Scorched Earth and Corn Husk Miracles

From Trump’s teenage target practice to a rediscovered bird and a teen science prodigy, America stumbles through cruelty, collapse, and glimmers of grace.

Good morning! On this Wednesday in the United States of Whatever, the gears of power continue to grind with all the grace of a malfunctioning combine harvester, as Donald Trump spends his week alternately torching democratic norms, targeting teenagers, and rewriting the laws of arithmetic, poorly.

Let’s begin in Arizona, where the Supreme Court has officially handed sacred Apache land to a foreign-owned mining conglomerate. In a ruling so morally bankrupt it should come with its own offshore account, the justices cleared the way for Resolution Copper to level Oak Flat, a religious site long protected under federal stewardship. Corporate lobbying and Trump’s deregulatory edicts greased the land transfer, powerfully reminding us that under this administration, "sacred" means "for sale," and shareholder portfolios contain the only relevant gods.

Meanwhile, Trump is busy handing out presidential pardons like party favors, with the most recent going to Paul Walczak, a convicted tax cheat whose mother just attended a $1 million-a-head fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Sources say reality TV fraudsters Todd and Julie Chrisley may have received similar clemency. If you're wondering what the going rate for absolution is these days, apparently it’s a seven-figure donation and a willingness to publicly adore the emperor's new golf game.

In the Senate, nerves are fraying over Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”, a budget-devouring monstrosity masquerading as tax reform. Billed as a generational boon for seniors, it falls hilariously short of his promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security. Instead, it throws retirees a $4,000 deduction-shaped biscuit, which helps virtually no one and insults nearly everyone. Even Elon Musk, previously a vocal cheerleader for all things Trumpian, has decided this bill is too fiscally grotesque to support, likely a strategic move to distract from the fact that his own companies are on fire, underwater, or both.

And if that’s not enough dystopia for one morning, Trump has now aimed his firehose of outrage at a 16-year-old transgender athlete, AB Hernandez, whose biggest concern should be her next high school track meet, not surviving a smear campaign from the President of the United States. In a now-viral post, Trump falsely claimed she was "unbeatable" and used her as a blunt object in his culture war against California. The facts? She placed fourth in one event, third in another, and eighth in the high jump, hardly the steroidal super-villain Fox News would have you believe. The real story here isn’t her athletic performance, but her extraordinary composure: “I’m still a child. You’re an adult. And for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a teenager outclassing a sitting president.

Internationally, the war in Ukraine continues to grind forward, and backward, on parallel tracks. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky claims Moscow has proposed a new date and venue for peace talks with Ukraine, just days after launching the largest drone assault of the war. Ukraine hasn’t responded publicly, likely because it’s hard to talk ceasefire with someone who just sent 355 Shahed drones screaming through your airspace. While prisoner exchanges continue and vague diplomatic gestures are tossed like breadcrumbs to the press, Russia is still demanding the moon: no NATO expansion, territory it doesn’t fully control, sanctions relief, and a pat on the back for all that bombing. In other words, peace on Putin’s terms, or else.

Back at home, economic alarm bells are getting harder to ignore. Reports continue to emerge that foreign ports are rejecting U.S. shipments, and German automakers are freezing exports to the U.S. in protest of Trump’s tariff tantrums. It’s almost as if alienating the global trading system while claiming “America First” has consequences. The Wall Street Journal even ran a rare editorial urging GOP senators to revolt against Trump and support 500% tariffs on nations buying Russian oil and gas. When the WSJ editorial board sounds like Bernie Sanders with a hedge fund, you know we’ve crossed a fiscal Rubicon.

But let’s end with something worth smiling about. A new NASA-backed study reveals that the Colorado River basin has lost the equivalent of an underground Lake Mead due to 20 years of unchecked groundwater pumping. Okay, that’s not the uplifting part, just hang in. The real story is that people are finally paying attention. Scientists are calling for urgent regulation, particularly in states like Arizona, where you can still pump your own aquifer dry with zero consequences. Maybe, just maybe, the era of treating water as infinite is starting to crack. It has to.

And finally, because we’ve earned it, a flicker of hope from the margins. In a biodiversity survey that started as routine, scientists rediscovered a bird species once declared extinct, alive and well in a remote corner of its former habitat. It’s a rare ecological second chance, and a feathered middle finger to those who’ve already given up.

And if that’s not enough to restore a shred of faith, meet Anika Puri, a 19-year-old genius who just won $100,000 for inventing a way to make antiviral drugs using corn husks. Her breakthrough slashes both costs and production time, turning agricultural waste into global medicine. No culture war. No billion-dollar subsidy. Just science, generosity, and a better future, delivered by a teenager with more public value than every Mar-a-Lago donor combined.

Somewhere in all this mess, the next world is already being built. Let’s make sure we show up for it.