Random News: August 10, 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 August 10, 2025, and it’s a Sunday. It’s cool this morning here at the beach, about 64º F, but the humidity is over 90%. Basically I’m living in a cloud. But I have my cup of Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend, and I’m happy.

• As we’ve often said before: when they tell you what they’re going to do… believe them.
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted and praised a video interview of a self-described Christian nationalist pastor whose church doesn't believe women shouldn't be allowed to vote.
• Doug Wilson — whom Hegseth openly admired greatly — said in the video that, "Women are the kind of people that people come out of."
• In the same video, Wilson also defended previous comments where he had said there was mutual affection between slaves and their masters. He also said that sodomy — aka homosexuality — should be recriminalized.
• It should be no surprise to anyone that what the entire Dump administration wants is for rights in the USA to be made available only to white, straight, Christian men. No one else.
• A huge majority of people said that we were being alarmist when we said that the far right would remove the rights of women to choose their own reproductive health care, and then you acted shocked when it happened.
• In the next few years, you could see women’s rights to vote being removed — or women being forced to vote the same way as their husbands or fathers.
• You might see women not being allowed to have their own bank accounts or hold their own lines of credit or own property without a man co-signing for them.
• If you choose not to believe me, it’s at your own risk, and I’ll take no pleasure saying that “I told you so” after the fact.
• And if you’re a guy reading this who doesn’t give a shit, maybe you do care in some small way about your wives, daughters, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, coworkers, and female friends (assuming you’ve ever had one).
• Let’s do some news.
• Tome for a deeper dive into the congressional redistricting arms race that’s been heating up around the country as other states look to follow Texas’s lead in redrawing their congressional lines ahead of the 2026 midterms.
• I can promise you that Texas’s choice to do this is only the tipping point of a much larger situation that will affect every state in the USA. Multiple Democratic and Republican governors have expressed interest in their states conducting their own redistricting process to add as many seats as they can for their parties and increase the chances that their party can win control of the House next year.
• But whether they will be able to depends on the state and its own unique rules. Let’s look at some likely candidates…
• Ohio is already guaranteed to redraw its district lines, but is in a different situation than the others. They’re required to approve a new map ahead of the midterms because the current map was only approved by a simple majority along party lines rather than a bipartisan supermajority.
• It would seem likely under normal circumstances that Ohio would be likely to pick up a few GOP seats with the next map. But something tells me that voters might not be sticking to predictable patters in 2026.
• California is the most visible state that’s threatened to respond to Republicans’ efforts to use redistricting, and my state also has the most seats (because we have the largest population, which is how this shit all works).
• The process for California to redraw its lines in time for the 2026 midterms is a bit complicated — but possible. We have an independent redistricting commission that determines its district lines.
• Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed on Friday that we’d move forward with a special election in November that would allow the commission to create a new map in place for the rest of the decade.
• Back on the GOP side, Florida is the other significant source of possible gains through redistricting. DeSantis has been hinting at the state following Texas’s footsteps to add more Republican seats.
• Other states that have some possibility of purposefully gerrymandering their election maps in this political war — in both red and blue tilts — include Indiana, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, and others.
• Is this the right thing to do? Do two (or ten) wrongs make a right? Weren’t we striving toward a path of more representational (rather than less) congressional districts? I’ll just say that if Texas hadn’t started this, we wouldn’t be in the position now to have to fight back.
• But fight back we will. Everyone’s gloves are off at this point. It’s no longer a normal time, and normal rules don’t apply (or even function) anymore.
• “Inter arma enim silent leges.” - Cicero. Look it up. It’s getting more and more applicable.
• Moving on.
• Russians could not be happier about this week’s coming summit between Dumples the Feckless Clown and President Vladimir Putin.
• That meeting is set for Friday in Alaska, and it’s the first time the Russian leader has been invited to the United States since 2007.
• Normally — under strong U.S. leadership — this summit never would have been scheduled unless Putin and Russia had already agreed to make clear concessions over its war in Ukraine.
• It’s obvious that Russia knows Dump is on their side, and that he’s going to try and unilaterally give permission for Russia to take large parts of Eastern Ukraine permanently. Dump will do this with no agreement from Ukraine’s people or leadership.
• And Russia will just continue destroying Ukraine even after any deal that Dump will pretend to have brokered. He’s the weakest president this country has had. It’s not even close.
• Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, made an interesting point. “Trump has chosen to host Putin in a part of the former Russian Empire. Wonder if he knows that Russian nationalists claim that losing Alaska, like Ukraine, was a raw deal for Moscow that needs to be corrected.”
• Dump has no clue about history, so the answer to that question is an obvious “no.”
• The Kremlin has long sought to dominate Ukraine through the “election” of a Russia-friendly president and parliament in Kyiv. Ukrainians have repeatedly taken to the streets to demand a free and democratic future in the European Union.
• At least some of the world’s people and their leaders still have balls. Europe’s major NATO powers — Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland — threw their backing behind Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.
• They all declared that Ukraine’s demand for a ceasefire — or at least a reduction in hostilities — should in place before any negotiations could start.
• We’ll see how Dump fucks this up next Friday.
• But before we even get there, we have some things at home to be focused on.
• Yesterday, Dumpy did a social post where he said that he is taking over our nation’s capital. Whether it’s via a military mission in our own country, or the declaration of martial law, we get to find out soon enough.
• Dumpy wrote, “We're having a News Conference tomorrow in the White House. I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't have to move out. We're going to put you in jail where you belong. It's all going to happen very fast, just like the Border. We went from millions pouring in, to ZERO in the last few months. This will be easier — Be prepared! There will be no "MR. NICE GUY." We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
• So yeah. This is the America where Donnie Dump wants you to live. Where federal forces come into your city and control the people with an iron fist.
• I mean, what happened to you people who loved “FREEDOM” and “LIMITED GOVERNMENT” and would use your Second Amendment rights to prevent “TYRANNY”? Serious, what the fuck happened to you Republican pussy-ass bitches?
• Anyway, per his declaration on Thursday, the security lockdown will run for seven days, “with the option to extend as needed.” I suppose we’ll hear more about this shit tomorrow. Lucky us.
• By the way, all this is because Dump’s 19-year-old buddy Big Balls got his ass handed to him by a teenage girl.
• D.C. can legitimately claim to have reduced the number of homicides and carjackings, which dropped significantly in the past couple of years.
• Oh, and while Dump’s gestapo is taking over D.C., they’re also restoring and replacing a statue of a Confederate military leader that was toppled by protesters in 2020, per Dump’s executive order as such.
• Let’s move on.
• On June 26, a meteorite the size of a cherry tomato ripped like a bullet through the roof of a home outside of Atlanta, GA, and left a dent in the floor.
• But after some analysis, it turns out this little space rock is pretty old. As in, older than the Earth.
• University of Georgia planetary geologist Scott Harris concluded the meteorite formed 4.56 billion years ago. That’s some 20 million years older than our planet.
• He said, "It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago.”
• Something I consider every so often. Our whole solar system — the sun and all of the planets and stuff that orbit it — formed about 4.6 billion years ago.
• But the universe — if not infinite with no beginning or end — came into existence at least 13.8 billion years ago. Even if you cut out the beginning era, when it was too crazy for matter or energy to exist as we know it, there’s still some eight billion fucking years of universe before our star ignited.
• Lots of things could have happened before we (and our planet) were around.
• And now, The Weather: “Bird Parts (feat. Harmony)” by Grumpy
• From the Sports Desk… the list of MLB players batting over .300 is a short one right now.
• 1. Aaron Judge (NYY) - .339. 2. Jeremy Pena (HOU) - .320. 3. Jonathan Aranda (TB) - .316. 4. Jacob Wilson (ATH) - .312. 5. Freddie Freeman (LAD) - .305. 6. Xavier Edwards (MIA) - .303.
• Today in history… Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, defeats the Magyars (955). Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships set sail to circumnavigate the globe (1519). Elizabeth I signs the Treaty of Nonsuch (1585). King Marthanda Varma of Travancore defeats the Dutch East India Company at the Battle of Colachel, effectively bringing about the end of the Dutch colonial rule in India. (1741). Word reaches London of the US Declaration of Independence (1776). Louis XVI is taken into custody and his guards are murdered by the Parisian mob (1792). The Louvre opens (1793). Missouri is admitted as the 24th state (1821). The Smithsonian Institution is chartered after Jane Smithson kicks down $500,000 (1846). Felix Hoffman — who also created heroin — synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, aka aspirin (1897). The U.S. Steel strike begins (1901). ’Candid Camera’ debuts on television (1948). The Secretary of Defense is placed in charge of the Army, navy, and Air Force, and establishes the Department of Defense (1949). The US Army sprays 20 million gallons of defoliants and herbicides over South Vietnam to deprive the Viet Cong of food and cover (1961). Postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested as the serial killer Son of Sam (1977). Three members of a family are killed in a car accident, leading to the Ford Pinto litigation (1978). The US pays $20,000 to each of the Japanese-Americans who were relocated and interned in WWII (1988). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are indicted for the Oklahoma City bombing (1995). 
• August 10 is the birthday of Aragon king James II (1267), organist/composer Hieronymus Praetorius (1560), businessman Henri Nestlé (1814), bass player William Manuel Johnson (1872), US president Herbert Hoover (1874), game designer Charles Darrow (1889), actor Jack Haley (1897), businessman Leo Fender (1909), actor Noah Beery Jr. (1913), singer/businessman Jimmy Dean (1928), singer-songwriter Bobby Hatfield (1940), singer-songwriter Ronnie Spector (1943), singer-songwriter/flautist Ian Anderson (1947), singer Patti Austin (1950), actress Rosanna Arquette (1959), NBA player John Starks (1965), actor Justin Theroux (1971), model/actress Angie Harmon (1972), NFL player Dalvin Cook (1995), personality/businesswomen Kylie Jenner (1997), and NBA player Ja Morant (1999).

It’s that day where — due to the fact that I was gone last weekend and then had to focus on work all week — my household needs some serious care involving vacuums and mops and scrub brushes and washers and dryers and all that fun stuff we do on our “days off.” But that’s okay. I’ll do it as a favor to my future self. Enjoy your day.