Texas Monthly is a real icon of state-based journalism, but the magazine out did itself this month with its astoundingly deeply researched story on the state of the Rio Grande and water issues on both sides of the border. Just one excerpt here, in a piece as long as your standard New Yorker story in 1955:

Farther downriver in the Rio Grande Valley, cities have been slower to adapt to the crisis, and they’ve run out of time. This year, when the multigovernment Rio Grande Regional Water Planning Group released its official 2026 strategy, local officials from across South Texas admitted that they had no plan in place for what happens if the drought continues to worsen. The report offered the weakest of excuses: “The Rio Grande RWPG chose not to plan for uncertainty or DWDOR [drought worse than the drought of record] on a regional scale at this time because forecasting tools have not been able to provide the resolution needed for water planning on a regional basis.”

The Valley is home to a handful of desalination plants, and officials are scrambling to bring others online. In addition to the high price tag, these facilities will come with immense environmental costs: Toxic saline sludge will get pumped out into surrounding wetlands.

Farmers themselves have actually pushed for more measures to improve efficiency. Galeazzi, the lobbyist, told me he’s spent time in Austin and D.C. arguing for public investment in water infrastructure. Some of the simplest changes, such as lining dirt irrigation canals with concrete, would save millions of gallons of water. But Galeazzi says politicians balk when they learn that those savings will cost billions of dollars.

In the end, there’s no clever technology that can pull us back from the brink. “No matter what we do—desalination, irrigation tech, conservation in cities, rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge—there is no way out,” Sandoval Solís said. The only thing that can help now is reducing agricultural water use. Everything else is too little, too late.

With the reservoirs in critical condition, Sandoval Solís said it could take just two dry years to wipe out the water that remains. And he fears that on the Mexican side of the river, over a million people could experience Day Zero as soon as next year.

If the reservoirs collapse, South Texas will get thrown back to a more primitive era. Sanchez, the researcher from Saltillo, doesn’t think Day Zero in the Valley will look like it did in Monterrey. It will look worse. “Mexico is actually much more resilient to water scarcity than the U.S., only because they’re used to it,” she said. “I cannot imagine my neighbor in Texas opening the tap and not getting water. What would happen? They would probably sue the city.”

Elsewhere around the world, Day Zeroes have been rare, but they almost always lead to violence. In 2015, São Paulo, Brazil, a city of over 20 million, got within weeks of Day Zero. Caught off guard, the government chaotically announced a strict limit: Water was turned off for twelve hours a day in neighborhoods across the city, leading to mass protests. In 2019 several reservoirs in Chennai, India—one of the world’s largest cities—ran completely dry, and taps stopped flowing for months. The government trucked in water by train and in convoys of tankers, but it couldn’t meet demand for more than 10 million residents. Tankers entering the city were attacked and hijacked. A woman was stabbed while arguing with a neighbor over water. In one of the larger riots in the region that summer, police arrested at least 550 people.

If a similar crisis comes to pass in Texas, governments in Austin and Washington, D.C., won’t be able to offer much more than tanker trucks. For residents, the most important technology will become the bucket, which they will need to bathe, launder clothes, and flush the toilet. Even if the rains return, this sort of deprivation could last for years as residents wait for the reservoirs to refill.

Thousands of Texans already live this way. During one reporting trip, I drove into the brush outside of Laredo until I reached the community of La Presa, known locally as a colonia. One of the residents I met there was Luz Castillo, a retired farmwork manager. She explained that in the nineties, a rancher had sold her an illegally subdivided plot of land, falsely claiming that he had plans to connect electricity and water lines. She was nine months into building her house when she realized he had lied to her. Today, Castillo trucks in her own water using a five-hundred-gallon jug in the back of her pickup. She’s spent thirty years organizing her neighbors and petitioning the county to connect water mains. “They are so hesitant to help you,” she said.

La Presa contains a warning for those on the brink of losing their water: The state is doing little to help its own residents secure this most basic resource.

The collapse of the borderlands’ water system would transform life in the region. Millions of Texans will face the immediate pressure to relocate, fueling the kind of disaster migration Texas saw when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. On both sides of the border, the agricultural system could break down completely.

There will be other more subtle but equally devastating long-term effects. South Texas is already home to some of the poorest counties in the nation, and the water scarcity will discourage investment and new business. Instead of preparing for that future, boosters are conducting business as usual. In fact, the Valley is booming.

One of those boosters is Elon Musk, whose gigantic south Texas investments all require water from the Rio Grande that is probably not going to be there very much longer. My other favorite piece of this is Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum shutting off water to Monterey in order to appease Donald Trump. Not that Mexico really is more responsible with the declining water than the. U.S., but it’s also not less responsible. Also, for all the talk that the ranchers will lose out eventually to the population in terms of water usage, the problem is that the legal mechanism for taking allocated water from agriculture is very very shaky.

This is a slowly ticking time bomb and that excerpt has it right: expect violence over water in the U.S. very soon.

Most reporting on Trump’s speech emphasized either his belligerence — his rejection of global cooperation — or the fact that almost everything he said was a lie. But isn’t the bigger story the fact that the leader of what used to be the world’s most powerful nation — I say “used to be” because America’s power is collapsing before our eyes — has clearly and undeniably lost his mind?

I’m by no means the only commentator to see parallels between Trump’s UN speech and the scene in Bananas. But comparing Trump to a fictional character is unfair — to the fictional character. After all, in Bananas the mad dictator is quickly removed from power. In America today, some Republicans are quietly distancing themselves from Trump. A few are even voicing subtle, elliptical criticisms. But will he be impeached, or face 25^th Amendment proceedings? Not a chance.

Indeed, let’s be honest: the only reason these faint hints of Republican rebellion are newsworthy is that they come after years of slavish obedience and flattery — obedience and flattery that continued even though Trump’s deteriorating mental state has been obvious for a long time.

I read an excellent commentary titled “It’s Sundowning in America,” inspired by Trump’s demented demands that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize several months ago. The damage being done by Deranged Trump Syndrome was already obvious. And that was before Trump squandered America’s military credibility, as well as a dangerously large share of our munitions, on his catastrophic war-of-choice in Iran.

There’s a high probability that Trump’s power will be considerably reduced in the aftermath of the November midterms. Polls point to a blue wave that is highly likely to give Democrats control of the House and more likely than not to deliver the Senate. If that blue wave does indeed materialize, I expect that there will be an enormous sigh of relief across the country because it will be a major, if not fatal, setback for Trumpism.

However, we shouldn’t let the short-term relief of a November victory blind us to the long-term realities. Trumpism did not emerge out of thin air – that is, an unfortunate draw of the democracy cards. Instead, Trump and Trumpism is the culmination of a decades-long threat to American democracy, to the moral, legal and social fiber of this country.

There is a straight line from Koch Brothers money, allied with segregationists and religious fundamentalists, that runs through the Federalist Society and the Roberts Supreme Court, through the MAGA-fied Republican Party, through the crypto-industry and the tech-broligarchy, that leads to Trump. And it will take a single-minded, fearless and incorruptible new generation of Democrats to defeat this many-headed hydra.

We should also recognize that Mad King Donald will still retain a great deal of power even with a Democratic Congress. He won’t feel that he has failed America, he will believe that America has failed him and try to punish the nation accordingly. Thus, he will use his remaining power vindictively not just against the victorious Democrats, but also against the American people.

 

 

I did not comment when Charlie Kirk was murdered, but let’s just say I had thoughts on the matter.

One of Kirk’s many contributions to vile hatred was his evil fascist Professor Watchlist, the “official list of leftist faculty,” who should be targeted by fascists. Among the little things that they can do is destroy your Rate My Professor rating with bullshit, since that  worthless site doesn’t actually require any proof you were in a class to say terrible things about a professor. Among the big things they can do is give murderers a list of targets.

Well, a year after Kirk’s killing, his movement is broke, leaderless, and in shambles — among the casualties is the Professor Watchlist. That story came out a couple of weeks ago. I checked it this morning and it is still no more. Of course, it could come back.  But any step toward reducing the fascist infrastructure of hate is a positive step.

Meanwhile, there’s another benefit to Kirk’s passing:  This year’s “Freedom Fest” was canceled because they only sold 4 tickets.

The question I found myself asking in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death was “Just how much of a piece of shit human do you have to be for your wife’s initial reaction to your passing is to run out and buy a bunch of expensive designer clothes and costumes, then parade joyously on stage as you try to take over your husband’s movement?”

The fact that she then made a pass at America’s third-worst hunk of shit human (JD Vance) really sez something about those family values.

 

 

 House Ethics Complaint Filed Today

Against Lauren Boebert from Colorado.

The complaint alleges that Boebert slept with multiple staffers and issued six-figure payouts in hush money with taxpayer dollars.

She is accused of carrying out sexual relations with 2 former Chiefs of Staff and her District Director between 2021 and now.

She is accused of mishandling federal taxpayer money, misusing campaign funds, and “witness tampering” regarding a $200K payout to one former staffer/lover who threatened an ethics complaint.

 

 

MeidasTouch has obtained exclusive images this afternoon showing the aftermath of an Iranian attack on a US base in Kuwait, and based on what we’ve reviewed, the destruction is severe.

Several structures at the base appear to have been completely destoryed, with everything surrounding them leveled as well. What were once functioning structures are now flattened, with debris scattered across the surrounding area.

The most alarming detail in the material we obtained involves one of the base’s bunkers, the exact kind of hardened structure troops are trained to run to and shelter in the moment incoming fire is detected. According to the images, that bunker took a direct drone hit. The fact that a shelter specifically built to protect personnel during an attack was itself struck is the detail that stands out most.

This reporting lines up with what ABC News separately and independently reported this week. ABC’s Rachel Scott and Chris Boccia obtained their own images and video showing damage to buildings and at least one aircraft across three US bases in Kuwait, including Camp Arifjan, along with Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, which houses US assets that were partially evacuated amid the danger. CBS News had separately reported on widespread base damage earlier in the week. Here are more images obtained by MeidasTouch:……………………

More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

A sixth official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration, in concert with Israel, initiated the Iran war. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said.

Additionally, the official said, three U.S. contractors who were based in the region have died since combat operations began.