curated news excerpts & citations
Rook T. Winchester: 2,300 miles
America is loud right now. Not productive loud. Leaf-blower-at-6-a.m. loud. Everyone has a microphone, nobody has patience, and the national posture is a permanent forward lean toward the next outrage. Into this circus walked a dozen Buddhist monks who decided the correct response was to shut up and start walking.
Not marching. Not rallying. Walking. Two thousand three hundred miles of it, from Fort Worth, Texas, to the marble pressure cooker known as the United States Capitol.
…
On November 19, a truck struck the pilot vehicle escorting the group in Texas. The impact pushed the vehicle into the monks. Two were seriously injured. One monk lost his leg.
…
They paused. They issued a statement asking for prayers. They expressed gratitude. And they kept going.
(Rook T. Winchester more…)
-
Daily Kos: Why Republican scandals and misdeeds get a pass
President Donald Trump has been neck-deep in a series of scandals and outrages that would have ended the career of a Democratic commander in chief, or at minimum caused them a lot of political heartache.
…The mainstream media has treated all of these developments with kid gloves, making them at best one-day stories or mere blips on the media radar. Contrast this to onetime Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s singular scream that effectively ended his campaign in 2004 (Trump regularly screams at anyone within earshot) or the days and days of negative press former President Joe Biden received when he finally ended the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.
(Daily Kos more…)
Marcy Wheeler: Three Descriptions Of Our Current Turmoil
-
ReligiousLiberty.TV: Europe Floats Selling U.S. Debt as U.S. Peace Deal Talks Continue; Gabbard Says ‘Deep State’ Blocking Peace
-
CNN: Delta CEO: Low-cost travel partly to blame for loss of civility
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – December 20, 2025
On November 19, 2025, Congress passed H.R. 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and although there was none of the usual publicity and fanfare President Donald Trump enjoys around a bill signing, the White House said that Trump signed it the same day, making it a law.
…Today observers caught that for all that the Department of Justice had omitted materials the law required they produce, Justice Department staffers had inserted unrelated material: a photo of former Democratic president Bill Clinton, pop music star Michael Jackson, and music legend Diana Ross, with children, suggesting that the three were associated with sex abuser Jeffery Epstein. The image was quickly identified by social media users not as a private image from the Epstein files, but as a publicly available image from a 2003 fundraiser. The children were not Epstein victims, but rather Jackson’s and Ross’s own kids.
…Officials in the Trump administration have been treating members of Congress with contempt since Trump took office, deliberately flouting the 1974 Impoundment Act that prohibits presidents from unilaterally deciding to withhold funds Congress has appropriated, for example, and ignoring the 1973 War Powers Act that requires congressional approval for military actions that last more than 60 days.
Now, with their disregard for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, they are also treating voters, especially their own MAGA voters who stood behind Trump because he promised to release the Epstein files, with outright contempt.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
NPR: Available to download Friday, some Epstein files no longer there Saturday afternoon
Dean Blundell: Pictures of Trump With Epstein and VERY Young Girls Made it Into Yesterday’s Epstein Files Dump. Today, TRUMP had Them All Deleted.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%201/EFTA00000467.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%201/EFTA00000468.pdfBrian Allen: At Least 16 Epstein Files Vanished From the DOJ Website Within 24 Hours
Lev Parnas: They Hit “Publish,” Then Started Deleting — My Sources Say the Epstein Story Is Being Rewritten
Joyce Vance: Redacted: Donald & Jeffrey
Allison Gill: Are the Missed Trump Redactions Accidents?
This is purely speculation and I have zero proof, but what if they’re not?
Guardian: Sister of Epstein victim reported him in 1996, but FBI failed to investigate, files reveal
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
Leave a Reply