curated citations to news sources
Ken Klippenstein: Troops Question Los Angeles Deployment
An inside look at the ill-fated mission in soldiers’ own words
Thousands of troops, National Guard and active duty Marines are being withdrawn from Los Angeles, the ill-fated mission quietly ending, the objective so confused that even the Defense Department’s official news service is publishing stories about soldiers questioning the point.
I’ve also been talking to those soldiers, and they affirm that so much of the Trump-Hegseth show of force was little more than an unnecessary and politically-motivated publicity stunt. So much so that I’m told that the Pentagon has ordered the California Guard to preserve all records related to the deployment, just in case the military is sued.
“Turns out there could be reasonably foreseeable litigation regarding the mobilization in the future,” one Guard source tells me, adding wryly: “Shocked.”
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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Agence France-Presse: “Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die”
[Grok translation] Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can recall seeing a colleague die of hunger.
We refuse to see them die.
(Marisa Kabas more…)NY Times: Aid Groups Blame Israel’s Siege of Gaza for ‘Mass Starvation’
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arsTECHNICA: Trump wants to “eliminate or expedite” environmental rules for rocket launches
SpaceX, other commercial launch firms, have been seeking this change in policy.
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NY Times: E.P.A. Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change
The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan.The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration known as the “endangerment finding,” which scientifically established that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endanger human lives.
That finding is the foundation of the federal government’s only tool to limit the climate pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industries that is dangerously heating the planet.
(NY Times more…)
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Atlantic: ‘We Voted for Retribution’
Over the next four years, some $45 billion will be spent on ICE detention centers, which will hold mainly people who have never been convicted of any crime.
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Outside the Everglades facility on its opening day, Enrique Tarrio spoke with a group of reporters. Tarrio is a former leader of the Proud Boys, a neofascist group. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, sentenced to 22 years in prison, pardoned by the president, and praised by Trump during a recent visit to Mar-a-Lago with his mother. Tarrio is now promoting a new app, ICERAID, that offers a cryptocurrency reward to users who help the government locate and arrest undocumented immigrants. “We didn’t vote for cheaper eggs,” Tarrio said in the Everglades. “We voted for mass deportation, and we voted for retribution.”
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NY Times: China Flexes Muscles at U.N. Cultural Agency, Just as Trump Walks Away
Washington had been a buffer against China’s efforts to use UNESCO to influence education, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.
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Bulwark: We Are Fumbling the Fight Against AIDS
Senate Republicans saved some PEPFAR funding at the last moment—but Trump has already heavily damaged the program.
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NY Times: Trump Told Park Workers to Report Displays That ‘Disparage’ Americans. Here’s What They Flagged.
At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, the Trump administration is set to review, and possibly remove or alter, signs about how climate change is causing sea levels to rise.At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the administration will soon decide whether to take down exhibits on the brutality of slavery.
And at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials are scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside the Spanish stone fortress.
According to internal documents reviewed by The New York Times, employees of the National Park Service have flagged descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites for review in connection with President Trump’s directive to remove or cover up materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
(NY Times more…)
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Your Local Epidemiologist: NIH: The quiet engine of science is being dismantled
(Your Local Epidemiologist more…)
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Register: COVID-19 pandemic accelerated brain aging – even if you didn’t catch the virus
Boffins think worry and stress during the plague years changed our wetware, and that the damage can be reversed
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James Eagle: China’s growing share of drug research
(James Eagle more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 22, 2025
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While this document dump appears to have been announced in order to distract from the Epstein files, it seems unlikely to do so. MAGA and other Americans are interested in the Epstein files because they expect the files will show that the government has been covering up for powerful men who have been able to rape children without facing legal accountability. In contrast, the King files will likely show the government harassing a citizen to pin illegal activity on him, a different side of the same coin that suggests the government is working for rich and powerful white men.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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TNR: Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Takes Darker Turn as Dem Senator Drops New Bomb
Ron Wyden has some ideas for Pam Bondi to pursue—if, that is, she’s genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of the Epstein scandal.
A few days ago, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal gripped Washington, Senator Ron Wyden offered a striking revelation in an interview with The New York Times. The Oregon Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his massive sex-trafficking network.The revelation—which emerged via Wyden’s work as ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee—ratified widespread suspicions that there is still much we don’t know about Epstein’s relations with some of the most powerful and wealthy elites in the world in the lead-up to his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges.
Now Wyden is ratcheting things up once again. Wyden’s office just sent a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi—which The New Republic obtained—suggesting seven potent lines of inquiry that the Justice Department could follow, right now, to dig more deeply into Epstein’s web of financial relations with global elites.
(TNR more…)
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Allison Gill: The Universe of Those with Access to the Epstein Files Keeps Expanding
According to new sources, photos and testimony of the survivors of the Epstein/Maxwell sex trafficking ring were available to even more people in the government than previously thought.
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Daily Beast: Never-Before-Seen Photos of Trump and Epstein Unearthed
THE WEDDING FILES
Among the trove of new images is one showing Epstein with Trump and his young children, Eric and Ivanka.
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Free Press: Trump’s Spy Chief Alleges a ‘Treasonous Conspiracy.’ Is She Right?
Isaac Saul: Tulsi Gabbard reignites “Russiagate.”
Bulwark: How Many Obama Arrest Threats Does It Take to Change a Storyline?
We don’t know yet, but Trump seems keen to find out.
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Even if Trump’s accusations that Obama illegally tried to invalidate his election victory were accurate—and again, they are not—there is zero question that Obama’s oversight of the intelligence community’s Trump-Russia investigation constituted an official act. Going by his own repeated statements, Trump should thus believe Obama to be immune from prosecution. But of course this is not how Trump’s mind works. To him, “presidential immunity” doesn’t exist to shield presidents in general. It exists to shield him.The other amazing thing is the specific charge that Obama’s supposed actions constituted treason. This is, of course, notable in part because a possible penalty for treason is death. But treason is more than just a really, really bad crime. It’s a direct attack on the United States as such—a crime of working not just against Americans, but against America itself.
Why does Trump believe actions Obama supposedly took to undermine his 2016 campaign constituted treason? Simply because Trump, in his megalomania, can conceive of no difference between the interests of the nation and his own personal interests. That he wasn’t even president yet in late 2016 is no matter. In his own mind, like many autocrats before him, Trump was already the state.
(Bulwark more…)
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Borowitz: Trump Offers to End War With Harvard if it Admits him to Freshman Class
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
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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