BLS Firing, Texas Redistricting Portend Democracy in Peril; We’re Building a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon Now? Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 4, 2025

Indy Digest: Aug. 4, 2025

Two developing stories show how terrifyingly precarious our democracy is right now.

First: On Friday, the president fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer—simply because he disliked the statistics her team had released.

CNBC today reported:

President Donald Trump and one of his top economic advisors on Monday stoked baseless conspiracies about federal jobs data, suggesting without evidence that Friday’s weaker-than-expected employment report had been “rigged” by federal workers bent on sabotaging the president.

“All over the U.S. government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Monday on CNBC.

Trump, meanwhile, claimed on social media that the report, which painted a dour picture of the economy, was “RIGGED” and the previous months’ revisions had been “CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!!” …

Monday’s comments from Trump and Hassett were the latest effort by the White House to criticize the labor statistic bureau’s work in order to retroactively justify McEntarfer’s firing.

But they also went a step further, planting the idea that any government economic data which does not fit neatly into Trump’s political narrative must, by definition, be false and manipulated by partisan federal employees.

If you’re not familiar with how the Bureau of Labor Statistics functions—and I admit that I had no idea before now—CNN has a great explainer here.

Second: the Texas redistricting scheme. The Associated Press explained what was going on as of this afternoon:

Texas Democrats on Monday prevented their state’s House of Representatives from moving forward, at least for now, with a redrawn congressional map sought by President Donald Trump to shore up Republicans’ 2026 midterm prospects as his political standing falters.

After dozens of Democrats left the state, the Republican-dominated House was unable to establish the quorum of lawmakers required to do business. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has made threats about removing members of the opposition from their seats. Democrats have countered that Abbott is using “smoke and mirrors” to assert legal authority he does not have.

At the center of the escalating impasse is Trump’s hope of adding five more GOP-leaning congressional seats in Texas before the upcoming midterms. That would bolster his party’s chances of preserving its slim U.S. House majority, something Republicans were unable to do in the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first presidency. Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 seats. That’s nearly a 2-to-1 advantage and already a wider partisan gap than in the 2024 presidential election, when Trump won 56.1% of the vote, while Democrat Kamala Harris received 42.5%.

Speaking Monday on Fox News, Abbott essentially admitted to the partisan power play, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined “there is nothing illegal” about shaping districts to a majority party’s advantage. He even openly acknowledged it as “gerrymandering” before correcting himself to say Texas is “drawing lines.”

The mess has Democratic governors—including one Mr. Gavin Newsom—threatening to take similar redistricting steps in their states, to “counter” what Texas is doing.

The march toward fascism is not only continuing; it’s speeding up.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• No, this is not a piece from The Onion .. it’s real, as reported by Politico: “Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will announce expedited plans this week to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, the first major action by the former Fox News host as the interim NASA administrator. NASA has discussed building a reactor on the lunar surface, but this would set a more definitive timeline—according to documents obtained by POLITICO—and come just as the agency faces a massive budget cut. The move also underscores how Duffy, who faced pushback from lawmakers about handling two jobs, wants to play a role in NASA policymaking. … The reactor directive orders the agency to solicit industry proposals for a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor to launch by 2030, a key consideration for astronauts’ return to the lunar surface. NASA previously funded research into a 40 kilowatt reactor for use on the moon, with plans to have a reactor ready for launch by the early 2030s.”

• The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Friday that it would be closing. NBC News examines what, exactly, that will mean. A tidbit: “Roughly 70% of the corporation’s money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country. The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it’s likely some won’t survive. NPR’s president estimated as many as 80 NPR stations may close in the next year. … Maine’s public media system is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12% of its budget, for the next fiscal year. The state’s rural residents rely heavily on public media for weather updates and disaster alerts. In Kodiak, Alaska, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22% from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions.”

• The feds are ramping up efforts to get voter and election information from the states. Given what’s going on in Texas, and the president’s penchant for election conspiracy theories, this is concerning. The Associated Press reports: “Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission. In Colorado, the department demanded ‘all records’ relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election. Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law. The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.”

• Some good government news, just for a change: Our partners at Calmatters report on the state’s efforts to stop companies from using artificial intelligence to, well, screw you over: “It’s late at night, and you badly need a ride. Your cellphone’s battery is dangerously low. Should a ridehailing company such as Uber or Lyft be able to charge you more because its artificial intelligence programming thinks you’re desperate since it knows your phone is about to die? Not if Hayward Democratic Sen. Aisha Wahab has her way. Her Senate Bill 259 would prevent retailers from using artificial intelligence to jack up prices using the information stored on customers’ phones. That could include the phone’s battery life, whether it’s an older model, what apps are installed, what time of day it is, where its user is located and where they live. ‘Our devices are being weaponized against us in order for large corporations to increase profits, and it has to stop,’ Wahab told the Assembly Judiciary Committee last month. Wahab’s bill to limit surveillance pricing that’s coasting through the Legislature is the latest example of California lawmakers trying to reign in the explosion of AI technology this year.”

• Today’s recall news involves … frozen berries! CBS News says: “Doehler Dry Ingredient Solutions, LLC is recalling boxes of Member’s Mark freeze dried fruit due to potential listeria contamination, which can lead to serious illness. In an alert Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the company discovered the problem affecting some 15-count boxes of ‘Member’s Mark Freeze Dried Fruit Variety Pack’ after internal product testing. So far, no illnesses have been reported. … The product was distributed between July 1 and July 25, 2025, and sold in Sam’s Club retail stores in 42 states (including California).”

• And … Kias! Fox Business says: “Kia America issued two recall notices within a week for more than 300,000 vehicles over loose parts near the doors and windows that can fall off and pose a potential hazard to other drivers. The recalls affect 201,149 Telluride models from 2023 to 2025 over faulty door belt moldings and 100,063 K5 models from 2023 to 2025 over window trim detachment issues, according to two separate July 28 notices from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Detached trim pieces can create ‘a road hazard for other vehicles, increasing the risk of a crash,’ NHTSA said in both notices. The recalled Telluride models may experience loosening and eventual detachment of its door belt molding trims—the long, narrow strip located along the top edge of the vehicle’s door where the glass window meets the metal frame of the door, according to NHTSA.”

• And finally … as a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, the thought of Rupert Murdoch having his hand in California-based enterprises makes me queasy. So this news has my stomach feeling unsettled. The New York Times says: “The New York Post said on Monday that it would introduce a new version next year called The California Post, aiming to muscle in to an ailing local news ecosystem on the West Coast. The California Post will have headquarters in Los Angeles and replicate The New York Post’s style of bombastic reporting, sports coverage and celebrity gossip from a California perspective, the company said. The newspaper will have its own staff of reporters, editors and photographers, though it will also share some resources with The New York Post. It will publish online and will print a daily edition starting in early 2026. … The Post’s move into new territory comes at a time when California’s media landscape has hollowed out. Many local newspapers have shuttered, as they have across the country. The Los Angeles Times, the state’s biggest daily newspaper, is losing tens of millions of dollars a year and has suffered controversy and a loss of subscriptions over its owner’s decision to block an editorial endorsement of last year’s Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris. It cut its newsroom by more than 20 percent early last year, with further rounds of layoffs and buyouts this year.”

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