Lake America on Google Maps (Lake Ontario elsewhere).
The Donroe Doctrine is Alive – Following President Trump’s announcement that the US will have access to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, Houston’s Chevron announced Wednesday it is expanding operations there to take advantage of its huge known reserves, NPR’s All Things Considered reports.
“The catalyst for transforming Venezuela is energy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at Chevron’s announcement, with its CEO, Mike Wirth, and Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez at Miraflores Palace in Caracas. “The catalyst for improving life conditions of Americans, our hemisphere and everyone in the world is to massively expand energy production around the world.”
But not quite yet, for everybody.
“They’re not ready for elections, but at some point they will be,” Trump said of Venezuela last Friday, as he announced US access to its oil (PBS News).
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What the Hegseth? – Many Republicans outside the White House, and probably a few within, are calling for President Trump’s removal of Defense/war Secretary Pete Hegseth after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced his resignation Monday.
“I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,” lame duck Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) wrote of Hegseth on X-Twitter, according to Politico.
Now The Washington Post scoops that President Trump late last week asked Driscoll to remain on at least through the midterms, according to people familiar with the meeting.
At that meeting last week, Driscoll told Trump he was concerned about the damage Hegseth was doing to the Army, people familiar with the conversation told WaPo.
An unnamed White House spokesperson disputed that characterization of the meeting, the newspaper reports.
Driscoll and Hegseth repeatedly clashed over Hegseth’s firing of several Army generals, stifling advancement of other top officers and blocking some of Driscoll’s efforts to modernize the Army.
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Gloria Steinem Has Died – Probably the most high-profile feminist leader of the late 20th Century, Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem has died at her home in New York City. She was 92.
Steinem’s journalism career took off with the 1963 publication in Show magazine of “A Bunny’s Tale,” described in her New York Times obituary as “a witty exposé” of her undercover stint as a cotton-tailed waitress at the Playboy Club in New York City. She was a co-founder of New York magazine in 1968, where she developed her political journalism chops writing “The City Politic” column.
In 1969, some four words ahead of Roe v. Wade, Steinem attended a “speak out” of women’s illegal abortions (she had had one at age 22), and in 1971 she helped launch Ms. which the NYT describes as the first glossy national publication created, owned and run entirely by women. The author of nearly a dozen non-fiction books, Steinem’s An Unexpected Life is scheduled for publication in September.
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Are We Blue? – Apparently not. In what appears to be another example of President Trump’s work to put his gold-plated imprimatur on the nation’s capital, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has removed artist Joel Shapiro’s “Blue,” a large metal sculpture of a human stick figure, installed in 2019.
“Blue” was targeted for removal after Kennedy Center Chairman Trump’s takeover last year, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. Would “Red” have survived the Trump administration?
Shapiro died in 2025. His daughter and president of his foundation, Ivy Shapiro, said he would have been “alarmed” it has been removed from its intended location.
“In Joel’s mind, it was one of his greatest site-specific commissions,” she told the NYT, “which celebrated joy, freedom and creativity.”
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded is`up 2.33 cents Thursday to $4.1436, AAA reports, or $1.3274 costlier than on February 27. Diesel shot up 16.07 cents to $5.7832 per gallon, $2.0967 costlier than in late February. –TL
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WEDNESDAY 9/2/26
Prog v. Prog – Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), 80, is 33 years older than Rep. Seth Moulton, and beat him in Tuesday’s Massachusetts Democratic primary by 29.8 points, The Associated Press reports. Both Markey and Moulton are progressives, (though Moulton rankled many Democrats with comments critical about trans athletes playing girls’ and women’s sports) which suggests that maybe the progressive wave in earlier primaries in other states this midterm season is more about taking on MAGA Republicans than it is about replacing Democratic status quo with a younger generation of the party’s candidates.
Markey is virtually assured re-election to the Senate in deep-blue Massachusetts, where his Republican challenger is John Deaton, who ran for his party’s nomination unopposed Tuesday. Deaton previously ran for Senate in 2024, when he lost to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) by about 20 points.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded is`up 2.49 cents Wednesday to $4.1203, AAA reports, or $1.3041 costlier than on February 27. Diesel is up 5.54 cents to $5.6325 per gallon, $1.9360 costlier than in late February. –TL
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TUESDAY 9/1/26
Whistleblower: USPS Rushing to Suppress Midterm Vote
Midterm Mail-In Ballots Imperiled – President Trump's executive order to take federal control of mail-in ballots could cause "catastrophic failure" in the midterm elections, according to a Whistleblower Aid report published by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Tuesday. A federal official with direct knowledge of the US Postal Service's "secretive, rushed" implementation of Trump's EO has "grave concerns" that "potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballots this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all," according to The New York Times. The report published by the senator was prepared with the assistance of the non-profit Whistleblower Aid.
The federal official alleges the USPS is rushing implementation of Trump’s EO #14399 restricting mail-in ballots to complete a new digital system overseeing mail ballots by September 1.
"Millions of Americans could be disenfranchised in a new election ballot mail system being hastily implemented by the United States Postal Service (USPS), according to the new, alarming revelation from a federal official with direct knowledge of the system's potentially catastrophic outcome," says the Whistleblower Aid report.
The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with the president's EO, ruling a lawsuit to stop it was premature, having been filed before implementation. But days before that, the USPS published a new plan to comply with Trump's order, according to the NYT.
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Ballroom Blitz, Part II – One way or another, the hole in the ground filling up where the White House East Wing used to be is destined to become President Trump’s most enduring legacy on the District of Columbia. The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s lawsuit attempting to put the kibosh on the Trump ballroom failed Monday when the Supreme Court granted the administration’s request, 5-4, to allow construction to continue, per SCOTUSblog.
The eight-page unsigned ruling came 10 days after Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay – a temporary order – that put a lower court’s ruling stopping construction on hold (follow the double-negative).
However, Roberts joined SCOTUS’ three Democratic appointees in dissenting, writing that construction “is likely unlawful” and the 5-4 decision moving construction forward is “no victory for the separation of powers.”
Trump said on August 13 that ballroom construction is “65% complete.”
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Army Secretary Resigns – After months of tension with Pete Hegseth over the war/defense secretary’s thinning of Pentagon generals and admirals, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation to President Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Driscoll, a friend and former law school classmate of Vice President JD Vance, clashed with Hegseth over the direction of the service and outcome of numerous senior officers, including Driscoll’s predecessor as Army secretary, Gen. Randy George, and top Army officer in Europe Gen. Chris Donahue, whom Hegseth downgraded, effectively ending his military career.
Hegseth has plans to cut generals and admirals by 10% overall while thinning four-star positions by 20%, according to the WSJ.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded is`up 1.47 cents Monday to $4.0954, AAA reports, or $1.2792 costlier than on February 27. Diesel is up 3.23 cents to $5.6325 per gallon, $1.8806 costlier than in late February. --TL
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MONDAY 8/31/26
Iran, US Resume Attacks – The US military struck two Iranian rocket launchers it said were about to fire sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz Sunday, according to an email to NPR. Iran retaliated with strikes on US forces in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, marking the first major attack between the US and Iran in more than a month, according to Morning Edition.
The US strike on Iran’s Larak Island killed military personnel and civilians, according to the report.
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One Week Only! – The House is back in town, through Thursday allowing enough time, they hope, to vote on a spending bill the Senate passed before the August break to keep the federal government open past September 30 and the midterms, to December 11 (Politico). Both chambers return September 14 to the 30th before recessing for all of October to the November 3 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Trump campaigns … President Trump travels to Texas Thursday to inject more campaign money into the Republican Party’s “massive” midterms war chest, CQ Roll Call reports, and to stump for Senate nominee Ken Paxton, the ethics-challenged state attorney general who defeated incumbent John Cornyn in the midterms. Polls show Paxton in a “tight race” with Democratic hopeful and state Rep. James Talarico, though there’s not much confidence left in modern polling results, especially for midterm primaries and the election.
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Trump Touts Deal for Venezuelan Oil – The US has a deal with Venezuela to take majority control of its oil reserves though a partnership with a so-far unnamed private company, the State Department said through a US official. Two people familiar with the partnership told The New York Times that the firm is affiliated with Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt López.
The US would have control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, Trump Truth Socialed Friday, almost equal to all the proven reserves in the US.
While Trump promises the deal thus will lower gas prices at the pump for American consumers, it will take at least a couple of years to see any progress in reviving Venezuela’s broken down oil extraction business.
Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez said the agreement would involve developing 17 oil fields and have a “significant impact on our nation’s revival.”
Chevron and Haliburton are in … Chevron and other US companies are near deals to invest billions of dollars into Venezuela’s oil fields, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing “people familiar with the matter.” Haliburton also is in talks to bring equipment systems to oil producers in the country.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded is down 0.91` cents Monday to $4.0807, AAA reports, or $1.2645 costlier than on February 27. Diesel dropped 1.03 cents to $5.6002 per gallon, $1.8483 costlier than in late February.
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On the Lake Front – It is now “Lake America” for Americans, at least, in place of “Lake Ontario,” on Google Maps. This from President Trump’s name change last week in the midst of a contentious trade war with Canada in which the Trump administration is imposing 50% tariffs on such goods as lumber, concrete and hockey sticks.
By Saturday, Google had changed the name of the Great Lake from “Ontario” to “America” for those in America using the map via mobile and desktop, as updated by the US Geographic Names Information System, while it remained Lake Ontario for the rest of the world.
Ontario’s feisty Premier Doug Ford told ABC This Week Sunday that Trump’s change, echoing his “Gulf of America” dictum last year, is like something out of Saturday Night Live.
“No one’s going to call it Lake of America,” Ford said. “It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue being Lake Ontario. It’s just so disappointing.” –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa