Random News: June 16, 2025

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s June 16, 2025, and it’s a Monday. I spent more time around more people over the past few days than at any point going back to at least before the pandemic. To make up for that, my goal this week is to be as much of a hermit as possible without actually moving to the top of a desolate mountain.

• A Pride Note…
• Something you hear now and then — mostly from idiots — is to the effect of, “There didn’t used to be all these gay people.”
• Sigh.
• Let’s break this down. See, for a good portion of human existence in many places, being openly gay was a death sentence.
• So the LGBTQIA+ folks in the world tended not to be very forthcoming about their sexual orientation. Why would they be?
• I can say with 100% certainty that the percentage of LGBTQIA+ people in the world has likely never changed.
• We’re just fortunate that we live in a time where people can risk being open about who they are, and hopefully are encouraged and supported by those around them.
• Let’s do some news.
• Yesterday, Dumples the Racist Clown directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities.
• Saturday’s No Kings demonstrations apparently are bruising his fragile ego badly… much worse than people realize. The huge crowds versus his tiny birthday gathering was probably the last straw for a narcissist like him.
• Dumpy called on ICE officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
• He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”
• ICE has a quota of at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Dump’s second term.
• I’d expect anyone with non-white skin — especially in the nation’s three biggest cities —  to be prepared to be stopped on the street to show proof of legal residency.
• A brief aside…
• Growing up and spending most of my life here in Southern California, I’m sure I can speak for damn near everyone when I say that our friends and family and co-workers include people named Garcia. Named Lopez. Named Villalobos, Ontiveros, Hernandez, and Ramirez.
• How many of them — named Mendez, Gomez, Jimenez, Perez, and the like — along with their spouses and children, are now in danger of being harassed on the street due to the color of their skin, and told to produce their papers, despite many of them being multi-generational Americans?
• It’s a sick, sad, and cruel world that Dumpy has created.
• As I mentioned the other day, Dumpy has also directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants, and hotels, after Dump’s wealthy pals told him that their businesses can’t survive without these immigrants.
• Moving on.
• Last night, they caught Vance Boelter, the piece of shit who shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses — killing two of them — in politically-motivated assassinations early Saturday morning. He’s now in custody.
• Funny how white murderers tend to end up in custody and get due process, and other ones get killed where they stand. 
• Anyway, congrats to the hard working law enforcement teams who nabbed this MAGA asshole before he could continue his killing rampage.
• More info about Boelter had come out before his capture.
• Boelter held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the U.S. was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.
• Friends and former colleagues described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for Dump.
• Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
• This insane cult member was going to gun down every Democratic lawmaker, abortion rights advocate, and health care official he could find. That’s what the Dump cult lusts after. Killing good people in cold blood.
• Dump has, on many occasions, openly advocated for physical violence against Democrats and liberal citizens in general. And his cult listens to him.
• What’s sad is that the truly unthinkable — that Dump will pardon this guy and let other murderers know that it’s open season on their fellow Americans — is now improbable, but not entirely impossible.
• We’re going to have to get better at identifying these scummy people in advance of when they start pulling the trigger. Most of them seem to tell you who they are via their social posts. Believe them.
• Let’s move on.
• I want to briefly touch once again on Saturday’s No Kings day of defiance.
• More than anything, I want to extend my thanks to so many of you who went out and participated in the streets, or those who used your outreach to help make others aware and drive them toward taking action.
• It’s a funny thing that some people expect exact numbers of the people who participated in No Kings around the world.
• Like, a protest isn’t a precise event. You don’t sign in when you get there. There’s not some kind of fucking registry. Most people don’t RSVP before arriving (though I did because I give no fucks in terms of my public disgust of the Dump regime). 
• But I did want to mention that data analysts are indeed suggesting that — in agreement with our previous estimates — the No Kings protests was the biggest single day of demonstrations in American history.
• And not only are the numbers of participants high; the number and frequency of demonstrations as a whole have skyrocketed in Dumpy’s second term.
• Since his inauguration in January, Dump’s administration has witnessed more than 15,000 protests and rallies, representing a threefold increase in the number of public demonstrations that had taken place by this point in 2017 during his first term.
• And if you want a perfect example of Dump’s government blatantly lying to your face, his Director of Communications Steven Cheung claimed the “No King’s [sic] Protests have been a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance.”
• You’ve seen the photos and the videos. The massive crowds. The news coverage. Many of you went and experienced them in person.
• Some of the latest tallies have No Kings topping 12.2 million in attendance. That’s over 3.5% of the populace, nearly guaranteeing massive change is coming.
• Why keep believing the lies that are so easily disprovable? And if Dump is lying to you about this, what else is he lying to you about?
• Maybe everything?
• And a final reminder: not only were these protests by and large extraordinarily peaceful, but they were attended by a wide swath of Americans of every range in age, race, economic status, and other dividing lines.
• And we’re all going to vote at every opportunity and take every other possible action to rid the world of this disease called Donnie Dump.
• Let’s move over to the War Desk.
• Iran and Israel continue to trade missile barrages.
• Missiles from Iran have struck Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, destroying homes and fueling concerns among world leaders at this week’s G7 meeting that the conflict between the two regional enemies could lead to a broader Middle East war.
• Ya think?
• Iranian state TV said the country fired at least 100 missiles at Israel, signaling that it had no intention of yielding to international calls for de-escalation as it pressed on with its retaliation for Israel’s surprise attack on Tehran’s nuclear program and military leadership on Friday.
• Sigh.
• Yesterday, Israeli strikes on Iran killed Mohammad Kazemi — the intelligence chief of the country’s Revolutionary Guards — along with two other officers.
• War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
• In other news…
• A follow-up on our story from the end of last week, when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was shoved to the ground and handcuffed after asking a question at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference.
• It turns out that contradicting Noem and the Dump administration’s description, not only was Padilla attacked with no provocation — he’d been escorted into the room by a member of the National Guard and an FBI agent.
• That makes sense, with Padilla being the senior senator from California, who was doing his job by questioning the secretary.
• Padilla was attempting to get clarity after Noem announced that her agents were staying in LA to "liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country."
• The people she is referring to are our duly elected officials who we voted to put in their respective offices, often by large margins.
• In footage of the incident shared by DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin — who said she believed Padilla was "an attacker” — Padilla can be heard saying, "I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
• Yesterday, Padilla asked, ”What does it say about the secretary to not know who the senator from California is, the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration?"
• Moving on.
• A Father’s Day story for you.
• Goliath is a 517-pound Galapagos tortoise, and he’s just celebrated his 135th birthday. And now, for the first time, he’s a dad.
• Zoo Miami officials said they submitted an application to Guinness World Records to recognize Goliath as the world's "Oldest First-Time Father.”
• And I thought I took a long time by becoming a father at 30.
• Side note: the Galapagos tortoise is listed as endangered, with population numbers once drastically reduced by direct exploitation and habitat disruption.
• Modern threats of climate change and ongoing habitat loss contribute to conservation urgency.
• So every new little tortoise that comes into the world is indeed precious. Congrats to Goliath.
• And now, The Weather: “Blue Moon” by Sea Lemon
• From the Sports Desk… um, no NBA or NHL playoff games yesterday. I’m not sure what to do here. Hang on.
• Ah yes. Golf. Sure, why not?
• J.J. Spaun survived a terrible start to capture his first major championship yesterday with a two-stroke victory in the 125th U.S. Open.
• Spaun — a native of Los Angeles — made a 64-½-foot birdie putt on the 18th to secure his unlikely victory and defeat Scotland's Robert MacIntyre by two. That’s actually pretty cool.
• Today in history… Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain (1779). A meeting in London leads to the formation of what is now the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1824). Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois (1858). A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed (1897). The Ford Motor Company is incorporated (1903). IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, NY (1911). George Junius Stinney Jr., age 14, becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century after being unfairly convicted in a two-hour trial for the rape and murder of two teenage white girls (1944). While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union (1961). Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space (1963). A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa, turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd (1976). Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, CA, as Software Development Laboratories by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates (1977). Upwards of 2,000,000 people participate in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the largest in Hong Kong's history (2019).
• June 16 is the birthday of economist Adam Smith (1723), actor Stan Laurel (1890), geneticist Barbara McClintock (1902), actor Jack Albertson (1907), Mexico president José López Portillo (1920), songwriter Lamont Dozier (1941), singer-songwriter Eddie Levert (1942), NBA player/coach Rick Adelman (1946), NFL player Al Cowlings (1947), boxer Roberto Durán (1951), singer Gino Vanelli (1952), actress Laurie Metcalf (1955), soccer player/manager Jürgen Klopp (1967), golfer Phil Mickelson (1970), rapper Tupac Shakur (1971), actor John Cho (1972), and NFL player Justin Jefferson (1999).

That’s enough for a Monday morning. Again, hats off to all of you for making No Kings day so impactful… but we’re not done. This is just the start of the process of taking back our country from these assholes. They have no idea what’s in store for them… but I do, and I’ll continue to share it with you. That’s what I do. Enjoy your day.