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Iowa Coast to Coast (statewide news)
From Dr. Bob’s Deep Midwest Substack: Below is a transcript of the video in Rollins’ tweet, with my comment in italics:
Male voice off camera: I call it woke seeds.
Rollins: Should I do a quick video? (Rollins trying to make it appear that the video wasn’t staged).
Hi everyone, it's Brooke Rollins here at USDA. We started really early this morning as we always do is we're here fighting for farmers and ranchers and putting Americans first, but you're not going to believe what we just found. Behind the door at USDA, we found a whole box of these seeds. And listen, we love seeds here at USDA, but check these out. These are specific tomato seeds that are for growing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility at USDA. I mean, look at these. If you can be anything, be inclusive at USDA. America, this is what we're fighting here in Washington, D.C. This is why we are completely working to realign under President Trump's vision our entire government about returning power to the people , about ensuring that we're putting Americans first and that we really are going to make America great again and no longer will we spend tax dollars on diversity, equity, inclusion at USDA.
From Dave Busiek on Media on Substack: The mass protests in Des Moines and other Iowa cities this past Saturday were covered, but I would rate the coverage as routine. Ho hum. Another garden variety protest rally. I sense many citizens are furious at how our government is being torn apart, how immigrants are being seized and shipped out of the country with no due process rights, how Trump is attacking universities, law firms and the news media itself. Iowans are frightened seeing their investment accounts wither away under Trump’s reckless tariffs. People are shocked that Congress shirks its duties and lets Trump run rampant. Fury. Fright. Shock. And my point is that none of that emotion is coming through in the coverage. On the local TV news, the stations showed a crowd shot here, a protest sign there, a sound bite – all standard stuff. The Sunday print Des Moines Register had not one mention of the rally in Des Moines early Saturday afternoon that attracted thousands of people. Not once did I see a reporter describe the mood of the crowd. I got a better sense of Saturday’s rallies by looking at social media and some of my cohorts in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative than I did from major media outlets. Guys like Bob Leonard know how to tell a story. Good reporters can sense when they’ve got a juicy story on their hands, and they skillfully use their powers of observation, their writing skills and their storytelling abilities to swing for the fences and knock it out of the park. Sadly, with coverage of all the gut-wrenching stories affecting our lives the past few months, I’m seeing far too many bunt singles and not nearly enough home runs.
Cauc Talk (talking political news)
From CNBC: China has pushed back once again to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies by hiking its levies on U.S. imports to more than 80%. China’s Office of the Tariff Commission of the State Council said tariffs on U.S. goods will rise to 84% from 34% starting on April 10, according to a translation of the announcement. This comes after the latest U.S. tariff hike — which brings levies on Chinese goods to more than 100% — took effect at the start of April 9. The repeated escalation of the tariffs threatens to bring trade between two of the world’s most important economies to a standstill. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. exported $143.5 billion of goods to China in 2024, while importing $438.9 billion of goods. The Trump administration announced a sweeping new tariff policy last week, and warned other countries not to retaliate. Some nations, including Japan, have seemed willing to negotiate on tariffs, but China appears to be taking a more hardline stance and quickly announced a countertariff.
Wider Scope
From Reuters: As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky. “We could fill it up and put it by our bedside at night,” says Wagner, now an entomologist. That’s all gone, the family farm now paved over with new homes and manicured lawns. And Wagner’s beloved fireflies – like so many insects worldwide – have largely vanished in what scientists are calling the global Insect Apocalypse. As human activities rapidly transform the planet, the global insect population is declining at an unprecedented rate of up to 2% per year. Amid deforestation, pesticide use, artificial light pollution and climate change, these critters are struggling — along with the crops, flowers and other animals that rely on them to survive. “Insects are the food that make all the birds and make all the fish,” said Wagner, who works at the University of Connecticut. “They’re the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet.” But insects are so much more than food. Farmers depend on these critters pollinating crops and churning soil to keep it healthy, among other activities.
Insects pollinate more than 75% of global crops, a service valued at up to $577 billion per year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) says.
In the United States, insects perform services valued in 2006 at an estimated $57 billion per year, according to a study in the journal BioScience.
Dung beetles alone are worth some $380 million per year to the U.S. cattle industry for their work breaking down manure and churning rangeland soil, the study found.
With fewer insects, “we’d have less food,” said ecologist Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex. “We’d see yields dropping of all of these crops.”
A.Iowa
What’s Good? (good/positive news)
From Daily Beast: Elon Musk rage quit a livestream of the video game Path of Exile 2 on Saturday night after repeatedly dying while also being ruthlessly cyberbullied in the chat. The DOGE chief was, predictably, terrible at the game, but that was the least of his problems—Less than five minutes into the stream, a player logged on and asked Musk if he could “please jerk off mr trump so he dies of a heart attack.” It only got worse from there. For the next hour and a half, Musk sat in stony-faced silence and blasted techno music while dozens of users with names such as ELON_IS_A_PEEDOPHILE and ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC repeatedly spammed the chat to tell him “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE” and “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY.”
Factoid of the Week: Scientists have observed a rhythmic, microseismic pulse occurring roughly every 26 seconds, sometimes referred to as Earth's "heartbeat," though the exact cause remains a mystery.
Spencer’s Top 5 David Foster Wallace Quotes
1. “You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
2. “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
3. “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
4. “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
5. “If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
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