Cartoons Sunday!

Plus Kimmel, music, commentary.

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.

Another travel day for me today but here we go somewhat limited…

Kimmel had a rare Friday night show and monologue. Gotta love the raccoon.

New York Times report:

What Visual Evidence Tells Us About Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus in Lebanon

The Israeli military has deployed white phosphorus, an incendiary substance that can be extremely harmful, over populated areas in Lebanon in its battle against Hezbollah, according to experts, aid groups and visual evidence collected by The New York Times.

Often deployed by militaries to create fires and smoke screens during combat, white phosphorus is not illegal in itself, but deploying it deliberately against civilians or in an area populated by civilians violates the international laws of war. Human rights advocates have raised concerns that civilians have been affected by the Israeli military’s use of it.

As Trump said little to mark the occasion: At Normandy, Secretary Hegseth recognized those who stormed World War II beaches against Nazi forces. Then, per a pool report, he added this: "Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not."

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yesterday Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post noted a report from former senior executive at the Social Security Administration Jeremiah Schofield, who is now a whistleblower. Schofield says that officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hatched a plan to make immigrants self-deport by declaring 2.7 million of them dead. Some of those people on the list were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Being listed on the Death Master File cuts off people’s access to wages, banks and other financial systems, and other services. The idea appears to have been that such an erasure would force people either to leave the country or to go to a Social Security office where they could be arrested. While they ultimately did not implement the larger plan, officials did move 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants into that database.

On Thursday, Douglas MacMillan of the Washington Post reported that ICE is abandoning a policy begun under the Biden administration in 2021 that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate the deaths of detainees who died within 30 days of their release. The policy was designed to make sure ICE could not pass off deaths caused by conditions in the detention centers simply by releasing severely ill people.

At least 18 people incarcerated in detainment facilities have died in the first five months of 2026. At least 30 died last year, the highest number in 20 years. MacMillan notes that a number of those deaths happened after detainees were taken to the hospital.

Today Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) went back to Delaney Hall, the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, to talk with detainees. Despite the established congressional duty of oversight, “ICE refused to let me talk to any detainees,” he said. “They restricted my ability to do my job.”

Kim reported that as he went through the women’s unit, “the women were trying to get my attention and flagging for me, waving their hands, and they were pointing into one of the beds. And I looked over, and I saw a woman curled up in a fetal position, clearly in some pain and agony. ICE and GEO Group [the private prison company that runs Delaney Hall on a federal contract] told me that they cannot share with me what is happening. I’m very concerned about that woman…. They have only one full-time doctor in this facility that has hundreds and hundreds of detainees.”

“The American people deserve to know what is happening,” Kim said. “We deserve to be able to hear directly from the detainees. They are doing whatever they can to impede congressional oversight and oversight from the American people.”

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) notes that the $70 billion in tax money Republicans just gave to ICE and Border Patrol could provide free childcare for 1.3 million children through September 2028, cover the annual cost of groceries for about 10.7 million U.S. households, provide a year of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to 31 million Americans, expand the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits for at least a year, cancel about 31.5% of Americans’ medical debt, and end homelessness for about eight years.

From the second night of the celebration of American music at the new Springsteen Center, Sheryl Crow joined by Bruce for “I Shall Be Released.”

And Jackson Browne with Little Stevie, “I Am a Patriot.”

From Tunes to Toons

Bramhall:

Stahler:

Margolis and Cook:

Dering:

Wolverton:

Photo Finish

From my camera to you: Monet at MOMA.