lbs of extra-firm tofu was spilled in an accident near a small town in Missouri and left in the open for weeks, creating a smell that local officials called “unforgettable”.
The cleanup – dubbed the “Great Battle of the Jerome Tofu Monster” – began near the town of Jerome, in south-western Missouri, on 1 March, when a tractor-trailer vehicle with a cargo of tofu crashed off a local highway and plunged into a ravine.
No one was hurt, but blocks of tofu spilled out of the trailer. The entire cargo was then left to ripen and rot for three weeks while a dispute over insurance played out and the tofu spread into a local creek. The effect was a smell that horrified local officials assigned to clean up the mess.
“While the main threat has been contained, cleanup and remediation efforts are still ongoing downstream, where runoff and debris from the incident have created what authorities are cautiously calling a ‘tofu-affected area’,” said a statement from the Doolittle rural fire protection district.
Calling the catastrophe “the Jerome Tofu Monster”, the statement added: “The creature resisted capture with surprising strength – and a smell officials described as ‘unforgettable’.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/30/spilled-tofu-accident-missouri-town
EWWWWWWWW!
Texas house speaker directs committee to study annexing parts of New Mexico
The speaker of Texas’s house of representatives says he is entertaining the idea of expanding the state by annexing some New Mexico counties.
Dustin Burrows, who has been the chamber’s speaker since 2025, ordered a state legislative committee on 26 March to look into the legal and economic options to add “one or more contiguous counties” of New Mexico to the state of Texas.
The office of the New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and some of her fellow state Democratic politicians summarily dismissed the idea, with Lujan Grisham’s office saying it is “not a serious proposal”.
Burrows set off the controversy by issuing an order to establish a new committee to study whether counties in the south-eastern part of New Mexico could be annexed.
For years, south-eastern New Mexico counties have pointed to political differences between themselves and the state’s capital, Democratic-led Santa Fe.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/30/texas-study-annexing-new-mexico
I don't think this is legal.
College Republicans director made racist and sexist remarks on live streams
Kai Schwemmer, the newly appointed College Republicans of America political director, has made racist, antisemitic, homophobic and sexist statements while espousing extremist rightwing views on abortion, a Guardian review of livestream recordings can reveal.
Schwemmer said he would accept a world in which slavery was legal if abortion was criminalised, describes himself as “very much an anti-universal suffrage guy” and accepts a supporter’s description of him as “our Mormon Nick Fuentes” – referring to the white nationalist influencer whose platform he streamed on for years.
The comments were made after Schwemmer’s return from a two-year Mormon mission to Argentina, a period he recently claimed had seen him undergo a “process of growth” that led him to abandon previous racist beliefs. Schwemmer had previously expressed extremist and bigoted views.
The streams, many of which are not publicly available but remain accessible behind a paywall on Schwemmer’s Gumroad page, also contain previously unreported material from his earlier broadcasts. In one, he walks a user through a sequence of antisemitic leading questions on the Omegle platform before directing her to Fuentes’s streaming site. In others, he claims gay men are “weaponizing” gyms “to give you Aids” and celebrates a DNA test he says proved “I’m 0% Jewish”.
The Guardian emailed detailed requests for comment to Schwemmer and the College Republicans of America.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/30/kai-schwemmer-college-republicans-livestream
Disgusting POS.
Trump's Department of Labor Is Trying to Slash Protections for Home Health Workers
hirty-two-year-old Long Island resident Kathleen Downes, creator of The Squeaky Wheelchair blog, is a licensed social worker who is involved in a host of local and national advocacy efforts.
As someone with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, she needs help getting in and out of bed, bathing, dressing, doing her hair, and preparing meals. Thankfully, she says, she receives a small amount of help through a New York State Medicaid Program called CDPAP, the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.
“I live with my parents,” Downes told Truthout, “because, even with my diagnosis, the state only authorizes care for 35 hours a week. It’s shameful since I need 24-hour assistance. Right now, my 62-year-old mother is the only person on my payroll. She makes $19.80 an hour and has to rely on my father’s employer health plan because the job does not provide benefits.”
But as inadequate as this is, Downes says the situation may soon get worse: A rule promulgated by the Department of Labor (DOL) in May could decimate the home care industry by removing minimum wage and overtime protections that in-home health care workers like her mom have been entitled to since 2015.
“The DOL rule change reflects a viewpoint that undervalues home health workers and the work they do, but it also reflects an undervaluing of people, like me, who are cared for,” Downes says. “Those lawmakers who support the rules change don’t see our lives as worthwhile, and they seem hellbent on moving us backwards.”
https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-dept-of-labor-is-trying-to-slash-protections-for-home-health-workers/
Because disabled Americans don't matter, even if they can work and contribute to society.
TV-Loving Trump Goons Suddenly Too Scared to Go on TV
Some of President Donald Trump’s top goons are running scared of network TV appearances as his war on Iran spirals out of control.
The conflict has now stretched into its fifth week, and the Trump administration is contemplating sending thousands of additional ground troops into the region in a desperate attempt to move the needle.
But despite the potential for boots on the ground—stoking fear of another protracted war in the Middle East—Americans have not heard from a few top administration officials for quite a while.
Notably, Vice President JD Vance seems to have grown allergic to media interviews since the war began on Feb. 28, with his absence from the airwaves fueling speculation that he sees no upside in defending Trump’s “excursion.”
The only interview Vance has granted of late was with MAGA influencer Benny Johnson for his YouTube channel. The softball sit-down saw Vance, seen by many as Trump’s eventual successor, rant about his belief that aliens exist, barely touching on the war that Americans object to en masse. “We’re gonna be out of there soon,” he did say, before quickly turning to the “UFO files” chat.
He also indulged in MAGA conspiracies with known peddler Johnson. Vance propagated the rumor that Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar married her own brother to gain U.S. citizenship.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tv-loving-trump-goons-suddenly-too-scared-to-go-on-tv/
Seriously, Shady? You're going that route again? Get over yourself.
Jack Smith suspected Trump kept docs for financial gain -- but sources highlight another motive
Special counsel Jack Smith strongly suspected that President Donald Trump took some classified records after he left office in 2021 because they could help him financially, but Smith and his team later concluded they could not prove this was his motive, MS NOW has learned.
Early in his tenure, Smith was “laser-focused” on establishing whether financial gain was one of Trump’s driving motives in taking and concealing classified documents after he left the White House, according to two people familiar with the case. The special counsel tasked his team with tracking down the connection between some documents in Trump’s possession which, according to an internal memo MS NOW obtained, contained intelligence related to Trump’s businesses.
But by late spring and early summer of 2023, as Smith’s team was secretly presenting evidence to a grand jury in Florida about Trump’s mishandling of these top-secret records, Smith and his prosecutors determined their clearest conclusion was that Trump kept the records out of an egotistical belief that he should be allowed to keep them — and also that the records were “cool” to have, the people said.
A January 2023 case memo that MS NOW obtained this week revived the long-simmering questions about what motivated Trump to take hundreds of pages of top-secret records when he lost his re-election bid. The special counsel’s office memo said the FBI found numerous records in its 2022 search at Mar-a-Lago that were connected to Trump’s business interests, and said it established a financial motive as a reason Trump kept them.
The law doesn’t require establishing a person’s motive in order to convict them of the crime of mishandling classified records, but like any prosecutors, Smith and his team were keen to determine it and describe it to a jury at trial, according to the people, who asked to speak confidentially to discuss a sensitive probe.
https://www.ms.now/news/jack-smith-trump-classified-documents-financial-motive
Very juvenile, but what do you expect?
'The Pitt' Producer Addresses Backlash to ICE Episode
An episode of The Pitt that divided viewers with its ICE-focused storyline was based on real-life accounts of hospital staffers and was not meant to “politicize” the series, the executive producer says.
Producer John Wells, 69, explained that the episode was shaped to remain faithful to a reality unfolding across the country. Since its inception, HBO’s medical drama The Pitt has not avoided politics; instead, it addresses the intersection of headlines and life within a hospital. This time was no different, Wells said, also revealing that the episode was written before the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January.
“We were just trying to get to this issue of why it’s important that immigration enforcement doesn’t happen in certain kinds of public spaces, like where we have to be able to provide services regardless of whether or not someone is an unauthorized person in the country or not,” Wells told Deadline.
This particular episode of The Pitt became preemptively controversial after Wells revealed that HBO told him to ensure the ICE episode remained “balanced.” On an episode of The Town with Matt Belloni, Wells said they would be “careful” in their portrayal of the issue, adding, “We’re not really in the business of preaching to the choir on this show.” The comments received pushback from fans before the episode aired.
Asked about this, Wells said that they sought to tell a story of what is “factually happening.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/the-pitt-producer-addresses-backlash-to-ice-episode/
I haven't seen this episode yet owing to recent travels,so I can't really comment on it, but if It's as good as the series generally is, I'm sure it's right on.
MAGA Senator Torched Over Totally Bonkers Claim About Snow
A MAGA senator got relentlessly mocked on social media for making a bizarre claim about shoveling snow in a deep-blue city.
Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, 44, used New York City’s snow as an example of why Americans should support the SAVE Act, a controversial measure that would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and largely scrap mail-in ballots in elections.
“We want to make sure that Americans have faith in their elections,” she said on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “We want to make sure that they are free, fair, and secure. If Americans don’t have faith, it undermines the very pillars that hold up our democracy. And we know the best way to do that is to require ID.”
She went on to list examples of situations where Americans would need an ID, which, according to her, includes shoveling snow in New York City.
“You can’t rent a home, you can’t go to work, you can’t shovel snow in New York City without an ID,” she said. “So I’m pretty sure as we look to try to achieve the American dream, whether that’s getting insurance, whether that’s getting a car, whether that’s signing your kid up for school, you need an ID.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-senator-katie-britt-torched-over-totally-bonkers-claim-about-id-mandate-for-new-york-city-snow-shovelers/
Southern senators ond congresscritters writing the book on stupid.....
Bad news for the boy in the bunny hat
A federal immigration judge has denied asylum in the U.S. to the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy who became the face of the Trump administration’s brutal immigration crackdown.
The Ramos family have been ordered to be deported to Ecuador, with their lawyers now appealing the ruling by U.S. Immigration Judge John Burns.
Preschooler Liam was photographed wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as he was detained with his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, during an ICE anti-migrant sweep in Minneapolis on Jan. 20.
(snip)
Judge Burns, who was as appointed assistant chief immigration judge in January 2026 after being appointed as immigration judge in December 2020 under the first Trump administration, handed down the decision on Feb. 19, according to People, but the family only shared the information publicly on March 18. As an immigration judge, Burns is not a full federal judge, and therefore works for the Department of Justice.
“We’re just gravely disappointed in the judge’s misguided decision,” the family’s attorney Danielle Molliver told CNN on Thursday. “We’re committed to the family and we’ll fight the appeal, obviously, the best that we can.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/devastating-blow-for-family-of-5-year-old-boy-taken-by-ice/
Oh FFS! They are not "the worst of the worst"! Let it go already!
Is Bibi MIA, dead, in a bunker, or what?
There are a lot of rumors around, and he apparently hasn't been seen in days. What's the truth? Does anyone know? Even in the Middle East? Even in Israel?
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