Poetic Justice
Buck Banks | Aug. 5, 2025
NASA’s Sean Duffy wants a lunar nuclear reactor — and soon!
We’ve perfected the tech on earth, so the timing’s opportune!
Just like Elon Musk’s electric cars,
We’ll need electricity to get to Mars,
And an extension cord that reaches from there to the Moon.
Verbatim
“We had the island to ourselves which was very cool. I had never been to Disneyland. I thought it was awesome… Sorry to all the people that are Disneyland for the longer lines, but we had a very good time.”
— Vice President JD Vance, talking to Katie Miller, on Disneyland being shut down for one of his many family vacations.
“He’s sending in the troops because he can—because D.C., as a federal enclave with few protections from presidential overreach, makes for a uniquely soft target. This ostensible show of strength is more like an admission of weakness. It is the behavior of a bully: very bad for the people it touches, but not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”
— Quinta Jurecic
“I wish Marjorie Taylor Greene got on her knees for her lord and savior as much as she got on her knees for men who aren’t her husband. Just another fake Christian.”
— Laura Loomer, on X.
Numerati
40,000 pounds
More than 20 tons of Burmese python have now been pulled from the wilds of Southwest Florida by one of the region’s most enduring and effective science teams, reported the Palm Beach Post. In early June, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida announced it had removed more than 6,300 pounds of snakes during the most recent six-month season, pushing the program’s total haul past the 40,000-pound mark since its launch in 2013.
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$27.7 billion
data from the Treasury Department released Tuesday afternoon confirmed that July marked another record month on the revenue front, with some $27.7 billion in customs duties coming into US coffers, reports Yahoo Finance. This was another step up from June’s total of $26.6 billion and May’s total of $22.2 billion. It represents a significant jump from around $8 billion in customs duties one year ago and brings the total for the fiscal year to around $135.7 billion.
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-9%
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 83% of Republican-leaning Americans approve of President Trump, down from 92% in January. Interestingly, a majority of Americans think Trump knew some (27%) or a lot (44%) about the sex crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein against underage girls before investigations into Epstein began; only 8% say he knew nothing about them.
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$37 trillion
“The U.S. government’s gross national debt has surpassed $37 trillion, a record that highlights the accelerating debt on America’s balance sheet and increased cost pressures on taxpayers,” the AP reports.
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$291 billion
“The U.S. government’s budget deficit grew nearly 20% in July to $291 billion despite a $21 billion jump in customs duty collections from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with outlays growing faster than receipts,” Reuters reports.
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