In The Hague there are two major international courts that are often confused. One is the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ), based in the historic Peace Palace, which settles disputes between states. The other is the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Housed in a modern glass-and-concrete building, the ICC has 125 member states — not all 193 UN members. The US, Russia and China are among the countries that have not joined, along with several states in Asia and North Africa.

When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently threatened to dismantle the court "brick by brick," it was clear he was referring to the ICC. In a statement, the State Department outlined a number of measures Washington is considering as part of its campaign against the court. These include visa restrictions on ICC staff and tougher sanctions targeting the court and affiliated organizations. It also suggested increased scrutiny of countries "that refuse to reject the ICC's illegitimate authority" while continuing to receive US assistance.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-the-us-is-going-after-the-international-criminal-court/a-78006596

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let him off the hook for a $1,000-a-day fine.

This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.

Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted.

In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.

Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied.

Blanche lashed out Monday in a melodramatic brief attacking Phang’s argument as “outlandish,” “absurd,” and “hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to impose punitive sanctions” on the Department of Justice. He called her lawsuit “sensational and unsubstantiated,” despite the reality that her entire argument is based on cold, hard facts.

Phang’s ongoing lawsuit is yet another headache for Blanche, whose scheme to secure a permanent promotion to attorney general has not exactly been smooth sailing. After days of tense confirmation hearings in the Senate, an uncomfortable meeting with Epstein survivors, and hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues opposing his nomination, $1,000 a day just might drive him over the edge.

Too bad. Let’s see the money.

*excerpt from Sophie Jager's article*

Full Article here:

https://newrepublic.com/post/213313/todd-blanche-begs-judge-fine-epstein-files

So while the internet is going crazy over Zohran Mamdani calling Benjamin Mileikowsky a war criminal and pinning the Gaza genocide solely on him, no one seems to be talking about the fact that tomorrow, the US Congress will be voting on the National Defense Authorization Act, which passes every year.

​Buried inside the bill is Section 219, which calls to permanently integrate US military technology and supply chains with Israel. We don't have any type of bilateral agreement like that with any other country on the planet, for obvious reasons. It threatens whatever sovereignty we have left.

​Thomas Massie is the sole Republican who says he will vote against this bill, and come January, he is out of Congress. Still, the bill needs to pass the Senate. But let's be honest, guys—it's great that Zohran is speaking about the Gaza genocide carried out by the entity known as Israel, not just Benjamin Mileikowsky, with our tax dollars, of course.

​But let's not forget that there are actual tangible things that he could be doing as mayor, including firing the Zionist billionaire you have as police commissioner, actually doing something about the illegal Palestinian land sales that are hosted continuously in New York City, or what about the Chabadnik night of terror that nobody's been arrested for?

​Also, you could ask the Attorney General to actually do something about these tax-exempt domestic terror operations or these tax-exempt orgs that are literally funding and fueling the colonization of Palestine.

​It's great that he is speaking about Palestine, but let's not forget the actual tangible things that need to happen. And words just aren't cutting it anymore, honestly.

https://www.military.com/us-israel-defense-integration-horizon-house-keeps-section-219-ndaa

A modelling scout linked to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home.

Daniel Siad, 69, was discovered on Monday in Colombes, a north-west suburb of Paris, the Nanterre prosecutor's office confirmed to the BBC.

"An investigation to determine the cause of death was opened on Monday evening following the discovery," the office said, adding that an autopsy will be carried out.

Siad's name appeared thousands of times in the Epstein files released by the US government. He had previously denied any knowledge of the threat that Epstein posed.

Epstein victim Anya - not her real name - previously told the BBC that Siad had introduced her to Epstein.

"It was a complete set-up," she said, describing Siad as "essentially a professional trafficker".

During one e-mail to Epstein released in the files, Siad wrote in badly-spelled English: "In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish".

Ahead of a BBC investigation on the subject published on 18 July, Siad's lawyer had said he was not available for comment, but in a recent CNN interview, Siad said he did not know the women were being abused by Epstein: "I trusted him, I believed this guy is a professional person."

Siad himself was the subject of several complaints in France, including allegations of rape, with the first filed in February. He denied wrongdoing in multiple recent media interviews, telling BFMTV in May: "I have never raped anyone in my life."

Lawyers for the former model who made the first complaint said they were "stunned" by his death.

"We are at a loss for words to describe the anger and sadness we feel," they said, with the sadness for their clients "now denied a criminal trial".

The lawyers said they feel "immense anger toward the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, which announced last February that it was opening an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's French accomplices".

They accused the office of "scandalous" inaction which they said "demonstrates the public authorities' contempt for victims of sexual crimes, even when these crimes are linked to the human trafficking network established by Epstein and his accomplices".

The BBC has contacted the prosecutor's office for comment.

Another former model who had given a deposition to police in June as part of the investigation into Siad told the BBC that his death meant any information he may have had about Epstein was now lost.

"An important link in the chain has just vanished into thin air, without there even having been a chance to recover the information Daniel Siad might have possessed, given that he was never questioned," she said.

"Too much time has been lost... and it is yet another way for the leads to go cold. I hope we won't have to wait another seven years to see his home searched, even though I think it is already too late."

Anne-Claire Le Jeune, who represents six women who had made complaints about Siad, said victims had been deprived of justice.

"My clients found the strength to break a particularly heavy silence, given Daniel Siad's ties to Jeffrey Epstein," she said. "They faced every stage of the proceedings with remarkable courage."

"It is deeply regrettable that the slow pace of the investigation resulted in his death before he could be questioned or taken into police custody, thereby depriving the victims of a crucial step in their pursuit of truth and justice."

Another associate of Epstein, French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, was found hanged in his Paris prison cell in 2022.

The 76-year-old had been held in custody for more than a year as he was investigated on suspicion of the rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation. Brunel had denied any wrongdoing.

Brunel founded MC2 Model Management with funding from Epstein and was suspected of transporting and housing girls or young women for Epstein.

Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited a federal trial for sex trafficking.

*excerpt from BBC's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8en38vpd3o

It’s been a little more than a year since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act began dismantling federal clean energy incentives—just one part of the Trump administration’s broader attacks on renewables, from freezing funds and canceling permits to paying developers to cancel plans for offshore wind farms. A new report tallies what the policy shift has cost the economy.

More than 200 major clean energy projects were canceled, closed, or downsized between the beginning of 2025 and May 2026, according to a report from E2, a nonprofit that tracks the clean energy economy, and the research and consulting firm BW Research. That includes factories like a $1.4 billion battery plant that Natron Energy planned to build in North Carolina—creating more than 1,000 jobs—and a $2.57 billion battery plant that Freyr Battery, now called T1 Energy, planned to build in Georgia. Other canceled initiatives span solar and wind farms, and EV facilities, including Stellantis’s scrapped $3 billion battery plant and parts hub in Illinois.

In total, the report calculates that nearly half a million jobs have been lost as a result, including 343,000 permanent roles and 125,000 construction jobs. More than $68 billion has been lost in private capital investments during construction phases. And $91 billion has been lost in GDP growth from canceled construction work, along with another $55 billion in annual GDP growth from ongoing operations. Local and state governments, along with the federal government, have foregone $20 billion in tax revenues from construction, and another $13 billion in annual tax revenues. And $31 billion has been lost in annual wages from permanent jobs.

Read more on Fast Company.

The Republican Party and its allied media organs have been blasting out messaging highlighting the radical views of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose views conservatives wish to associate with the Democratic Party. The particular extreme DSA stance they have chosen to highlight over the past week is the abolition of the U.S. Senate. The right-wing media is aflame with headlines such as “DSA Co-Chairman Defends Plan to Abolish Senate: ‘We Don’t Think That’s Extreme’” and “‘It’s Not Extreme’: Guess What the DSA Wants to Abolish Now.” (Answer: the Senate.)

The odd thing about this choice is that, although the DSA’s platform is indeed chock-full of maniacal proposals, on this particular idea, the maniacs have a point. The Senate is a vestigial deformity upon the Constitution whose elimination, unlikely though it might be, would rank among the great democratic advances in American history.

The Senate’s many admirers, chief among them senators themselves, tend to defend it as the product of ingenious design. Ben Sasse, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, offered up a typical tribute in a Wall Street Journal column on Sunday. He wrote, “The upper house is built for the long view, with six-year terms that encourage a deliberative trustee model of representation. Senators owe their states both judgment and conscience.”

The truth is that James Madison and his allies did not want to create a Senate that represented states rather than people. The Constitution’s architects, despite notoriously excluding many Americans from the political community, wished those who were granted the right of self-determination to be able to do so on an equal basis. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in “Federalist No. 22,” “Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York.” The idea that people who lived in small states should enjoy more power than people who lived in large states offended Madison and Hamilton’s sense of justice.

However, those Founders lived in the real world, and in that world, they had to cut deals with less-remembered Founders such as Gunning Bedford Jr. of Delaware, who threatened to walk away from the newly founded republic unless the citizens of small states were granted disproportionate rights. Madison and Hamilton recognized they had no choice but to submit.

This deal is known to history as the Great Compromise. It was great not because it was perfect, but because it was politically necessary. As Madison explained, “A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil.” This is an elegant way of saying: It stinks, but what are you gonna do?

Merely because the Founders had to cut a deal to achieve an imperfect outcome does not bind the citizenry to abide by it for eternity. Other compromises the Founders made—such as protecting slavery—have long since fallen by the wayside. But the Senate, rather than viewed by posterity as the necessary evil that Madison recognized it to be, has been sacralized.

In some ways, the Senate has evolved in a more democratic direction. Prior to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were appointed by state legislatures, in many cases with the help of hefty bribes, rather than elected. In other ways, however, the body has grown even more undemocratic. When the Constitution was ratified, the most populous state had fewer than 13 times as many residents as the least populous state. Today, that ratio has ballooned to nearly 67 to 1.

This malapportionment occurred only in part because of the natural growth of mega-states such as California, Texas, and New York. It was also the product of deliberate manipulation. In the late 19th century, Republicans, seeking to maintain their electoral advantage in the chamber, admitted a series of states that would not have met the customary qualifications for statehood. Most comically, they split the lightly settled Dakota territory into two states, giving them an extra pair of senators.

The upper chamber’s undemocratic character has been warped further by the filibuster. The Constitution specified only limited uses (such as approving treaties and proposing constitutional amendments) for a supermajority, but it has evolved into a routine requirement for legislation. In theory, a Senate bloc representing less than 11 percent of the public could prevent the passage of a law.

This imbalance has been made all the more noxious by yet another distortion. Small states (many of them located in the sparsely populated Great Plains and Mountain West) tend to be rural and overwhelmingly white, which means that the Senate systematically under-weights racial minorities, who tend to live in states with the lowest per-capita voting clout. One 2025 paper calculated that, compared with a legislative body that represents all racial groups equally, in the U.S. Senate, white people functionally enjoy 1.14 votes per person while Black people have 0.84 votes, Asian Americans 0.75, and Latinos 0.67.

fect. Studies have found that the Senate has a persistent tilt in favor of Republican candidates and conservative-policy outcomes. The tilt may be worse than it appears, given that Republicans have often squandered their structural advantage by nominating extreme candidates who have lost winnable races.

The DSA’s platform sets out an ambition to reduce the Senate to a symbolic institution like the House of Lords, which once exerted counter-majoritarian influence over the United Kingdom but now simply affirms policies enacted by the democratically elected Parliament. That is obviously an ambitious goal with no prospect of fulfillment anytime soon. Even the more modest goal of admitting Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states, which would reduce but not eliminate the Senate’s conservative tilt, is probably not in reach for the next Democratic majority.

But advocating for morally just, utopian policies is the sort of thing that democratic socialists ought to be doing. Republicans want to scare voters into thinking that if Democrats win the midterm elections, the United States will be on the road to a future in which the Senate is no more—or is, at best, an impotent debate club for elderly statesmen. If only!

*excerpt from Jonathan Chait's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/senate-representation-undemocratic-imbalance/688012

I do not condone or endorse The Atlantic or Jonathan Chait.

So, so very much to unpack here, so read it slowly and with relish. Pull quotes:

Furnari, despite no one having commissioned him to make the statue, was hoping to make money. He said he had expected unnamed wealthy figures to donate to him – he spent $100,000 on steel, resin and labor – but that has not come to pass.

In desperation, Furnari set up an online fundraising campaign, hoping to raise an initial $150,000, but potentially millions of dollars, which he said would allow him to take the statue on tour. As of Thursday, he had raised $1,400.

 Was there pressure inside Marsha Blackburn's U.S. Senate office to break the law?

That's the provocative question raised by new recordings just obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates as Tennessee's senior senator asks voters to put her in the governor's office.

It follows NewsChannel 5’s revelation last week that Blackburn’s office had been the focus of a 2025 investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee into allegations that taxpayer resources had been used for her political campaigns.