Trump’s settlement with the IRS that he controls. The case of the yawning fetuses. And Peter Jackson is making another “Lord of the Rings” movie.
President Trump (head of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government) sued the Internal Revenue Service (part of the Executive Branch, which he heads) for $10 billion for not preventing a leak of the president’s tax return. The president and the IRS (which he controls) announced a settlement in which the agency would pay the patriotic sum of $1.776 billion (of taxpayer money).
With this money, the Department of Justice (part of the Executive Branch, which the president controls) will set up an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate victims of the “weaponization” and “lawfare,” defined as the use of the DOJ and the IRS to punish political enemies. In exchange, the president, who considers himself a victim of such tactics, said that he would also drop his claims of damages in regards to the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and the Russian Collusion accusations.
A commission would be established to examine claims and to disburse the money. Recipients of the compensation would presumably include the January 6 rioters who took over the Capitol Building whom President Trump pardoned.
Furthermore, the Department of Justice issued a separate statement stating that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” (capitalization in the original) President Trump, his family, or his businesses for any tax violations or “Lawfare and/or Weaponization.”
Does this sound on the up and up? Democrats are calling this unprecedented corruption, and even a number of Republicans and Trump supporters don’t like it.
I would add that despite the claim that the “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” pledge from the Department of Justice is a permanent get-out-of-jail-free pass that will give the president and his cronies complete immunity from violating the tax laws and looting the treasury, as Politico notes, the pledge only applies to past, not future violations. That’s the nature of a settlement, the dropping of legal claims.
As for the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” one could make a case that individuals persecuted by the federal government should indeed be compensated. But I’ll believe in the legitimacy of this fund when the critics of President Trump who are victims of his revenge tactic of weaponizing the justice system and waging lawfare against them get their payout.
The Case of the Yawning Fetuses
You know how when you are in a group and someone yawns, that makes you and other people in the group yawn too?
Well, researchers have learned that when their mothers yawn, babies in the womb also yawn!
This finding has puzzled the researchers, since experts think one reason people and many animals yawn is to take in more air, but infants in the womb do not breathe air. “As there is no air for them to draw in,” says the study, “during a yawn they slowly open their mouths, perform movements that resemble breathing in and out and then gently close their mouths again.”
The researchers conclude,
‘This study provides the first empirical evidence that foetal yawning can resonate with maternal behaviour,’ the scientists wrote in the journal Current Biology.
‘These findings challenge the view of foetal behaviour as purely reflexive or entirely self-contained. Instead, they support a picture of the foetus as an organism whose behaviour expression is already integrated into a shared biological context.’
Infants in the womb, who start yawning after 11 weeks, typically yawn 90 seconds after their mother yawns.
Maybe they are just bored in there! Or maybe they are just sleepy. They are certainly intimately bonded with their mother–they can’t see her yawning–but they are clearly feeling, experiencing, responsive children.
Peter Jackson Is Making a New “Lord of the Rings” Movie
Last week in this space, we blogged about new Narnia movies being made, with the Magician’s Nephew scheduled to come out on February 12, 2027.
There is also a new “Lord of the Rings” movie in the works, scheduled for release on Dec. 17, 2027. And it’s being produced by Peter Jackson, who gave us the much-acclaimed movies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus a trilogy of movies based on the Hobbit. This new one is tenatively entitled Lord of the Rings: Hunt for Gollum (not to be confused with the 2009 fan-made movie of the same name).
Here is the description of the upcoming film’s story on the film site IMBD:
Aragorn’s quest to capture Gollum between The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, tracking him to keep the Ring’s location from Sauron. The film explores Aragorn’s early adventures as a ranger.
The film will include much of the original cast of the Lord of the Rings films, including Ian McKellen as Gandalf, But 65-year-old Viggo Mortenssen will not be returning as Aragorn, despite fan consternation and an AI-generated fake trailer that has been circulating. This story will take place 20 years before the events of the Fellowship of the Ring, so a younger Aragorn was cast. Jamie Dornan will take that role.
Though Peter Jackson is producing the movie, he will not direct. He has given that task to Andy Serkis, who played Gollum and will do so again in this movie. Jackson said, “It’s an internal story about Gollum’s psychology and addiction. It’s a personal story to Gollum. Andy knows this guy better than anybody. I didn’t think about me. The more exiting version of this movie is if Any Serkis made it.”
Last summer, in the course of our travels, we listened on Spotify to the audiobook of Andy Serkis reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy in which he performed 132 different voices. I would recommend it for your summer road trips.
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