curated news excerpts & citations
Jennifer Rubin: Demolishing the Presidency
A White House teardown ordered by a reckless child is the perfect metaphor
Donald Trump has done far, far worse things. But images of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, including water being sprayed throughout to douse the debris, were viscerally appalling. Maybe it was the resemblance to the damage wrought to the Pentagon on 9/11. Maybe it was an instinctive defense of a national symbol—last destroyed by a monarch in the 1812 war. …
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Trump promised this sort of desecration would not occur. But, as we know too well, the lifespan of his promises is a nanosecond. A leaked memo telling employees not to release damaging images is the sort of internal rebellion that a White House literally falling apart must dread.
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… it is of a piece with the recent string of moronic moves by a White House apparently in the grips of panic.
When you resort to a vulgar AI video (“not only juvenile but also betray[ing] striking contempt for tens of millions of Americans he ostensibly leads and for the concept of democratic free speech,” as CNN’s Stephen Collinson observed), or when you insist that the images of millions of No Kings protesters blanketing social and legacy media are fake, you give the impression you are not only crass and delusional, but panicked.
Don’t forget his jaw-droppingly irresponsible stunt, the Marines’ exercise of “firing high explosive rounds from M777 Howitzers” over a major California freeway that—no surprise!—ended in disaster. …
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
Thom Hartmann: Trump: Is He the Thief in the Ballroom?
The fight isn’t between left and right anymore: it’s between oligarchy and the people, between those who hoard power and those still brave enough to believe in democracy…
Trump is now trying to extract a quarter-billion dollars from the American treasury — our tax dollars — to compensate himself for the troubles he faced when Merrick Garland belatedly tried to hold him to account for criminally stealing classified documents, trying to overthrow the 2020 election, and his explicit, public outreach to Putin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and make them public that helped him win the 2016 election.
The decision about whether to give him the $230 million will largely fall to Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice she heads, assuming no Republicans in Congress dare challenge him. The obscenity of his former private attorney — who looked the other way for eight years in Florida when she was Attorney General there and Trump and Epstein were up to their dirty deeds — ratifying this demand is astonishing.
(Thom Hartmann more…)
John Pavlovitz: Now That The Government Has Turned Tyrannical, What Happened to All the Second Amendment Conservatives?
Turns out, protecting America from fascism wasn’t the plan…
NY Times: The White House Wrecking Ball
President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing has struck a nerve in Washington and beyond.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 22, 2025
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There are currently no approved plans to rebuild, no permits, no signs of weatherproofing for a construction project begun just before winter, no indication that the history or the paintings or the artifacts in the East Wing were preserved. There is only the destruction of the People’s House.
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Marshall, though, noted that Trump’s behavior “opens up opportunities the political opposition can and must exploit.” The president is “increasingly reckless, acting like someone who is free from any consequences or the need for support from anyone beyond his admirers.” But “[t]he reality is that Trump is deeply unpopular.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Steve Vladeck: The Costs of a Quiescent Congress
Many Supreme Court decisions limiting judicial review have held out the existence of political checks as a viable alternative. Each day brings new evidence of the growing costs of such a myopic view.
(Steve Vladeck more…)
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Bulwark: Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina. Here’s $40B Trump’s Giving You.
Trump’s MAGA allies aren’t thrilled by the prospect of our stocking up on pesos and Argentinian beef.
(Bulwark more…)AP: US ranchers oppose Trump’s plan to import more Argentine beef and experts doubt it will lower prices
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Dispatch: No Peace, No Plan
Other than that, a heck of a job.
Donald Trump’s grandiosely announced Middle East peace plan might have been a smashing success, except that it is missing two elements: 1) peace; 2) a plan.
Like the so-called Abraham Accords, the Israel-Hamas peace plan is a triumph of marketing over substance, packaging over product. Neither of the two central parties to the dispute have, in fact, agreed to any binding terms, and, in fact, neither has signed the 20-point plan.
(Dispatch more…)
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Signal: Execution in the Pacific
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For decades, U.S. counternarcotics operations at sea followed a recognizable pattern. The Coast Guard would intercept suspected smuggling vessels, board them, seize contraband, and arrest crew members for prosecution in American courts. Those interdictions produced evidence chains, court records, and bilateral agreements with partner nations. They were slow and bureaucratic and produced limited results—but they operated within established legal frameworks and generated verifiable outcomes. The current campaign has produced body counts with no supporting documentation. Officials announce strikes, cite intelligence, and move on. No boarding teams verify cargo. No courts review the evidence. No mechanism exists for determining whether the people killed were actually smuggling drugs or simply fishermen on the wrong route at the wrong time. …
(Signal more…)
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Ga. teacher urged to resign after Charlie Kirk post is suing her employer
Teachers and others across the country lost their jobs or were disciplined for making similar posts on social media in the wake of Kirk’s death.
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution more…)SPLC: SPLC and GAE File Federal Lawsuit for Georgia Educator Facing Termination for Protected First Amendment Speech
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Bulwark: The CDC Diaspora Fights Back
How America’s scientific army is trying to stand up for public health—and stand up for itself.
(Bulwark more…)
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Felipe Galindo Gómez (aka Feggo): My painting was showcased at the Smithsonian. Donald Trump censored it.
Trump’s war on Latino art is an attempt to whitewash history.
In 1999—the same year I became a US citizen—I created a painting that continues to resonate with viewers today. It depicts a young boy peering through a slat on the Mexico side of the southern border wall while his father looks on. In the distance, bright white, starlike fireworks illuminate a deep-blue night sky, while the barrier in the foreground bears rusty red and white stripes.
(Felipe Galindo Gómez (aka Feggo) more…)
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Bulwark: MAGA Media Keeps Thirsting for Left-Wing Violence
… even if that means they have to invent it.
… the man and woman who disrupted the watch party were not liberals at all. As the Arlington GOP made clear in its own statement, the duo were in fact former Daily Caller reporter Myles Morell and wannabe Republican operative Alysia McMillan. If those names sound a bit familiar, it might be because you’ve seen them printed in this very newsletter.
(Bulwark more…)
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CNN: Federal workers form line down the block for food pantry as shutdown hits third-week mark
Summer Kerksick waited in line for two hours Tuesday to receive a box of canned and dry goods at a food bank event for federal workers amid the ongoing government shutdown.
“With my rent due next week, I can take anything I can get,” Kerksick, a federal contractor and market research analyst with the Rural Export Center in the US Department of Commerce, told CNN.
(CNN more…)
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Bill McKibben: Beyond the solar panel
Finding all the clever paths forward!
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Waging Nonviolence: What’s next after the historic No Kings protest?
We just witnessed the largest protest in US history, but this is just the start.
(Waging Nonviolence more…)Above the Law: LAPD Tried To Fight Order That Wouldn’t Let Them Shoot Journalists, Shot Them Anyway
You don’t get it judge — we REALLY wanna shoot these guys!
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Nature: People with some cancers live longer after a COVID vaccine
mRNA vaccines seem to boost the effectiveness of an immune therapy for skin and lung cancer ― in an unexpected way.
(Nature more…)
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James Eagle: Housing affordability is shifting unevenly
Housing has become the defining economic fault line of our time. For younger generations, owning a home has slipped from expectation to fantasy. What was once a natural milestone in adulthood is now out of reach for all but a lucky few. The culprit is not just rising prices, but the debt-fuelled system that inflated them. Decades of cheap credit pushed property values higher and higher, creating an economy where basic shelter has become a financial burden rather than a foundation.
What shocks me most is how little we talk about the generational divide this has created. …
(James Eagle more…)
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404 Media: The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds
When Amazon Web Services went offline, people lost control of their cloud-connected smart beds, getting stuck in reclined positions or roasting with the heat turned all the way up.
(404 Media more…)Verge: Eight Sleep adds ‘outage mode’ to smart beds after AWS problems left them frozen
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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