Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Ohio EPA weighs allowing data centers to dump wastewater into rivers

Ohio regulators are weighing a statewide permit that openly accepts lower river and stream water quality to accommodate data-center growth.

State Politics

Feb 26, 2026

Sources

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/ohio-epa-weighs-allowing-data-centers-to-release-wastewater-into-rivers

Summary

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency released a draft permit that would allow data centers statewide to discharge untreated wastewater and stormwater directly into rivers and streams. The draft explicitly contemplates lowered water quality to accommodate social and economic development, signaling a regulatory posture that prioritizes development over baseline environmental protections. If adopted, the permit would normalize direct discharges from current and future facilities and shift monitoring and remediation burdens onto downstream communities and taxpayers.

Reality Check

When a regulator writes “lowering of water quality” into a permitting rationale, we are watching the guardrails of public-interest governance bend toward managed degradation. Normalizing untreated discharges as a statewide baseline conditions the public to accept environmental harm as a routine cost of development rather than a preventable policy choice. Over time, this kind of permitting posture shifts risk downstream—onto residents, local systems, and public budgets—while weakening the expectation that government protections are the default, not a negotiable exception.

Detail

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued a draft permit that would allow data centers across Ohio to release untreated wastewater and stormwater into rivers and streams. The draft is written to apply to water circulating through any current or future data center in the state, regardless of location.

The permit’s first page states that “a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state associated with granting coverage under this permit is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.” Residents interviewed raised concerns about what pollutants could be present in data-center water, including chemicals and microplastics, and whether wastewater treatment plants can address those contents. Residents also warned that, if impacts occur, Ohio taxpayers could bear costs tied to remediation and Ohio EPA monitoring.

The permit has not been approved. The Ohio EPA declined to comment on the proposal and provided a fact sheet on the permit.

Norms Impact

Billionaire Trump Donor Closing U.S. Plant and Moving Work to China

A top presidential fundraiser is offshoring an Ohio factory to China while selling pro-worker politics, exposing how donor power can evade any duty to the communities it claims to defend.

Economy

Feb 16, 2026

Sources

https://newrepublic.com/post/206603/trump-donor-closing-us-plant-moving-work-china

Summary

Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson is closing Conn Selmer’s manufacturing plant in East Lake, Ohio, and moving the work to China. A major political donor is using public pro-worker, pro-tariff messaging while privately executing an offshoring decision that bypasses local accountability. East Lake workers and the local economy lose jobs and income while the decision-makers face no direct democratic check.

Reality Check

This conduct weaponizes political branding to legitimize decisions that strip working people of leverage, and it normalizes a system where donor-backed rhetoric masks private offshoring with no public recourse. Nothing here, on these facts, cleanly fits a federal criminal statute—there’s no described bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 201, honest-services fraud under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341/1343/1346, or extortion under color of official right under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951—because no corrupt official act is alleged. The damage is institutional: when major fundraisers can preach “protect American jobs” while moving production to China, our politics becomes a permission structure for economic harm without accountability, and workers’ rights become contingent on PR rather than enforceable commitments.

Detail

Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson plans to offshore the East Lake, Ohio, plant of Conn Selmer, described as the largest U.S. manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments, by moving the work to China.

UAW Local 2359 president and plant worker Robert Hines said the union arrived “with a full proposal, fully prepared to bargain,” but management began with a presentation describing poor performance. Hines also said Paulson publicly supported the Trump administration’s tariff messaging and then pursued moving the jobs to China.

Paulson raised $50.5 million for Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. Hines said the closure will remove “a lot of money out of East Lake,” that community members have tried to keep the plant open, and that the company “isn’t open to it,” including not answering or returning calls.