SAN DIEGO — The USS Midway Museum is opening the doors to a previously unseen, top-secret area of the ship where naval intelligence history was once made.

Dozens of guests flocked to the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum on Friday morning, standing in front of a ribbon and balloon display, that marked the grand opening of the museum’s immersive new exhibit, “Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence.” Men in bright red sport coats, dressed in a style reminiscent of characters from the movie “Men in Black,” assisted retired Rear Adm. and the USS Midway Museum’s current President and CEO Terry Kraft with unveiling the once restricted area of the ship known as the Carrier Intelligence Center, or CVIC.

Opening day of the a new exhibit at the USS Midway Museum called Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence on Friday, June 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“I took over the Midway Museum in 2023 and I thought about spaces that were important to me when I served on Midway. I did two deployments on Midway. I flew forward to combat missions from Desert Storm,” Kraft said. “One of the places where it was kind of transformational for me was all the work we did here in the Carrier Intelligence Center during Operation Desert Storm. So, I wanted to open it up.”

The USS Midway’s CVIC once served as the backbone and nerve center for naval intelligence during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early ’90s. The exhibit takes guests through the day-to-day lives of the naval intelligence specialists behind Desert Storm’s strategic gathering and analysis, mission planning and decision-making that supported aviators’ efforts against the Saddam Hussein-led Iraqi army’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

People experience a new exhibit at the USS Midway Museum called Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence on Friday, June 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The exhibit consists of six themed displays. Through a narrow hallway and the connecting rooms of the once high-stakes environment, bright photographs, naval artifacts and old newspaper clippings don the walls of the exhibit. Tables are scattered around each room, filled with artifacts that offer guests a more hands-on experience, as they’re able to get a close-up glimpse of detailed flip-books aviators created for a quick reference during flights, toolkits where intelligence specialists stored their grease pencils and measuring tools or one of the telephones that play a recording describing the stories of intelligence officers.

Guests are even allowed to step into the shoes of intelligence specialists, testing their skills in a group of tests based on visual memory, codebreaking, site assessment and close aerial looking skills, where guests learn what naval intelligence role best suits them, and participate in an immersive mission planning activity.

People experience a new exhibit at the USS Midway Museum called Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence on Friday, June 27, 2025 in San Diego, Calif. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The exhibit’s opening comes after a nearly two-year planning and working period. Initial talks to restore the CVIC were fleshed out in 2009; however, the idea didn’t come into fruition until summer 2023, when discussions of restoring the space earned the formal backing of a partnership between Naval Intelligence Professionals and the USS Midway Museum, which funded the bulk of the project. Construction began in the winter of 2023 and concluded in May this year.

“We worked with a great company called Art Processors, who did our another new exhibit for us last year,” Kraft said. “We wanted to make this something that anybody can come down and understand the role of intel professionals, how they interface with aviators, that kind of fusion that took place and get an appreciation for really the high stakes planning that went on down here.”

Kraft and the museum enlisted the help of every intelligence officer he remembered serving with on the USS Midway, as well as intelligence officers and specialists from the Midway’s docents, to study and prepare for the exhibit — eventually totaling up to around 750 volunteers.

Retired Commander Diana Guglielmo, an imagery analyst, helped lead the planning efforts.

“I was one of their advisors, because I served on board five aircraft carriers as a senior intelligence officer,” Guglielmo said. “I was the first woman to serve as the senior intelligence for the air wing, and so I basically ingested all the artifacts, and then grouped them together, and then put them into the exhibit in the right place based on what would be on a carrier.”

People experience a new exhibit at the USS Midway Museum called Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence on Friday, June 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Reflecting and honoring the real stories behind the CVIC and the intelligence specialists involved was essential to the team; a space of the exhibit is dedicated to retired Capt. William Marcus “Marc” Luoma, who died in 2021. Luoma’s jacket and the coffee cup he used frequently on board are even on display. As guests exit, the last section of the exhibit displays historic photos from the naval intelligence community and a message paying tribute to their “dedication and excellence” in CVIC

“We hope they feel honored,” Mark Berlin, the USS Midway Museum’s director of operations said. “We hope that they recognize our appreciation for the hard work and dedication that they have to everything that they do. We saw that in engineering, when we had a lot of our former engineers go through this space and feel like their story is being told. We hope the same thing happens here.”

The team behind the exhibit hopes that even the general public will find something meaningful to take from their experience.

“I hope one day, as young people come through here, men and women, they see kind of this quiet profession, and they’re motivated or enthusiastic about doing this job. It’s one of those parts of the Navy that we just don’t talk a lot about,” Guglielmo said. “In the intelligence community, we say open the green door, because all the classifieds are always hidden behind the green door, and so this will open the green door and let them see, kind of what their contributions can do.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placed several of its Duluth laboratory employees on leave for signing a letter criticizing the Trump administration’s politicization of the agency, a move the union and Democratic politicians said violates federal workers’ right to free speech.

According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, approximately six people at the EPA’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division Laboratory, 6201 Congdon Blvd., are on leave after signing a letter published late last month urging EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to recommit the agency to protecting human and environmental health and “restore EPA’s credibility as a premier scientific institution.”

“EPA employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies, including those that undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment,” the letter, organized by Stand Up For Science, said.

While several signatures were originally public, they have since been removed from the website, which now lists 620 anonymous signers.

The EPA said it placed 139 employees on paid leave to investigate their use of official titles when signing the letter. The agency said the letter “contains information that misleads the public about agency business.”

However, the agency did not respond to the News Tribune’s request to explain why the letter was misleading.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” an EPA spokesperson said in an email.

In a letter to Zeldin on Tuesday, Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee said that statement was “effectively concluding and publicly announcing that these individuals had somehow violated the law before an investigation was even conducted.”

“Taking adverse actions against employees for making a protected disclosure — including investigating them and placing them on administrative leave — in a manner that deters others from coming forward is a textbook violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act,” wrote Reps. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey; Paul Tonko, D-New York; and Yvette Clarke, D-New York.

Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents some 1,000 EPA employees in the Midwest, said in a news release that the union expected to take legal action against the agency.

“This is an act of blatant political retaliation — pure and simple,” Cantello said. “My message to EPA Administrator Zeldin is this: EPA employees have the right to freedom of speech just like everyone else. We’ll see you in court.”

Further cuts feared

There are also renewed fears that mass firings could be coming to the EPA.

Uncertainty has swirled at the lab since March, when the Trump administration’s plans to cut the EPA’s Office of Research and Development were first reported by the New York Times. The Duluth freshwater lab is part of ORD.

A portion of the reduction plan, shared earlier this year with the News Tribune by Science Committee Democratic staff, said the EPA planned to “eliminate” the ORD and expected 50%-75% of its more than 1,540 positions “will not be retained.”

In May, EPA officials told ORD employees they could retire early, leave voluntarily or apply for approximately 500 job openings at other EPA offices, the News Tribune previously reported.

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Meanwhile, funding ended for 25 early-career researchers when the EPA did not renew a contract and canceled a grant.

The lab employed 176 people, according to an April 2025 fact sheet.

Any widescale reduction in force or reorganization seemed to be on hold after a federal judge barred such action without working with Congress.

However, in a decision Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for the Trump administration to carry out a reduction in force of the federal workforce, renewing fear that mass firings were coming to the EPA and other federal agencies.

By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

Landscape fabric may sound like a neat, tidy and easy solution to all your weeding woes, but, as often is the case, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

To be fair, landscape fabric has its place. Unfortunately, it’s widely misused in most home landscape applications, where it does more harm than good in ornamental beds and around perennials and crops.

The woven (or sometimes non-woven) synthetic (or sometimes biodegradable) barrier is meant to suppress weeds while allowing water and air to pass through to the soil beneath it. And that’s exactly how it works -– for a short time, after which buyer’s remorse almost always sets in.

This July 10, 2008, image provided by Bugwood.org shows geotextile landscape fabric in use around a tree. (Andrew Koeser/International Society of Arboriculture/Bugwood.org via AP)

Before long, soil and other organic matter settle on top of the fabric, seeds find their way to the surface, and weeds begin to grow. Since their roots penetrate through the fabric, removing them becomes extremely difficult.

Under the barrier, which restricts water and oxygen from reaching the soil and carbon from escaping, microbes, earthworms and other insects die, fertility declines and roots struggle.

In perennial beds, the fabric creates heat pockets and impedes the spread and self-seeding of plants. In time, the fabric will shift and tear, and attempts to remove it will no doubt make you rue the day you had the bright idea to use it.

This 2010 image provided by Bugwood.org shows tree roots that have become tangled up in landscaping fabric. When this occurs, root growth is restricted, which negatively impacts tree or plant health. (Joe Murray/Treebio.com/Bugwood.org)

Plastic sheeting is even worse, as it completely blocks water and air from reaching the soil, overheats roots and releases microplastics into the ground.

There are exceptions, however. Landscape fabric can be helpful under gravel or stone paths or walkways, where it creates a barrier between the hardscape and the soil below.

It can also help smother grass and weeds when used temporarily to help create a clean slate for future planting beds in areas that are difficult to clear. Still, I recommend using thick layers of newspaper or cardboard instead, as they biodegrade naturally and perform the same function without having to be removed.

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When your landscape fabric becomes a torn, weedy, root-tangled mess – and it will — good luck removing it. The painstaking process involves slowly and carefully pulling up individual fragments of the fabric, which will be heavy under the soil, and cutting them away from around and between roots, which will have grown above, below and through the textile.

Instead of shooting yourself in the foot with landscape fabric, opt for an organic mulch like shredded bark, wood chips or straw. It will regulate soil temperature and moisture, nourish the soil as it decomposes and support the soil life that supports your plants.

Apply a 2- to 4-inch layer, keeping it away from trunks and stems, and refresh it when it breaks down. You’ll still get a few weeds, but they’ll pull up easily, roots and all.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

None of it makes sense.

The Tim Walz administration, on behalf of Tim Walz, hired the law firm K&L Gates, based in Pittsburgh, with offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and South America, to coach Walz for an appearance in Washington on June 12 before a subcommittee wishing to question a couple of governors believed to be dragging their feet on federal immigration laws.

Walz was a predictable candidate to be summoned as he stubbornly refers to ICE agents as a modern-day Gestapo; the left in this country fanboys itself into a lather when it comes to Germany.

The coaching sessions began April 10 and continued right up to June 12 when the K&L team, their fingers crossed, boxed Walz up and shipped him to Washington for the day.

Oh, the bill. The bill was $430,000 of our money, with the K&L people promising not to wink at each other until they cleared Minnesota air space.

None of it makes sense.

Let’s start with the fact that the state employs offices full of lawyers, including Attorney General Keith Ellison. They couldn’t do it. Either they think Walz is so incomprehensibly dense that only the nation’s top legal surgeons could prep him, or our lawyers were too busy running down the streets trying to scoop up spilled food fraud cash.

In comes K&L Gates with a reported fee of $516 per hour. Among the questions we’ll never get answered is why K&L Gates? A local firm couldn’t have been tossed this bone? How about a firm that bills at, say, $316 an hour? How is it that K&L Gates just popped up on somebody’s rolodex?

Here’s another reason it doesn’t make sense. From the moment Walz got the letter summoning him to Washington, he grumped and griped about how this was nothing but a grandstand play by Republicans. He had a spokesman, Teddy Tschann, claim that the Republicans were planning a political stunt on the taxpayer dime. Practiced in the art of deflection, like a good spokesman, Tschann meant the federal taxpayer dime, not the local soaking for the legal bill.

Tom Hauser of KSTP-TV asked Walz on camera if Walz thought the taxpayers were angry about the $430,000 bill. Walz, also practiced in the art of deflection, kicked that one aside with the toe of his skate and agreed that Minnesotans should be angry that Republicans even invited him in the first place.

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Well, Tim, if you really thought that way, then why were you worried at all? You’re the alpha male of your party. You could have swaggered into that hearing room and called it for what you thought it was, a big sham.

But here’s the best reason the $430,000 doesn’t make sense. Walz served in Congress from 2007 to 2019. He was on countless committees and commissions. He held congressional hearings. Walz could walk through the nation’s Capitol building blindfolded. He not only knows all the nooks and crannies, he knowns all the tricks, the deflections, the stunts, the BS, you name it. And we’re supposed to believe that Walz needed highly specialized and outrageously expensive coaching for two months so he could handle those evil attack dogs, of whom he once was one.

JB Pritzker of Illinois was also summoned to appear the same day as Walz. Pritzker isn’t much of a governor, either, but it should be noted that he personally paid for his legal prep.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.