Random News: July 20, 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 July 20, 2025, and it’s a Sunday. I am here. Where is here? No one knows. You’re on a spinning planet that’s flying around a star that’s circling a galaxy that is itself being pulled around an expanding universe by various forces. You’ve never in your life been in the same place in the universe for more than a tiny fraction of a second. Don’t get me started on who I am or what time it is. Anyway, I’m here in my bathrobe and have a big cup of coffee. That’s what’s important.

• One news story you can count on not just going away is the investigation into the wealthy and powerful people who participated in the evil escapades of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
• While the Dump administration has requested the release of grand jury testimony made against Epstein, there’s at least one person who knows that the transcripts are not going to be as revealing as other information on the case.
• That would be Epstein’s former attorney, Alan Dershowitz.
• To his point: grand jury testimony is very limited compared to the entire case file. It’s more like an overview of what the prosecutors think is important in the actual case file, which could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of documents.
• Dershowitz — correctly — also cautioned that some records may include the names of people who were falsely accused, which we want to avoid in this country. We are innocent until proven guilty here.
• This morning, Dersh stated, “What’s much, much more important is discovery information, depositions and other things that came out of the Ghislaine Maxwell case — that came out of other cases that were pending in front of federal judges, and, for example, the case involving Prince Andrew. All of that should be revealed as well.”
• Unlike Epstein, who, um, killed himself, Maxwell is still very much alive. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for her role in a yearslong scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
• The girls Donnie Dump was referring to when he said about his friend Jeffrey Epstein, "He likes them on the younger side and so do I.”
• This is all still a very sore subject for Dumpy, who wrote yesterday, "Even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request. It will always be more, more, more.”
• I don’t know what that guy is so worried about. Dump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case.
• Except Dump’s name appears multiple times on Epstein's private jet flight logs. I mean, there’s no crime there, right? Just because you’re some old man hanging out and traveling to private islands with a guy who procures children for old men to have illegal sex with doesn’t mean you’re actually fucking those kids, right?
• Right?
• Anyway, according to Dershowitz, Maxwell would be willing to testify before Congress about her longtime confidante if given immunity to prevent her testimony from potentially being used against her.
• As he said today, “She arranged every single trip with everybody. She knows everything.”
• For now, we’ll wait and see. Moving on.
• Some relatively good news amidst the tragedy of the Texas hill country floods from earlier this month.
• Just three people remain missing, down from nearly 100, after people who had previously been reported missing have since been accounted for.
• The flash floods killed at least 135 people in Texas over the July 4 holiday weekend, with most deaths along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, about 60 miles northwest of San Antonio.
• Let’s move on.
• Some news from the Immigration Desk…
• A diverse group of people who range from faith leaders to college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers, and professors has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials.
• They’re giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.
• As the mass deportation campaign of Dumples the Racist Clown continues to terrorize asylum-seekers and immigrants, their legal defenders sued this week, seeking class-action protections against the arrests outside immigration court hearings.
• Meanwhile, these heroic volunteers are taking action.
• An example: after a Seattle immigration judge dismissed the deportation case against a Colombian man — exposing him to expedited removal — three people sat with him in the back of the courtroom, taking his car keys for safe-keeping, helping him memorize phone numbers, and gathering the names of family members who needed to be notified.
• When the judge asked why they were doing that, the volunteers said ICE goons were outside the door, waiting to take the man into custody, so this was their only chance to help him get his things in order. “ICE is in the waiting room?” the judge asked.
• These days, they often are. They go for easy pickings… people at scheduled court hearings who are there to maintain their legal status, and people working on job sites to support their families.
• You might not know this, but since May, the government has been asking judges to dismiss deportation cases.
• Once the judge agrees, ICE goons arrest them in the hallways and put them in fast-track deportation proceedings, no matter which legal immigration pathway they may have been pursuing. Once in custody, it’s often harder for immigrants to find or afford a lawyer.
• This is a vile and disgusting scheme that circumvents any rights people may have, along with the legal process to help people — of all skin colors and national origin — achieve legal resident status.
• Up in the Pacific Northwest, so many community members wanting to help that the non-profit Northwest Immigrant Rights Project made a volunteer training video, created “Know Your Rights” sheets in several languages, and started a Google sheet where people sign up for shifts.
• One volunteer stated, “Being here makes people feel they are remembered and recognized. It’s such a bureaucratic and confusing process. We try to help them through it.”
• Now that’s the real America for you. People going out of their way to help others. There’s no possible way anyone who agrees with Dump’s racist policies should be in a house of worship on this Sunday morning.
• They’re all on a fast track straight to hell.
• I have another immigration note for you today.
• An 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania lost his green card, and visited an immigration office in June to have it replaced.
• Instead of giving him a replacement card, ICE secretly deported him to Guatemala. Then they told his family that he was dead.
• Allentown, PA resident Luis Leon — who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — had lost his wallet that contained the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
• When he arrived at the office June 20, however, he was handcuffed by two ICE goons, who led him away from his elderly wife without explanation. She herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
• Some investigation showed that Leon had first been sent to an immigration detention center in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala — a country to which he has no connection and had never been to before.
• Leon wasn’t on any list for detention or deportation. He never committed any crime. He was here 100% legally.
• In his nearly 40 years living in the USA, Leon spent his career working in a leather manufacturing plant, and raised a family. He had since retired.
• His condition at the hospital in Guatemala is unknown. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition.
• As we reported, a recent Supreme Court decision ruled that Dump could deport immigrants to other countries beside their country of origin.
• Is that what you want in the USA? Innocent elderly people being terrorized, including those who are doing the right things to remain here legally?
• Keep in mind, Dump told you to your face that he’d be going after the most hardened criminals and violent gang members. How much longer are you going to accept being lied to?
• The more I learn about what’s going on, the more I’m convinced that we are now Germany in the 1930s. And we’re not going to wait for them to start the next steps in ethnic cleansing.
• Not in the USA. If you support this, you are now my enemy. And I’m a proactive fucking guy, if you know what I mean. I’m not waiting for you to come get me.
• Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
• I do have some good news in that regard.
• Americans largely oppose recent efforts by Dump to scale up his racist deportation program, a new poll finds, with a rising majority saying that Dump has gone too far in carrying out deportations.
• In the latest survey, 55% say the president has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the US illegally, up 10 points since February.
• Opposition among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents has risen in that time from widespread to nearly universal: ninety percent of Democratic-aligned adults now say that Dump’s deportation policy has gone too far.
• Just 15% of Republican-aligned adults say the same. Hey, you racist pieces of shit: fuck you.
• A 57% majority also say they oppose plans to build new detention facilities capable of holding up to 100,000 undocumented immigrants, while 53% oppose increasing the budget for ICE by billions of dollars — two White House priorities reflected in the sweeping Big Bullshit Bill that Dump recently signed into law.
• Moving on.
• We’re now going to cover a story that has no impact on anyone’s life, just because it’s funny. But there’s also a little lesson to be learned.
• The biggest internet meme of 2025 has to be the widely circulated Jumbotron video of a married tech CEO canoodling with an employee who is not his wife while at a Coldplay concert.
• Let me start by saying… I don’t give a single fuck. People are gonna people. Monogamy is the exception to the norm. I don’t care if this guy was fucking 17 different employees and was caught with another one at a thrash metal concert the following night.
• I only mention this for two reasons.
• First, the creativity and speed of the meme wave over the past couple of days has been astounding. I am impressed. A lot of them have been super funny.
• And it had an immediate cultural impact. At ballgames last night, at least one stadium had a “Coldplay Cam” that showed couples in the stands purposefully diving out of sight when they realized the camera had them on screen.
• But the other reason I even bothered talking about this at all is a public service message.
• It’s easy to miss, but most concert venues have signs informing the audience that they could be filmed during the event.
• Likewise, a lot of online ticket sellers have TOS-type language that you quickly scroll by and agree to that has similar disclaimer language.
• Filming is a common practice, especially when bands like to use performances for music videos or concert films.
• The venue in this case, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA, also has a privacy policy online which states: “When you visit our location or attend or participate in an event at our location, we may capture your image, voice and/or likeness, including through the use of CCTV cameras and/or when we film or photograph you in a public location.”
• And that’s what I’m getting to. Time and time again, courts have agreed that you have zero expectation to privacy in a public setting.
• What is “public”? Anywhere outside of your own home, or beyond places where privacy is generally accepted — bathrooms, doctor’s examination rooms, and the like.
• So when you do shit in public and get caught… that’s your own fault. Which is what Andy Byron is now acutely aware of. He’s now resigned from his job as CEO of Cincinnati-based Astronomer Inc., per a statement posted on LinkedIn by the company yesterday.
• And now, The Weather: “It's true we've been happier” by Common Holly
• From the Sports Desk… you know what’s important to do in baseball? Hit the ball. Some might say this is the most important thing to do. It’s hard to score — perchance to win — if you don’t hit the ball and get on base.
• Here is every MLB player with more than 100 hits, in order from most (Judge with 127) to least (Rodriguez and Pages with 100).
• Aaron Judge, Trea Turner, Jacob Wilson, Bobby Witt Jr., Bo Bichette, Yandy Diaz, Brent Rooker, Jackson Chourio, Manny Machado, Luis Arraez, Maikel Garcia, Elly De La Cruz, Jose Ramirez, Riley Greene, Austin Riley, Shohei Ohtani, Jarren Duran, Brendan Donovan, Steven Kwan, Jose Altuve, Kyle Tucker, Pete Alonso, Jonathan Aranda, Nico Hoerner, Jeremy Pena, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nick Castellanos, J.P. Crawford, Vinnie Pasquantino, Sal Frelick, Julio Rodriguez, and Andy Pages.
• Today in history… Rollo lays siege to Chartres (911). Japanese forces capture Pyongyang (1592). Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône in France (1807). Citizens of Bogotá, New Granada declare independence from Spain (1810). Seneca and Shawnee people agree to relinquish their land in western Ohio for 60,000 acres west of the Mississippi River (1831). British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada (1871). The Ford Motor Company ships its first automobile (1903). In Finland, a new electoral law is ratified, guaranteeing the country the first and equal right to vote in the world, and Finnish women are the first in Europe to receive the right to vote (1906). Police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, killing two and wounding sixty-seven (1934). The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system, eventually result in a break-up of the industry (1938). California opens the first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, known today as the 110 between DTLA and Pasadena (1940). King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem (1951). The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago, with about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities (1968). Apollo 11's crew successfully makes the first human landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility, and Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon six and a half hours later (1969). The American Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars (1976). The Civil Marriage Act legalizes same-sex marriage in Canada (2005). The United States and Cuba resume full diplomatic relations after five decades (2015). O. J. Simpson is granted parole to be released from prison after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence after being convicted of armed robbery in Las Vegas (2017).
• July 20 is the birthday of poet Petrarch (1304), paleontologist Richard Owen (1804), monk/geneticist Gregor Mendel (1822), painter Giorgio Morandi (1890), explorer Edmund Hillary (1919), NBA coach Chuck Daly (1930), novelist/playwright Cormac McCarthy (1933), actress Diana Rigg (1938), actress Natalie Wood (1938), singer-songwriter Kim Carnes (1945), guitarist/composer Carlos Santana (1947), singer-songwriter/guitarist Chris Cornell (1964), guitarist/composer Stone Gossard (1966), NHL player Jimmy Carson (1968), actor Omar Epps (1973), NHL player Peter Forsberg (1973), NBA player/actor Ray Allen (1975), NHL player Pavel Datsyuk (1978), model Gisele Bündchen (1980), NBA player Steven Adams (1993), and NBA player Ben Simmons (1996).

That seems like enough to think about on a Sunday. I need breakfast, and a shower, and I’m doing some more work today on a little orchestral musical theme for a friend’s podcast which turned out to be a very fun compositional and arranging project. Oh, and laundry. I’ll be doing laundry. Anyway, there you go. Enjoy your day.