CNN: India launches military operation against Pakistan in major escalation
India has launched a major military operation against Pakistan in a major escalation of tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
The missile strikes early Wednesday morning targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan administered-Kashmir, according to India. Pakistan has denied the claim, saying the attack largely harmed civilians – killing at least three, including a child, and injuring at least a dozen.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the country had the right to respond to what he described as an “act of war,” adding that a “befitting reply is being given.”
Kashmir is one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints and is controlled in part by India and Pakistan but both countries claim it in its entirety.
(CNN more…)
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NY Times: Chinese Imports Hit 2-Decade Low as Trump Tariffs Begin to Bite
(NY Times more…)EEAGLI: The de-industrialisation of the West
President Trump has promised to revitalise American manufacturing through sweeping tariffs, tapping into nostalgia for an era when factory jobs provided middle-class wages to millions. The data, however, tells a very different story about what really happened to these jobs.In 1950, nearly one in three American workers were employed in manufacturing. Today, it’s just one in twelve. Trump blames this decline squarely on international trade and offshoring to countries like China.
Most economists strongly disagree with this narrative. Research from Ball State University found that 88 percent of manufacturing job losses between 2000 and 2010 resulted from productivity improvements – not trade. New technologies simply allowed companies to produce more goods with fewer workers.
(EEAGLI more…)TNR: Trump’s Rants About Young Girls’ Dolls Just Got Weirder and Darker
Who actually wants to work at a Barbie doll factory in America, anyway?
NY Times: ‘We Don’t Have to Sign Deals’: Trump Backs Off Big Promises About Tariffs
After weeks of bragging about upcoming trade “deals” with foreign countries, President Trump says the United States doesn’t need to worry about them after all.
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Ever since President Trump announced he was slapping hefty tariffs on countries across the globe, he has been predicting they would force trading partners to sign major deals beneficial to the United States.But on Tuesday, with the Canadian prime minister sitting beside him in the Oval Office and no new trade deal between the two countries achieved, Mr. Trump had a different message for the public: “We don’t have to sign deals.”
(NY Times more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 6, 2025
In a follow-up story to last night’s information about the Trump family’s cryptocurrency corruption, MacKenzie Sigalos of CNBC reported today that 58 crypto wallets have made more than $10 million each on Trump’s meme coin, gathering a total of $1.1 billion in profits. But 764,000 wallets, mostly owned by small holders, have lost money. Meanwhile, since January the meme’s creators have pocketed more than $324 million in trading fees.
In other news today, reality is crashing into the ideology of the Trump administration.
MAGA ideology was on full display in a meeting of the House Committee on Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, when Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem refused to answer a question from the ranking member—that is, the highest-ranking Democrat—of the committee, Representative Lauren Underwood (D-IL), about whether she believes that “the Constitution gives everyone in our country the right to due process.” The right to due process is clearly established in that foundational document, but Trump refused to acknowledge it in an interview that aired Sunday. Now Noem, too, is refusing to acknowledge it.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Liz Dye: Maine fought the law, and Maine won
The Trump administration can’t defend the indefensible
“A few months ago, I stood in the White House and, when confronted by the president of the United States, I told him I’d see him in court,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills said last Friday. “Well, I did see him in court. And we won.”
After weeks of public fulminating, the administration quietly folded and quit trying to steal kids’ lunch money for the grievous sin of letting a couple of trans girls play sports.It’s a heartening reminder that Trump, like any bully, can be fought and beaten.
(Liz Dye more…)
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National Security Journal: ‘Self-Defeating’ Trump Took a ‘Sledgehammer’ to One Of America’s Most Important Alliances
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Wired: The Company Behind the Signal Clone Mike Waltz Used Has Direct Access to User Chats
A new analysis of TM Signal’s source code appears to show that the app sends users’ message logs in plaintext. At least one top Trump administration official used the app.
(Wired more…)
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Jennifer Rubin: Even Trump-appointed judges are resisting authoritarian ploys
Judges have refused to buckle under or bow down
Donald Trump certainly nominated some of the most unfit partisan judges ever to make it to the federal bench. …However, as we are witnessing, not all Trump appointees are cut from the same cloth. When it comes to basic democratic principles, even his appointees—like judges appointed by other presidents—have proven their mettle by harshly rebuking MAGA attacks on the rule of law.
On Monday, a Trump appointee, U. S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers, II from the Eastern District of North Carolina, put the kibosh on a MAGA scheme to steal the November 2024 election of a progressive judge to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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Independent: Trump team ordered to move Tufts student from Louisiana ICE jail after it couldn’t ‘take a position’ on her free speech
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Slate: Is Trump Carrying Out His Mass Deportation Promises? The Numbers Might Surprise You.
Trump Isn’t Doing What He Promised on Deportations
The Trump administration is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants this year, according to the Washington Post—and despite the administration’s extreme, lawless methods, a look at the numbers suggests that goal is far out of reach. Looking at all of Trump’s immigration actions since he took office on Jan. 20, the Brookings Institution concluded that there’s been “more arrests, less due process, but not yet more deportations.”
(Slate more…)
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UtilityDive: States sue Trump administration over halt on wind energy development
(UtilityDive more…)
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Independent: US intelligence agencies told to ramp up spying on Greenland as Trump eyes takeover
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Bulwark: Donald Trump’s Information Warfare Against America
Federal data used to be economic jet fuel. Now much of it is either gone or weaponized.
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The fact is that we now have a president ditching essential scientific data at a fast clip, sending “move fast and break things” saboteurs to collect other data—private, personal data—at an equally fast clip, and overseeing a frightening yet highly convenient consolidation of all the data he needs to be the president who dispenses favors to his friends and retribution to his foes.It almost hurts, in fact it actually does hurt, to recall a time when we had a president who saw data as an economic engine, who believed in American entrepreneurs and researchers and innovators, and in the potential of government data to help them create jobs and entire industries. A president whose goal was to improve American lives and make America more prosperous.
That president once said there wasn’t a liberal America and a conservative America, just the United States of America. But that was a long time ago.
(Bulwark more…)TNR: Trump Is Destroying the Data that Keeps the Country Running
DOGE’s attacks on the administrative state threaten to undermine essential data gathering across a vast array of fields, from economics to the environment.
NBC: Trump administration has shut down CDC’s infection control committee
The Trump administration has terminated a federal advisory committee that issued guidance about preventing the spread of infections in health care facilities.
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Dean Blundell: Is Anyone Going to Investigate Trump’s $2 Billion Crypto Grift in the Middle East?
Stablecoins, state-backed deals, terror-linked investors, and a sitting U.S. president—this isn’t just unethical. It’s insane.
(Dean Blundell more…)
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404 Media: The AI Slop Presidency
AI-generated outrage bait is the perfect artistic medium for a president who rules by trying to overwhelm the system.
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New York: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.
(New York more…)
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BBC: Five takeaways from Biden’s BBC interview
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew