January 14, 2025

Chicago: Biden-Harris Administration has announced a 1.97 billion USD grant to fund the extension of the Red Line

The Biden-Harris Administration has announced a 1.97 billion USD grant to fund the extension of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Red Line.
This project is set to transform transit access on the city’s Far South Side, representing the largest single transit project in CTA history.


The funding, delivered through the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Capital Investment Grants (CIG) programme, will extend the Red Line by 5.5 miles, from 95th/Dan Ryan to 130th Street.

The extension includes four new fully accessible stations at 103rd Street, 111th Street, Michigan Avenue, and 130th Street. These stations will feature connections for buses, bicycles, pedestrians, and park-and-ride facilities.

The project also includes traction power substations, a new railyard, and a maintenance shop near 120th Street.

The Red Line Extension (RLE) will provide vital transit access to predominantly Black and economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, connecting residents to jobs, schools, healthcare, and other essential services. The project aims to address longstanding inequalities in transit access while improving connectivity to destinations such as the Roseland Medical District, Pullman National Monument, and Chicago State University. ....................(more)

https://railway-news.com/us-fta-grants-nearly-2-billion-for-chicago-red-line-extension/

January 14, 2025

"There will be no rebuilding": Bracing America for the implementation of Project 2025

"There will be no rebuilding": Bracing America for the implementation of Project 2025
Donald Trump's return to power further undermines America's self-image of greatness

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published January 14, 2025 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was an extreme failure for the United States as both a nation and a country. He has open contempt for democracy and the Constitution. He is publicly promising and threatening (and putting in place the means) to rule as the country’s first elected dictator on “day one.” Trump, like other such autocrats and authoritarians, means what he says both literally and figuratively.

....(snip)....

A nation consists of shared values and ideas, myths, narratives, stories and a sense of shared community and identity (and perhaps even destiny) that tie together a people. One of the tenets of America as a nation is a belief in American Exceptionalism. Be it a “shining city on a hill” or “the world’s greatest democracy,” Trump's return to power further undermines America's self-image of greatness. The United States has now been brought down to the level of being common, and just another of many examples across the centuries, of how a failing and sick democracy succumbs to demagogues, strongmen and authoritarians and their false promises of renewed greatness and easy solutions to complex problems.

To that point, the international democracy and human rights advocacy and watchdog organization Freedom House gave the United States 83 points in its annual ranking of freedom around the world. This is similar to countries such as Croatia, Panama and Romania. Mongolia and Argentina, for example, scored higher than the United States.

....(snip)....

Cheri Jacobus, a former Republican, is a political strategist, writer and host of the podcast "Politics With Cheri Jacobus."

In retrospect, we all should have been more keenly aware of the fact that we are a 50/50 nation in modern presidential elections. The country is split down the middle. Not only does it make it "easier” or more "necessary" to cheat with the Electoral College but places our democracy and elections in severe jeopardy. Whoever the nominee of each party, and no matter their crimes, indictments, sins, lies, theft, treason, or apparent mental illness, they are a coin toss from the presidency from the get-go.

Once Merrick Garland allowed and facilitated Trump to skate on the worst acts imaginable not only against individuals but against our democracy and national security we were in deep trouble. The minute Trump was able to announce he was running for president it was clear it was to avoid prison. And Merrick Garland knew it. And enabled it. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/there-will-be-no-rebuilding-bracing-america-for-the-implementation-of-project-2025/

January 14, 2025

It's MAGA's problem now

It’s MAGA’s problem now
Living with the consequences imposed by a woefully uninformed electorate

By Kim Messick
Published January 14, 2025 5:30AM (EST)


(Salon) During the 2024 presidential campaign and after, a recurrent theme among the commentariat was that liberal Americans shouldn’t be, well, mean to Donald Trump supporters. This admonition applied to words as well as sticks and stones; there were just certain things liberals shouldn’t say to, or about, Trump’s familiars. Foremost among these was any hint that proposing to elect a man with 34 felony convictions who had attempted a coup might signal a shortage of smarts, at least when it comes to politics. This, apparently, would be a very not-nice thing to do.

....(snip)....

But then we have voters like the ones in this Times piece from early December. Asked for one word to describe Trump, their choices include “common sense,” “compassion,” and “patriotism.” Keep in mind that they are talking about a man who suggested ingesting bleach could help cure COVID, put migrant children in cages, and tried to steal an election. Later, a truck driver says that Trump “believes in Christ,” while a lacrosse coach tells us that he “runs this country like a business,” though he does allow that it’s “tough for some people to see that.” Yeah, I confess to getting hung up on small details like the eight trillion dollars Trump added to the national debt. As for Trump the apostle of Christ, well, this brings to mind the words of the Duke of Wellington: “If you can believe that, you can believe anything.

And this, in sum, is the problem. We’re not talking here about thinking that Mitt Romney’s views on marginal tax rates were incrementally better than Barack Obama’s, or, alternatively, that Ronald Reagan’s vigilance toward the Soviet Union was a better bet than Walter Mondale’s more dovish approach. These positions moved, more or less persuasively, within the space of rational discourse; perceptive, well-informed people could profitably debate them. But seeing Trump as a compassionate Christian, or as a brilliant businessman and avatar of common sense, signals an epistemic collapse so profound that it removes the opinion from the sphere of rationality and into that of pure, unfiltered credulity. There is simply no way for a person whose cognitive faculties are operating efficiently to hold these views.

....(snip)....

This fact explains an important mystery about our politics. About two-thirds of noncollege white voters supported Trump in 2024. About two-thirds of nonwhite noncollege voters supported Harris. If we assume that both groups experience roughly equal levels of economic distress, then we have an obvious question to answer: Why did they respond to it so differently in the voting booth? The answer, I’d say, is that they accept radically different explanations of that distress. Nonwhites mostly see themselves as oppressed by corporate power and racial bigotry, and they see the government as the only institution of sufficient scale to stand against these forces. Whites mostly see themselves as oppressed by corporate power and elite derision, and they see the government as complicit in both. Their only hope for dignity, they think, lies in an outsider, a strong man (and yes, it has to be a man), a smasher who will destroy a rotten system and resurrect the industrial glory of their fathers and grandfathers. The smokestacks will reignite, The Other will be tamed, and life, and America, will be great again. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/its-magas-problem-now/

January 14, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg's gaslighting can't hide the truth for Donald Trump

Mark Zuckerberg’s gaslighting can’t hide the truth for Donald Trump
Mark Zuckerberg’s gaslighting about Meta’s shameful decision to end fact-checking is still very dangerous

By Austin Sarat
Published January 14, 2025 9:07AM (EST)


(Salon) When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company’s shameful decision to end fact-checking on its Facebook and Instagram platforms last Tuesday, he defended his decision in a five-minute video, claiming that it represented a return to the company’s “founding values.” In truth, Meta’s bottom line and Zuckerberg’s well-known tendency to accommodate himself to the prevailing political winds are the only values his decision serves.

It will be cheered by authoritarians everywhere and be especially welcome at MAGA headquarters in Mar-a-Lago. An aide to President-elect Trump made that clear when they proclaimed that Zuckerberg is now “speaking Trump's love language.” Not coincidentally, the new Meta policy followed quickly on the heels of Zuckerberg’s powwow with the president-elect the day before he announced the end of fact-checking.

....(snip)....

Early in his speech, Zuckerberg revealed his preferred side when he made the entirely false but very Trumpian claim that “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.” He added the complaint that “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.” He said that Meta tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.” But, as Zuckerberg put it, “The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.”

....(snip)....

According to materials obtained by The Intercept, the content users will now be free to post on Facebook and Instagram, includes “derogatory remarks about races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities, That is one reason why the new era Zuckerberg is promising feels like an older era when freedom meant the absence of regulation and a “let the buyer beware” approach in economics and politics. That was great for the powerful and not so much for the rest of us. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/mark-zuckerbergs-gaslighting-cant-hide-the-truth-for-donald/

January 13, 2025

New FTA report shows U.S. transit ridership on the rise

Transit ridership in the U.S. continues to rise, growing by more than 17 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to a recent report from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) on transit trends.

The report notes transit agencies provided 6.9 billion trips in 2023, an increase of 17.3 percent from 2022. Those same transit agencies moved passengers 35 billion miles, an increase of almost 17 percent from 2022. According to the report, with that year-over-year-growth, public transportation grew nearly twice as fast as domestic air travel between 2022 and 2023.

"Our nation's public transportation systems continue to punch above their weight, providing billions of trips covering billions of miles for millions of people all across our nation," said FTA Deputy Administrator Veronica Vanterpool. "This report shows an upward trend in people using transit, which provides many benefits, including less time wasted in traffic, fewer carbon emissions and better air quality."

The report notes public transportation is also a jobs generator, as in the past year, 10,000 new workers have entered the transit industry, and salaries have increased more than $1 billion. At the end of 2023, more than 388,000 people worked in public transportation, filling jobs in operations, maintenance and administration. ......................(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/press-release/55259857/federal-transit-administration-fta-new-fta-report-shows-us-transit-ridership-on-the-rise

January 13, 2025

Is it seasonal influenza or bird flu? Here's how to tell

(Salon) Last month, researchers published a report in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) detailing how a 13-year-old in Canada fought for her life after contracting a severe bird flu infection from an unknown source. In addition to going on life support with an ECMO machine, the teenager received a plasma exchange and multiple antiviral treatments. But her case didn’t initially start severe. Her symptoms began with double conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, and turned into a fever and coughing. When she first went to the hospital she tested positive for influenza A — but not the seasonal subtype. Further testing suggested she had a high viral load of a novel influenza A infection, which researchers eventually discovered to be avian flu caused by the H5N1 virus.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains, bird flu is a disease caused by the influenza A virus. At the same time, recent CDC data shows that seasonal influenza A is rising across the U.S. — specifically the H1N1 (swine flu) and H3N2 strains. While it may just seem like a tiny change in numbers, these differences in flu viruses can mean they are more pathogenic and deadly. But how do researchers know that if a person tests positive for influenza A, it’s not H5N1 avian flu?

....(snip)....

Jetelina elaborated that when it comes to rapidly discerning whether or not a person is infected with H5N1, or another type of flu A, people are reliant on clinicians to decide whether or not further testing is necessary. This is usually triggered by symptoms — like red eyes for H5N1 or a history of having exposure to sick animals. According to the CDC, 66 humans have been infected with H5N1 in the last year. On Friday, the San Francisco Department of Public Health reported a presumptive case of H5N1 bird flu in a child, which the CDC hasn't confirmed yet. The patient experienced symptoms of fever and conjunctivitis but did not require hospitalization and have since fully recovered.

While a majority of those cases occurred from contact with infected poultry or dairy herds, two sources of infected cases remain unclear. To date, most cases haven’t been severe. But last week the CDC reported the first bird flu death in the United States. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/13/is-it-seasonal-influenza-or-bird-flu-heres-how-to-tell/

January 13, 2025

The LA conflagration: It is now painfully clear what matters

The LA conflagration: It is now painfully clear what matters
The wildfires in Los Angeles are a harbinger of our doom — yet ultimately leave me with hope

By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published January 13, 2025 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) The helicopter blades beat through the smoldering air no more than a couple hundred feet above my head. At ground level, the scent of fire brings back memories of fire pits I’d seen at “Cement City” during the Gulf War. As the helicopter passes overhead on the way to the nearby fire, my middle son, his wife, their son and daughter, hurry to pack the car and leave their home near West Hills, California, after the outbreak of the Kenneth Fire. Neighbors were packing up and moving out as well. Traffic in the area was backed up and at a standstill.

....(snip)....

That has not stopped idle speculation that the Palisades had been targeted by arsonists to bring down the area’s richest neighborhoods, or that angry arsonists had started all the fires. Rumors are thick and furious, with some claiming they saw undocumented immigrants with blow torches, and even President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom is somehow omnipotent, or an arsonist, and is responsible for the fires.

“It’s too perfect. It’s like someone’s following a script,” Tony, a baseball coach at a local community college, told me. “It’s too much of a coincidence, fires don’t just start like that spontaneously.” Actually, they can and do.

....(snip)....

The fires in LA this week have highlighted the best and the worst of us. How little do you think of yourself and other people to walk through a disaster zone and steal from people who’ve lost their homes and perhaps loved ones? Then again, you can be brought to tears watching ordinary citizens of different races, creeds, political persuasions and religions join with police and firefighters, including currently incarcerated inmates, to help people they don’t know.

....(snip)....

Make no mistake; this was a natural disaster. But there is a huge human component. It wasn’t Gavin Newsom’s fault. It isn’t Joe Biden’s and it isn’t Donald Trump’s. It is the industrial revolution that led to climate change, the oligarchs who do not care if in pursuit of fistfuls of sweaty cash they rape the planet and the average person who denies the science and reality. Climate extremes which include stronger hurricanes, more intense winter and summer storms, horrifying wildfires, droughts and floods were all predicted 30 years ago by scientists. Some of the results have come later than predicted and some sooner than predicted. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/13/the-la-conflagration-it-is-now-painfully-clear-what-matters/

January 12, 2025

Under Trump, America's military will face a crisis: History has lessons

Under Trump, America's military will face a crisis: History has lessons
This won't be the first time politics has endangered our professional military. What can we learn from the past?

By Gregory D. Foster
Contributing Writer
Published January 12, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Come Jan 20, civil-military relations in this country will be thrust into turbulent and uncharted waters, driven by a mercurial, domineering commander in chief unlike any other in American history. His oft-voiced disdain for the military and those in uniform, at the same time that he treats the military as his personal property, portends a prolonged period of ethical upheaval for a military institution whose prevailing ethos has, with few exceptions, always been one of disciplined restraint in its dealings with civilian authorities.

The price of a military sworn to political neutrality, public silence and dutiful obedience is the military’s reciprocal expectation that its civilian overseers will honor the sanctity of the relationship by conducting themselves professionally and tempering their own demands for politicization. Looking ahead to the next four years, all bets are off in the face of a newly empowered commander in chief who uniformly ignores, circumvents and undermines established norms of protocol and accountability for his own benefit.

....(snip)....

A lesson past: The Billy Mitchell court-martial. Billy Mitchell, father of the U.S. Air Force, commanded all U.S. Army Air Corps forces in France toward the end of World War I. An argumentative, outspoken advocate for air power and the formation of a separate air service, he alienated nearly everyone who didn’t agree with his vision. Moreover, he openly criticized both Army and Navy leadership for incompetence. So contentious was he that President Calvin Coolidge ordered the War Department to court-martial Mitchell, which it did in 1925 under the catchall 96th Article of War, for statements considered prejudicial to good order and discipline, insubordinate, "contemptuous and disrespectful," and intended to discredit the War and Navy Departments. The court found him guilty on all counts and suspended him from rank, command and duty, with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances for five years. He subsequently resigned from the service.

....(snip)....

A lesson past: Coup plotters and Smedley Butler. A perennial icon of the U.S. Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, including being the recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor. Over more than three decades, he fought all over the world in battles and campaigns that fed his own growing cynicism: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism." In retirement, Butler produced a small book titled "War Is a Racket" expressing his distaste over having been a tool for big-business interests. Ironically, he was approached in retirement in 1933 by a group of wealthy right-wing businessmen who wanted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Butler as president. He refused and took his story to Congress, which then produced a lame report that found no one culpable and held no one accountable for what came to be known as the Business Plot or the Wall Street Putsch. ...................................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/12/under-trump-americas-military-will-face-a-crisis-history-has-lessons/

January 11, 2025

LA fires: evacuation orders expand as Santa Ana winds are expected to pick up

(Guardian UK) Evacuations have been ordered for areas of Los Angeles east of the uncontained Palisades fire – as the Santa Ana winds that initially fueled the four-day inferno are expected to moderately pick up.

The Los Angeles fire department issued a new immediate evacuation order at 7pm local time on Friday to areas that cover Sunset Boulevard north to the Encino reservoir and from the 405 Freeway west to Mandeville Canyon.

The evacuation order covers parts of the Brentwood – one of the city’s most affluent areas – and Encino neighborhoods in west LA after the fire department warned that the Palisades fire, now at 21,596 acres, saw a “significant flare-up” on Friday evening.

The area was already under an evacuation warning, but it is now an immediate evacuation order. ..................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/california-wildfires-evacuation-orders-expand

January 10, 2025

Jesse Watters implied women are too stupid to run fire departments -- most LA fire department leaders are men

"DEI is deadly": Fox News spin on California wildfires exposes MAGA's total incoherence
Jesse Watters implied women are too stupid to run fire departments — most LA fire department leaders are men

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published January 10, 2025 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) One thing no one can deny: MAGA influencers put a lot of work into pushing really stupid talking points. Most everyone with sense understands that the fires ravaging Los Angeles are, in large part, a predictable consequence of climate change. However, it is an article of faith in MAGA circles that climate change is a "hoax" invented by the "libs" to deny gender-affirming care to cis men, in the form of oversized gas-guzzling trucks. So they quickly jumped into action during a time of immense need, seeking someone or something else to blame. And because the movement takes all its cues from a right-wing influencer named Chaya Raichik — who posts under the name "Libs of Tik Tok" — they've settled on blaming women.

....(snip)....

It would be cool if women occupied the top three positions of the LAFD, but readers will not be surprised to find out this is not the case. The fire chief, Kristin M. Crowley (pictured left), is a woman. But a quick view of the orgaztional chart shows the chief of staff, the head of emergency operations, the head of administrative operations, the heads of the regional bureaus, the head of the prevention bureau, and the head of IT are all men. Out of the 12 leaders on the page, only 3 are women — meaning a full 75% of the leadership team is male. And that is to say nothing of the first responders from Los Angeles County.

....(snip)....

And what point are Raichik and her MAGA followers making? Not clear! The acronym "DEI," which stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion," is being thrown around, but an acronym does not actually explain why women in leadership is a bad idea. Commenters responded to the photo with "Answers a lot of questions" and "And that’s all you need to know," but no one is willing to say what answers they arrived at, knowing nothing about these leaders but their gender. Jesse Watters of Fox News recycled this photo but also declined to spell out why he believed women are unable to handle the job of being upper management at a fire department.

....(snip)....

With the election of Trump to a second term, there's been a lot said about the "post-truth" moment that Republican voters live in. But this entire exercise shows that it's beyond that. This is the right's post-coherence era. Even within the context of this false information about the gender makeup of the LAFD, there's no attempt to explain why having women in leadership would harm the ability of the firefighters on the ground to do their jobs. It's just a vague gesture — "ew, women" — and a total unwillingness to explain why women are unfit to serve. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/10/dei-is-deadly-fox-news-spin-on-california-wildfires-exposes-magas-total-incoherence/