curated news excerpts & citations
NY Times: The Transformative Power of the White ‘Race Traitor’
From Schwerner and Goodman to Good and Pretti, white people putting themselves in harm’s way has helped galvanize Americans for justice.
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The first person to be executed for treason in the United States was not a spy or someone who sold secrets to a foreign government. It was not a Confederate general who took up arms against his government. It was an abolitionist named John Brown.
A religious man, Brown had long opposed slavery on moral grounds, becoming a conductor on the Underground Railroad and training Black communities in free states how to arm themselves against slave catchers. But as slavery continued to expand across the West and with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Brown came to believe that the only way to end slavery was to overthrow it by force.
In October 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in what was then Virginia, intending to arm enslaved people to rise up against their enslavers. Brown’s group killed several people before he was captured and charged with murder and conspiracy to incite the revolt. The Commonwealth of Virginia considered a white man’s taking up arms to liberate Black people an act of treason, punishable by death.
(NY Times more…)
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – February 13, 2026
At midnight tonight, most of the agencies and services in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will run out of funding, as popular fury over the violence and lawlessness of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol made Senate Democrats refuse to agree to fund DHS without reforms. And yet, because the Republicans lavished money on ICE and Border Patrol in their July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—the one they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—those agencies will continue to operate. The 260,000 federal employees affected by the partial shutdown will come from other agencies in DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), and the Coast Guard.
A measure to fund DHS passed the House by a majority vote, but in the Senate, the filibuster allows the Democrats, who are in the minority, to make demands before the measure can pass. …
Those demands are pretty straightforward. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Austin American-Statesman: Federal Judge orders Trump administration to return deported Austin college student
Joyce Vance: Judge Boasberg’s Most Recent Decision
Jack Hopkins: They Didn’t Get Their Insurrection. That’s the Story.
A disciplined city refused to hand over the excuse—and now ICE is reportedly drawing down.
Charlie Sykes: Trump’s Confederacy of Incompetents
The three scariest words in the English language right now are “Three more years.”
Steward Beckham: Are we just in another moment of baseless hopium?
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And still, I can’t shake the sense that we’re confusing motion with safety.
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CNN: A year in, it’s official: Americans, not foreigners, are paying for Trump’s tariffs
A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York confirms what economists have long warned about: The burden of tariffs is borne almost entirely by the people living in the country that imposes them.
That simple fact — now learned experientially in 21st century America — is an Econ 101 lesson as foundational as supply and demand. ’Twas ever thus!
US businesses and consumers last year paid for nearly 90% of 2025’s import taxes, the Fed branch found. That’s hardly surprising: The National Bureau of Economic Research and the Congressional Budget Office recently found roughly the same thing.
(CNN more…)
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USA Today: Bodycam contradicts DHS story of Border Patrol shooting Chicago woman
“It’s time to get aggressive,” an agent says moments before Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez, a Montessori school teacher.
(USA Today more…)
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Washington Post: The Don Lemon indictment: Video appears to contradict key claims
Video footage appears to contradict key aspects of a federal indictment’s descriptions of former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s actions at a protest last month inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to a review by The Washington Post.
Lemon, another independent journalist and several protesters are all charged with the same two criminal counts. They are accused of conspiring to deprive congregants of their religious rights and of interfering with access to a place of worship.
The Jan. 29 indictment calls the nine defendants “agitators” and says they “entered the Church in a coordinated takeover-style attack.” In multiple instances it describes the alleged conduct of the two journalists and the protesters collectively. It does not characterize Lemon or Georgia Fort as journalists, though it notes that he was live-streaming video to his online program “The Don Lemon Show” and that Fort, acting separately, conducted an interview at one point.
(Washington Post more…)
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EFF: Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans
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Financial Times: How China wants to create a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through the Arctic
Beijing targets shipping routes and resources in far north
Capable of breaking through floes up to 2.5 metres thick, China’s latest Arctic icebreaker is a powerful symbol of Beijing’s ambitions in the far north, where tensions have soared over US President Donald Trump’s attempts to claim control of Greenland.
(Financial Times more…)
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Lisa Needham: The Fulton County raid is part of Trump’s total war on voting
And it’s disturbing that a magistrate judge signed off on it.
While it may seem like the entire federal government is currently focused on violently attacking immigrants and anyone who supports them, that’s simply not true. A significant part of the federal government is also focused on destroying free and fair elections.
…Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas is no right-wing election denier or newbie. She’s been in the job for 10 years and has a background as a public defender and in legal aid. So, this can’t be automatically chalked up to malice or incompetence. However, the affidavit supporting the search warrant is fatally flawed in three glaringly obvious ways.
(Lisa Needham more…)
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NY Times: Trump Policy Moves Likely to Change Health Care for Older People
Two regulatory rollbacks, along with a new A.I. experiment in Medicare, raise some worrisome questions.
(NY Times 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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