Random News: June 27, 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 27, 2025, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I’ve had a busy but mostly productive week, and today I’ll be continuing that trend to make it through to a weekend that I’m planning to enjoy in no specific way.

• A Pride Note…
• From the most open and compassionate liberal to the most hate-filled conservative, every single one of you have had your lives positively impacted by people across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
• Some of those folks are obvious — we spoke earlier this month, for example, about Alan Turning, without whom you might not have a computer, a smart phone, or any freedom at all (since Turing was perhaps the most important person in helping the Allies defeat the Axis in WWII).
• But life without LGBTQIA+ people is fucking shitty on a wide range of areas.
• Here’s a list of people who do various things that help you be a happy person. The fact that they’re gay, or lesbian, or trans, or whatever they are, is probably irrelevant to you.
• But their contributions to the world make your life better.
• Gilbert Baker (artist/activist). James Baldwin (activist). David Bowie (musician). Pete Buttigieg (politician). Brandi Carlile (musician). Charlotte Clymer (activist). Jason Collins (athlete). Anderson Cooper (journalist). Deadpool (comic/film character). Billy Eichner (actor). Justin Fashanu (athlete). Harvey Fierstein (actor). Keith Haring (artist). Maura Healey (politician). Monica Helms (veteran/activist). Elton John (musician). Marsha P. Johnson (activist). Billie Jean King (athlete). Jeanne Manford (activist). Ian McKellen (actor). Freddie Mercury (musician). George Michael (musician). Carl Nassib (athlete). Tig Notaro (actor). Elliot Page (actor). Sally Ride (astronaut). George Takei (actor/activist). Oscar Wilde (poet/playwright). Bowen Yang (actor). Lil Nas X (musician).
• And that’s a tiny and somewhat random list. The real list — that also includes teachers, coworkers, religious clergy, doctors, scientists, business leaders, first responders, and friends — is in the millions and millions.
• Let’s do the news.
• Today is the day. All the rulings in the remaining cases in this term of the Supreme Court come out today.
• There are six of them.
• One — likely the most impactful — is the “emergency appeal” from the Dump administration, regarding Dumpy’s birthright citizenship order that has been blocked by lower courts.
• Dump wants to change something that’s been part of the USA since the country was founded, which is to deny birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrant parents.
• And in a bigger picture related to this case, the SCOTUS is being asked whether or not to limit the authority of judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
• In recent times, those federal judges have been one of the only roadblocks between Dumpy’s plans for a total authoritarian dictatorship, versus the America we’ve known and loved for almost 250 years.
• At arguments last month, the court seemed intent on keeping a block on the citizenship restrictions while still looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders.
• Neither ruling would be good. And do keep in mind: no matter what your political ideology is, whatever SCOTUS ruling that applies now to Dump will also apply to the next Democratic president who succeeds him.
• Aaaaaaaaaand breaking news: the Court just ruled in favor of Dump, 6-3. We’re fucked.
• This ruling now scales back nationwide orders that have for months blocked Dump’s ban on automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors.
• The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the ruling, which sends the cases back to the lower courts to determine the practical implications of the majority’s decision.
• The justices were not directly addressing the constitutionality of Dump’s horrible birthright citizenship order, which conflicts with the 14th Amendment.
• A sad, sad day in U.S. history. Democracy itself is at risk. There may need to be actions that we’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary.
• Some of the other cases with rulings coming today…
• The court seems likely to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ storybooks in public schools
• Parents want to be able to pull their children out of lessons that use certain storybooks, with such titles as “Prince and Knight” and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.”
• Shrug. I’m not losing sleep over this. If people want to be discriminatory assholes, so be it, as long as my own kids can get a thorough and broad education.
• Another SCOTUS case involves a three-year battle over congressional districts in Louisiana. That case is making its second trip to the Supreme Court.
• Lower courts have struck down two Louisiana congressional maps since 2022 and the justices are weighing whether to send state lawmakers back to the map-drawing board for a third time.
• Louisiana’s voting districts have long been skewed so that Black folks in that state don’t have proper representation. But this Supreme Court has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.
• At arguments in March, several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
• Assholes.
• Yet another SCOTUS case to be decided today is about a Texas law aimed at blocking online pornography. 
• Texas is among more than a dozen states with age verification laws for online sex content. The question for the court is whether these laws infringe on the constitutional rights of adults as well.
• The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, agrees that children shouldn’t be seeing pornography. But it says the Texas law is written too broadly and wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online that is vulnerable to hacking or tracking.
• Valid point.
• Anyway, I don’t know what time the Court will release these decisions, so now I’m hurrying through my news so it’s not obsolete by the time I post it at 8am PDT.
• Moving on.
• You know how on Wednesday, Dumples the War Clown said he’d be meeting with Iran “next week”?
• He must have forgotten to tell White House Mouth of Sauron Karoline Leavitt, who said yesterday that the Dump administration doesn't have any meetings scheduled with Iran.
• You have to understand… Dumpy will say things that pop into his head. Some of those things might be real; others might be imaginary.
• And you never know which is which until he does or doesn’t do the thing he said he was going to do. And most of the time, he’ll just deny having said it, or claim it was a joke, or say that Democrats or Communists stopped him from the thing.
• It’s kind of the exact opposite of what anyone wants from a leader. A man who takes no responsibility for the results of his actions.
• And if you want another example of Dump being a massive fucking clown show moron — and yes, there are so many every day — look at this little nugget.
• Japan has condemned Dumpy for comparing recent US strikes on Iran to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.
• Dumpy said, “I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing.”
• What the actual FUCK?
• A reminder: about 140,000 people were incinerated alive when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the two southern Japanese cities in August 1945. Survivors live with psychological trauma and heightened cancer risk to this day.
• That is what Dumpy thinks is “essentially the same thing” as what he did last Saturday in Iran.
• And he’s proud of it. Asshole.
• Let’s move on.
• We've recently gotten a couple of big saves via the Senate Parliamentarian.
• I’m going to take a guess here and assume that most of you don’t know 1) what the Senate Parliamentarian is and 2) who that person is currently.
• The short version: the Parliamentarian is a non-partisan position. They are the official advisor to the United States Senate on the interpretation of Standing Rules of the Senate and parliamentary procedure.
• The most important role of the parliamentarian is to decide what can and cannot be done under the Senate's budget reconciliation process under the provisions of the Byrd Rule.
• That’s super important because the rulings allow certain bills to be approved by a simple majority, instead of the sixty votes needed to end debate and overcome a filibuster.
• While it’s true that the presiding officer of the Senate may overrule the advice of the parliamentarian, in practice it’s extremely rare.
• Last time it happened was with VP Nelson Rockefeller in 1975, and it was so controversial that the leaders of both parties immediately met and agreed that they did not want this precedent to stand.
• Can the Senate majority leader fire the parliamentarian? Yes. Last time it happened was in 2001 during a dispute between parliamentarian Robert Dove and Majority Leader Trent Lott.
• But again, it’s super rare. There have only been six Senate parliamentarians since the role was founded in 1935.
• The current Senate Parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough, who has served in the role since 2012, under both Democratic and Republican majorities. She is the first woman to hold the position.
• And MacDonough has done some important shit. She guided the Senate through the first and second impeachment trials of Dumpy, and she and her staff brought the Electoral College certificates to safety during the January 6 failed coup attempt at the Capitol.
• Moving on.
• My state’s leader is not fucking around, and Fox News may do some finding out.
• California governor Gavin Newsom accused Fox News of defamation in a lawsuit this morning, alleging the network should fork over $787 million.
• Fox host Jesse Watters had claimed that Newsom lied about his phone calls with Dump after Orange Julius Caesar ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles this month. Newsom’s lawyers argue Watters’ program misleadingly edited a video of Dump to support the claim.
• If that $787 million sounds familiar, that’s because Newsom’s request for damages is nearly identical to the $787.5 million sum Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 to settle another defamation case over election falsehoods.
• Newsom’s lawyers said he is prepared to drop the lawsuit if Fox retracts its claims and Watters apologizes to him on air.
• Hahahahah. It’s gonna hurt either way.
• In news from the Immigration Desk…
• Johnny Noviello, a 49-year-old citizen of Canada who was being detained by ICE, died in their custody this week. His cause of death is still under investigation.
• Congressional requirements require ICE to make public all reports regarding an in-custody death within 90 days.
• Noviello entered the United States in 1988 using a legal visa status. In 1991, he became a lawful permanent resident. But then he was arrested for selling drugs.
• Hardly an offense that warrants a death sentence. According to ICE, all people in custody receive a screening for medical, dental, and mental health within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.
• They are also supposed to have access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. It’s not certain that ICE is following its own rules — especially in the overcrowded condition of detainment facilities — and it’s definitely not the case if people are shipped off to foreign prisons where no such guarantees are offered.
• So how many other people have died in ICE custody?
• According to ICE, at least 185 people have died in immigration detention since 2003. This year alone, at least four deaths have been reported.
• Dead, in a holding facility, with no legal help, no trial, or other means to prove one’s innocence. Is that what makes America great again?
• In news from the Spite Desk…
• Yesterday, Kenneth Chesebro — a lawyer who was part of the failed plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Dumpy in power — lost his license to practice in New York.
• A New York appeals court determined Chesebro should be disbarred because of his 2023 conviction in Georgia for his role in the effort to subvert the election.
• As I’ve said many times before, ETTD (Everything Trump Touches Dies).
• And now, The Weather: “The Scene” by Hotline TNT
• RIP going out to Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists. He was 91.
• Moyers was deputy director of the Peace Corps before being named Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary. His career notes also included being a newspaper publisher, the senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News,” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”
• But PBS is where he did his best stuff. In hundreds of hours of programming on public television, Moyers covered in-depth topics ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse.
• Another RIP for Lalo Schifrin, one of the great composers for film and TV. He died yesterday at 93.
• If you know him for anything, it’s the hummable 5/4-time signature theme from "Mission: Impossible,” but he did over 100 other arrangements, winning four Grammys and six Oscar nominations for his outstanding film compositions.
• Let’s do a chart.
• It’s the end of June 1980, which is somehow 45 years ago today. Fuck, I’m old.
• I’ve just finished 6th grade at Margate Intermediate School. I like music a lot. I’ve already been playing guitar for a few years, and I soon receive as a gift a huge-ass book of guitar chords and tablature called “Platinum ’80,” and I’m pretty sure I learned to play every song in there, front to back.
• Many of these albums — the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart at the time — had the songs I was learning in there.
• 1. Glass Houses (Billy Joel). 2. Just One Night (Eric Clapton). 3. McCartney II (Paul McCartney). 4. Against The Wind (Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band). 5. Mouth To Mouth (Lipps Inc.).  6. Star Wars: Episode V-The Empire Strikes Back (London Symphony Orchestra). 7. The Wall (Pink Floyd). 8. Let's Get Serious (Jermaine Jackson). 9. Empty Glass (Pete Townshend). 10. Middle Man (Boz Scaggs). 11. Women And Children First (Van Halen). 12. Christopher Cross (Christopher Cross). 13. Duke (Genesis). 14. Heroes (Commodores). 15. Scream Dream (Ted Nugent). 16. Sweet Sensation (Stephanie Mills). 17. Off The Wall (Michael Jackson). 18. Trilogy: Past, Present And Future (Frank Sinatra). 19. 21 At 33 (Elton John). 20. The Rose (Bette Midler).
• From the Sports Desk… I know, basketball season is over. But lacking anything better to discuss in sports, here are the ten current NBA franchises that have never won a championship.
• Listed by their year of inception: Brooklyn Nets (1967), Indiana Pacers (1967), Phoenix Suns (1968), Los Angeles Clippers (1970), Utah Jazz (1974), Charlotte Hornets (1988), Orlando Magic (1989), Minnesota Timberwolves (1989), Memphis Grizzlies (1995), New Orleans Pelicans (2002).
• Today in history… The thirteen Stratford Martyrs are burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs (1556). In the Battle of Dettingen, George II becomes the last reigning British monarch to participate in a battle (1743). Cherokee warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Echoee near present-day Otto, NC (1760). The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia (1898). Romanian authorities launch one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iași, resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews (1941). The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War (1950). U.S. president Richard Nixon visits the Soviet Union (1974). France grants independence to Djibouti (1977). Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4 (1982). Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister (2007). NASA launches the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun (2013).
• June 27 is the birthday of French king Louis XII (1462), French king Charles IX (1550), anarchist/activist Emma Goldman (1869), author/activist Hellen Keller (1880), pool player Willie Mosconi (1913), philosopher/activist Grace Lee Boggs (1915), singer-songwriter Doc Pomus (1925), businessman/politician Ross Perot (1930), fashion designer Norma Kamali (1945), fashion designer Vera Wang (1949), singer-songwriter Lisa Germano (1958), film director/producer J. J. Abrams (1966), actor Tobey Maguire (1975), businesswoman Khloé Kardashian (1984), actor Drake Bell (1986), singer-songwriter H.E.R. (1997), and NFL player Will Levis (1999).

So yes, today’s SCOTUS decision is really, really bad, and will have implications that go far beyond the important matter of birthright citizenship. And I will remind you that this dismantling of American checks and balance systems will be a hard pill to swallow for conservatives when a Democratic president is elected in 2028. You wanted it, MAGA. Let’s see what happens when you understand what you actually wanted. Either way, we’ll keep fighting. I know I will, and I trust you will too. Enjoy your day.