Reap What They Sew

A Protest Trigger, and Web's Dead, Baby

The national emergency we've been facing, we were told, had to do with monstrous, criminal, gang-affliliated immigrants who were in the country illegally and posed a serious threat to our safety. So how did the LA protests end up getting triggered when ICE agents wearing camouflage and bulletproof vests showed up to arrest people at a Home Depot and a clothing manufacturer called Ambience Apparel. According to the brother of one of the arrested workers, "The only crime he committed was trying to live a better life and trying to get ahead and work. Because of that dream, I had to witness him being chained up like he was some dangerous animal." One can obviously make the point that the government has the right to detain those who have entered the country illegally. But that isn't the point we've been sold by the Trump administration. The story doesn't add up because the numbers didn't. "Even with the high-profile arrests of suspects by masked immigration agents and the plane loads of migrants swiftly ferried out of the U.S., President Trump was falling short of the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year. So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up." So the target changed from the "worst of the worst" to anyone who could be rounded up in a hurry. "In Coral Springs, Fla., at least eight agents in tactical gear, shields and rifles surrounded a home with guns raised to arrest a father with no criminal history. In Irvine, Calif., ICE agents drove a phalanx of military vehicles in the Orange County suburb to arrest a person, though not for illegal immigration. They were seeking a resident’s son who had allegedly posted fliers alerting neighbors to the presence of ICE agents." The WSJ(Gift Article): The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown. We were promised safer communities and we got arrested workers and the military in our streets. As could soon be the case for the customers of Ambience Apparel, the emperor has no clothes.

+ I wonder if ICE will show up at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has been using undocumented workers for years. Here's an overview of his hypocrisy on this issue from his first term.

+ The emergency was fake. The justification for calling in the National Guard was fake. And, unsurprisingly, much of the imagery we're seeing on social media is fake. NYT (Gift Article): Fake Images and Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around L.A. Protests. "James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state’s elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020." (A misleading image paired with a nonsensical conspiracy theory...how is this guy not in the cabinet?)

+ "If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived. The question, now, is whether Americans who hate tyranny can be roused to respond." Michelle Goldberg in the NYT (Gift Article): This Is What Autocracy Looks Like.

2

Pulp Nonfiction

"Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at the Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb. Business Insider cut about 21% of its staff last month, a move CEO Barbara Peng said was aimed at helping the publication 'endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control.' Organic search traffic to its websites declined by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025, according to data from Similarweb. At a companywide meeting earlier this year, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic, said the publication should assume traffic from Google would drop toward zero and the company needed to evolve its business model." The numbers are dramatic, but the trend makes sense when you consider that people have stopped searching for links and started searching for AI answers. WSJ (Gift Article): News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools. Of course, it's not just news sites. It's all sites. The internet is enabling the AI that that will replace it. To paraphrase Bruce Willis's Butch Coolidge in Pulp Fiction, "Web's dead, baby. Web's dead."

3

K Pop-Quiz

"They were not doing their ABCs. They were getting a head start on a defining moment more than a decade in the future: their college entrance exam. Write a paragraph of five to eight sentences using five synonyms for 'large,' said Ms. Keri, their teacher. The kids began jotting down ideas in neat handwriting." The kids, it should be noted, were doing so in a foreign language. And they're only in kindergarten. Think Americans are competitive when it comes to private schools? Consider South Korea. WaPo (Gift Article): Cram schools for kindergartners are the latest in South Korean college prep. "Parents are increasingly preparing their 5-year-olds to eventually sit for college entrance exams as competition for good universities grows ever more fierce."

4

The Algorithm Method

"While to the naked eye, a sperm sample from a man with azoospermia might look normal, the microscope tells a different story, Williams says. Highly trained technicians rarely find any sperm in these samples, which are often filled with other debris. Add to that the fact that sperm are the smallest cell in the body, and it’s not surprising that even the best fertility technicians rarely find sperm in azoospermia samples. That’s where AI comes in." Time: Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure.

5

Extra, Extra

Shot Clock: "This is the latest in a series of moves that Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to dismantle decades of policy standards for immunizations. An advisory panel more closely aligned with Mr. Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter — or even drop — the recommendations for immunizations to Americans, including childhood vaccinations." Kennedy Removes All C.D.C. Vaccine Panel Experts. (Maybe they’re gonna deploy the Marines against viruses.)

+ Overcoming Overdoses: "What we're seeing is a massive reduction in [fatal] overdose risk, among Gen Z in particular ... Ages 20 to 29 lowered the risk by 47%, cut it right in half." Drug deaths plummet among young Americans as fentanyl carnage eases.

+ Chamber Made: "I had been trying to compose my thoughts about the death penalty for a while, distilling them into scraps and stubs of writing, but the only certainty I had going into the Indiana death chamber in December 2020 was the simple sense that it’s generally wrong to kill people, even bad people. What I witnessed on this occasion and the ones that came after has not changed my conviction that capital punishment must end. But in sometimes-unexpected ways, it has changed my understanding of why." Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Inside America’s Death Chambers.

+ Trade Marks: It's safe to assume that some traders with inside knowledge of the timing of certain announcements made bigly money on the on-again, off-again tariff announcements. Worse, some of those traders are in Congress. Lawmakers Traded Stocks Heavily as Trump Rolled Out ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs.

+ Inflationapallooza: "Inflation and tightening budgets have people spending less in nearly every part of American life, including nightlife, fashion and dining out. While you could once see your favorite act play a major stadium and still attend a festival that same summer, music enthusiasts today are having to choose between the two." Dwindling ticket sales and cancellations: What’s behind the decline of music festivals. (Ever since my kids starting going to local music festivals, I've been prohibited from attending.)

+ Everyday People Don't Come Around Every Day: "Though Mr. Stone eventually receded from center stage, his vibrant, intricately arranged songs left their mark on a host of top artists, including George Clinton, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Michael Jackson, Outkast, Red Hot Chili Peppers and D’Angelo, as well as jazz musicians like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. As the critic Joel Selvin said, 'There was Black music before Sly Stone, and Black music after Sly Stone.'" Sly Stone, Maestro of a Multifaceted Hitmaking Band, Dies at 82.

6

Bottom of the News

"Fast-paced travel and 24-hour journeys predate the advent of social media and viral fads. However, it taps into our modern desire for quick, impactful experiences that are easily documented and shared. It’s travel’s version of instant gratification." I am a terrible traveler and immediately get homesick. So this is actually my dream vacation scenario. WaPo: The many ways to turn one day off into a 24-hour vacation. (Now if we could just cut that down by one day...)

+ There's robbing a home run and there's robbing a home run. Forget the rest of the Summer. The season's greatest MLB catch has been made by Athletics' rookie Denzel Clarke.