Indy Digest: Aug. 7, 2025
Let’s take a look at two big national stories making the social-media rounds—and see if what’s being bandied about is actually true.
First: Here’s the text from a Facebook post I came across yesterday:
The Trump Administration isn’t even pretending anymore that they are attempting to undermine the Constitution.
The sections currently removed from the (Library of Congress) Website are:
Article 1, Section 9 – Habeas Corpus Clause (mass deportations, sweeping people off the streets, Alligator Alcatraz); and
Article 1, Section 10 – Foreign Gifts/Emoluments Clause (free airplane from the Qatari government).
Trump is corrupt. Republicans are complicit in undermining our nation’s democracy.
Quite horrifyingly, the claim was true—for a little while.
The missing sections included foundational provisions, such as the right to habeas corpus—which protects people from unlawful detention—and the foreign emoluments clause.
Those constitutional principles have risen to the forefront of political and legal debate amid the president’s immigration crackdown and foreign dealings. …
As highlighted by tech news site TechCrunch, an archived version of the website shows that a chunk of Article I Section 8 was cut, in addition to the entirety of Sections 9 and 10 of Article I.
According to captures from the Wayback Machine, those sections were present as recently as mid-July. …
“It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated …website,” the Library of Congress said in a statement posted to social media. “We’ve learned that this is due to a coding error.”
The missing text has since been restored.
It would be one hell of a coincidence that, of all things, these portions of the Constitution were deleted for a while … but that’s exactly what this may have been—a coincidence. As Axios said: “The text of Article I Section 8, which outlines congressional powers, trailed off after enumerating Congress’ power to ‘To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.’ Rather than continuing to the next line, ‘To provide and maintain a Navy;’ the section ended abruptly on a semicolon.”
The fact that the text trailed off randomly mid-clause gives the “coding error” excuse some credence.
Nomination Round—Vote Now!
Second: A Facebook post has been making the rounds with this claim:
One condition of the Paramount+ merger, is that CBS News must accept a “bias monitor” appointed by Trump’s FCC, and who reports DIRECTLY to President Trump himself.
That is NOT Freedom of the Press.
This is a fascist dictatorship growing before our very eyes.
It is true that Paramount agreed, as part of the Paramount/Skydance merger deal, to have a CBS News ombudsman put in place to monitor bias. However, it is not true that the ombudsman/monitor will report directly to President Trump. The ombudsman will instead report to the head of Paramount.
In Skydance’s July 22 letter, it cited the FCC’s 2011 approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal, as part of which Comcast agreed to an ombudsman for “preventing editorial bias” in the operation of the NBC broadcast network. The ombudsman, according to the 2011 FCC opinion, was originally put in place during a prior NBC merger in 1986, but Comcast would voluntarily keep the ombudsman “to further ensure that the policy of independence of NBCU’s news operations would be maintained.”
Who was president in 2011? Barack Obama.
Here’s an interview PBS did with Brendan Carr, the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission: It includes this quote from Carr: “… This will be up to the company itself. This bias monitor is someone that they’re hiring inside CBS. They’re going to report directly to the president of CBS itself.”
The Trump administration is doing many terrible things—but truth really does matter, so it’s important to make sure what you read on social media is actually accurate before you share it yourself.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
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Contreras modified his drum set to include timbales instead of toms; unique percussion elements like a cowbell and tambourine; and stacks of cymbals with jingles on top of them. The result: an undeniably funky, yet rockin’ drum sound.
The Indy Endorsement: The Three-Berry Tart at La Provence Patisserie and Café
By Jimmy Boegle
August 6, 2025
It’s a good thing La Provence doesn’t sell containers of pastry cream, because one could be tempted to grab a spoon and go crazy.
Vine Social: If You Think All Rieslings Are Too Sweet or ‘Old Fashioned’ … Think Again!
By Katie Finn
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Before you think of the sugary Blue Nun your aunt used to pour at family gatherings, let’s set the record straight: I’m talking dry, refreshing and so crisp, it practically does a happy dance on your tongue.
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Coming up in the next 11 days: the return of a Indio burger legend; a celebration of butterflies; and more!
More News
• Here’s yet one more piece of evidence that cruelty and bigotry are guiding forces in the Trump administration. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to force them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters. These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump-sum payments as they walk out the door, the August 4 memo says. The move is the latest escalation by President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to bar transgender individuals from joining the U.S. military and remove all who are currently serving. The Pentagon says transgender individuals are medically unfit, something civil rights activists say is untrue and constitutes illegal discrimination.”
• If you have solar panels on your home, you may have just gotten some good news from the California Supreme Court. Our partners at Calmatters say: “The California Supreme Court today sided with environmental groups in a case seen as pivotal for the proliferation of rooftop solar power in California. In a unanimous vote, justices told a lower court to revisit a ruling that upheld reduced payments to solar panel owners for selling excess power back to utility companies. Justices did not rule on whether the changes to the solar program were legal, requiring the court of appeals to determine this. ‘They basically said the lower court kind of punted on the whole substance of the (solar payments) decision,’ Bernadette Del Chiaro, vice president for California at the Environmental Working Group, said. ‘I do think they’re clearly stating this needs to be reviewed.’ At issue is a 2022 decision by state regulators to reduce by about 75% payments to solar panel owners for excess power. The change was intended to help make bills affordable for all customers while still encouraging the adoption of renewable energy sources. Three environmental groups that brought the lawsuit — the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect our Communities Foundation, and the Environmental Working Group — argued in the case that the state utilities commission’s decision left out crucial considerations around benefits to customers and disadvantaged communities.”
• Despite a court ruling that many of the recent ICE raids in Southern California are illegal, they’re still happening. The Los Angeles Times says: “A man driving a Penske truck pulled up to day laborers at the Home Depot and told them he was looking for workers, recalled one day laborer. The workers gathered around, just as more than half a dozen Border Patrol agents jumped out the back. Many of the people scattered, but 16 were arrested in the operation. After weeks of relative quiet, the immigration raid on a Home Depot in Westlake early Wednesday morning revived fears of widespread sweeps in Los Angeles as U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino warned, ‘We’re not leaving.’ … Immigrant advocates and city leaders had hoped such sweeps had stopped with a federal judge’s order, affirmed by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, that immigration officials cannot racially profile people or use roving patrols to target immigrants. ‘We are all trying to look into … exactly what happened,’ said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. ‘But from the video and from the stills, it looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing before.’”
• The anti-science secretary of Health and Human Services just defunded mRNA vaccine research. NPR talked to scientists who explain why this move is beyond terrible: “‘This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I’ve seen in my 50 years in this business,’ says Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. ‘It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths. I’m extremely worried about it.’ … Jennifer Nuzzo … runs the Brown University School of Public Health’s Pandemic Center and says the move could erode preparedness for future pandemics. ‘This is a profoundly disappointing development,’ she says. ‘When there’s the next pandemic, we’re going to be caught flat-footed. It absolutely leaves the country vulnerable.’ Nuzzo and others aren’t just worried about the next pandemic. Many experts say mRNA vaccines would provide a crucial deterrent and powerful defense against bioterrorists.”
• Here’s an ABC News headline that just made me sigh: “Trump moves to shut down NASA missions that measure carbon dioxide and plant health.” Some details: “The Trump administration is moving to shut down two NASA missions that monitor a potent greenhouse gas and plant health, potentially shutting off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers. … NASA said in an emailed statement Wednesday that the missions were ‘beyond their prime mission’ and being terminated ‘to align with the president’s agenda and budget priorities.’ But the missions—a free-flying satellite launched in 2014 and an instrument attached to the International Space Station in 2019 that include technology used in the Hubble Space Telescope—still are more sensitive and accurate than any other systems in the world, operating or planned, and a ‘national asset’ that should be saved, said David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist who led their development. They helped scientists discover, for example, that the Amazon rain forest emits more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, while boreal forests in Canada, Russia and places where permafrost is melting absorb more than they emit, Crisp said.”
• And finally … I am a Stanford Daily alumnus—and I’m an especially proud alumnus today. Time magazine reports: “Stanford University’s student newspaper is suing the Trump Administration over what it says is the government’s attempts to target international students for immigration actions over the expression of pro-Palestinian views. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on behalf of the Stanford Daily, as well as two unnamed former students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are named as defendants. A spokesperson for Stanford University told Reuters that the student newspaper is an independent organization and that the university is not involved in the lawsuit. ‘In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,’ Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney at FIRE, said in a statement. ‘Free speech isn’t a privilege the government hands out. Under our Constitution it is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.’ The lawsuit has requested a preliminary injunction to block the government from attempting to deport students over pro-Palestinian speech while the case is ongoing.”
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