curated citations to news sources
Politico: Trump’s lawsuit against Wall Street Journal now has a judge — and it’s not Aileen Cannon
President Donald Trump’s bid to take down the Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his connection to Jeffrey Epstein has landed in the courtroom of Darrin Gayles, who is likely experiencing deja vu.
That’s because Gayles, a 2014 appointee of Barack Obama, had another brush with a litigious Trump in 2023, when the then-former president sought to punish his onetime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Trump sued Cohen in April 2023 seeking a $500 million payout for claims that Cohen violated his attorney-client relationship with Trump and enriched himself off their relationship. Six months later, Trump abandoned the lawsuit, just before Cohen’s lawyers were set to question him under oath.
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But as with the Cohen case, there’s an open question of whether Trump’s new lawsuit is more of a political stunt than a serious attempt to litigate the issue. If Trump pursues the case, he would open himself up to answering questions under oath about his connection to the disgraced financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
(Politico more…)
WSJ: Companies Welcome EU-U.S. Trade Deal as Least Bad Outcome
The preliminary agreement cements tariffs that are bad for Europe. But many businesses say it is better than a trade war.
Jennifer Rubin: Trump Waging War Against Blue States and Cities
A federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois on Friday threw out the government’s lawsuit claiming federal law preempts local laws limiting cooperation with Trump’s mass deportation effort. …
Trump’s war against blue states is central to his dictatorial ambitions. To achieve unlimited control, he must subjugate independent sources of power and information—from TV network news operations to universities to civil servants to Congress itself. Ironically (for a party that once fetishized states’ rights), Trump’s MAGA GOP consistently seeks to obliterate federalism and force states—generally blue ones—to do his bidding.
Liz Dye: Judge Dropkicks Trump Admin Immigration Suit Against Illinois
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John Pavlovitz: We’re Never Going to Be the Same, America. But We Can Still Be Beautiful.
One day, this will all be over.
History testifies that all brutal empires fall, all hateful movements dissolve, all malevolent momentary victors eventually find themselves defeated and driven out.Every time in the past when the pendulum has swung toward inhumanity, it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice again.
This will be true here, as well.
America will not always be where it is today.
It will not be in such cruel and violent hands.
It will not be forever captive to a predatory minority.
It will not always be so devoid of accountability for its leaders.
It will not always be this dangerous to marginalized people and this openly hostile to diversity.
It will not permanently be a hostile place for the hungry, the hurting, the poor, the different.I believe that.
And while I take solace in these truths, they come with the bitter aftertaste of the realization that we have already lost so much that is simply irretrievable.
(John Pavlovitz more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 27, 2025
On July 23 the X account of the Department of Homeland Security posted an image of an 1872 oil painting by John Gast, titled American Progress. Gast represented the American East on the right side of the painting with light skies, a rising sun, and the bustling port of New York City, full of ships. He painted the American West in darkness, through which bison and Indigenous Americans flee the people in the middle of the painting: white hunters, farmers, settlers, and stagecoach riders. Over the scene floats a giant, blonde Lady Liberty, evidently moving west, carrying a schoolbook and a telegraph wire being laced on poles along a train track behind her.
Over the reproduced image, the Department of Homeland Security account wrote: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”
From the time Gast painted it, American Progress has been interpreted as a representation of the concept of manifest destiny: the mid-nineteenth-century notion that God had destined the people of the United States of America to spread democracy to the rest of at least the North American continent, and possibly South America as well. A number of people who saw the Homeland Security post saw it as the Trump administration’s embrace of that ideology.
…Rather than advancing the concept of manifest destiny—as deeply problematic as that would be—the Trump administration’s reposting of American Progress seems designed instead to harness American traditional symbols in order to advance the idea of “blood and soil” citizenship popularized in 1930s Germany.
“Blood and soil” ideology claimed true Germans were defined by race within a specific land. Nazi propagandist Richard Walther Darré reflected those ideas when he celebrated agricultural life and what he claimed were rural values. Elevating those who had lived in Germany for generations, he suggested that German blood was mystically connected to German soil. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Judd Legum: How Axios rebranded conservative ideology as objectivity
Steven Beschloss: America’s National Embarrassment
Donald Trump goes to Scotland, spreading his mess on the global stage
He could have simply gone to Scotland, played golf at his Turnberry course (on taxpayer money) and tamped down an escalating trade war that he triggered with Europe. But Donald Trump is proving once again that he will never miss the chance to mouth off and do the wrong thing, ensuring that America’s global reputation continues to be shattered.
During an on-camera conversation Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive branch, he pontificated about windmills. “And the other thing I say to Europe: We will will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us,” Trump said. “They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains—I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains.”
In fact, even as Trump asserted that “windmills will not come—it’s not going to happen in the United States,” the U.S. Geological Survey has noted there are at least 70,800 turbines throughout the country. Even as he railed against windmills, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has reported that wind power makes up more than 10 percent of total electricity, making it the country’s largest source of renewable energy.
Dean Blundell: VIDEO: Busted at Turnberry – Trump Caught Cheating at Golf in Viral Clip as Epstein Scandal Explodes
How a golf ball toss revealed everything we already knew about Donald Trump, “Commander in Cheat”
Charlie Sykes: All the President’s Targets
Because fear is the point.
Over the weekend, the convicted felon who occupies the Oval Office called for the criminal prosecution of Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, and Kamala Harris. They now join Bruce Springsteen, the Reverand Al, and Bono in the ever-growing cast of Trump targets and indictees-in-waiting.
Because, covfefe, and Epstein, and it was a day ending with -y. And because, Fear is the Point.
…Exit take: It’s unlikely all of these folks will actually ever be arrested. But, as Garry Kasparov reminds us, that’s not the point: “Instead of looking to jail his rivals, Trump is simply going to make their lives infinitely more difficult.”
(Charlie Sykes more…)
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NPR: ‘Hell on Earth’: Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse
Carlos Daniel Terán, 19, still remembers the words a prison warden told him when he entered El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT.“He told us we were never going to leave this place,” Terán recalled.
(NPR more…)
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AFP: Detención de inmigrantes es un maná económico para prisiones privadas en EEUU
(AFP more…)
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Honolulu Advertiser: Deported Army veteran fights to return to Hawaii
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James Eagle: [Chinese automaker] BYD is set to overtake Tesla sales
(James Eagle more…)
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Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID & Health News, 7/28/25
Your Local Epidemiologist: Covid-19 wimpy wave is here, corn sweats, SSRIs, the optimal number of steps, and more
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Brendan Szendro: Why government support for religion doesn’t necessarily make people more religious
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NY Times: ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has
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There are myriad reasons the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989. The economic stagnation of the East and the war in Afghanistan are two of the most commonly cited. But literature also played its part, thanks to a long-running U.S. operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency that covertly moved millions of books through the Iron Curtain in a bid to undermine Communist Party censorship.
…In the mid-2020s, “1984” is again being restricted, this time by conservative, Trump-aligned politicians in the United States. In May 2023, the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, signed into law Senate File 496, which according to the governor “puts parents in the driver’s seat” when it comes to their children’s education. In fact SF 496 forces Iowa schools to remove from their libraries thousands of books of which cultural conservatives disapprove.
(NY Times more…)
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Adam Kinzinger: Behind the Headlines: How Trump Hijacked Justice
In 2018, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions wouldn’t bend to his will, Trump erupted: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He meant: Where’s the ruthless fixer who will bend the law to serve me?Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, was one of the most corrupt lawyers in American history—architect of McCarthy’s witch hunts, defender of mobsters, and a master of smear tactics. When the DOJ sued Trump for racial discrimination in housing, Cohn countersued for $100 million and called federal prosecutors “Nazi stormtroopers.” It worked. The government caved. Lesson learned: Intimidation works.
Now, Trump’s second term is filled with Roy Cohns—handpicked loyalists who don’t serve the Constitution, but the man. They bend justice. They smear judges. They ignore court rulings. And far too many Americans aren’t paying attention.
While this is working so far, the key to whether it is long term successful is whether we collectively are intimidated, or refuse to be. South Park, refused to be. Columbia University, was intimidated. They only have as much power as they are allowed, and we need to stop allowing them to win.
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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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