Today in the news briefs: Jimmy Kimmel is moving an interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico off television and onto YouTube because he says the U.S. communications regulator FCC has openly threatened his show. Meanwhile, over at Kaufland, you can buy an AfD hoodie with the slogan "We’re taking our country back" - sold by an outside merchant, but right there on Kaufland’s own marketplace.
And Dallas delivers the insanity as a full package: Trump has thousands of people raise their right hands and repeat a pledge to the "greatest president in history," a pardoned Oath Keeper is walking around the convention, and somewhere in between, the crowd sings the Flintstones vitamins jingle.
Then there’s the hottest August since records began, new records in the world’s oceans, and greenhouse gas emissions that are still rising. And over at the U.S. Justice Department, Trump’s own investigator of all people quits - with this line: "If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem."
Kimmel Moves Online After Threats From U.S. Regulator - Interview With Democrat Gets Pulled From TV Broadcast
Jimmy Kimmel says the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, is putting pressure on his show. That is why an interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air on television and will instead be published on YouTube. Kimmel said on his show that for more than 20 years, he has interviewed candidates running for political office without any problems. Now something is different. The FCC, he said, has threatened him, his show, ABC, its affiliates and local stations over completely normal editorial decisions. That includes, apparently, guests the agency did not like.
And this is not the first time Talarico has been hit by this kind of caution. Back in February, an appearance by the Democrat on Stephen Colbert’s show was moved from television to the internet. At the time, the network was worried about trouble over the FCC rule requiring political candidates to receive comparable airtime. Talarico is running in Texas against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and is considered one of the Democrats’ better chances of winning in a state Republicans have dominated for years. The fact that his interview is once again disappearing from regular television is therefore anything but politically insignificant.
Kimmel’s fight with the Trump administration has been going on for quite a while. In September 2025, ABC temporarily suspended "Jimmy Kimmel Live" after threats from then-FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. In April 2026, Donald Trump and Melania Trump demanded that Kimmel be fired over a joke about the First Lady. ABC then went to court itself and said the FCC’s demand for an early review of broadcast licenses posed an existential threat to the network. Now an interview with a Democratic Senate candidate is being pushed onto YouTube as a precaution because Kimmel says the government regulator is threatening him over his guest list. For a president who constantly talks about free speech, that is a pretty remarkable way to deal with television.
AfD Propaganda at Kaufland: Not Sold by Kaufland Itself, but Offered on Its Own Marketplace
An AfD hoodie with the slogan "We’re taking our country back" is being offered on Kaufland’s online marketplace for 39.95 euros. According to the listing, the seller is not Kaufland itself but an outside merchant called Printera. That does not change the fact that the product is being sold under the Kaufland brand, on its platform, and using its infrastructure. Anyone who runs a marketplace cannot completely hide behind the line that they are just providing the technical space for outside sellers. Especially when it comes to openly political party merchandise, the question is what kinds of political products Kaufland wants to allow on its marketplace in the first place.
Trumpapalooza in Dallas: $5,000, Flintstones Vitamins and a Pardoned Oath Keeper
Trump: "So please, raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, who loves us so much he can barely breathe, that I will go vote with my family and my friends ..."
The crowd repeats the words. 🤣🤣🤣
Trump: "I don’t care whether I’m registered or not. I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do."
Donald Trump is not even on the ballot in November, but in Dallas his party spent two nights acting like the whole thing was still all about him. The president had his supporters promise to vote on November 3 and openly told them: "You’ve got to do me the biggest favor you’ve ever done." They were supposed to vote as if his own name were on the ballot. That is exactly where the Republicans’ problem lies. A lot of their voters show up for Trump, but not automatically for just any candidate running for the House or Senate. Quite a few Republicans in tough races stayed away from Dallas altogether. Those who did show up got the full Trump package: Democrats cast as the danger, keeping the Republican majority sold as the lifeline for the final two years of his presidency, and on top of that, a promise of $5,000 for every adult if Republicans hold both chambers. It would cost more than a trillion dollars. Even people inside his own party were shaking their heads. Trump tied the money directly to the election result he wants anyway. Win first, check later.
JD Vance got to speak right before Trump and offered a preview of what 2028 could look like. Democrats, he said, are "the party of hatred," and nobody should hand the country over to "a bunch of crazy people" just because they disagree with Republicans on one issue or another. When a protester carrying a Mexican flag interrupted his speech, Vance shouted back: "If you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there. I’ll buy you a plane ticket." The crowd went wild. Earlier that same day, Vance raised two million dollars for the party at an event in Dallas. Trump, meanwhile, is having more than $68 million reserved for advertising in key races through a political action committee tied to him. So there is plenty of money moving around. The only place where nobody still knows where the money is supposed to come from is the $5,000 for every adult.
And then this convention really turned into Dallas. Stewart Rhodes was walking around, the former head of the Oath Keepers whom Trump pardoned for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. A Republican candidate from Nevada got the crowd singing along to the Flintstones vitamins commercial jingle. Mike Johnson declared the election a choice between "common sense and crazy." Donald Trump Jr. drew chants of "USA!" while the right-wing conservative Charlie Kirk was honored one year after his assassination. A family whose daughter had been shot and killed in Chicago stood onstage with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, along with a memorial bench. Outside, protesters shouted, "Donald Trump’s not welcome here," while inside the celebration kept going. All of it one day before the 25th anniversary of September 11.
At the end came the image that pretty much told the whole story. Balloons slowly dropped from the ceiling, like they do after a presidential nominee is chosen. Except nobody had been nominated. Trump is already president and, under current law, cannot run again in 2028. Still, there he stood, enjoying the balloon drop while his favorite tenor, Christopher Macchio, sang opera. Republicans had supposedly come to hold a convention for the midterms. What they ended up with was an event for a man who is not even on the ballot. His candidates are supposed to win, his supporters are supposed to swear a pledge, his vice president is positioning himself for whatever comes next, and somewhere in between the crowd is singing about Flintstones vitamins. If you want to understand just how completely this party now revolves around Trump, you really do not need to make it any more complicated than that.
Dallas spent two nights showing just how deep the abyss goes.
The Planet Keeps Breaking Heat Records - and the World Is Still Pumping Out More Greenhouse Gases
August 2026 was the hottest August since records began and at the same time matched the previous monthly record set in July 2023. The average global surface temperature was 16.96 degrees Celsius. That was 1.65 degrees above the preindustrial level and 0.85 degrees above the average for the years 1990 through 2020. By now, this is no longer just one isolated outlier. At the beginning of August, the surface of the world’s oceans also hit a new record: 21.1 degrees Celsius, just above the previous high from March 2024. Copernicus says the extreme heat is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels, with unusually warm sea-surface temperatures during El Niño adding to it.
While temperatures keep rising, emissions are still going up too. In 2025, humanity produced around 54 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, according to the European Commission - more than ever before. That was another 0.7 percent increase from the year before. The United States posted an especially sharp increase: emissions there rose 2.2 percent, the largest increase in absolute terms of any country. China, still the world’s biggest emitter, was up 0.1 percent. India, by contrast, cut its emissions by 0.2 percent. China, the United States, India, the European Union, Russia and Indonesia together account for around 62 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
If this continues, the European Commission estimates that the Earth could already be permanently around 1.5 degrees warmer than preindustrial levels by the end of this decade. The records in the oceans make the situation even more dangerous. Warmer water expands and pushes sea levels higher. It also releases more heat and moisture into the atmosphere, making severe storms and extreme heat on land more likely. At the same time, warmer oceans absorb less carbon dioxide. The math keeps getting simpler: temperatures are hitting new highs, the oceans are too - and right at this moment, the world is producing even more of the gases driving it.
Trump’s Investigator Quits: "If You Want Indictments Where There’s No Evidence, You Have an Ethical Problem"
Joe diGenova was brought back into the U.S. Justice Department in April to go after the very former investigators and intelligence officials who had spent years investigating Donald Trump. Five months later, he is gone. The 81-year-old confirmed his resignation himself. Behind the scenes, frustration had apparently been building over how little progress his investigation was making and the fact that it still had not produced a single indictment. Then came a line that could hardly be more uncomfortable for the administration: "If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem." DiGenova later said the remark had been taken out of context. There was, he said, plenty of material to support the prosecution theories being pursued, but it simply took time. Apparently, some people were no longer willing to give him that time.
The investigation had been enormous from the start. It was supposed to pull together several separate investigations into Trump and turn them into a possible conspiracy by former government officials against him. That includes the Russia investigation surrounding the 2016 election and the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, where classified government documents were recovered. Trump has spent years treating both as part of a campaign against him. DiGenova was one of his most loyal allies, backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and repeatedly talked about a conspiracy inside the intelligence agencies. Now that very man is walking away from an investigation that was supposed to hold Trump’s old enemies accountable.
To this day, it is unclear whether any criminal cases will come out of it at all. The earlier special counsel investigation found widespread Russian interference in the 2016 election but could not prove a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Other investigations found serious FBI errors but likewise found no criminal conduct by senior investigators. Back in April, a senior prosecutor working on the investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan had already been replaced after raising doubts about the strength of the case. Brennan denies allegations that he lied to Congress about the creation of the intelligence assessment and has since sued the Justice Department to force preservation of all records from the investigation. Now diGenova is gone too. The man who was supposed to investigate Trump’s enemies is leaving his post - and leaving behind the question of whether Washington wanted indictments faster than the evidence could support them.
