curated citations to news sources
Dispatch: There Is No Deep State
If MAGA Republicans understood the nuts and bolts of the CIA, they wouldn’t see conspiracies so easily.
It’s become gospel in much of the American right that a liberal “deep state” exists, forming an alternate government that works against Donald Trump and the Republican Party. “Either the deep state destroys America,” Trump declared during his first major rally of his last campaign, “or we destroy the deep state.” This supposed pernicious matrix is spread throughout the press and the federal bureaucracies, though most dangerously embedded in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the rest of the Justice Department.
(Dispatch more…)
ProPublica: “The Intern in Charge”: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention
One year out of college and with no apparent national security expertise, Thomas Fugate is the Department of Homeland Security official tasked with overseeing the government’s main hub for combating violent extremism.
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LAWdork: Judge orders Trump admin to let those sent to CECOT to challenge AEA removal
Chief Judge James Boasberg issued the ruling in ongoing litigation over Trump’s effort to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport people.
A federal judge has found that the Trump administration’s removal of people from the United States on March 15 under the purported authority of President Donald Trump’s invocation of a wartime power, sending them to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, violated their due process rights because they were not given the chance to challenge the action.
(LAWdork more…)NY Times: U.S. Brings Back Guatemalan Wrongly Deported to Mexico
Steve Vladeck: The Six-Hour Settlement
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Texas Attorney General’s Office turned the legal system on its head on Wednesday—and all because the Texas Legislature refused to repeal a 24-year-old state law.
Jennifer Rubin: Ukraine has lessons for beating bullies
Domestically, lawsuits are democratic advocates’ armed drones
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Steady: You Can’t Erase the Truth
Not many things you can take to the bank, but believe me — this reporter has, through many decades of employment, never felt discriminated against because I’m white. …Trump insists that white American heterosexual men are now a persecuted group. …
One of Trump’s loyalist minions, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is taking it a step further in this latest culture war battle. Hegseth has already deleted Pentagon webpages and erased photographs of prominent Black, Latino, and female members of the U.S. military. He has fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black four-star general, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard, a female admiral.
He is on a rampage to remove mention of anyone in the U.S. military who isn’t white, straight, and male. On Tuesday, Hegseth ordered the Navy to remove the name of the USNS Harvey Milk, a Navy support ship named for the political trailblazer and gay rights activist. The decision to make the announcement at the beginning of Pride Month was no accident.
(Steady more…)Times of London: Culture war fought at sea as US navy ships to be renamed
Harvey Milk, Harriet Tubman and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are among those whose names could be removed, according to plans by Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary
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NY Times: How Trump Talks About Antisemitism
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump repeatedly promised voters that he’d be the “best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.” But after a string of violent antisemitic attacks, the president has been criticized for his slow or muted responses. Tyler Pager, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, explains.
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Marisa Kabas: In Trump’s America, wealthy criminals are pardoned, poor innocents are arrested
While ICE patrols court houses for law-abiding immigrants, Trump’s friends get a free pass.
Wired: ICE Quietly Scales Back Rules for Courthouse Raids
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 4, 2025
Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.
The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.
The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.
Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)James Eagle: Uncle Sam’s $1 trillion interest hurdle
1967 – 2025 Data visualisation
TNR: Trump Turns Sharply on Musk as Harsh New Data Wrecks Case for GOP Bill
Dean Blundell: TRUMP’S Tariff/Trade SCAM has Turned Into an Exercise of “Begging” Countries With Letters to Validate his Tariff Scam
Trump is now sending letters to countries begging for “trade deals”
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Adam Mockler: Trump’s Cuts to Science Are Already Killing Us
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This week, a veteran South Florida weatherman paused his forecast on live television. Not to warn viewers about an approaching hurricane, but to warn them about Donald Trump.John Morales, who has been tracking storms for 34 years, admitted that he no longer knows if he can accurately predict deadly storms this season. The reason is sweeping Trump-era cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA. These are not hypotheticals. These are real consequences of the Trump administration’s attack on science and data.
“I’m not sure I can do this anymore,” he said, visibly emotional on air.
“NOAA is understaffed by 20 to 40 percent in South Florida. We’re seeing fewer weather balloons, degraded forecasts, and hurricane aircraft grounded. Lives are at stake.”
(Adam Mockler more…)Reuters: CDC official resigns from COVID vaccine committee advisory role
Slate: RFK Jr.’s Report Actually Nails What’s Wrong With American Health
It thoroughly documents a real crisis—then draws all the wrong conclusions.
…Bulwark: Yes. People Will Die.
Joni Ernst’s cringey videos were wrong. They also reveal a lot about the GOP’s desperately dishonest sales job.
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Al Jazeera: White House makes misleading claims about Democratic opposition to tax bill
In a release, the White House said that Democrats opposed key measures party members actually championed.
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Jay Kuo: Trump Travel Ban, Redux
He’s hit 19 countries with travel bans and restrictions as part of his push toward nativist white nationalism.
NY Times: Trump travel ban sparks World Cup questions — and raises more soccer issues
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Texas Tribune: Data centers are building their own gas power plants in Texas
Not long ago, developers of the massive server farms talked about powering them with wind and solar energy. Now they’re bypassing the grid and building their own gas-fired power plants on site.
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NY Times: Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides
The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office.
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Ken Klippenstein: U.S. Intel Warns of “Enduring” Gaza Outrage
Intelligence report on Jewish museum shooting says what Washington won’t
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Decoding Fox News: Elon Musk Just Got Tossed from the MAGA Clown Car
A condensed overview of 19 hours of Fox News for the week ending 6/1/25
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
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