curated citations to news sources
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 4, 2025
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Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Al Jazeera: Fact checking Robert F Kennedy’s statements to Senate on COVID, vaccines
WSJ: RFK Jr.’s Operation Warped Memory
The health secretary can’t keep his vaccine story straight.
WSJ-Susan Monarez: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC and Me
I was fired after 29 days because I held the line and insisted on rigorous scientific review.
I served for 29 days as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Senate confirmed me to ensure that unbiased evidence serves our nation’s health, and for doing that, I lost my job. America’s children could lose far more.
(WSJ-Susan Monarez more…)
Reuters: Ousted CDC head says she was pressured to preapprove vaccine panel recommendations
NY Times: 5 Takeaways From Kennedy’s Senate Hearing
Dean Blundell: RFK Jr.’s Reckoning – Senators Torch a Health Secretary Who Plays Doctor on TV
A clearly unwell HHS Secretary, RFK Jr wheezed and flailed in today’s Senate Committee hearing as Senators took turns roasting his worm brain
The emergency hearing on the President’s 2026 health-care agenda turned into a referendum on Kennedy’s credibility and a live-fire audit of his first months in office—months defined not by better outcomes but by turmoil at the CDC, collapsing trust in vaccines, and open revolt inside the very department he leads. It started with an opening Statement (not under oath, so that he could lie to the Senate Finance Committee, and he did A LOT of that today) that was quickly drowned out by a protestor heckling him for killing kids.
(Dean Blundell more…)
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Atlantic: The Anti-Trump Strategy That’s Actually Working
Lawsuits, lawsuits, and more lawsuits
(Atlantic more…)
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NY Times: Orsted Sues Trump Administration in Fight to Restart Its Blocked Wind Farm
The Danish company behind Revolution Wind, a $6 billion project off Rhode Island, said the federal government had unlawfully halted work on the wind farm.
Orsted, the Danish renewable energy giant, sued the Trump administration on Thursday, saying the government’s move to halt a nearly finished wind farm off Rhode Island was unlawful and “issued in bad faith.”
(NY Times more…)
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Dispatch: The False Pretenses Behind the Naval Operation Off the Coast of Venezuela
The nation is not a major source of drugs to the U.S., for starters.
… Venezuela is not a leading source of the drugs reaching U.S. streets. The last estimates made by U.S. agencies suggest that between 10 and 13 percent of global cocaine supplies passes through Venezuela, and much of that goes to Europe. The preferred route for cocaine headed to the United States these days is from Colombia through Ecuador and up the Pacific Coast to Central America or Mexico, or through the Western Caribbean. In any case, fentanyl is a bigger threat on U.S. streets than cocaine—it accounts for 70 percent of the fatal overdoses—and none of it comes from Venezuela.
(Dispatch more…)NY Times: Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers
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The White House statement suggests that it considers this week’s operation — and any like it to come — to be covered by the laws of war. The statement appears to gesture at Justice Department opinions that presidents have constitutional authority, without congressional permission, to order limited military strikes in the national interest.But if wartime rules do apply, that raises a different problem. It is a war crime for troops to deliberately kill civilians — even criminals — who are not directly participating in hostilities.
Whether Mr. Trump is directing service members to commit war crimes, then, turns on whether he has legitimate power to unilaterally redefine drug smugglers as combatants.
Martin Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who helped write legal memos on counterterrorism drone strikes as a Justice Department official in the Obama administration, said that interpreting the law as allowing Mr. Trump to kill people who are not attacking the United States would require an “alarming” expansion of presidential power.
“Even if it were true they were ‘terrorists,’ the president doesn’t have authority to go around killing terrorists anywhere in the world, let alone to kill drug smugglers,” he said. “The targets of lethal force would have to either be in an armed conflict with us or otherwise be threatening a use of force that would justify self-defense.”
(NY Times more…)
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Daily Kos: Why is Trump turning a military base into an Airbnb?
(Daily Kos more…)
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Adam Kinzinger: The Barroom Confession: A Fictional Republican Congressman Admits Why He Bows to Trump
A behind-the-scenes dialogue on cowardice, complicity, and why standing up gets easier once you take the first step.
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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Bloomberg: US Manufacturing Activity Contracted in August for a Sixth Month
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Boing Boing: MAGA discovers they actually love gun control after all
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Guardian: ‘It happened so fast’: the shocking reality of indoor heat deaths in Arizona
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Boing Boing: Travel under Trump 2.0: Don’t cross a U.S. border without a “perfect burner phone”
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The White House Insults People of Faith & DeSantis Destroys 4th Graders’ Art for Being Too Political
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
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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