curated news excerpts & citations
Anne Applebaum: Dislike and Disdain
Trump expresses his true feelings about America and Americans
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In truth, the administration’s unannounced destruction of the East Wing of the White House reflects a similar kind of disdain, and belongs to a similar kind of tradition. Ignoring the National Capital Planning Commission, eschewing the deference that presidents have usually shown to public opinion and precedent, Trump sent in the bulldozers before anyone was able to stop them.
The message is the same as in the AI video: Trump doesn’t care about public opinion, or that it belongs to the American nation rather than himself, or that it was the product of Thomas Jefferson’s belief in order, proportion, and discipline. He believes that only he can decide what it should look like, and he wants it to reflect his Mar-a-Lago taste: bigger, uglier, with the Rose Garden covered in concrete and fake gold ornaments pasted onto the walls of the Oval Office. He is discarding history, tradition and propriety, destroying a symbol that belongs to all of us, weakening one of the few remaining images that unite us.
He is also doing so at the cost of $300 million, thanks to donations from wealthy Americans under conditions that are unclear. Why have Apple, Amazon, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, the Winkelvoss brothers, the family of Howard Lutnick and more than a dozen others given money to this project? What do they hope to receive in exchange? Secrecy is another hallmark of authoritarianism, and so are permanent conflicts of interest. Plenty of those surround this project too.
(Anne Applebaum more…)
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Fast Company: May the First Amendment be with you: Protester sues after ‘Imperial March’ performance sparks arrest
![Capitol and Darth Vader[Photos: Getty Images; María Ten/Unsplash]](https://kewus.net/yesterday/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Capitol-and-Darth-Vader.webp "Capitol and Darth Vader[Photos: Getty Images; María Ten/Unsplash]")
(Fast Company more…)
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co1ombia: Family of Colombian Fisherman Killed in US Strike Speaks Out
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Carranza’s boat had suffered a mechanical failure and was adrift with a distress signal, writing on X that “he had no ties to drug trafficking. His daily activity was fishing.” Petro has condemned the U.S. strikes as violations of Colombian sovereignty and called the attack an “assassination.”
(co1ombia more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 25, 2025
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Not only will the loss of SNAP create more hunger in the richest country on earth, it will also rip a hole in local economies just as people’s health insurance premiums skyrocket.And yet, at the same time the Department of Agriculture says it cannot spend its $6 billion in reserves to address the $8 billion needed for SNAP in November, the administration easily found $20 billion to prop up right-wing Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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MSN: ‘Material factual error’: 9th Circuit reverses victory for Trump admin in National Guard case after discovery shows feds lied about troops
Trump Action Tracker
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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