Random News: July 22, 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 22, 2025, and it’s a Tuesday. Stepping into the shower a short while ago, I noted a large black spider struggling to get out of the tub. So I grabbed a toilet paper roll and let her climb in, then lifted her to safety. Sometimes things may scare you that still need your help. Same with people. Something to keep in mind.

• As I predicted last week, the House will not vote before Congress' August recess on a resolution that calls on the Dump administration to release more files related to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 
• As we’d reported, last week House Republicans offered a resolution to make the Epstein files public — a resolution that carries no legal weight.
• Then a bipartisan group of Congresspeople tried to force a vote that would compel the Justice Department to release Epstein-related files within 30 days.
• But House Speaker Mike Johnson did exactly what we said he would, which was to punt the vote until after the five week recess. 218 signatures are required on the petition to force a vote once Congress returns after Labor Day. 
• So that’s where it stands for now. Dump is hoping that everyone stops talking about Epstein while Congress is on their nice vacations, and it will be forgotten about upon their return.
• Not if I can fucking help it.
• This morning, Deputy Attorney General — and Dump’s former personal attorney — Todd Blanche announced that he is seeking a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
• Remember kids: Ghislaine didn’t kill herself.
• She was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking and other charges, and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida.
• A relevant side note…
• Dumpy proved this morning that he is capable of releasing sensitive records. His administration made public some 240,000 pages of info on the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.
• He’s releasing that shit despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.
• The records had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
• Rev. Al Sharpton surmised the timing of the release accurately, saying, “Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice. It’s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.”
• Bingo.
• Moving on to the Immigration Desk.
• Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that the 700 active-duty Marines who deployed to Los Angeles earlier this summer following protests against immigration policies will head home. 
• They did literally nothing while they were here, nor was there any reason for them to be here in the first place.
• Last week, the Pentagon released about 2,000 of the 4,000 members of the National Guard in L.A. With the Marines headed home, there are still about 2,000 guardsmen lounging around in the L.A. area, still doing nothing at all.
• In related news…
• A note from a resident of LA County who’s been heavily protesting the actions of ICE in our neighborhoods — New York City: you’re up.
• The Department of Homeland Security says they will “flood the zone” with ICE goons in New York City after the City Council blocked federal law enforcement agencies from opening an office in the city jails.
• Yesterday, Dump’s border czar Tom Homan joined DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other Dump administration officials to deliver that message at One World Trade Center.
• Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, the Democratic nominee for city comptroller, shot back. “To be clear: ICE can and does detail people on Rikers. They just need a judicial warrant. What Homan is talking about is sending masked, unidentified agents into our streets to tear apart families and raid workplaces. This is not about safety. It’s about instilling fear.”
• That’s correct. And the reason they’re targeting NYC is the same reason they’ve been doing so in LA for the past 2-1/2 months: it’s Dump’s personal vendetta against Democratic-led cities.
• It’s my hope that New Yorkers will not just roll over and accept this shit. And Noem was quite clear on the objective…
• She said, “What we’ll do in a city like this is we’ll double down. We’ll put more agents here. We’ll put more personnel here. We’ll give them more equipment, more training for situations where they may have to go into a dangerous neighborhood where local law enforcement won’t be there to have their backs.”
• Another note from the Immigration Desk…
• A Vietnamese man died in ICE custody on Saturday. Tien Xuan Phan, 55, had been in custody at the ICE Processing Center in Karnes County, Texas, for seven weeks.
• At the “processing center,” Phan suffered seizures, vomiting, and unresponsiveness. he was eventually taken to a hospital where he died.
• At least from the records they’ve made public, eight detainees have died this year while in ICE custody, including one other from Vietnam. The rest were from Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Honduras, and Guyana.
• They will not be forgotten.
• Let’s move on with some breaking news from this morning.
• Dump has once again withdrawn the U.S. from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
• It’s the the third UN agency that Dump is withdrawing from, following decisions earlier this year to leave the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council.
• This move will allow China to increase its influence on the UN system. It’s short sighted and moronic. In other words, a typing Dump move.
• Also, Dump did the same thing in 2017. And in fairness, Obama also did in 2011, due to U.S. law barring our involvement in the organization after Palestine became a full member that year.
• But what’s the reason this time? Per Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly, it’s because UNESCO is too woke. I’m not kidding; that was her statement.
• And some news from the Justice Desk…
• Brett Hankison, a former Kentucky police officer who was convicted in the death of Breonna Taylor, was sentenced yesterday to 33 months in prison.
• Taylor was shot and killed on March 13, 2020, during a botched drug raid authorized by the Louisville Metro Police Department. Hankison was found guilty last November of violating Taylor's civil rights while executing a search warrant on her home, which resulted in the tragedy.
• Hankison fired multiple shots through a sliding glass door and window on the side of her building, despite both being covered by blinds and curtains. Breonna Taylor was killed by police for no reason at all.
• Let’s just move on.
• There was an item in my “today in history” section yesterday that should have been given more attention.
• It was a year ago yesterday that Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, and instead endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate. She had only 107 days from that moment until election day.
• There remain so many questions about what could have been… had Biden dropped out earlier, had he chosen not to run at all for a second term, had he been more mentally fit for the job, had he performed better in his debate with Dump, had Harris had more time to campaign, and much more.
• I like to think of an alternate universe where Harris did indeed win, and we weren’t living in a dystopian nightmare as we are today. Some people feel that she did, indeed, win, and that Dump’s entire presidency thus far has been illegitimate.
• If there was tangible proof of that, it would have been presented in court and we’d still be debating it today. Or we’d be in the midst of a civil war.
• I still think Harris would have been an excellent President. Perhaps she may yet. But one thing we proved as part of the 2024 election is that there is still a huge bias against women as a whole in the USA.
• Plenty of other countries — including alleged male-dominated nations — have elected qualified females to their highest office. And trust me, Harris was (and remains) as well qualified as any POTUS candidate in history.
• Moving on.
• One thing I try to mention in this column from time to time: very few things happen that haven’t happened before.
• Humans haven’t changed that much, especially in the past 10,000 years or so. Therefore, our reactions to challenges remain similar as they always have been.
• One example, of course, is the use of “detainment facilities” — also known as “concentration camps” if you’re speaking the plain truth — for people who are undesirable.
• The ones that come quickly to mind are those that Nazi Germany used in the 1930s and 1940s to detain and then murder millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, and others who would defy their plans.
• But during that same conflict — WWII — the USA created Japanese “internment camps”, also known as "relocation centers.”
• We forcibly detained over 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom lived on the West Coast. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 deemed anyone with Asian racial characteristics to be a threat to national security.
• It is looked at as one of the most egregious violations of civil rights ever, and are considered a dark chapter in American history.
• And now, of course, the USA is building a number of detainment facilities that are specifically created to instill fear, misery, and possibly injury or death to people who in many cases have not been charged with any crime, and are not offered due process as guaranteed by our Constitution.
• But again, these are hardly the only examples of humanity making bad decisions the same way, over and over again.
• Allow me to give you an example.
• During the late 1800s, most farmworkers in the U.S. came from China, Japan, and the Philippines. Xenophobic hysteria spawned the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the U.S. turned to Mexico and South America to replace the banned Chinese workers.
• And then in the 1930s during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of nearly two million migrant workers who had come from Mexico.
• In 1942, the Mexican Farm Labor program was created to address the World War II labor shortage. Known as the bracero program, it allowed generations of manual laborers to work legally in the United States.
• But in 1965, Congress cut off the pathway for those millions of migrant workers from Mexico who’d been doing back-breaking labor on our nation’s farms.
• Rumors were spreading that the migrant workers were either taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, or draining public aid and resources.
• Sound familiar?
• Congress tried to convince the American people that strapping young high school jocks would fill those jobs.
• The government plan was for thousands of athletes to sign up for “Join A-TEAM” (Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower).
• The boys found themselves in horribly squalid living conditions, being fed food that was unfit for human consumption, sleeping in beds filthy with bedbugs, and associating with actual men who often carried switchblade knives.
• You know, like the conditions the migrant workers lived in all the fucking time. So fields of unpicked produce began rotting because those boys couldn’t work nearly as hard or fast as migrant women.
• And nearly all of them ended up paying their own way home after a week or two. Many of the boys said they were never paid for the work they did do. In any case, don’t ever tell me that immigrants don’t do their part in keeping this country running.
• Moving on with a note from the Universe Desk…
• Today will be one of the shortest days ever recorded. In fact, it’s the second fastest day in history.
• 
  
• The difference will be just 1.34 milliseconds less than the standard 24 hours — not something you'll notice — but it's part of a puzzling trend in Earth's rotational behavior that has been unfolding in recent years.
• If that trend continues, a second may need to be subtracted from atomic clocks around 2029 — a so-called negative leap second, which has never been done before.
• Here’s the deal: the universe is fucking chaotic, and the speed of Earth's rotation isn't precisely fixed. Long ago, a day was much shorter than the 24 hours — or 86,400 seconds — we're now accustomed to.
• The forces that affect Earth’s rotation include tidal friction from the moon, which has caused it to gradually move farther away from Earth. As it moves away, the moon saps Earth's rotational energy, causing Earth's rotation to slow and days to lengthen.
• So why is it shorter now? No one knows for sure. A study last year suggested that the melting polar ice and rising sea levels may be influencing Earth's spin.
• But I find it more likely that this is something larger that relates to the slowing of Earth's liquid core, which could be redistributing angular momentum in a way that makes the mantle and crust spin slightly faster.
• Weird, huh?
• And now, The Weather: “Kneel” by Nilüfer Yanya
• RIP going out to Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the guy who many of us remember from his role as Theo Huxtable on the iconic ‘80s sitcom The Cosby Show. He was just 54.
• He died due to an accidental drowning while on a family vacation in Costa Rica. That’s fucking awful.
• As I’ve said many times, you can do a lot of things to impact the quality of your life. But the quantity, well… everyone dies, and some do far earlier than they’d have preferred. The point — in my opinion — is to do all the good things you can in whatever time you have.
• One other note on Malcolm-Jamal: most people don’t know that he was a respected bass player, recording and performing jazz and R&B despite not starting on the instrument until he was in his 20s. 
• Let’s do a chart.
• It’s getting toward the end of July 1981. I am in the summer between seventh and eighth grade, as a student at Market Intermediate School in Palos Verdes Estates, CA.
• This is the point that I really started feeling less like a kid and more like that age where you’re not a kid but still have another 10+ years before you really start thinking like an adult.
• I can tell you, I was playing guitar a lot at this time. I’m pretty sure that I was playing every single day at that point, getting past the point of learning the basics and getting into some more advanced chords and scales and modes.
• It was just a year or so later that I formed my first band with my little neighborhood friends. I also had a couple of my first actual girlfriends at this time, complete with kissing and holding hands when we went to the mall. I also spent most days that summer at the beach.
• And wait! I have an actual diary entry from July 22, 1981. A diary, if you don’t know, is like a blog you make with a pen. Ready?
• “I’m getting to be a REALLY good surfer but Ian doesn’t think so. Ian also thinks Randy and Greg are suck surfers. Tomorrow we’ll show him. We’re gonna do the hottest fuckin surfing ever. I went to RAT today and I’ll be going tomorrow and the next day.”
• Yeah, that sounds like… a petulant child, which I was from time to time. Note: RAT is the colloquial name of a local beach. Here’s the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart at the time.
• 1. Long Distance Voyager (The Moody Blues). 2. Mistaken Identity (Kim Carnes). 3. Hi Infidelity (REO Speedwagon). 4. Street Songs (Rick James). 5. Hard Promises (Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers). 6. Paradise Theater (Styx). 7. Face Value (Phil Collins). 8. Share Your Love (Kenny Rogers). 9. Stars On Long Play (Stars On). 10. Zebop (Santana). 11. The One That You Love (Air Supply). 12. Moving Pictures (Rush). 13. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (AC/DC). 14. Don't Say No (Billy Squier). 15. Fair Warning (Van Halen). 16. Working Class Dog (Rick Springfield). 17. Somewhere In England (George Harrison). 18. Christopher Cross (Christopher Cross). 19. Precious Time (Pat Benatar). 20. Fancy Free (The Oak Ridge Boys).
• From the Sports Desk… CP3 is back in LA. He is 700 years old.
• Okay, I’m exaggerating, a little anyway. But free agent point guard Chris Paul has indeed agreed to a deal with the LA Clippers for his expected final, 21st NBA season.
• Paul, 40, can still compete at a high level. He had multiple suitors such as the Milwaukee Bucks, Charlotte Hornets, and Dallas Mavericks, but the 12-time All-Star chose the contending Clippers and their shared history in Los Angeles.
• It makes sense. Paul previously played for the Clippers for six seasons (2011-12 to 2016-17), during which he was a five-time All-Star. Also, his family lives here in LA.
• Today in history… Godfrey of Bouillon is named the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre (1099). A second group of English settlers arrives on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony (1587). Albany, NY is chartered (1686). Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first recorded human to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America (1793). The Slavery Abolition Act passes in the British House of Commons, initiating the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire (1833). Outside Atlanta, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill (1864). Katherine Lee Bates writes “America the Beautiful” (1893). The United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States (1937). The USA begins compulsory civilian gas rationing for WWII (1942). The Mariner I spacecraft launches erratically and has to be destroyed (1962). Greg LeMond wins his third Tour de France (1990). US military attacks a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay along with others (2003). 
• July 22 is the birthday of poet Emma Lazarus (1849), painter Edward Hopper (1882), philanthropist Rose Kennedy (1890), psychiatrist Karl Menninger (1893), politician Bob Dole (1923), actor Orson Bean (1928), fashion designer Oscar de la Renta (1932), novelist Tom Robbins (1932), actress Louise Fletcher (1934), TV host Alex Trebek (1940), singer-songwriter/producer George Clinton (1941), singer-songwriter/keyboardist Rick Davies (1944), actor Danny Glover (1946), actor/writer Albert Brooks (1947), singer-songwriter/drummer Don Henley (1947), author S. E. Hinton (1948), guitarist/composer Al Di Meola (1954), actor Willem Dafoe (1955), musician/music producer Steve Albini (1962), actor John Leguizamo (1964), actor David Spade (1964), NFL player Tim Brown (1966), NFL player Keyshawn Johnson (1972), singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright (1973), NFL player Steven Jackson (1983), singer/actress Selena Gomez (1992), and NFL player Ezekiel Elliott (1995).

That was a lot of news, but sometimes it be that way. A follow-up note from my intro: someday, in my darkest hour of need, perhaps that very spider I saved will come to my rescue. It could happen. Enjoy your day.