curated news excerpts & citations
Steward Beckham: A Presidency of Racist Memes
This morning, I woke up to the news that the president had posted a social media video depicting the former and first Black head of state and his wife as chimpanzees. It was grotesque. It was also tragically unsurprising. We’ve had roughly a decade of this kind of political rot: a carnival barker’s politics of enrichment for the wealthiest, paired with racist shiny objects tossed to a sizable, influential slice of the working public like bait.
A few Republicans pushed back. Senator Tim Scott suggested it was racist, but also may have been a “mistake” by the president or his communications team. Congressman Mike Lawler also framed it as a possible mistake while admitting, plainly, that this wasn’t borderline anything, just raw racism. It was overt.
I grew up on a saying my mother repeated often: what happens in the dark comes to light. American politics has its own version of that law. Think of Ronald Reagan launching his 1980 general-election campaign with a “states’ rights” speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi, only sixteen years after the murders of civil rights workers there. On paper, “states’ rights” can sound like a tidy argument about federalism. In historical practice, especially in the post–Civil Rights era, it functioned as coded reassurance: desegregation went too far; the old order should reassert itself; separate but equal (that peculiar institution’s afterlife) deserved a second wind.
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Same with Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope.
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So when the president posts something like last night’s video, he’s not merely being tasteless or provocative. He’s reaffirming the bargain at the center of his rise: political power built on the destabilization of the country through racial grievance through the insistence that a Black president disproving racist stereotypes was not progress but an existential theft. …
(Steward Beckham more…)
Jennifer Rubin: Judge Ana Reyes calls out Trump regime racism
Slate: The Real Reason Trump Wants to Let Our Nuclear Weapons Treaty With Russia Die
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The real problem with New START, in Trump’s eyes, was the same problem that compelled him to denounce the Iran nuclear deal as “the worst deal ever” before he tore it up in 2018; he hates them because they were both signed by his loathed and envied predecessor, Barack Obama.
Jason Easley: If Trump Didn’t Post The Racist Video, His Decline Is Even Worse Than Imagined
The White House is claiming that Trump didn’t post the racist video attacking the Obamas, but for this to be true, it exposes another lie that Trump is energetic and running his own social media.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – February 6, 2026
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Later tonight on Air Force One, Trump said that he had posted it himself. When a reporter asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
While the post exhibited both the president’s vile racism and his failing impulse control, it also seems to have been an attempt to use racism to break the growing coalition against him. As when they arrested Black journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort as well as Black protesters at a church while leaving white protesters free, Trump and his allies are hammering on racial fault lines. …
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Mike Stunson of Forbes reported today that the U.S. lost 108,435 jobs in January in the biggest cuts since January 2009 during the Great Recession. Despite Trump’s insistence that he would bring back masculine jobs like manufacturing, in 2025 the U.S. lost about 68,000 manufacturing jobs.
On Tuesday, February 3, a bipartisan group of 27 former Agriculture Department officials and leaders from farm and commodity groups wrote to the leaders of the agriculture committees of both chambers with a dire warning about “the damage that is being done to American farmers.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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News Nation: DHS called her a domestic terrorist, but the charges were dropped
Some criminal cases involving people characterized by the Department of Homeland Security as “transnational gang members” and “domestic terrorists” out to harm federal immigration agents are being dismissed or reframed differently than what the agency stated.
In Chicago, charges were dropped against a woman deemed a domestic terrorist. Two Venezuelan men were arrested in Portland, Oregon, and labeled gang members, a designation prosecutors are no longer using in court.
Additional cases in Chicago against a protester charged with resisting arrest and a comedy club owner accused of assaulting a federal officer were dismissed.
ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization, reported in October that in 170 cases involving migrants charged with federal offenses since Trump took office, at least 50 were either dismissed or never filed.
(News Nation more…)NBC Chicago: Judge orders release of body camera video from shooting of Marimar Martinez by fed agent
“I don’t know why the United States government has expressed zero concern for the sullying of Ms. Martinez’s reputation,” Judge Alexakis said.
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Noah Berlatsky: Why Delia Ramirez thinks DHS needs to be dismantled
“Why would we ever want to give them more money to keep doing what they’re doing?”
Chicago Congresswoman Delia Ramirez is one of the most aggressive critics of ICE in Congress, which is notable given how unpopular the agency has become.
Ramirez has said for months that ICE should be defunded. Since the assault on Minneapolis, she’s gone further, arguing the entire Department of Homeland Security needs to be dismantled.
(Noah Berlatsky more…)
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Dean Blundell: Alberta Separatists Say Trump Regime Offered Them $500,000,000 “Loan” To Break Up Canada
Alberta’s separatist circuit is bragging about a half-billion-dollar “transition loan” they say was discussed with Trumpworld in Washington. Seditious if true…
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Bloomberg: How Bidirectional Charging Kept the Lights On Amid Cold and Blackouts
The US now has more than 600,000 EVs that can feed power to houses during an emergency.
(Bloomberg more…)
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Miles Taylor: Did Trump secretly order an illegal recount of the 2020 election?
The President and his team have been caught in lies. New information is casting further doubt on the raid of a Georgia election office.
(Miles Taylor more…)
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James Eagle: Trump approval hits a second term low
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Polling always moves, but sustained negative net approval is historically hard to reverse without a major economic or geopolitical shift.
(James Eagle more…)
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.- January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
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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