curated news excerpts & citations
Bulwark: What We Choose to Nazi
The Department of Labor is posting Heroic Realism propaganda. What, exactly, are they telling us?
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But it’s not the use of AI that’s giving everyone pause, of course. It’s that these pictures, released by the Department of Labor social-media accounts and bearing the department’s seal, are uncomfortably reminiscent of posters from the 1930s. To be more specific: the ‘Heroic Realism’ of Nazi propaganda posters and the similarly stylized patriotic posters later produced in the United States.
Why is this style being used now, and what are these images for? Only a few of the images explicitly say. But their purpose is explained in the accompanying captions: They’re promoting the department’s work on Project Firewall, meant to restore “pathways to the American Dream by ensuring American Jobs go to American Workers.”
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There is a final irony. As millions of Americans are facing a real possibility of hunger in the days ahead and as tech giants like Amazon lay off tens of thousands of workers—adding to the material conditions that will make enlisting in the army ICE is building a more appealing option—all this AI-generated slop is being used to harden false, in-group thinking among impressionable and disillusioned young men. The very AI tools that are adding to today’s employment problems are being used by the Trump administration to chip away at reality, one white-supremacy meme and one fascistic propaganda video at a time.
(Bulwark more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 30, 2025
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to pin the upcoming catastrophic lapse in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding on the Democrats. But with the U.S. Department of Agriculture sitting on $6 billion in funds Congress appropriated for just such an event, the Treasury finding $20 billion to prop up Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina, Johnson refusing to bring the House into regular session to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, and President Donald J. Trump demanding $230 million in damages from the American taxpayer, bulldozing the East Wing of the White House to build a gold-plated ballroom that will dwarf the existing White House, and traveling to Asia, where South Korean leadership courted him by giving him a gold crown and serving him brownies topped with edible gold, blaming any funding shortfall on Democrats is a hard sell.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Al Jazeera: Trump calls for Senate to scrap filibuster tactic to end the gov’t shutdown
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Jennifer Rubin: Prosecutions Have Never Been This Vindictive—or Meritless
Trump threatens the rule of law like it’s his job
Evidence of animus is so stark—and the absence of evidence of guilt so glaring—in the prosecutions of former FBI director James Comey, Jr. and New York AG Letitia James that if these cases do not get tossed out as vindictive prosecutions, then no case will be barred on this basis pursuant to the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Allowing such bogus indictments to proceed would permit this or any subsequent president to put his enemies through the ordeal of criminal prosecution and the risk of conviction.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)Jay Kuo: Trump’s Getting Thumped in Court
Bad faith arguments, blatant misrepresentations, illegal appointments and politicized prosecutions are turning judges against Trump’s DOJ.
Intercept: Man Jailed for Facebook Meme Is Freed in Tennessee
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ABC: Suspect is sentenced in case where prosecutors were disciplined for Jan. 6 reference
A day after the Justice Department withdrew a sentencing memo that described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as being carried out by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” the convicted Jan. 6 participant accused in the case was sentenced Thursday to time served.
Taylor Taranto was sentenced Thursday for his illegal weapons and threats conviction stemming from his June 2023 arrest near the home of former President Barack Obama, after Taranto was pardoned by President Donald Trump over his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Joyce Vance: Is Justice Done?
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Lucian K. Truscott IV: No defendants, no evidence, no lawyers, no courts, no judges, just dead people in the water
Trump’s rocket strikes on alleged drug boats in the Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific are his dream of what law enforcement should be. You make an allegation – look over there! A drug boat! You order up a Reaper drone armed with a Hellfire missile. You get your Secretary of Hair Gel to post a video on his X account showing the boat loaded down with packages – see what we said? Drugs! You shoot it out of the water. Boom! Lots of fire! It’s gone.
It’s not even shoot first, ask questions later, because there are no questions. It’s fait accompli. It’s gone.
…There it is in a nutshell. They don’t have any legal justifications for these extra-judicial killings because there are none. Trump’s theory, or that of the people running the so-called drug boat shooting gallery show, is that they don’t need any legal justifications so long as there are no legal proceedings. With no defendants, there are no indictments, no trials, nothing. They just go out there in the Caribbean and the Pacific with their drones and shoot anything with three outboards on it.
Jason Crow put it well when he noted that stopping the flow of drugs into the United States “needs to happen, by the way.” But shooting random speedboats carrying packages wrapped in plastic is doing little to accomplish that goal, if in fact it is a goal of the Trump administration. Their failure to retrieve the plastic-wrapped packages and show that they contain dangerous drugs raises the question of exactly what the whole thing is about. Is it just a trigger-happy Trump and a trigger-happy Secretary of Hair Gel wanting to shoot stuff and watch it burn? Or is it part of another strategy that they’re not talking about?
(Lucian K. Truscott IV more…) -
MIT Technology Review: Whales are dying. Don’t blame wind turbines.
A wildlife veterinarian who performs necropsies shares what it takes to investigate a whale stranding.
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Daily Express: NATO forced to scramble jets after huge Russian attack despite Trump pledge
Reuters: Russia uses missile in Ukraine that led Trump to quit nuclear treaty, Kyiv says
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AXIOS: Trump muddles nuke-testing message
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Reality check: Trump began his announcement by claiming the U.S. has more nukes than any other country. Russia, in fact, has the largest stockpile.- He also suggested the U.S. has completed its modernization efforts. They are, in fact, very much still in progress.
- The president then claimed China would catch up to the U.S. “within five years.” Experts doubt that. While Beijing’s arsenal is “growing more quickly than it grew in the past,” said Jon Wolfsthal, the Federation of American Scientists’ director of global risk, “this is not an immediate ‘they’re going to match us’ problem.”
- “By no calculation can they be considered having parity with us or a nuclear peer.”
Hill: Jeffries says Trump nuclear tests would be ‘massive breach’ of international law
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Bulwark: This Man Is the Face of the Future
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This entire scene was a performance piece. The question is: Who was this performance for?
(Bulwark more…)
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NY Times: How a Former Trump Golf Club Worker Was Mistakenly Deported to Mexico
When Alejandro Juarez was returned to his homeland, federal agents told him that they were just following orders. Those orders were wrong.
…… Mr. Romero said that because Mr. Juarez’s eldest son is in the military, he could be eligible for a special type of relief, known as “parole in place,” traditionally afforded to immediate relatives of U.S. service members.
(NY Times more…)
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Michael Thomas: How we identified 500+ planned data centers
(Michael Thomas more…)
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404 Media: Libraries Scramble for Books After Giant Distributor Shuts Down
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Austin Chronicle: Students Organize as UT Continues to Drag Its Feet on Trump’s Compact
New university president avoids the topic in inauguration ceremony
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Dispatch: We, Sharpie
It takes a global supply chain to make a permanent marker, regardless of where it’s assembled.
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Daily Kos: Billie Eilish blasts bad-guy billionaires to their faces
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Christina Pagel: England’s Covid wave recedes but is replaced by flu
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Al Jazeera: Trump administration sets rules to bar groups it opposes from loan relief
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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