Random News: August 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.

---

Good morning. It’s August 27, 2025, and it’s a Wednesday. I managed to re-tweak my lower back injury yesterday because I’m an idiot, but it’s not terrible, and I’m gonna try and have a normal work day and not dwell on it. Sometimes when things are shitty in some way, the one thing you don’t want to do is constantly focus on it. I refuse to.

• I asked a question at the end of my report yesterday, which was inquiring in regard to your opinion whether or not the new U.S. Civil War has already begun.
• None of us can legitimately and accurately answer that just yet. Before you even start, t’s important to qualify some things and make some definitions.
• You hear a term like “civil war,” and your mind goes to a scene from 1863, with men firing rifles and horses pulling cannon brigades across dirt fields.
• Or maybe you think of some dystopian modern equivalent, with hordes of MAGAs in red hats marching down a city street holding AR-15s, and black-clad Antifa operatives pelting them with Molotov cocktails, or some shit.
• I’m not saying that scenario is out of the question at some point (though let’s hope not). But there are actions going on that could, in retrospect, seem like the early stages of civil war, or at least a version of it in the contemporary world.
• For example, there’s the concept of a “slow civil war” that actually began on January 6, 2021 during the failed coup attempt.
• And the long build from then to today, with armed troops from red states descending on blue cities. There are people out there with much more expertise than I who feel that we’re about one exchange of gunfire from open war, with Americans fighting Americans.
• There are far too many nuances to this topic to try and cram into a single report. But in coming days, we’ll talk about the various forms a modern U.S. civil war could take.
• Not all of them involve violence at all. Economic war, tech war, deepfake/AI/information war… we’ll look into it all.
• But I’ll leave you with this for now. Fascism isn’t coming; it’s here now. And today — before it continues to progress, like a cancer on the nation — is the time to take it out before we lose our 250-year-old democracy entirely.
• Let’s do some news.
• Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen threw out an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit the Dump administration filed against every federal judge in Maryland over an order slowing down efforts to swiftly deport people it believes are in the country illegally.
• Side note: Cullen was a Dump appointee. Ha ha!
• This is another in a long list of failures by the Dump administration to enact illegal rulings. You and me and everyone else here should be thankful for our Constitution.
• The USA’s forefathers did indeed envision tyrants and dictators trying to take over the country, and made it so it wouldn’t be easy. This ruling is a nice setback for Dump’s cruel and immoral agenda.
• The ruling highlighted the judiciary's increasing frustration with Dump's litigation tactics, which have included filing misconduct complaints against judges and stonewalling an order to provide details about the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
• Dump’s Justice Department filed the case in June after the Maryland court adopted a standing order that automatically blocks for two business days the deportation of migrants in the state who file new habeas lawsuits challenging their detention.
• Moving on.
• Some outstanding news out of Iowa yesterday, where Democrat Catelin Drey defeated her Republican opponent, Christopher Prosch, in a special election in the Sioux City area.
• What’s the big deal about that? Dump won the same 1st Senate district by 11 percentage points in November, just nine months ago. Today, Drey’s margin of victory is by 10 points.
• You can consider that a 21-point swing. not only is this indicative of current and future voting trends, but Drey’s massive victory breaks the Republican supermajority in the Iowa state Senate.
• Democrats will now hold 17 districts in the Iowa Senate compared to 33 seats held by Republicans — enough to break the two-thirds supermajority the GOP has wielded since 2022.
• Get their asses. All of them.
• Let’s move on.
• Yesterday, Dumples the Hypocrisy Clown said that the federal government would seek the death penalty for murders committed in Washington, D.C.
• Wanna hear the Stable Genius’s quote on the topic? Sure.
• "Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment. Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we're going to be seeking the death penalty. And that's a very strong preventative."
• You demented moron.
• Okay, let’s start here: on January 6, 2021, multiple police officers were murdered at the Capitol. And what did you do, Donnie? Did you give their killers the death penalty?
• No, you gave a blanket pardon to everyone who participated.
• The District of Columbia hasn't executed anyone since 1957, after Robert Carter was convicted of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer.
• Decades ago, D.C. had mandatory death sentences for first-degree murders, a policy the Supreme Court voided in the 1972 case ‘Furman v. Georgia’ when it found that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally arbitrary manner.
• And the D.C. City Council abolished the death penalty in 1981. 
• Moving on with some breaking news.
• Federal prosecutors failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Sean Dunn, the hero in the pink shirt who threw his sandwich at a federal agent.
• Ha ha!
• The U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. sought to charge Dunn with felony assault of an officer for the August 10 sandwich lobbing incident. It is not clear if prosecutors will try again to obtain an indictment of Dunn.
• Of note: it’s extremely rare for a grand jury to decline to return an indictment. And it’s rarer still in a high-profile case that the government has aggressively promoted in the media, as the DOJ did after Dunn’s arrest.
• Ha ha again, you fucking dumbasses. Viva la sandwich!
• Moving on to more breaking news, this time from the Fascism Desk…
• This morning, Dump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that his department is taking management of Union Station, the main transportation hub in Washington, away from Amtrak.
• They claim the reason is that Union Station, located within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol, had “fallen into disrepair” when it should be a “point of pride” for the city.
• But this is just more fascist bullshit. Dump thinks he can monitor the movement of everyone getting in and out of our cities.
• Like it’s 1943 and he’s Benito Mussolini. Control the railways, Donnie!
• Moron.
• While we’re here at the Fascism Desk, what are those hundreds of National Guard troops doing while they’re in D.C.?
• They’re on sanitation and landscaping patrol. No, I’m serious.
• Dump described D.C. as a violent, lawless dystopia. So he brought in the troops to smooth mounds of mulch around the city’s treasured Tidal Basin cherry trees.
• National Guard troops are typically called upon to respond to emergencies in the USA or to deploy overseas. Now they’re landscaping.
• Weren’t there already people whose job it was to keep D.C. pretty? Of course. Typically, this sort of custodial work has been done by the National Park Service.
• But then Dump gutted the federal workforce. The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20.
• So the National Guard is now picking up trash, mowing lawns, and scrubbing graffiti off walls.
• Slow clap for Dumpy.
• News from the International Desk…
• Today, Denmark’s foreign minister summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country for talks after least three people with connections to Dump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.
• Public broadcaster DR said Danish government and security sources which it didn’t name, as well as unidentified sources in Greenland and the U.S., believe that at least three American nationals with connections to Dump have been carrying out covert influence operations in the territory.
• One of those people allegedly compiled a list of U.S.-friendly Greenlanders, collected names of people opposed to Dump, and got locals to point out cases that could be used to cast Denmark in a bad light in American media.
• Two others have tried to nurture contacts with politicians, businesspeople, and locals.
• Assholes.
• Moving on to more Asshole News…
• Even Fox News has had enough for Demented Don’s bullshit.
• Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume slammed Dump’s executive order that directed the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute people for burning the American flag.
• Hume wrote, “George HW Bush ran against flag burning in 1988 and spent a whole week campaigning on the issue. But he called for a constitutional amendment to ban the practice. He didn’t pretend he could ban it by an executive order that flies in the face of constitutional speech protections. C’mon man.”
• Snort.
• A note from the Health Desk…
• We’re having a huge surge in a new variant of COVID here in the Los Angeles area.
• And it’s coming on strong right at a time where the Dump administration has fucked up a fantastic vaccination program that ran smoothly under Joe Biden.
• Los Angeles county has reported a jump in the coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in recent weeks. L.A. County also has reported an increase in patients hospitalized with COVID.
• The rate at which COVID lab tests came back positive in L.A. County is 12.6% for the week that ended Aug. 16, up from 7.6% a month earlier. In Orange County, it's 14.4%, up from 8.1%.
• The new subvariant is XFG, nicknamed Stratus. It accounts for the vast majority of strains seen in wastewater. The only good news is that it’s another Omicron subvariant, so previous infections with other Omicron variants may offer some residual protection.
• But you can always be reinfected. And the more times you get COVID, the more likely you end up with longterm severe effects.
• Be safe. Be vaccinated. Mask up when it makes sense, especially for seniors and immune-compromised people.
• Some big news from the Entertainment Desk…
• And this is so big that actual-ass television media cut away from their stories of war and politics and famine and disasters for the breaking news when it hit yesterday morning.
• NFL tight end Travis Kelce and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift announced their engagement via an Instagram post.
• Tay-Tay wrote, "Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” as a caption with a photo that seems to show the two tall people in an enchanted forest, with Kelce down on one knee in the traditional engagement pose. Cute.
• The couple has been dating for the past two years. Swift is a 14-time Grammy winner; Kelce is a three-time Super Bowl champion with the Kansas City Chiefs, a 10-time NFL all-star, and a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
• They are both 35 years old, born within a couple months of each other in 1989.
• Congrats, you crazy, wealthy kids. What’s that? Oh, Kelce’s net worth is in the range of $60 million; Swift’s net worth is slightly higher at $1.6 billion. She’s the second most wealthy musician on the planet behind only Jay-Z.
• And now, The Weather: “Jasmine Blossoms” by Hand Habits
• Let’s do a chart.
• It’s 61 years ago, at the end of August 1964. I won’t be born for almost five years. Where am I?
• This is the heading toward the height of the “British Invasion” in pop music. Life in the USA is pretty good, though JFK had been assassinated about a year earlier, and this country is about to go through a massive cultural shift.
• Civil rights activism, the Vietnam war, the hippie/flower child movement, street protests, and the other defining aspects of the decade are yet to come. For the moment, this top of the Billboard 200 albums chart is still varied and yet representational of the times.
• 1. A Hard Day's Night (Soundtrack) (The Beatles). 2. Something New (The Beatles). 3. Getz/Gilberto (Stan Getz And Joao Gilberto Featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim). 4. All Summer Long (The Beach Boys). 5. Everybody Loves Somebody (Dean Martin). 6. Funny Girl (Barbra Streisand). 7. Hello, Dolly (Louis Armstrong). 8. Hello, Dolly! (Original Cast). 9. Rag Doll (The 4 Seasons). 10. Cotton Candy (Al Hirt). 11. The Third Album (Barbra Streisand). 12. The Pink Panther (Henry Mancini). 13. The Dave Clark Five Return! (The Dave Clark Five). 14. England's Newest Hit Makers/The Rolling Stones (The Rolling Stones). 15. Peter, Paul And Mary In Concert (Peter, Paul & Mary). 16. The Beatles Song Book (The Hollyridge Strings). 17. The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Soundtrack). 18. I Don't Want To Be Hurt Anymore (Nat King Cole). 19. Honey In The Horn (Al Hirt). 20. The Beatles' Second Album (The Beatles).
• From the Sports Desk… it’s one week from tomorrow that the regular NFL season begins.
• More sports media orgs are getting in their final preseason power rankings. CBS Sports predicts the coming season as follows. It might be fin to come back to this and see how close they were (or weren’t).
• 1. Philadelphia Eagles. 2. Baltimore Ravens. 3. Buffalo Bills. 4. Detroit Lions. 5. Green Bay Packers. 6. Kansas City Chiefs. 7. Washington Commanders. 8. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 9. Denver Broncos. 10. Pittsburgh Steelers. 11. Cincinnati Bengals. 12. Minnesota Vikings. 13. San Francisco 49ers. 14. Los Angeles Chargers. 15. Los Angeles Rams. 16. Seattle Seahawks. 17. Houston Texans. 18. Dallas Cowboys. 19. Arizona Cardinals. 20. Chicago Bears. 21. Miami Dolphins. 22. Atlanta Falcons. 23. New York Jets. 24. Indianapolis Colts. 25. Las Vegas Raiders. 26. Jacksonville Jaguars. 27. New York Giants. 28. Carolina Panthers. 29. New England Patriots. 30. Tennessee Titans. 31. Cleveland Browns. 32. New Orleans Saints.
• Today in history… the Visigoths stop sacking Rome after three days (410). George Washington gets his ass kicked by British forces under William Howe at the Battle of Long Island in what is now Brooklyn, NY (1776). Napoleon defeats a bigger army of Austrians, Russians, and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden (1813). Cruse oil is discovered in Titusville, PA, leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well (1859). Krakatoa is almost completely destroyed in four explosions during a volcanic eruption (1883). The UK and Zanzibar fight the world’s shortest war, from 9:02am to 9:40am (1896). In the Battle of Ambos Nogales, the US takes on Mexico in the only battle of WWI fought on American soil (1918). The Kellogg–Briand Pact outlawing war is signed by fifteen nations… lol (1928). First flight of the Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft (1939). The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published (1955). The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA (1962). An attempted coup d'état fails in the African nation of Chad (1971). Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years (2003). Hurricane Irene strikes the United States east coast, killing 47 and causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage (2011).
• August 27 is the birthday of shōgun Ashikaga Yoshikazu (1407), philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770), vice president Hannibal Hamlin (1809), vice president Charles G. Dawes (1865), serial killer Ed Gein (1906), president Lyndon B. Johnson (1908), actress Martha Raye (1916), MLB player Pee Wee Butts (1919), computer scientist Kristen Nygaard (1926), writer Ira Levin (1929), pianist/composer Alice Coltrane (1937), guitarist/composer Sonny Sharrock (1940), keyboardist/songwriter Daryl “Captain” Dragon (1942), actress Tuesday Weld (1943), actress Barbara Bach (1947), actor Paul Reubens (1952), guitarist/composer Alex Lifeson (1953), actor Peter Stormare (1953), fashion designed Tom Ford (1961), NHL player Adam Oates (1962), dog trainer Cesar Millan (1969), actor Aaron Paul (1979), and NFL player Darren McFadden (1987).

We will continue our discussion about the nascent civil war in the USA in future issues of Zak’s Random News. I’m going to go have a typical work day now with things to create and meetings to attend. Sticking with the normal shit is important. You may soon wish you had the option of being normal. Enjoy your day.