Skyline Happenings

Submitted by Pam Peterson

Submitted by Pam Peterson

Submitted by. Pam Peterson

Submitted by Pam Peterson

Submitted by Bob Peterson

https://apple.news/AXdISXghKSbeNXzpQEH_UCA

Submitted by Charlotte Lin

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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/11/02/the-state-officials-defending-the-midterms-from-the-president?cndid=73437654&utm_mailing=tny_nl_6667_daily_102526_rukf6k6p7s

Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to assert federal control over elections. From the beginning of his second term, he has issued executive orders attempting to restrict voter registration, impose new regulations on voting machines, and limit voting by mail. (Most of these have been blocked by the courts.) And attempts to seize power over voting have come from every corner of the executive branch: an F.B.I. raid of election offices in Georgia in January, mounting lawsuits against states by the Justice Department, and warnings that armed ICE agents may be sent to the polls this fall.

How big a threat is Trump to the midterms? In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, Barton Gellman, whose writing ahead of the 2020 election anticipated key maneuvers that Trump and his allies would pursue to try to overturn that result, reports on what might happen this year. First, the good news: there is little evidence of a master plan. As a former senior trial attorney in the D.O.J.’s voting section tells Gellman, there has been “no coherent strategy” from the Administration to upend the midterms. “There’s malevolence, but there’s a lot of incompetence,” he added, noting the near legal wipeout that Trump’s lawyers have experienced in courtrooms across the country. “They don’t have a single success.”

Gellman writes that even Trump’s marginal influence on voting could have an impact on close races this year. And he reports on the scenarios that some local election officials have been preparing for—all centered on the fear “that the President could do something new and outlandishly lawless on or close to Election Day.” Here’s just one nightmarish, if unlikely, hypothetical: suppose that the F.B.I. shows up at a polling place and seizes ballots or voting machines, citing some suspected irregularity, and breaks the chain of custody and leaves actual results in doubt. But that would take getting a warrant from a judge—as one expert puts it, “extremely unlikely yet disastrous if it happens.”

Much of the hope for the nation’s election integrity this cycle rests on local officials, including Republicans, who have stood up to immense pressure from Trump, and even faced death threats from strangers. Gellman profiles the lieutenant governor of Utah, Deidre Henderson, who is tasked with running the state’s elections, and has fought a lonely, and boldly public, battle for the rule of law. “It sure looks like they’re trying to take over control of elections to make sure only people they want to vote are voting,” Henderson tells Gellman, about the Administration’s actions. “To me, as an American and a Republican, it’s offensive.” 

from David Horsey’s Substack

I have a theory about Bill Gates, once the world’s richest man.

Yes, he has a reputation as a testy genius who does not suffer fools lightly. He has other well-publicized demerits, as well, that do not need to be listed. Nevertheless, through the Gates Foundation, he is doing a great thing by spending down all the billions he made as a co-founder of Microsoft by initiating and sustaining targeted efforts to cure diseases and raise up some of the most impoverished people on the planet.

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My theory is that he got his core values from his parents, Bill Sr. and Mary Gates, two Seattle legends in the legal community and in civic engagement who knew that philanthropy was all about giving, not getting something in return.

Unfortunately, the folks now in charge of Microsoft — as well as the people running two other Seattle-based companies, Amazon and T-Mobile — seem not to have learned that lesson.

The three companies joined other tech titans, such as Meta and Palantir, to contribute tens-of-millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s self-glorifying, illegal scheme to build a grandiose ballroom to replace the White House East Wing which was demolished when the president unilaterally brought in a wrecking crew to knock it down.

It should be noted that T-Mobile apologists insist their money was donated indirectly through the Trust for the National Mall. That only gets them off the hook if they stipulated that none of the money should go to Trump’s ballroom, which, I believe, they did not do.

Is this a case of really smart people unwittingly doing something really dumb? Did they somehow not know Trump had no authorization from Congress or any other entity to tear down part of the most historic home in America? Did they miss hearing Trump’s lies about the cost of the ballroom or his false claim that taxpayers would not end up footing a significant part of the bill for his vanity project?

No, I do not think they are that stupid. I think they did not care. The only thing that mattered to the Seattle tech giants and their peers in Silicon Valley was gaining favor with the imperious, vengeful man in the Oval Office so that their access to lucrative federal contracts would not be endangered.

A Microsoft flack claimed the company’s donation was aimed to help “update a home built more than 200 years ago so that it can meet 21st century needs.”

Funny how no one saw that need before Trump. The president is either a visionary or a megalomaniac. I am quite sure it is the latter, and I am quite sure the people who run Microsoft and the other companies know that, too, even if their PR hacks do not.

Would Microsoft have supported Trump’s lawless desecration of the White House if Bill Gates were still in charge? I cannot say for certain, although I’d like to think not.

What I do know is that his parents would have put their money into something far more ethical and worthy and would not have expected to get a federal contract in return.