Excerpts cozy fantasy Read an Excerpt From A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna A witch has a second chance to get her magical powers—and her life—back on track… By Sangu Mandanna | Published on July 8, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, a cozy romantasy by Sangu Mandanna, out from Berkley on July 15th. Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests’ shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power…Enter Luke Larsen, handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and just might know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing.Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone…and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all. If Luke were a different sort of person, perhaps he might have been able to settle into this rhythm. There was a part of him that wanted to, that wanted to believe it was possible for somebody’s life to be nothing but this: the work he loved, his sister tearing around a wild, overgrown garden in bare feet with a smudge of jam on her chin, hot cups of strong tea and scones that crumbled in his mouth, and fairy‑tale evenings by the fire with a book. But that, there, was the problem. Fairy-tale. Reality was traffic and steeples and old bookshops in Edinburgh. Reality was tedious meetings with Guild bureaucrats over whether the acquisition of a priceless book was really worth the funding. Reality was the question mark over Posy’s future, and his own, and the cold, secret fear that came late at night and made him wonder if maybe it wasn’t normal, really, to have nobody in your life you could say all of that to. This place, this inn, which was every bit as batty as its ridiculous name promised, was not reality as Luke knew it. This was a place of fables and stories and peculiar magic, and such a place, he was certain, had no place in the real world. So Luke did not settle. He waited, calmly, icily, resigned, for the fairy tale to end. Funnily enough, the first disruption to the rhythm of those early days did nothing to dispel Luke’s certainty that the Batty Hole Inn was an incomprehensible departure from reality, good sense, and all things regular. He woke, blinking, groggy, to the sound of something going on outside. Posy was fast asleep in the other twin bed, having been awake and remarkably chirpy from the hours of two to six in the morning, but it sounded like everybody else was up and about. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and swapping his sweatpants for jeans, Luke checked the time on his phone. Half past nine, which was frankly too early for mayhem at even the best of times. He descended two flights of creaky stairs, passed through the long hallway, and crossed the kitchen to the open back door, by which point the indistinct sounds had become shrieks and hollers of “Catch it!” and “Not that way! That way!” Jasmine stood at the edge of the stone patio, leaning on her cane, tutting gently to herself as Luke drew level with her. The garden looked like a meteor had hit it in the middle of the night. In fact, for a moment, Luke wondered if a meteor had hit it— what else could possibly have overturned half the earth, sent large clumps of grass flying in every direction, beheaded a few dozen wildflowers, decimated most of Matilda’s vegetables, and even apparently laid waste to Sera’s red wellies?—but then, at the heart of the disaster, he saw Matilda and Nicholas. Trying, and failing, to catch a goat. “I thought Rule One was no goats,” Luke remarked. Jasmine nodded. Luke wondered if her cheerful calm was an ominous indication that these things happened rather too often around here. “Matilda,” Jasmine explained, “was of the view that if she borrowed a goat from the Medieval Fair, and showed Sera just how sweet and adorable it was, Sera would change her mind.” “Just how many goats did she borrow?” Pressing her lips together like she was trying not to laugh, Jasmine said, “One.” Buy the Book A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping Sangu Mandanna Buy Book A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping Sangu Mandanna Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Luke looked at the garden, and then looked at the small goat merrily eluding its would-be captors, and then looked at the garden again. “One goat did all this?” “In just over an hour,” Jasmine confirmed. “Can’t see this changing Sera’s mind, can you?” Luke said wryly. “Thank you for that excellent contribution!” Matilda wailed from halfway down the garden. “Now get over here and help us catch this dratted creature! We have maybe half an hour to corral this menace, return him to the Fair, and fix this mess before Sera gets back from the supermarket and murders us all!” “I don’t see why she’d murder me,” Luke pointed out. “She’s not going to murder anybody,” Jasmine said in a wounded tone of voice. “She’ll be a little cross that the garden has been completely destroyed, and who could possibly blame her, but it’s not like she’s a terrifying dragon who’ll gobble everybody up.” “You’d deserve it if she did gobble you up,” Nicholas said to Matilda, deeply disapproving. “How could you? That you’d even dream of causing Lady Sera the slightest anguish—” “I would never, you sweet, ridiculous, lovestruck puppy!” Matilda shot back. “Not on purpose!” “Lovestruck?” Nicholas was appalled. “I’m not in love with her! I am a loyal knight! I would no more make advances on my lady than I would cut off a single lock of her glorious hair!” “Does he say these things to Sera?” Luke asked Jasmine with interest. “He does,” said Jasmine. “Are you sure? He seems to still be alive.” “Don’t you start,” Jasmine said reproachfully. Luke relented. “How’s she really going to feel about this?” Jasmine gave him a long, searching look before saying, “She’ll never say it, but she loves this house. Every creaky stair, every crumbling brick, every bit of dirt under our feet. We all know it. You don’t really think Matilda’s panicking because she’s afraid of Sera’s wrath, do you?” At Luke’s furrowed brow, she explained, “You see, what’s going to happen is Sera will come home, and she’ll glower, and she’ll compete with Matilda to see which of them can be more dramatic, and then she’ll put this mess to rights even if it takes weeks, but the whole time, what she’ll actually be is quietly, devastatingly upset.” Luke had never heard a word as understated as upset hold so much weight, but somehow, in this woman’s gentle, dignified voice, and in the honest, tender simplicity of her answer, it felt weightier than almost anything else. Resigned, Luke heard himself say, “Matilda, maybe you and Nicholas ought to go to the Fair and bring the goat’s owner back with you. Trying to catch it yourselves obviously isn’t working.” “Go there?” Matilda’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why? The man must have a phone.” “And risk him saying he can’t get away until lunchtime?” Luke replied without missing a beat. “Like you said, we have maybe half an hour before Sera gets home. If you get going right now, you might just be able to get rid of the goat before she sees it. I’ll see what I can do about sorting out the mess here.” “I shall be honoured to be of service to you in that endeavour, sir,” said Nicholas. “You’ll need a strong pair of arms and a devoted, unwavering heart.” “Matilda doesn’t know her way around the Fair like you do, dearest,” Jasmine said at once. “If we want to be quick, you’d better go with her.” Giving Luke a look of deep gratitude, Jasmine whisked Matilda and Nicholas away, ferrying them herself out to the car to prevent either from doubling back at a most inconvenient moment. Luke got to work. First, the goat. His magic was a library of old books, the rustle of its pages a constant, comforting hum of background noise in his mind. The spines of spellbooks cracked open when he wanted to cast a spell, pages turning until the spell he needed was at his fingertips, and the spell he needed right now was one that would lull an animal to sleep. It was a tricky spell, particularly for somebody like Luke, who, on top of having a completely ordinary amount of magic, tended not to mess about with spells that affected living things. Take the goat, for example. The sleepy spell was supposed to conjure lavender and lullabies and other soporific sorts of things, but as the fingers of one of Luke’s hands moved in the air, almost like he was playing notes on an invisible piano, the goat wasn’t having it. Like a toddler rebelling at the first sign of drowsiness, determined to put bedtime off as long as possible, the goat bucked and baaed and, outraged, tried to chew at the knee of Luke’s jeans. Luke refused to relent, even with one very soggy knee, and bit by bit, the infernal creature was bested. Once the goat was drooling blissfully on an undamaged patch of grass not far from the disgusted chickens, Luke moved on to his next spell. It was a much easier one, and also a much more tedious one, but frankly, Luke felt like he could do with a bit of tedium right about now. The spell was the one witches usually used when they wanted to summon their coat from across the room or, say, arrest the fall of a child who insisted on jumping off balconies, but on this particular occasion, Luke needed to use it to restore many, many clumps of grass and ravaged lumps of earth to their rightful places. Matilda, Nicholas, and the goat’s exasperated owner arrived just as he was finishing up. Matilda grabbed Luke’s face in her hands and planted a smacker of a kiss on his forehead, Nicholas goggled at the repaired garden in awe, and the owner of the goat retrieved the goat, muttering, “Don’t see what all the fuss was about, everything looks fine to me,” as he departed. After that, the only thing left for Luke to do was to salvage what he could in Matilda’s vegetable patch. Jasmine convinced Matilda and Nicholas to go inside for a restorative cup of tea so that Luke could have a few more minutes unobserved. He didn’t have quite enough magic to revive beheaded wildflowers or regrow partly digested vegetables, but he took stock of what had survived (one pumpkin, a handful of pepper plants, and three artichokes, all of which probably had Sera’s magic to thank for their resilience in the face of the goat’s onslaught) and tidied up the rest of the patch. “It’s adorable that anybody thinks anything happens in this house that I don’t know about,” a voice said behind him. He stood, turning. Sera was studying the garden. Luke had a feeling she could see every seam and stitch of his magic. She looked intrigued. “Was it a goat?” He cracked a smile. “Of course it was a goat.” She was quiet for a moment. Then, pushing her windblown hair behind one ear, she turned to look at him. “You fixed it.” “I fixed what I could. You’ll need new wellies.” “You didn’t have to do that.” “No,” Luke agreed. She smiled, a proper smile, one that reached all the way into her eyes. “Thank you.” It felt essential, somehow, that Luke look away. He nodded at the house. “Are you going to tell them you know?” “No, I think I’ll take that one to my grave.” As she stomped across the overgrown grass back to the house, Luke thought he was beginning to understand. Matilda’s despair over the goat she’d so optimistically brought home for a visit. Nicholas’s chivalrous outrage. Jasmine saying quietly, devastatingly upset. Sera choosing to pretend not to know. It seemed at first glance like ridiculous theatre, unnecessary and a bit silly, but at the heart of it, weren’t they just a handful of people trying to be good to one another? It was the first thing about the inn that made sense to him. It would probably be the last thing too. Excerpted from A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, copyright © 2025 by Sangu Mandanna. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping</i> by Sangu Mandanna appeared first on Reactor.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have delivered on the biggest legislative promises of the Republican Party with last week’s passage of the “big, beautiful bill”—extending the 2017 tax cuts and funding border security. But the Republican-controlled Congress’ budget fights are far from over. Here’s what to watch in the coming months. Appropriations: A Shutdown Showdown Congress has until Oct. 1 to fund the federal government and avoid a shutdown. A nasty partisan blame game is likely when Republicans and Democrats try to work together on the 12 budget bills that make up the appropriations process. While the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation process set spending levels for “mandatory spending,” Republicans now have to turn toward appropriations, where they’ll need some Democratic assistance to allocate discretionary funds. Unlike budget reconciliation bills, the appropriations process requires 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor in the Senate if the minority forces the issue. Congress passed a continuing resolution in March to continue to fund the government along the Biden administration’s parameters, but that resolution is set to expire at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (left) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both D-N.Y. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images) The process will be far from easy. Democrat congressional leadership received brutal backlash for allowing the March continuing resolution to pass, leading to shouting matches at town halls and calls for a change in leadership. “I think Senate Democrats have to sit down and take a look and decide whether or not Chuck Schumer is the one to lead in this moment,” firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said in March after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., voted for the continuing resolution. Democrats will likely be under immense pressure from their base and from more strident members of Congress to obstruct the Republicans’ attempts to pass the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government. More ‘Big, Beautiful Bills’? It appears Johnson has taken a liking to budget reconciliation bills as a way to enact transformative legislation without Democrat votes. Shortly after passing the “big, beautiful bill,” Johnson said on TV’s “Fox News Sunday” he would be rolling out even more. “We’ve been planning a second reconciliation bill for the fall that would be attached to the next fiscal year, and then potentially one in the spring. That’s my plan—three reconciliation bills before this Congress is over,” he said. WATCH: @SpeakerJohnson discusses the GOP's win on the ‘Big Beautiful Bill', and the political impact as we inch closer to next year’s midterms. pic.twitter.com/TUrDf39sQZ— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 6, 2025 Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which created the budget reconciliation process, Congress is generally allowed one reconciliation bill per fiscal year for each budget resolution, which is essentially a nonbinding rough draft for the legislation.  But Johnson is staying mum on what exactly would be in those future bills. “You’ll see more of us advancing these common-sense principles to deliver that ‘America first’ agenda for the American people,” he said. Johnson’s proposal of follow-up reconciliation bills may have helped secure the votes of final holdouts in the House. House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., suggested that shortly before the bill’s passage. Holdouts “wanted to speak with the president, and they wanted to get some assurances from the president that we’re not done, that this process is still going to continue through rescission and through other reconciliations, and obviously, they got those assurances to the point where they feel that they will be voting ‘yes,’” McClain said. That could mean fiscal hawks were told they would receive a bill that would enshrine deeper spending cuts into law. But passing a second “big, beautiful bill” might be just as hard as passing the first one. For one thing, the GOP has succeeded in its main mission of delivering on tax cuts and border security. Without these incentives, it will be difficult to create the same sense of urgency for members to get on board.  A lot of political capital was spent in getting the megabill over the finish line. When Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., indicated he would not vote for it, President Donald Trump threatened to support a primary challenger against him, which may have precipitated Tillis announcing he would not seek reelection next year. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images) Tillis, who had bucked the party line before, would have nothing to lose anymore if he were to take issue with a follow-up bill. There’s also Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who was brought over to a “yes” on the “big, beautiful bill,” but urged the House to reject it.  Murkowski delivered the 50th vote, which allowed Republican leadership to pass the bill with Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaking vote. Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins also voted against the bill despite the maximum pressure applied by the White House and Senate leadership. What’s more, Johnson and Thune will have a lot on their plates as they work on appropriations in the coming months. An autumn megabill is ambitious, to say the least. Codifying DOGE Cuts Congress has until July 18 to vote for a White House-backed rescissions package that would cancel unspent funds for public broadcasting and foreign aid. The package, which targets National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding, was passed through the House by a 214-212 margin in June. This legislation could run into trouble in the Senate, where some senators are bristling at cutting funding. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Collins has called purported cuts to AIDS prevention programs in the package “extraordinarily ill-advised and shortsighted” and has floated the idea of “drafting an alternative package of rescissions.” Despite the fact that the package cuts $9.4 billion—a pittance compared to the federal government’s roughly $7 trillion in spending in 2024 alone—the Senate may soften this rescission package to be sent back to the House for final passage. The post Congress’ Budget Fights Have Only Just Begun appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In January 2025, the White House finally did what should have been done years ago: designate Mexico’s brutal drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. This action gives U.S. authorities broader tools to freeze assets, gather intelligence, and dismantle these violent syndicates. As Border Czar Tom Homan said last week on X, “The Biden Administration is responsible for the most inhumane immigration policies in U.S. history.” He is right. The open border has created the perfect storm for chaos, and the cartels are thriving because of it.  The fentanyl crisis was not accidental. China supplies the chemicals, but it is the Mexican cartels who manufacture and distribute the poison. Fentanyl is a synthetic killer that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives. None of this would have been possible without the Biden administration’s reckless border policies. The cartels were given free rein to exploit a system that no longer functions.  Today’s cartels are not street gangs. They are paramilitary empires. Groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel have private armies, armored vehicles, encrypted communications, and surveillance technology. Some even use spyware like Pegasus to monitor law enforcement, journalists, and rival organizations. They are militarized, disciplined, and global in reach. And they operated with confidence because they knew our border was wide open.  In 2023, when Ovidio Guzmán Lopez, son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was arrested, the Sinaloa Cartel launched a violent siege in the Mexican city of Culiacán. They shut down highways, attacked airports, and engaged in urban warfare with the Mexican military. That was not just a criminal response. It was an act of war. If you think something like that cannot happen in the United States, think again.  The cartels already operate in all 50 states. Their distribution networks are active in every major city and many small towns. They traffic fentanyl, weapons, and human beings. They are embedded in communities across the country. And when millions of illegal immigrants poured over the border, often smuggled by cartel networks, the federal government had no idea who they were, what they were carrying, or where they were going.  You want to stop the fentanyl epidemic? Secure the border. You want to prevent human trafficking and modern slavery? Secure the border. You want to stop foreign terrorist organizations from taking root on American soil? Secure the border.  During President Donald Trump’s first term, immigration enforcement was strong, and cartel influence was being pushed back. The “Remain in Mexico” policy, increased wall construction, and support for Border Patrol were working. But when the Biden administration took office, those policies were dismantled. Remain in Mexico ended. Border wall construction stopped. Deportations plummeted. Sanctuary cities expanded. The result was predictable. The border collapsed.  The Biden administration replaced security with surrender. Legal immigration involves background checks, interviews, and proper documentation. But open-border Democrats removed those safeguards. Instead of compassion, they delivered chaos. And in doing so, they handed the cartels their biggest victory in history.  This outcome was avoidable. Trump and conservative leaders issued clear warnings. They called for the cartels to be designated as terrorist organizations. They demanded action to stop fentanyl, close loopholes, and build the infrastructure necessary to defend our border. They were mocked by the media and ignored by the Left. But they were right all along.  Now the free world is facing the consequences. Cartels are no longer simply drug traffickers. They are fully operational, foreign terrorist organizations with the resources to challenge governments. And thanks to former President Joe Biden’s policies, they have a foothold inside the United States.  This is not just Mexico’s problem anymore. It is a problem of the whole free world. We are in a new kind of war. It is a war fought with drugs, deception, and terror. And we are on the front lines, especially as fentanyl has already penetrated Europe.  Remember the days when Trump was blaming China for the fentanyl epidemic and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans? Well, folks, it is all true, but it is about to change. For the worst. And the change will be rapid. The Mexican drug cartels have started a campaign of hiring top chemists and chemical scientists, and they have already hired hundreds. The ultimate goal? To produce their own fentanyl precursors and cut ties with China as their main supplier. When they do that—it is not “if” but “when”—fentanyl will become cheaper, much more accessible, and much more widely spread in pure form and in laced drugs. And yes, there will be a new wave of mass deaths because of that. Because of fentanyl. Because of the cartels.          The United States must act with urgency. That means finishing the wall, deploying the National Guard where necessary, continue restoring Trump immigration policies, and using every legal and military tool available to dismantle the cartels before more Americans die.  Because if the U.S. does not fully act, the next cartel siege will not happen in Sinaloa. It will happen in South Texas, in rural Arizona, or in middle America.  And when it does, we will know exactly who to blame.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Cartels at the US Gate: How the Open Border Fueled a Foreign Terror Threat appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Churches can speak about candidates from the pulpit without risking their nonprofit status, the IRS said in a court filing on Monday. The IRS reached the agreement to resolve a lawsuit brought by two Christian nonprofits, the National Religious Broadcasters and Intercessors for America, and two Texas churches. Communicating with congregants about candidates is more like a “family discussion concerning candidates” than participating in a campaign or seeking to change the outcome of an election, the IRS said in a joint filing with the organizations. Though the initial lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the entire Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and charities from participating in political campaign activity, the proposed consent decree would interpret the provision “so that it does not reach communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith.” This interpretation is in line with the IRS’ general enforcement practice, the filing notes. “For many houses of worship, the exercise of their religious beliefs includes teaching or instructing their congregations regarding all aspects of life, including guidance concerning the impact of faith on the choices inherent in electoral politics,” the filing states. “Interpreting the Johnson Amendment to reach such communications would create serious tension with the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause: That broad interpretation would treat religions that do not speak directly to matters of electoral politics more favorably than religions that do so—favoring some religions over others based on their speech to their own congregations in connection with religious services through customary channels of worship and religious communication,” it continues. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Conservative Churches Win Massive Concession in Court Case Against IRS appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrats Demanding Blood; Antifa Delivering It

The Sheiks of Hebron Got Some Shaking Going On

Once near-mythological, a new Māori-led initiative is building genomes for all nine moa species.

Radar systems like those used at airports may be inadvertently revealing our existence to advanced extraterrestrial civilisations.

Lefty billionaire Michael Bloomberg is back in the spotlight exploiting the disastrous Texas floods to blow a gasket over arguably his most obsessive political issue — you guessed it — climate change. The anti-American energy media mogul belched out a new op-ed on Bloomberg Opinion pontificating how “The Texas Floods Were Made Worse by Climate Denialism.” No, he wasn’t kidding. Bloomberg railed about how “[t]he scientific evidence is clear that the more frequent extreme weather we are experiencing is being driven by climate change — and that it’s only going to get worse.” Of course the Texas floods which killed over 100 people couldn’t just be the result of a natural disaster without shoe-horning climate politics into it, right? But Bloomberg channeled his dubious eco-scare porn to instigate political backlash against Texas’s elected leaders: “[Texas elected officials] owe [the victims’ families] a sincere commitment to righting their deadly wrong, by tackling the problem they’ve turned their backs on for too long: climate change.” JunkScience.com founder Steve Milloy blasted Bloomberg for his outrageously tone-deaf political hot take in comments to MRC Business. “It's sad to see radical climate activists like Michael Bloomberg trying to exploit the tragic Texas flooding to advance its political agenda.” As Milloy analyzed, “Just for the record: This area of Texas is known for flash floods, extreme rainfall is not correlated with emissions and there hasn't even been any ‘global warming’ over the past five days.”  But Bloomberg clearly saw an opportunity to use the deaths of Texans to drag the climate boogeyman back into the national conversation. “The refusal to recognize that climate change carries a death penalty is sending innocent people, including far too many children, to early graves,” he spewed. Bloomberg then — along with other media talking heads — ridiculously tried to blame the Texas floods as being an indirect result of President Donald Trump gutting bloated government waste on climate activist pet projects and undoing absurd eco-regulations on the U.S. economy: The Trump administration has erased the words ‘climate change” — and critical climate data and information — from government websites, as if the problem could be wished away. It is attempting to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s obligation to fight climate change. Milloy pointed out that “the National Weather Service was sufficiently staffed and issued warnings in time for local officials to be aware of the risks.” The NWS’s X account was issuing warnings to Texas residents from Thursday, July 3 into the wee hours of Friday, July 4. Milloy concluded that an “[i]nvestigation will show how the warning system failed and improvements will be made. We should pray for the families and condemn the climate ambulance chasers.” No kidding. Bloomberg actually even tried to make the tragedy a Get-Out-The-Vote platform: There is much more that our governments can be doing to protect us — and our children and theirs — from the worsening effects of climate change. But for that to happen, all of us need to make our voices heard, and our votes count. Despicable. This behavior is par for the course for Bloomberg — worth a whopping $104.7 billion —  who has proven to have more of an affinity for advancing his own political interests than the less affluent. After all, this is the same billionaire who pledged at least $1 billion to wipe out America’s entire coal industry in the name of Gaia, which would undoubtedly obliterate the jobs of the 42,600 workers employed in that sector.  No one should be under any illusions. Bloomberg is obsessed with advancing his own political agenda more than he’ll ever be with taking up the causes of the plebeians. And it’s not even close. 

For their Tuesday podcast, CNN/PBS anchor Christiane Amanpour and ex-husband/former Clinton official Jamie Rubin warned that Trump’s budget cuts, both foreign and domestic, will get people killed. Discussing the Texas floods, Amanpour wondered, “So Jamie, do you feel comfortable linking what just happened with the cuts that President Trump has enacted from day one in all the executive orders?” Rubin tried to hedge, “Look, it's probably not possible, nor really we should be pointing a finger like that and so directly, because who knows whether a better prediction would have yielded a better preparation on the part of the people at this camp.”     However, he had no problems claiming, “What we can say is that to cut off our nose, that is the ability to predict climate, predict weather, because scientists came up with the conclusion verified by everyone in the scientific community that climate change has a man-made component. That's what motivated the Trump and Musk people, and think about that. Musk claims to be this great environmentalist who has electric cars, and yet he allowed the Trump administration and his people allowed them to cut at the Weather Service precisely because they don't like the conclusions the Weather Service goes to someday, somehow, someway those cuts will hurt or harm or kill people.” Concluding, Rubin gave another unsatisfying qualification, “Whether it happened in this case, whether it's going to happen down the road, it's hard to know. And I don't think that finger should be particularly blamed at a time like this. But we know that cutting science, cutting knowledge can kill people.” Amanpour agreed, “And he has rolled back so much in the climate space, you can't even name all the departments, but it's essentially complete. It's almost as somebody said, ‘We are now sleepwalking into climate catastrophe,’ and nobody right now is paying a huge amount of attention because there's so much else coming at us, but it is the world's global existential threat.” That somebody was U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Later, the conversation shifted to foreign aid, with Amanpour wondering, “Are they just hoping that nobody pays attention and they can just cut this vital soft power and humanitarian life-saving aid without anybody noticing or anybody caring?”  Rubin began into a lengthy denunciation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “Well, I certainly hope not, and that's why we're doing this podcast, and that's why a lot of reporters have spent their time looking into this. I mean, think about Secretary of State Rubio, who had a pretty good reputation, often talked about the great work that AID.”     Amanpour then interrupted to play a 2019 clip of Rubio “because it is the height of hypocrisy.” In the video, Rubio claimed, “Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and that will bring us to balance is lying to you. Foreign aid is less than one percent of our budget. It's just not true.” That doesn’t prove hypocrisy. If USAID wandered so far off course that its elimination and the complete restructuring of U.S. foreign aid was the only recourse, then cutting it out of principle is justified. Nevertheless, Amanpour quipped, “But sorry, sorry. He is now a convert to cutting it.” Rubin then resumed his lengthy anti-Rubio speech, “Well, of course, he's a convert to whatever Donald Trump wants. That's what's so sad about Marco Rubio… I thought he was one of the brightest stars in the Republican Party. How do you justify these things one after another? Musk cut AID, you know, destroyed it while Rubio was on a trip in El Salvador working with one of the most right-wing dictators there. And they were cutting programs that were holding that dictator to account.” He also suggested that the fate of USAID is one of those great historical moments, like the Holocaust, that requires one to take a stand and that Rubio has failed: So, Marco Rubio has a lot of questions that he's going to face for the rest of his life about what he did in his time in government. You know, I always remember when I was growing up and you always said to yourself when you learned about great moments in history: World War II, the Holocaust, all that, you know, what would you do if you were in power? How would you behave? Would you just go along? Would you fight? Would you quit? Would you be an honorable person? Whatever one thinks of foreign aid, the idea that the USAID bureaucracy was so vitally important that those defending it are somehow Churchillian figures standing up at a critical junction of history is more than a little hyperbolic. Here is a transcript for the July 8 show: Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin              7/8/2025 1 Minute, 7 Seconds CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So Jamie, do you feel comfortable linking what just happened with the cuts that President Trump has enacted from day one in all the executive orders? JAMIE RUBIN: Look, it's probably not possible, nor really we should be pointing a finger like that and so directly, because who knows whether a better prediction would have yielded a better preparation on the part of the people at this camp. But what we can say is that to cut off our nose, that is the ability to predict climate, predict weather, because scientists came up with the conclusion verified by everyone in the scientific community that climate change has a man-made component. That's what motivated the Trump and Musk people, and think about that. Musk claims to be this great environmentalist who has electric cars, and yet he allowed the Trump administration and his people allowed them to cut at the Weather Service precisely because they don't like the conclusions the Weather Service goes to someday, somehow, someway those cuts will hurt or harm or kill people. Whether it happened in this case, whether it's going to happen down the road, it's hard to know. And I don't think that finger should be particularly blamed at a time like this. But we know that cutting science, cutting knowledge can kill people. AMANPOUR: And he has rolled back so much in the climate space, you can't even name all the departments, but it's essentially complete. It's almost as somebody said, “we are now sleepwalking into climate catastrophe” and nobody right now is paying a huge amount of attention because there's so much else coming at us, but it is the world's global existential threat. … 12 Minutes, 34 Seconds AMANPOUR: Are they just hoping that nobody pays attention and they can just cut this vital soft power and humanitarian life-saving aid without anybody noticing or anybody caring? RUBIN: Well, I certainly hope not, and that's why we're doing this podcast, and that's why a lot of reporters have spent their time looking into this. I mean, think about Secretary of State Rubio, who had a pretty good reputation, often talked about the great work that AID— AMANPOUR: Let me stop you because we have that sound bite. Let me stop you. RUBIN: Can we, let's play it. AMANPOUR: We're going to play it because it is the height of hypocrisy. MARCO RUBIO [AUGUST 21, 2019]: Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and that will bring us to balance is lying to you. Foreign aid is less than one percent of our budget. It's just not true. AMANPOUR: But sorry, sorry. He is now a convert to cutting it. RUBIN: Well, of course, he's a convert to whatever Donald Trump wants. That's what's so sad about Marco Rubio. He had a great reputation as a-- quite a quality thinker in the Senate on foreign affairs, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I thought he was one of the brightest stars in the Republican Party. How do you justify these things one after another? Musk cut AID, you know, destroyed it while Rubio was on a trip in El Salvador working with one of the most right-wing dictators there. And they were cutting programs that were holding that dictator to account. So, Marco Rubio has a lot of questions that he's going to face for the rest of his life about what he did in his time in government. You know, I always remember when I was growing up and you always said to yourself when you learned about great moments in history: World War II, the Holocaust, all that, you know, what would you do if you were in power? How would you behave? Would you just go along? Would you fight? Would you quit? Would you be an honorable person? And that's what made me fight so hard for Bosnia and Kosovo when I was in government. As you know, I was prepared to get fired because it seemed that important. So, here are these people who care about power so much and their fame and their glory, but what are they part of? They're part of something that's going to haunt them for the rest of their life. Things they did, things they allowed to happen. And he's in charge. Marco Rubio is in charge. He's got AID, he's in charge of. The National Security Council, he's in charge of, and the Secretary of State. He's Donald Trump's one-man foreign policy apparatus. And he is allowing this to happen. And I don't know, I don't know how he's going to defend himself with this constituency for the rest of his life. Remember this is a man who came from Cuban refugees who came to this country promoting democracy and saying how important it was to fight communism. And now who's going to gain from all these cuts in foreign aid around the world? The Chinese Communist Party.