Linda Arbuckle

@lindaarbuckle.com

Lapsed potter, sewist, owned by a dog, 3 cats, and flock of hens. Knitter, gardener. Vegan liberal atheist feminist. Retired. Living in N Central FL. YES to LGBTQ+ and trans rights. YES to WOKE, DEI. Pronouns: she/her

Cat and dog enjoying lying down together.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the United States plans to “systematically disable” the International Criminal Court, an overt attack on a body that investigates some of the gravest crimes in the world.

Officially established in 2002 and based in The Hague, the court has a mission to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes and other serious offenses. The United States never ratified the main treaty establishing the institution, and Mr. Rubio raised the possibility that the court could prosecute Americans as reason to dismantle it.

Darline Graham Nordone does not have a background in elected office, but she possesses professional leadership credentials in public service and state agency management. Following the passing of her brother, longtime U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed her to temporarily fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat until January 2027.Her primary professional, educational, and political qualifications include:Professional Leadership & Public ServiceState Agency Commissioner: She serves as the commissioner for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, leading an agency that manages vocational rehabilitation and independent living services.National Council President-Elect: She was elected the incoming president of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind (NCSAB).Public Information Director: She spent years working as the director of public information for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department.EducationAdvanced Degree: She holds a Master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from South Carolina State University, earned in 2009.

Gov. DeSantis shifted $250 million from funding for hurricane recovery to pay for the facility, which was built in eight days. Much of that time, it appears, was devoted to awarding no-bid contracts to what Norman describes as “politically connected firms.”

The cost ballooned to four times that amount. About $219 million of it went to Doodie Calls, a vendor taking care of the facility’s toilets and hauling away its sewage.

Laptop computer with a Cricut Joy 2 and cutout project.

Supporters of the law said they sought to halt teachings that supported racial discrimination, while opponents in the Legislature, mostly Democrats contended it was really an attempt to quash candid teaching about historic racial horrors in the U.S., including slavery and the Jim Crow era.

Other parts of the law sought to ban workplace training at companies regarding racial, gender and sexual orientation issues, but those provisions have been struck down by federal courts.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, also a Trump appointee, wrote a dissent arguing the state had the right to restrict the speech of professors in the classroom.

DeSantis pushed for the law as a bulwark against “indoctrination” in university classrooms. It bars professors from endorsing precepts of critical race theory, including eight specific tenets.

For example, the law bans instruction that causes students to “feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.”

TALLAHASSEE – A federal appeals court Tuesday kept in place a district court’s preliminary injunction on Florida’s law banning “woke” instruction at public universities.

A 2-1 ruling from the three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Florida’s assertion it could control the speech of its employees, including college professors, to be “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry.”

Woman making a face while being licked by a dog.

The Trump administration is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions.

The drastic retrenchment at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws, was not entirely unexpected: President Trump campaigned as a champion of gun rights.

HB 919 - Renaming Airports
House Bill 919 allows the state to override local governments in naming airports. It paves the way to rename Palm Beach International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport.

Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.

ATTENTION EDUCATORS!

We wanted to reach out about a resource we currently have available to university classes, guilds, and ceramics students of any age and level nationwide. Through our non-profit, we offer cups and other vessels starting at $15 to students, professors, and staff. There are always new pieces being added, and students are welcome to make purchases at any time. We love the idea of getting ceramics in student hands, and thank you for your help in reaching that goal!

Reach out to Jordyn HERE to get the link for these pieces. jordyn@schallergallery.com

For Plato, the source of inequality was a disease of the soul that the Greeks called pleonexia — a kind of insatiable greed. In Plato’s “Gorgias,” Socrates likened this condition to a leaky jug: No matter how much water one pours into it, it will demand more. For some, the desire for money extends only so far as is necessary to cover their needs; for others, the desire is infinite. Plato likened those insatiable souls to slaves who are ruled by their desires.

Someone consumed with his unquenchable desires comes to love himself far beyond what he can feel for the rest of humanity. He was, for Plato, “a poor judge of what is just and good and noble,” because he would always treat his desires as more valuable even than the truth. As a consequence, Plato wrote, “it is impossible that those who become very rich also become good.”

The Summer Solstice
The summer solstice occurs at the moment the earth's tilt toward/from the sun is at a maximum. Therefore, on the day of the summer solstice, the sun appears at its highest elevation with a noontime position that changes very little for several days before and after the summer solstice. The summer solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, which is located at 23.5° latitude North and runs through Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and southern China. For every place north of the Tropic of Cancer, the sun is at its highest point in the sky and this is the longest day of the year.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out to the LWVFL office for information about the League's position on Amendment 3, the Homestead Tax Exemptions, Property Assessments, and Spending Restrictions Amendment. Placed on the ballot by the Florida Legislature in June 2026, it seeks to overhaul the state's property tax system and would heavily impact local governments throughout the state.

During its meeting on Monday, June 8, 2026, the LWVFL Board voted to formally oppose Amendment 3 in light of the League's long-held position that there should be no increase or extension of homestead exemption. Furthermore, LWVFL believes that no tax sources or revenue should be specified, limited, exempted or prohibited in the Constitution. We also support home rule by municipalities and counties in the administration of local issues, and a state fiscal structure that is equitable in its distribution of the tax responsibility and responsive to public needs.

Please stay tuned for guidance from LWVFL over the coming weeks on how we can help Florida voters understand the potential impacts of Amendment 3 so they are prepared to cast an informed vote in November.

From Robert Reich
Friends,

In December 2025, Trump axed today’s holiday — Juneteenth, the official celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation — from the free admission days at the more than 100 national parks across America. He also axed Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a free admission day.

Instead, he substituted his own birthday, June 14, as a free admission day.

There you have it: the venal combination of Trump’s white supremacy and his malignant narcissism.

June 15, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 16

READ IN APP

President Donald J. Trump’s remaking of Washington, D.C., to reflect his personalized approach to power rather than the American people and their government has become a little too on-the-nose over the past week.
After weeks of hyping the idea that he would restore the Reflecting Pool by the Lincoln Memorial to “SPECTACULAR” condition after it had been “destroyed by Barack Hussein Obama and Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump today reposted an article from the right-wing site Breitbart, titled: “‘Thank You President Trump’: Reflecting Pool in D.C. Wows After Trump Renovations.”
In fact, as Kinnia Cheuk of Politico reported today, the renovations Trump said would cost $1.5 million appear from federal contracting records to have cost almost $16 million, and the pool is now fouled with green algae.

Key Points

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1451 on Friday, creating new parameters for municipal utilities operating outside city limits and seeming to cement the Gainesville Regional Utilities Authority.
Established in 2023, the GRU Authority has been a dividing point and Gainesville residents voted twice to dissolve it and the DeSantis-picked members.
Local officials seem divided on whether the bill will actually change the situation and end ongoing litigation or if the status quo will continue.

Alachua Women Build house #19, finished w/landscaping in

A political activist and military veteran from Virginia tried to stop the event from proceeding, calling it a “deeply corrupt” event that uses national monuments to shill for private businesses, in at least one of which—UFC’s parent company TKO Holding Group—Trump owns significant amounts of stock. They noted that although Trump used the 250th anniversary to justify ignoring environmental review and congressional approval, the event is clearly designed not for the nation’s birthday, but for his own.

On May 29, Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News reported that the new secretary of DHS, Markwayne Mullin, is considering selling a number of the warehouses. If he does so, Ainsley and Strikler report, there may well be scrutiny of the initial purchases. An Atlanta suburb has filed a lawsuit alleging that ICE paid more than five times the assessed value of a warehouse there.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted that funding for ICE and CBP has historically been made under annual appropriations bills, and the Republicans’ new policy of giving them a huge pot of money for years makes it hard to estimate the pace of spending.

June 6, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 7

READ IN APP

In the wee hours of Friday morning, Senate Republicans passed a measure to provide about $70 billion in additional funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency for Border Patrol. They did so without meeting any of the demands Democrats had made to reform ICE and Border Patrol in the wake of the violent sweeps that led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
While Republicans tried to insist that Democrats who demanded reforms were starving immigration enforcement, in fact, the budget reconciliation measure the Republicans passed in July of last year—they one they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—provided an astonishing $191 billion to fund the Department of Homeland Security, with about $75 billion for ICE and $65 billion for CBP. According to Dominik Lett of the libertarian Cato Institute, those numbers were seven times ICE’s previous annual budget and four times the typical annual budget of CBP, and were designed to last through September 30, 2029.

So far, the administration has stalled or blocked aid for child care, disaster preparedness, green energy, education, food stamps, foreign assistance, mental health, public broadcasting, research and transportation infrastructure, according to court records and public statements. In cases that date back to the early, disruptive days of the Department of Government Efficiency, judges have found that many of Mr. Trump’s actions have violated the law.

In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear. Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could “devastate innovation, science and research” in the United States.

The government could not issue grants to projects or groups that “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” for example. Nor could it seek to fund initiatives that “promote anti-American values,” contribute to illegal immigration, advance diversity, equity and inclusion or assist in voter registration.

Rainbow heart with text Celebrating Pride Month

Woman in a handmade sleeveless top with a button front.

The GOP’s Attacks on James Talarico Are Straight Out of the Incel Handbook
Claims about low testosterone and false accusations of veganism might play well to the online far right, but will they win an election?

Two woman showing off carpentry work in a kitchen of a Habitat for Humanity House built by Alachua Women Build

Trump’s grifts are running so fast and furious that the media can’t keep up. When Todd Blanche put together the “settlement” of Trump’s phony $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, “resolving” the case by handing Trump’s hand-picked panel $1.776 billion to distribute as they see fit (including to both J6ers who killed 4 cops and to Trump himself) Blanche included a huge Easter Egg for Trump and his kids: he forgave $100 million the IRS has been trying to collect from Trump and his boys for over 15 years.

Even though he’s not particularly bright, Trump’s no idiot. He knows his stupid mistake in attacking Iran, his war crimes of murdering unarmed fishermen in the Caribbean, his on-again-off-again tariffs, his massive tax cut for himself and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and now his grift where Todd Blanche gifts him the $100 million the IRS was trying to collect while making him eligible to draw from his own $1.776 billion Thug Fund, are all catching up with him.

One-eyed, medium-haired cat with a raccoon tail.

The U.S. Department of Justice has secured a criminal indictment for Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba. The department alleges that Castro played a key role in shooting down two U.S. planes in 1996. The attack killed four people who were part of the anti-Castro activist group Brothers to the Rescue. The Justice Department is charging Castro and other former senior members of Cuban leadership with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft and four individual counts of murder, according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

A federal judge yesterday dismissed Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns from years ago, following the president's request. The suit is the first known instance of a president suing the government he heads. Shortly after the request to dismiss the case, the Department of Justice announced that, as part of the settlement with Trump, it would establish a $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund." The president says the money will be used to reimburse people who were "treated horribly" by the Biden administration. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will appoint a board to oversee this new fund, and Trump will be able to fire the members. The fund will be developed with taxpayers' dollars.

Woman in a tulip-print blue t-shirt with 2 cats

But as Trump turns 80 next month, his recent behavior should prompt even more questions than usual about his stability, judgment, and mental sharpness. Among the points of concern: a late-night social-media storm a few days ago featuring more than 50 messages, many strewn with dangerous or nonsensical misinformation, which followed a similar Truth Social broadside weeks earlier; an apocalyptic threat to wipe out a civilization; more and more insults (“nasty,” “stupid,” “ugly,” “treasonous”) hurled at reporters; appearing to fall asleep in public, sometimes twice in one week; deep bruises on his hands, which are covered in makeup and accompanied by confusing explanations; and long, odd tangents in speeches that seem longer and odder than his usual tangents. Never known for his ability to self-censor, Trump seems to have completely abandoned any sort of filter, tossing out messages from one extreme (He’s glad that Robert Mueller is dead!) to the other (actually, Trump is Jesus and shall heal the sick).

hummingbird feeder with a floating layer of dead love bugs.

pair of young barred owls at a bird bath

Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, recently calculated that the United States was in worse shape than Italy once you included Social Security, Medicare and other obligations that don’t appear in the official debt figures. “We don’t have any grown-ups in the room in Washington,” he said. “Nobody picks it up and says, ‘You have a problem.’”

Cartoon of Mike Johnson with his head up Trump's behind, and the question "Is it a conflict of interest for the Justice Dept. to settle Trump's 10 B lawsuit over the leaks of his tax returns?" Reply from Johnson, " I haven't thought about this."

$May 12, 2026 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON MAY 13 READ IN APP The biggest story in the country, today and always, is that the president of the United States is mentally unwell. Over the course of three hours last night, he posted on social media fifty-five times. Those posts accused a number of those Trump considers his personal enemies, including former president Barack Obama, of treason; claimed that investigations of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives were an attempt to damage Trump; insisted the 2020 presidential election was stolen; reposted a fake quotation from Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) accusing Obama of making a personal fortune of $120 million from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; labeled Obama and others “traitors” and called for their arrest; and demanded to know why acting attorney general Todd Blanche hadn’t indicted any of those people yet. This morning, he started in again with a long screed attacking the New York Times for its coverage of his alterations to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and insisting that Democratic presidents Obama and Joe Biden had “botched” renovations that he was now fixing for “a ‘tiny’ fraction of the cost!” He posted an AI image of Obama, Biden, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) apparently swimming in a filthy version of the reflecting pool with the caption: “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” Then he posted an image of himself on the $100 bill. And then he was back to calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “Low IQ.”$