curated citations to news sources
Vanity Fair: The Godfather Presidency: How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob
Forget the comparisons to fascists and autocrats. The most accurate model for understanding the transactional tough guy in the White House is the politically connected underbelly of 1970s and ’80s New York real estate.
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It was amid this disruption that Raskin got a glimpse of how the new regime was going to work. The tutelage came from a Republican colleague whose name Raskin was protecting and who likewise had been worried, he confided to Raskin, until rescue had come. Raskin’s impersonation went like this: “We’ve got this guy ‘Joe’ who’s been in the forestry service as a firefighter for nearly two decades, and he’s a loyal Republican. He’s always supported me, and he just got sacked. He had some promotion and was in the probationary period.” This was also the case, said Raskin, for “hundreds of people that I represent.” The Republican legislator reached the White House—something few Democrats are able to do—and asked for help. “Their answer was, ‘Here’s the phone number of the guy you need to talk to in Musk’s office.’ ” Start to finish—legislators reduced to supplicants; sources whose names weren’t being revealed—the episode was appalling to Raskin, who saw the partisan cronyism as an assault on the professional civil service and the rule of law.
(Vanity Fair more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 1, 2025
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The measure cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations and offsets those cuts in part by slashing Medicaid and food security programs for low-income Americans.But there is at least one aspect of American life on which the bill is lavishing money. While the measure slashes public welfare programs, it pours $170.7 billion into immigration enforcement. The American Immigration Council broke out the numbers today: The Senate bill provides $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times what Trump spent on the wall in his first term. It provides $45 billion for detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an increase of 265% in ICE’s annual detention budget. It provides $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, a threefold increase in ICE’s annual budget.
When Trump talks about undocumented migrants as being dangerous criminals, he appears to have bought into the fantasy that the U.S. is a hellscape. In fact, about 8% of arrested migrants have been convicted of violent crimes. The administration defines anyone who breaks immigration law—which is a misdemeanor, not a felony—as a criminal. One of the reasons for the push to get the bill passed before July 4 is that the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the bill’s additional funding to operate.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)NewsNation: Fact check: Medicaid cuts for immigrants in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
- White House wants to remove ‘at least’ 1.4M immigrants from Medicaid
- Immigrants in US illegally aren’t eligible for federally funded care
- However, they can use Medicaid-funded emergency services
Atlantic: They Didn’t Have to Do This
By passing Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, congressional Republicans have talked themselves into an incomprehensibly reckless plan.
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Michele Hornish: Let Them Eat (Wedding) Cake
The Bezos wedding, and a story of how a banquet helped end a monarchy
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It was in that context that King Louis XVI held an opulent banquet for 210 at the Versailles Opera House to welcome a new crop of guards. It was a lavish affair – with enough wine that the soldiers ended the night standing on tables and singing bawdy songs, saluting the King and (reportedly) insulting the budding Revolution. (If you ever visit the MET, you can see a depiction of the event – Banquet of the Guards by Jean Louis Prieur le Jeune.)The apocryphal story of an arrogant Marie Antoinette saying “Let them eat cake” is from this very banquet.
News of the event spread, with Parisian newspapers juxtaposing its extravagance with the struggles of the working class. You can imagine the reaction.
And so on that fateful October day, with news of the King’s banquet still fresh in their minds, women were queued up in the market to purchase bread. What was available was of poor quality and high cost. And they had had enough.
One young woman began to beat a drum.
Others gathered. Still more joined.
And soon, they were walking.
First they went to the City Hall, gathering around 7,000 of their closest female friends along the way and chanting “When will we have bread?”. When they arrived, they took provisions (and two cannons), broke into offices and snatched papers to burn – while impatiently proclaiming that pushing papers was all the city council had done since the Revolution had begun.
All the while, according to testimony, the women loudly complained that “men were not strong enough” to take the action necessary in the Revolution – and they (meaning the women) would do better.
Frankly, they did.
After taking what they needed from City Hall, they turned their attention to Versailles and began the 12-mile walk (in the rain) to the palace. Imagine the sight of thousands of women descending on the opulence of Versailles – muddied, soaking wet, pulling two cannons, and armed with household items and their incandescent feminine rage.
The Women’s March on Versailles was a signal event of the French Revolution – an inflection point, a turning point, a demonstration of the power of everyday people.
(Michele Hornish more…)
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engadget: ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it
Liz Dye: Abrego Garcia is a fake gangster. Trump and Bukele are not.
Trump’s filthy deal with El Salvador is an indictment of him, not the deportees.
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Emily Atkin: This is exactly what Project 2025 proposed
Analysts called it “extreme” and “unlikely.” Now, it’s almost reality.
Here’s the good news: Before Senate Republicans passed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” this afternoon, they removed the surprise tax on solar and wind that was “designed to fully kill the industry,” as HEATED reported on Sunday.Here’s the bad news: Almost everything else. …
(Emily Atkin more…)
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Democracy Docket: Ahead of 2026, Georgia Republicans Are Quietly Installing Election Conspiracy Theorists on Local Boards
Democracy Docket: Anti-Voting Activists Definitely Haven’t Given Up on Passing the SAVE Act
On a call with volunteers, the leader of an influential group of grassroots conservative activists laid out a plan for how to get the SAVE Act, the GOP’s monster voter suppression bill, through the Senate and onto Trump’s desk.
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NY Times: Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit
President Trump sued Paramount over a “60 Minutes” interview with his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
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arsTECHNICA: White House works to ground NASA science missions before Congress can act
(arsTECHNICA more…)
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NY Times: Trump Escalates Attacks on Mamdani
President Trump claimed that the New York mayoral candidate, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was “here illegally,” his latest effort to promote false conspiracy theories about political opponents.
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James Eagle: Are we heading for nuclear war?
Global nuclear arsenals have hit 12,241 warheads, officially ending decades of disarmament progress. China leads the new arms race with 100 additional warheads in one year, while 2,100 weapons remain on hair-trigger alert. The Cold War peak of 70,300 warheads in 1986 seems distant, but the trend toward reduction has reversed for the first time since the 1980s.
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Popular Information: What really happened to Jabari Peoples?
Alabama law enforcement is refusing to release the body cam footage.
(Popular Information more…)
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Daily Beast: Trump’s DOJ Adds Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter to Its Retribution Team
REFERENCE CHECK
Jared Wise, accused of inciting Capitol rioters to kill police officers, now has an advisory role in the Weaponization Working Group.
(Daily Beast more…)
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ABC News: Native Americans raise safety concerns over Florida Everglades detention center
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Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Business Council, said some tribal villages are located within 900 feet of the facility’s entrance.“This proposed facility is surrounded on all sides by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and the tribe has been at home in the Big Cypress for centuries,” Cypress told ABC News.
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Bulwark: Trump’s Team Is Lying About Iran’s WMD
He savaged Bush for distorting intelligence and overselling the military’s initial success in Iraq. Now Trump and his team are doing the same in Iran.
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Trump also alluded to unspecified intelligence that supposedly vindicated his boasts. At the NATO meeting, he said of Fordo: “We’ve collected additional intelligence. We’ve also spoken to people [who] have seen the site. And the site is obliterated.” He posted the same statement, again without evidence, on Truth Social. The next day, at a White House event, he asserted that “the target has now been proven to be obliterated, just as we said.”TRUMP IS LYING. A week and a half after the bombing, he has offered no such proof. Instead, his flunkies have issued empty statements claiming, with zero discernible evidence, that “new intelligence” or “credible intelligence” backs him up. The charlatan who accused Bush of politicizing intelligence and lying about weapons of mass destruction is politicizing intelligence and lying about weapons of mass destruction.
But that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is that Trump, like Bush, is suggesting that anyone who disputes the president’s statements about a war is sabotaging America’s armed forces.
(Bulwark more…)
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Decoding Fox News: Fox News Hosts Laughed at Migrants Being Used as Alligator Bait
A condensed overview of 17 hours of Fox News for the week ending 6/29/25
Last week on Fox News the network worked its audience into a frenzy of paranoia over possible secret Iranian sleeper cells while it celebrated the cruelty of a migrant detention center surrounded by alligators and pythons. As the network focused on fear and sadism it also lauded Donald J. Trump as the daddy of NATO.
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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