Indivisible Binghamton - Public Page

08/24/2026

They're dousing national forests in Roundup, and the government helped Monsanto rig the science that says it's safe. A yearlong investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, aired on PBS News, found glyphosate use in California's forests has quadrupled over the past two decades.

In 2023 alone, crews put roughly 266,000 pounds of it onto forestland, close to five times what was used twenty years earlier.

Why poison the woods? Not to protect the trees you love. To grow the trees a lumber company can sell.

Glyphosate kills the native brush and hardwoods that compete with young conifers, making it the go-to tool for replanting land scarred by logging and fire. Wildflowers, shrubs, and the bees and birds that live in them get wiped out so profitable pines grow straight and fast for harvest.

This spring, workers with backpack sprayers are set to hike 10,000 acres of Lassen National Forest and apply up to eight pounds of the chemical per acre. A family with a two-month-old lives right in that spray zone. Near Lake Tahoe, the agency wants to hit up to 75,000 burned acres above some of the cleanest drinking water in the country.

The Pacific Crest Trail runs straight through the most heavily sprayed forestland in the state.

The World Health Organization's cancer agency labeled glyphosate probably carcinogenic to humans back in 2015. Bayer, which owns Monsanto, has already paid out more than $12 billion to people who say Roundup gave them cancer.

And the safety study the Forest Service leans on? Investigators found it rested heavily on research Monsanto secretly ghostwrote. One of its most cited "independent" papers was retracted last year for hiding the company's involvement. Monsanto scientists talked openly about paying outsiders to stand up and shout that glyphosate is harmless.

So the agency poisoning our forests is quoting the poisoner's homework.

Then stack on last week's news. The Trump administration just moved to strip protections from 45 million acres of roadless national forest, roughly one-third of the entire system, opening it to loggers and road builders. Last year, 99 percent of more than 625,000 public comments opposed the rollback.

This is the whole machine in one frame. Soak the wild places in chemicals, rig the science, hand the keys to timber.

These forests are ours. The water reaches millions of us. And they're turning it into a chemical tree farm while telling us to trust them.
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08/24/2026

08/24/2026

Here’s the problem with Trump pi***ng off Canada. This isn’t pretty. I hesitated putting this out here right before bedtime.

First of all, the U.S. IS the world's largest crude oil producer, yielding over 13 million barrels per day. Trump talks about it all the time. We don’t need anybody’s oil!

We’ve got plenty of our own. Right? Well, here’s the problem. Only about 60% of the crude oil processed in U.S. refineries comes from domestic production. Another 40% of our crude oil comes from imports.

Why do we need to import oil if we produce so much of our own? That’s because domestic shale fields produce mostly light, sweet crude, while many American refineries are specialized to process cheaper, heavy, sour crude. Gulf Coast refineries are built for heavy crude, for example. Refineries across the American Midwest are also physically built to process heavy crude. And you can’t just throw up new refineries overnight.

So guess who we get this needed heavy crude oil from? 60% to 62% of it is coming from Canada.

Here’s a breakdown:

Canada (~57% to 62% of crude imports)
Mexico (~6% to 7% of crude imports)
Saudi Arabia (~4% to 7% of crude imports)
Iraq (~3% to 4% of crude imports)
Brazil (~3% of crude imports)

Uh oh.

Did you know Canada also supplies the U.S. electricity? New York, New England, Minnesota, Michigan, and the Pacific Northwest rely the most on these cross-border lines. Dozens of international power lines connect the two national grids to balance regional supply and demand.

Canada is a major supplier of uranium to American nuclear reactors, frequently acting as the largest foreign source of uranium for the United States. Roughly one-third of the uranium purchased by U.S. nuclear plants originates from Canadian mines. The U.S. relies heavily on imported nuclear fuel, and Canada regularly provides the largest share among international providers.

How about fertilizer for our crops? The U.S. imports over 85–95% of its total potash (potassium), and roughly 85% to 90% of those specific imports come directly from Canada. For you non-farmers potassium is a core plant nutrient that boosts crop yields, root strength, and disease resistance. Canada also supplies a substantial share of U.S. nitrogen imports (averaging around 30% of total nitrogen imports), which translates to about 10% of total U.S. nitrogen consumption.

Finally, Canada supplies roughly 2.6 to 2.7 million metric tons of aluminum to the United States each year. This amount equals more than half of all the aluminum used in America, making Canada the largest foreign supplier of the metal to the U.S. Of course we use aluminum for a lot of stuff, building airplanes for example.

And the Canadian Prime Minister just told Trump to shove his bullying and trade deals right up his ass.

Copied from John William Evans via David Foster

08/23/2026

To all my Canadian friends. Our president is a total ass. Imposing an 50% tariff on you is ridiculous and the majority of us in the US do not understand why he is actually doing this. He will profit from it somehow, I'm sure. I feel everything he does is to put money in his pocket. Please don't hold it against us, we hate him as much as you do. (written by a FB friend)

08/23/2026

Apparently, the family’s definition of “hard work” is being born into a White House access pass and waking up worth nine figures.

Barron Trump, a 20-year-old college student, is reportedly worth around $150 million—wealth tied largely to the Trump family’s crypto operation, World Liberty Financial. Not a business built from years of experience. Not a company that solved a public problem. Just another Trump-branded money funnel operating while his father sits in the Oval Office.

What could possibly raise ethical concerns about the president’s family selling crypto tokens to wealthy buyers around the world while the administration holds enormous power over the industry? Nothing to see here, apparently.

Remember the Republican meltdown over Hunter Biden selling artwork? Fifty-thousand-dollar paintings became a five-alarm national-security crisis. Congressional investigations! Breathless cable-news segments! Endless lectures about influence-peddling!

But a president’s son allegedly accumulating an estimated $150 million through a family crypto venture? Suddenly the party of “law and order” has misplaced its monocles. No hearings. No outrage. No righteous speeches about the appearance of corruption. Just the sound of MAGA politicians pretending not to notice the giant pile of money sitting on the front lawn.

And it isn’t only Barron’s reported fortune. Reporting and analyses have found the broader Trump family crypto operation has generated hundreds of millions through World Liberty token sales and Trump-branded meme coins, while the value of those speculative coins has cratered for many ordinary buyers.

That’s the model: powerful people collect the fees; everyone else gets left holding the digital bag. They told us Hunter Biden’s art sales were the end of civilization. Yet when the Trump family turns the presidency into a crypto vending machine—one that can accept money from practically anyone, anywhere—Republicans suddenly discover nuance.

08/23/2026

Pete Buttigieg, on the current situation: :
On August 17, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg recorded a video to assure those Americans who oppose the Trump administration that they are in the large majority. He noted that the strategy Republicans are pursuing shows how unpopular they are.
“Think about it,” he said. “They're not out there showing that the economy is somehow better than it looks…. They're not defending their cuts to healthcare, they're not defending the tax cuts for the wealthy. They're not defending the corruption that's going on in Washington.”
“It's too late for that,” he said, because “we've all seen that those policies have failed. They made us all pay tariffs and said the reason we got to do this is to bring back manufacturing jobs…. Well, we paid the tariffs, and then America lost manufacturing jobs. They cut taxes for the rich. They said we've got to do that in order to speed up economic growth. And what happened? Economic growth slowed down…. They said they were going to cut costs and prices. Inflation is actually higher now than the day Donald Trump took office. They said they were gonna drain the swamp. And then they expect us to be okay with the first family making a billion dollars or more in crypto deals while the president's in office….
“A lot of people believed this president and Republicans when they said no new wars. Then, what do we get? A war with Iran in the Middle East right now, which means all of us here at home are paying higher gas prices.”
The Republican strategy is not to change their policies, Buttigieg said. “It's changing the maps. Changing the rules. Because that's the only way they could win. They know they're on the wrong side of the American people….
“You're already in the majority if you think that we need healthcare for all, not Medicaid cuts and cutting Obamacare…. Right now, if you think that the wealthiest people in the country need to be paying their fair share in taxes, which is more than they're doing today, where they currently pay less than a lot of teachers and nurses and firefighters. You are definitely in the majority if you believe that the wealthiest nation in the world ought to do the best job of funding public education and making sure it works. Not this Republican approach, which is to literally eliminate the Department of Education. You're not alone if you think that in any decent economy, one job ought to be enough. And you're certainly not alone if you believe that a woman's healthcare decisions ought to be up to her and no one else, that in a free country, you should get to be who you are, and love who you love, and live a life of your choosing. When you believe these things, you're not just not alone. You're part of a powerful majority. Really a supermajority of the American people.
“So, whether you're a Democrat, an independent, or someone who has generally voted Republican in the past, most voters want the same things right now: to be led and represented by normal people who are good at getting things done. People want leaders who respect those who disagree or vote differently instead of calling them the enemy. People who know that God does not belong to a political party in the United States of America. Most voters want to elect leaders who are not simply trying to rebuild the past, but trying to create something new and better.”