How The Progressive Set To Debate Kirk Was Set To Debate Kirk:
On September 25, the left-wing Twitch streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker was supposed to debate Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. But one hour into an eight-hour stream on Wednesday, Piker’s chat started posting that Kirk got shot.
“Oh my God, he definitely got shot in the neck,” Piker said, his hand covering his mouth as he watched the footage (which was not on the livestream). “Oh, fuck.” After a few moments of silence, Piker told his audience not to watch the clip. “There’s very little chance that he will survive that.”
We reached out to Piker to discuss Kirk’s murder and its aftermath, including his concerns that President Donald Trump, who called Kirk a “martyr” and moved immediately to blame the political left, will lead his followers in using Kirk’s death to clamp down on progressive organizing.
Just an excerpt to whet your appetite:
My worldview is empathy-first politics. I think Charlie Kirk said it best when he said that empathy is a made-up concept that he thinks is problematic. He thinks it is just a made-up concept that people have designed to advance a leftist agenda, something along those lines. I think that dichotomy perfectly demonstrates the way we view the world.
I believe in universal programs for everyone, unconditionally, regardless of their ideological background, their ethnic background, their nationality. I believe everyone has a right to health care. Everyone has a right to a free college education, a chance for upward social mobility, decent housing, decent job, good wages, just an opportunity to better themselves and the next generation, that is at the root of my worldview. That’s what I believe in in an uncompromising manner.
Whereas I think reactionary ideals oftentimes revolve around striking the clock of progress back to the best of their ability, and assuming that if we were to maintain some semblance of traditionalism, some semblance of conservatism in the way that we govern, that society would improve.
On How Trump Will Exploit This:
They’ve already started doing that. I think Donald Trump, his first statement immediately after Charlie Kirk’s untimely demise was to, without even profiling the shooter, go on this mission. [Trump and other right-wingers] were like, “This was done by radical leftist extremism, and it must be destroyed.”
The State Department has already made an announcement saying that they are going to look at people’s profiles at the point of entry into the country to see if they actually sufficiently grieved Charlie Kirk—which is, of course, a violation of the First Amendment, regardless of whether I personally think that’s inappropriate or not. I’m just simply talking about how ridiculous it is to make this kind of enforcement a priority and how unconstitutional it is.
And it’s very clear that they’re using this as a Reichstag fire moment, very clearly, using this as an opportunity to further persecute and prosecute political dissidents.
Migrating Trees–Will Trump Deport Them?:
They can be carried by wind, water and animals to new locations. And when they put down roots in more hospitable climes, the seeds of these lucky survivors can further advance into that region. This has been going on for millennia and entire ecosystems have shifted their ranges in response to changing environmental conditions.
When studies of living trees in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, USA, first noted this migration in the 1970s, scientists had not yet correlated the movements to a rapidly changing climate. Now, as human activities accelerate climate change, trees appear to be stepping up their game. Across the world, forests are moving away from the heat. Some are moving north, others west and some are even climbing mountains to find more temperate homes – moving upslope from where previous generations established.
As certain forests show signs of stress due to the increasing temperatures, some scientists are advocating for assisted migration – planting tree species in regions outside of their natural range to establish biodiversity reservoirs in case their stranded relatives perish.
Solar Panels–Is There Any Downside To This Innovation?:
A novel solar power project just went online in California’s Central Valley, with panels that span across canals in the vast agricultural region.
The 1.6-megawatt installation, called Project Nexus, was fully completed late last month. The $20 million state-funded pilot has turned stretches of the Turlock Irrigation District’s canals into hubs of clean electricity generation in a remote area where cotton, tomatoes, almonds, and hundreds of other crops are grown.
Project Nexus is only the second canal-based solar array to operate in the United States—and one of just a handful in the world. America’s first solar-canal project started producing power in October 2024 for the Pima and Maricopa tribes, known together as the Gila River Indian Community, on their reservation near Phoenix, Arizona. Two more canal-top arrays are already in the works there.
In California, the solar-canal system was built in two phases, with a 20-foot-wide stretch completed in March and a roughly 110-foot-wide portion finished at the end of August. Researchers will study the project’s performance over time, while a new initiative led by California universities and the company Solar Aquagrid will push to fast-track the deployment of solar canals across the state.
The purpose of these early arrays is primarily to power on-site canal equipment like pumps and gates. But such projects could eventually help clean up the larger grid, too. A coalition of US environmental groups previously estimated that putting panels over 8,000 miles of federally owned canals and aqueducts could generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy—enough to power nearly 20 million homes—and reduce water evaporation by possibly tens of billions of gallons.
How Trump Shuttles Immigrants Into Limbo:
The Trump administration is shuttling immigrants around the US in irregular and unprecedented ways, according to the findings of a Guardian investigation, in effect vanishing people into a “purgatory” that denies them constitutionally – protected rights.
A review of leaked flight records and passenger manifests from Global Crossing Airlines (GlobalX), the charter company that operates the majority of deportation flights for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), has provided a rare look at the winding journeys of more than 44,000 immigrants detained or deported by the Trump administration.
The leaked data was provided to the Guardian, which has verified its authenticity. It encompasses about 100 days from late January to early May.
The Guardian reviewed GlobalX deportation flights as well as government detention data and interviewed attorneys, advocates, former officials and immigrants who have been through the system. The analysis has revealed that:
GlobalX carried out more than 1,700 flights for Ice, the vast majority of them between domestic US airports. The airline transported nearly 1,000 children, including nearly 500 children under the age of 10, and 22 infants.
For many immigrants, the flight paths were long, with multiple legs and layovers. Nearly 3,600 people were moved around repeatedly, forced to board five or more GlobalX flights.
Immigrants were also moved between detention facilities more than before. The average number of transfers per person has markedly increased in the past six months, and some detained immigrants have been moved as many as 10 or 20 times.
Detainees were moved around the US without notice, to locations far from their families, communities and legal counsel – leading to apparent violations of constitutional due process rights.
Along their journeys, immigrants say they were repeatedly kept in the dark about where they were going. Some say they were threatened by immigration agents with long-distance transfers and separation from their families if they did not accept voluntary deportation.
“It just seems so fundamentally inhumane,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a non-profit legal advocacy group. “The administration is using the system to make it as prohibitively cruel as it possibly can for the people going through.”
No better choice than The Neville Brothers to sing us out:
