curated news excerpts & citations
Conversation: From record warming to rusting rivers, 2025 Arctic Report Card shows a region transforming faster than expected
The Arctic is transforming faster and with more far-reaching consequences than scientists expected just 20 years ago, when the first Arctic Report Card assessed the state of Earth’s far northern environment.
The snow season is dramatically shorter today, sea ice is thinning and melting earlier, and wildfire seasons are getting worse. Increasing ocean heat is reshaping ecosystems as non-Arctic marine species move northward. Thawing permafrost is releasing iron and other minerals into rivers, which degrades drinking water. And extreme storms fueled by warming seas are putting communities at risk.
(Conversation more…)
USA Today: Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado
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Miles Taylor: Trump is threatening troops who question “illegal orders.” So we’re giving them lawyers.
DEFIANCE.org is launching an effort to make sure concerned service members have access to the best legal advice, despite White House intimidation.
In recent weeks, something disturbing has unfolded in plain sight. Lawmakers have publicly warned about illegal orders, amid growing scrutiny of Trump’s deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean. Career officials have raised alarms privately. And quietly, U.S. service members have begun asking a question no one in uniform should ever have to ask: What if I’m directed to break the law?
Instead of allaying these concerns, the White House has moved to silence them. So we’ve made the decision to do something about it.
(Miles Taylor more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – December 17, 2025
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This evening, the House passed the Republican healthcare measure, which is expected to die in the Senate. The House will vote on extending the premium tax credits in January.Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported today on a court filing by lawyers for the government that claims it is legal for the administration to distribute federal money only to Republican-dominated states, withholding it from Democratic-dominated states. The government admitted that it withheld grants from the Department of Energy according to “whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect and/or has recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called ‘Blue States’).” Without evidence, the government claimed that such discrimination “is constitutionally permissible, including because it can serve as a proxy for legitimate policy considerations.”
Kornfield and Natanson note that this is a “remarkably candid admission” that “echoes…Trump’s frequent vows to punish cities and states that he sees as his enemies, from withholding disaster relief for Southern California to targeting blue cities with National Guard troops.”
Joey Garrison of USA Today reported yesterday that a senior White House official told him the Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Since 1960, NCAR scientists have studied Earth’s atmosphere, meteorology, climate science, the Sun, and the impacts of weather and climate on the environment and society. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote that “[d]ismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought told Garrison that the center is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and that the government will break it up, moving what he called “any vital activities such as weather research” to “another entity or location.” Earlier that day, Garrison notes, the administration cancelled $109 million in grants to Colorado.
…Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket reported yesterday on escalating calls for violence to free Peters coming from prominent right-wing figures. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted after the threat to close NCAR that he was “[h]earing this is payback for Colorado not honoring Trump/Peters ‘pardon.’”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Liz Dye: Trump gets bored issuing real pardons, tries a fake one
It’s hilarious … right up until his supporters storm the jail.
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Gizmodo: How Governments Turn the Internet Into a Weapon
From protests to elections, governments are increasingly pulling the internet plug on entire populations. Connectivity is slowly becoming a tool of control, not a guarantee.
…Defenses on the ground are slim. Depending on the country and the type of shutdown, there can be workarounds. Everything, from VPNs to mesh networks to Starlink terminals to foreign SIM cards near borders, has been used with varying degrees of success. The tech-savvy sometimes have other options. But for most everyone in society, no internet means no internet—and all the effects of that loss.
(Gizmodo more…)
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Times of London: US warns Europe against giving frozen Russian billions to Ukraine
Washington is warning privately that it will demand “the money back” if the European Union, along with Britain, moves to seize frozen Russian assets worth €210 billion to fund Ukraine.
A political fight between EU leaders is looming on Thursday, putting Europe in conflict with President Trump and Russia, which threatened “eternal retaliation”.
(Times of London more…)
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Noah Berlatsky: Men Aren’t Lonely. They Just Have Guns.
The real crisis of masculinity
This weekend there were multiple mass shootings—one in Providence and one in Australia. Mass shootings in Australia are very rare because they have strict gun control laws specifically designed to stop mass shootings. Mass shootings in the US are very common because we have a large and politically powerful gun cult which feeds the great god “Freedom” with bullet-riddled human sacrifices.
(Noah Berlatsky more…)Jennifer Rubin: Two Countries — Two responses to gun massacres
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Atlantic: Americans Can’t Believe How Rich They Are
How much does an American family of four need to earn to avoid poverty? According to the Census Bureau, $32,130. But what if it were really $140,000? Late last month, the investor and Substack writer Michael Green advanced this attention-grabbing claim, which implies that a majority of Americans are living in poverty today. He argued, further, that families earning $40,000 to $100,000 were stuck in a “valley of death” because “benefits disappear faster than wages rise.” These figures have launched a thousand subsequent takes—most of them skeptical but some sympathetic. Chris Arnade, the author of the book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, wrote that “the core of its argument is correct” because too many people in “the ‘aspirational bottom’ are being squeezed.”
(Atlantic more…)
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HuffPost: Jack Smith Tells Lawmakers Donald Trump Brought Charges On Himself
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“Chairman Jordan made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of January the 6th,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters.
(HuffPost more…)Joyce Vance: Jack Smith Testifies Before The House Judiciary Committee
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But even Judge Cannon rejected any notion that some dissent within the ranks at the FBI invalidated the probable cause used to obtain the Mar-a-Lago search warrant.
(Joyce Vance more…)
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Your Local Epidemiologist: How health institutions can catch up
Project Stethoscope, the PHNIX initiative, and you
GriftMatrix
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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