curated citations to news sources
Jennifer Rubin: Undaunted
In Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro gets it right
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With a solid record on public safety and personal experience with political violence, Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro was ideally suited to the task. Last year, when sitting at the Passover Seder table with his family, a man threw two Molotov cocktails into Shapiro’s home, igniting a fire. (Trump conveniently ignores the incident when reciting recent acts of political violence). His state was also the location of the worst mass murder of Jews in America (by a White nationalist) and of the first attempted assassination of Trump. Shapiro knows violence does not come from one ideological group.
He delivered remarks this week at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit. “I will not be deterred in my work for you, and I will not be silenced,” he declared. He then explained why violence is antithetical to democracy: “It tears at the fabric of American society, and the fundamental principles this nation was founded upon… A nation where civil disagreement should be welcome, because that discourse can lead to progress.”
He also rejected selective outrage. “Unfortunately, some—from the dark corners of the internet all the way to the Oval Office—want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn,” he said, pointing out that such crass opportunism makes healing impossible.
Shapiro then made the critical point: “Censorship—using the long arm of government to silence people, businesses, and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech—will not solve this problem.” He declared, “Prosecuting constitutionally protected speech will only erode our freedoms and deepen mistrust. That is un-American.”
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
Thom Hartmann: The Day America Stepped Over the Edge
The reason we’re at a pivotal moment in America is because most people don’t know how to answer this question: “How do you know when you’re really no longer living in a democracy?”
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“You know you don’t live in a free country any more when comedians can no longer criticize the president.”
Economist: Is “radical-left” violence really on the rise in America?
The killing of Charlie Kirk is part of a grim pattern of political violence. This is what the data show
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Rebecca Solnit: On the Party of Narcissistic Inequality
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There’s so much news swirling around us that I had to pause for a minute to sift through the censorious/repressive/Trumpian parts of it to remember, oh yeah, that peak narcissist lawsuit against the New York Times and the two journalists who turned their reporting into a book, a lawsuit filed Monday, which feels like a month ago. The book is on how Trump was never the self-made man or financial genius he insists he is; his daddy’s money made him, bailed him out, and he never really managed it well. The lawsuit written by some low-end-for-hire lawyers doesn’t just have a hissy fit that they dared to say such things; it sings his praises in grotesque terms.
(Rebecca Solnit more…)NY Times: Judge Dismisses Trump’s Lawsuit Against The New York Times
A federal judge in Florida on Friday threw out President Trump’s defamation suit against The New York Times four days after it was filed, calling the complaint “improper and impermissible” in its present form.
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Governor JB Pritzker: Be Loud — For America
I have spent the last few weeks addressing and preparing for a military invasion by the President of the United States. No, I’m not a soldier or a foreign adversary. I’m the Governor of Illinois, one of our nation’s largest and most prosperous states.
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(Governor JB Pritzker more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 19, 2025
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The administration’s pressure on ABC to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel is very unpopular, as G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, with people polled by YouGov on September 18 seeing it as an attack on free speech.That unpopularity showed today when podcaster and senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) celebrated Kimmel’s firing but called the threat of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to retaliate against ABC “unbelievably dangerous.” Cruz called Carr’s threats “right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
…Most American adults think Trump has gone too far with his tariffs, his use of presidential power, and sending troops into U.S. cities.
…“Ultimately, though,” Schiff said, “the most powerful check on Trump’s authoritarianism is not Congress. It is not the courts. It is the American people.”
And that was the rallying cry of Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) in Congress yesterday.
Crow, who entered Congress in 2019, is a former Army Ranger who completed three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment.
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“There’s a tradition in the paratroopers,” he said, “that the leader of the unit jumps out of the plane first and then the others follow.”He concluded: “I’m ready to jump.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Karen Attiah: Why Washington Post fired me
Read the official termination letter for yourself.
(Karen Attiah more…)
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KXAN: Tenured Texas State professor fired for conference comments sues, says school broke state law
A Texas State University professor fired earlier this month filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the university in Hays County District Court, arguing that the school’s administration breached its contract with him and retaliated against him for protected speech for political reasons.
(KXAN more…)
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Esquire: Wait, How Exactly Did ICE Manage to “Lose” More Than 1,000 Alligator Alcatraz Detainees?
It appears that the agency is just as incompetent as it is cruel.
(Esquire more…)
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Al Jazeera: Trump says US struck another ‘drug smuggling vessel’, killing three
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NY Times: 18-Year-Old Is Fatally Shot During F.B.I. and A.T.F. Operation in Pennsylvania
A medical examiner’s report said Kendric Curtis, 18, was “shot by law enforcement” on Thursday and died on Friday.
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Closer to the Edge: Trump’s ICE goons unleash hell on Chicago
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Boing Boing: Disney cancels Kimmel segment after threats, recalling Walt’s 1938 meeting with Nazi filmmaker
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Dispatch: Assessing Claims About Tyler Robinson’s Motive
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NY Times: U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Resigns After President Seeks to Oust Him
Erik S. Siebert had hit roadblocks investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
Sarah Jones: Trump Ordering DOJ to Charge Enemies with Crimes Sans Evidence
Trump pushed out a Trump-appointed prosecutor who refused to charge a Trump enemy sans evidence, meaning he is now ordering DOJ to charge people he doesn’t like with crimes they haven’t committed.
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Your Local Epidemiologist: Covid-19 vaccine changes: What it means for you
Day 2 of ACIP
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Ben Mathis-Lilley: The Biggest Difference Between the Trump Era and the Obama Era
…things are a little different than they were in 2014 when Barack Obama was president, don’t you think?One of these differences is the sheer number of basic societal functions that people are aware of, and forced to have opinions about, within the realm of politics. Think about COVID and the way everything worked or didn’t work while it was at its peak. Think about the crash course in vote tabulation and Electoral College procedure that followed. Think about what has happened in the past nine months—a sort of national unscrewing of the parts on the furniture that its advocates and opponents alike would describe as an attempt to change the entire nature of bureaucracy and commerce in this country. We’re in the midst of an effort to turn pretty much every entity that once maintained a certain “normal” and nonpartisan order of operations into one that acts for the benefit, and at the direction, of a specific political party and its leader.
In effect, we have spent the past five years as a society examining the gears that make us move.
…Some citizens of this country think it was a good idea to dynamite the house; many don’t. … Bill Kristol, once the country’s most prominent conservative intellectual, is now essentially a Democrat, and not only because he shares Democrats’ personal aversion to the Orange Man. As crazy as it might seem, Kristol and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually have a mutual interest in restoring some of the previous status quo. It’s rational for them to be part of the same coalition.
Other questions that were once seemingly settled have been put up for discussion too. The current regime believes that what it’s doing, for all its violations of democratic “norms” and dismal poll numbers, is legitimate because it is acting on the authority of the Americans who most deserve to have America run on their behalf. And while there’s never been a big announcement about it, it’s been made clear in many ways that these first-class, more deserving citizens are the white ones.
Disputes over whether some Americans are more American than others have, of course, characterized the country’s entire existence. But when I wrote about the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance, the implications Donald Trump made about the second-class status of people with Mexican and Middle Eastern ancestry, his false claims about Black criminality, and his outreach to racial “science” IQ obsessives and Jewish world-control theorists registered as extreme and noteworthy not just to me, but to much of the general public. These things were scandals that led the news and made other Republicans nervous. …
This time around, not so much! …
…None of these stories is necessarily even the main topic in the news on any given day. The reversal of a 250-year trend toward equal rights in the U.S. is just one issue among many. Admiration for Adolf Hitler and Nazism is now a mainstream part of politics, which you can vote for or against.
…Why did all this happen? …
…My own explanation of the national meltdown involves a few factors. One is that the establishment and the status quo, as effective as they had been in engineering U.S. world hegemony, dominance, and wealth, had gotten a bit stalled out. …
…The second is that, for economic and technological reasons, the media disintegrated and it became impossible to find any consensus about why things weren’t working. The third is that it turned out that there was a lot of willingness in the population—more than the population itself probably would have guessed—to support a candidate who held views about race that they found unsettling. And this wasn’t just otherwise tolerant white people who were willing to overlook Trump’s more offensive statements because of tax rates, but also the crucial Latino and Black voters who elevated him to a second term because they thought he would help ease inflation. Which is related to the last factor: the American mind, utterly hypnotized by television, believing that because someone played an intimidating business executive on a reality-show competition, they must be good at managing economic stuff in real life. Oh well.
(Ben Mathis-Lilley more…)
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Fight for the Future: Activist Anti-Surveillance Tips from a Friendly Neighborhood Hacker
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Jay Kuo: To Kash a Troll
FBI Director Kash Patel went to Capitol Hill this week to do battle with Democrats. Here are my takeaways.
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Jack Hopkins: From Wall Street to the Palace: Mapping the Redactions in Epstein’s Files
You don’t redact nobodies. You redact the people who can’t afford to be seen.
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Disobey in Advance: New MAGA-approved late night TV lineup
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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