Random News: September 5, 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 September 5, 2025, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! This was one of those “do five days worth of work in four days” weeks, and it’s not quite done yet. But it seems as though I will once again survive. Sometimes you gotta be thankful for the small things.

• We have a lot of news, so let’s jump in and see if we can get through the important stuff.
• Yesterday, the District of Columbia challenged Dump’s use of the National Guard in Washington, asking a federal court to intervene even as he plans to send troops to other cities, allegedly in the name of driving down crime.
• Brian Schwalb, the district's elected attorney general, said in a lawsuit that the deployment, which now involves more than 1,000 troops, is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
• He wrote, “No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation.”
• Correct.
• Members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December. While that does not necessarily mean all those troops will serve that long, it is a strong indication that if Dump has his way, their role will not wind down soon.
• As we reported this week, a federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday that Dump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids in June was illegal. It does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.
• But Schwalb’s filing contends the deployment also violates Washington's Home Rule Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, and Dump’s actions wrongly asserts federal control over units from other states.
• We’ll come back to this topic in a little bit. Moving on for now.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had his ass handed to him on live television yesterday.
• Kennedy faced an angry bipartisan group of senators at a rancorous three-hour committee hearing. He tried to defend his efforts to pull back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and explain the turmoil he has created at federal health agencies.
• It didn’t go well.
• Kennedy claimed that the fired CDC director was untrustworthy. Then he stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.
• He’s full of shit. Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers, and remaking vaccine guidelines.
• And his actions thus far as Health Secretary directly contradict assurances he made during his Senate confirmation hearings.
• As a result of Kennedy’s ineptitude, now groups of Democratic-led states are forming alliances to offer their own vaccine policies apart from those of the federal government. More on that in a bit.
• Medical groups, current and former HHS staffers, and multiple Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators at yesterday’s hearing repeatedly devolved into shouting.
• But it wasn’t only the Democrats who were pissed. Some Republican senators also clearly expressed unease with RFK Jr.'s changes to COVID-19 policies.
• It was the GOP senators like Thom Tills and others who noted that Kennedy said Dump deserved a Nobel Prize (hahahahahaha Jesus) for the 2020 Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
• And that Kennedy then went on to attack the safety and continued use of those very shots. He said that the vaccines killed more people than COVID.
• I’m serious.
• Here’s the truth for any fucking person reading this: in their first year of use alone, COVID vaccines saved some 14.4 million lives globally, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
• You — yes you, reader — might be dead right this moment without those vaccines. And you might still be later on without access to them and other vaccines like them.
• Let’s move on.
• This next item boggles the fucking mind.
• Senior Justice Department officials have held internal deliberations in recent days over potentially issuing a rule that could restrict transgender individuals from being able to own firearms.
• That’s right. In the country where we have a literal fucking amendment to our Constitution that guarantees the right for people to bear arms, our government is — for no reason other than hatred — singling out a group of people to say that they can’t.
• It goes without saying that such a proposal will face significant pushback not only from civil rights groups but also from gun rights organizations, which have historically been resistant to the issuance of any regulations restricting people's access to firearms.
• Of note: there is no evidence to suggest transgender people are more likely to be violent than the general population. However, transgender people are far more likely than average to be the victim of a violent crime.
• If anyone needs a gun, it’s probably them. And if they’re going to take guns away from trans people, who’s the next group that can’t own guns? Jewish people? Black people?
• But right now, DOJ officials are debating whether having a diagnosis of gender dysphoria could disqualify someone under a federal law that restricts people who are "adjudicated as mental defective" from owning guns.
• Fucking pricks. Wanna know how awful the Dump admin actually is on this topic?
• While they want to take away transgender people’s gun rights, at the same time Dump is proposing a new rule that could restore gun ownership rights to certain people with felony convictions.
• I mean, considering that Dump himself was convicted of 34 felonies, it’s not entirely unsurprising.
• Let’s move on.
• With fresh jobs data released this morning, we’re seeing a continued hiring slowdown. This is the first release of employment data since a dismal jobs report last month prompted Dumpy to fire the top official tasked with compiling labor statistics. The reading fell well short of his economists' expectations.
• The U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure showed a sharp decrease from 79,000 jobs added in the previous month. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%.
• A previous jobs report showed a sharp slowdown of hiring over the summer, eliciting concern among some economists about a possible recession.
• Today’s jobs report included a downward revision for the month of June, saying the U.S. labor market had lost 13,000 jobs that month, much lower than a previous estimate of 14,000 jobs added. It marked the first monthly job loss since December 2020.
• I am telling you as I’ve told you over and over again: this fucking president sucks. It’s not that he’s just a horrible person (which he is). He’s completely incompetent at leading the country.
• Again, remember: hours after the release of the weak jobs report last month, Dump removed BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Dump said — without any evidence at all — that the job statistics had been "manipulated."
• But here we are and the jobs are still dropping. Where are the jobs, Dumpy?
• Let’s do some news from the Immigration Desk…
• Yesterday, hundreds of undocumented immigrants were apprehended during a sweeping immigration raid at the Hyundai Metaplant site in Ellabell, GA. It’s one of the largest ICE raids at a single site in the 22-year history of the agency.
• About 450 people were apprehended by ICE and Homeland Security along with the Georgia State Patrol, the FBI, DEA, ATF and other agencies. We’re not talking about some little car wash or a flower shop. It’s fucking Hyundai, a huge company.
• Which leaves me suspicious, knowing that Dumpy has been trying to pick fights with our ally South Korea in recent times. Hyundai is a South Korean company that builds a lot of cars in the USA.
• Plus, the raid halted construction of a factory being built to produce batteries for electric vehicles. The facility has been touted by Georgia’s governor as the largest economic development site in the state’s history.
• Too weird. There’s gotta be more to this story.
• Let’s move on.
• A federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for improperly snooping on people's smartphones during a nearly decade-long period of intrusions.
• I mean, we knew that, right?
• The verdict followed a trial in a class-action case covering about 98 million smartphones operating in the United States between July 1, 2016, through September 23, 2024. So the total damages awarded in the five-year-old case works out to about $4 per device.
• Ooh, four bucks!
• Google had denied that it was improperly tracking the online activity of people who thought they had shielded themselves with privacy controls. The company maintained its stance even though the eight-person jury concluded Google had been spying in violation of California privacy laws.
• How did this fuckery work? Google used the data they collected off smartphones without users' permission to help sell ads tailored to users' individual interests — a strategy that resulted in the company reaping billions in additional revenue.
• The lawyers who brought the case were seeking damages of more than $30 billion, so it seems Google got off easy.
• Moving on.
• Dump is scared to death that the front runner for the upcoming New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, will win.
• So he’s going to offer the current mayor Eric Adams an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia so he’ll drop out of the race to consolidate the field.
• Ain’t that some shit? 
• Adams’ exit would give a boost to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who shares a base of moderate, older, and blue-collar voters with the current mayor. Republican Curtis Sliwa has vowed he will not leave the race and has been polling in third place behind Cuomo.
• And Adams met this week with Dump’s team in Florida to discuss what he can get from dropping out of the race. Is that legal? It doesn’t feel legal.
• Let’s move on.
• I’ve mentioned before and I’ll say again: we have so, so, SO many things to consider before we start planning ahead to the 2028 general election, which is over three years away.
• The way things are going, a good number of the people reading this might not even be alive at that point. Focus more on what’s happening around you today, in the here and now. It’s plenty.
• That being said, it’s of very little surprised that my governor, Gavin Newsom, has recently surged to the front of the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential primary pack.
• In a recent Yahoo/YouGov poll, Newsom is enjoying a lead in the hypothetical (for now) race, with 21% of registered Democratic voters and registered voters who lean Democratic now picking him as their preferred nominee.
• That puts Newsom slightly ahead of former Vice President Kamala Harris (19%), the party’s 2024 nominee and perhaps the most familiar name on the list — and far ahead of all other possible contenders, like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (12%), former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (10%), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (7%), Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (4%), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (4%), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (2%).
• The reason is pretty straightforward. Newsom’s profile has exploded in recent months, he’s set up fundraising committees. He’s visited key battleground states. He’s hosted national political players on his podcast.
• And perhaps most effective, he’s brutally mocked Dump on social media, and convinced the California Legislature to fight fire with fire by matching Texas’s partisan redistricting push.
• Newsom’s downside? Most Democrats under 45 feel like he’s not progressive enough, or cool enough, or something enough. That age group prefers both Harris (27%) and Ocasio-Cortez (22%) to Newsom (13%) as a potential 2028 presidential nominee.
• Democratic voters over 45 years old? Newsom is killing it against Harris, leading 26% to 13%.
• Now back to my earlier statement… we have immediate existential threats from our own federal government. We have states forming alliances to combat national tactics. We have federal troops being sent to Democratic-run cities.
• And we have a whole-ass Midterm election in a year that will be crucial for our survival. So while I glad for Gavin, this is perhaps the last shit we should be spending time considering for now.
• And as I’ve said before, I will vote for literally any Democrat in 2028 over any representative of MAGA and the continued blundering influence of Donnie Dump.
• And now, The Weather: “Big Crime” by Neil Young
• You ever start thinking about something that’s so completely irrelevant to anything of importance, but then you have to go down a rabbit hole to get some closure to your train of thought?
• I found myself wondering about the cartoon character Yogi Bear.
• The cartoon debuted in 1958, and the character’s mannerisms were a direct ripoff of Art Carney's Ed Norton character on “The Honeymooners.”
• But at the same time, baseball player Yogi Berra was a household name. The Yankees catcher was an 18-time All-Star and won 10 World Series championships as a player — more than any other player in MLB history.
• So when the cartoon came out, Berra sued Hanna-Barbera for defamation, but their management claimed the similarity was just coincidence.
• Berra withdrew his suit, despite the defense being utter bullshit. But when asked about it, Berra himself said, "I was going to sue the Yogi Bear program for using my name until somebody reminded me that Yogi isn't my real name. It's Lawrence."
• And if you want to be super nit-picky, that’s not his name either. Yogi was born Lorenzo Pietro Berra.
• Anyway, now I know.
• Let’s do a chart.
• This time we’re going back exactly 10 years to September 2015. According to my own blog at the time, I was focused at the time of finishing the self-titled debut album of They Stole My Crayon.
• Here’s something about music of any era: I was (and remain) an avid new music listener, and there were a ton of great songs that came out in 2015.
• My “best-of” song list for that year includes “Dreams” (Beck), “Pedestrian at Best” (Courtney Barnett), “Blackstar” (David Bowie), “Sapokanikan” (Joanna Newsom), “Pretty Pimpin” (Kurt Vile), “Necessary Evil” (Unknown Mortal Orchestra), and more.
• None of those artists are at the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart at the time, because pop music will likely never be as cool or adventurous as indie music. I’m not saying everything here sucks, but note how many of these artists you almost never heard from again.
• 1. Beauty Behind The Madness (The Weeknd). 2. Badlands (Halsey). 3. Kill The Lights (Luke Bryan). 4. 1989 (Taylor Swift). 5. Compton (Dr. Dre). 6. x (Ed Sheeran). 7. Start Here (Maddie & Tae). 8. Depression Cherry (Beach House). 9. Brand New (Ben Rector). 10. Immortalized (Disturbed). 11. DS2 (Future). 12. Montevallo (Sam Hunt). 13. Blurryface (Twenty One Pilots). 14. If You're Reading This It's Too Late (Drake). 15. NOW 55 (Various Artists). 16. Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A). 17. Unbreakable Smile (Tori Kelly). 18. Handwritten (Shawn Mendes). 19. Title (Meghan Trainor). 20. American Beauty / American Psycho (Fall Out Boy).
• From the Sports Desk… the first game of the NFL’s season went a little differently than most had predicted.
• The Eagles hosted the Cowboys for the opener, which included a player ejected for spitting on another, and then a huge brawl in the first ten minutes of play. Then a lightning storm delayed the game for over an hour.
• Final score: Eagles 24, Cowboys 20.
• In more news for the Sports Desk, we have a final matchup for tomorrow’s U.S. Open Women’s championship.
• 1-seed Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka will face 8-seed American Amanda Anisimova. We’ll know about the men’s championship after today’s semifinal matches.
• The Sports Desk also brings a disappointing note from the WNBA, where Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark has been ruled out for the remainder of the 2025 WNBA season due to injury.
• Clark, the 2024 No. 1 pick and the face of the league in recent times, had been limited to just 13 games this season, and hadn't appeared since July 15 when she suffered a right groin injury.
• Ouch. Get well soon.
• Today in history… Louis XIV's Superintendent of Finances is arrested in Nantes by D'Artagnan, captain of the king's musketeers (1661). Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards for all men except the clergy and peasantry (1698). First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia (1774). The Siege of Fort Wayne begins when Chief Winamac's forces attack two soldiers returning from the fort's outhouses (1812). Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas (1836). The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City (1882). A group of youths affiliated with the fascist National Socialist Movement of Chile are executed after surrendering during a failed coup (1938). Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg constitute Benelux (1944). Cassius Clay wins the gold medal in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympic Games in Rome, later changing his name to Muhammad Ali (1960). Squeaky Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford (1975). NASA launches the Voyager 1 spacecraft (1977). The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage (1984). Liz Truss is declared the winner of the UK Conservative Party leadership election, beating Rishi Sunak (2022).
• September 5 is the birthday of king Louis VIII (1187), king Louis XIV (1638), composer Johann Christian Bach (1735), poet/author Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817), inventor Lester Allan Pelton (1829), outlaw Jesse James (1847), pianist/composer Amy Beach (1867), MLB player Nap Lajoie (1874), composer John Cage (1912), actor/comedian Bob Newhart (1929), author Werner Erhard (1935), singer-songwriter/guitarist John Stewart (1939), actress Raquel Welch (1940), director Werner Herzog (1942), singer-songwriter Al Stewart (1945), singer-songwriter Freddie Mercury (1946), singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III (1946), singer-songwriter/drummer Buddy Miles (1947), cartoonist Cathy Guisewite (1950), actor Michael Keaton (1951), NFL player Willie Gault (1960), drummer/songwriter Brad Wilk (1968), guitarist Dweezil Zappa (1969), director/musician Liam Lynch (1970), actress Rose McGowan (1973), NBA player Lance Stephenson (1990), and NFL player Mac Jones (1998).

Whew, that was a lot of info. Hopefully some of it meant something to some of you. I’m just here to tell you the things that I see. And as I often say, what happens after that is up to you. Enjoy your day.