curated news excerpts & citations
Naomi RaineyandEmer Moreau @ BBC: Oil price jumps to $115 after reports of ‘extended’ Iran blockade
Oil prices have climbed sharply following reports that the US is preparing for an ‘extended’ blockade of Iran.
Brent crude rose to around $115 (£85) a barrel on Wednesday, having closed at just over $110 (£81) on Tuesday evening. The price had fallen slightly to $114.37 (£84.68) just before midday BST.
It follows reports from the Wall Street Journal that US President Donald Trump has instructed aides to prepare to extend obstruction of Iran’s ports, in an effort to squeeze the country’s economy.
Iran has said it will continue to disrupt traffic travelling through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockade.
Al Jazeera: Trump vows to maintain Iran blockade, Tehran threatens ‘practical’ action
US president says Washington’s naval siege on Iranian ports is ‘more effective than the bombing’ as oil price soars.
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Trump has ideas about how to end the Iran war. You won’t believe what they are.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 29, 2026
…I want to make sure that yesterday’s speeches by President Donald J. Trump and King Charles III of the United Kingdom don’t get lost in the tidal wave of news. They presented a very clear picture of what is at stake in the United States today.
…And then he got to the heart of the matter. In words that sounded far more like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—who has been clear he wants to see the nation purged of nonwhite people—than like Trump himself, the president rejected the longstanding belief that the United States is based on the profound idea articulated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and “[t]hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
…Later, King Charles addressed a joint session of Congress. He was the second British monarch to do so; the first was his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1991. He began by noting that “our destinies as Nations have been interlinked.” But, unlike Trump’s, his understanding of that linkage underscored the traditional understanding of the United States of America. He began by defining Congress as “this citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people to advance sacred rights and freedoms.”
His picture of the United States also was markedly different from Trump’s. He noted that the Founders “united thirteen disparate colonies” by “balancing contending forces and drawing strength in diversity.” When they created a nation “on the revolutionary idea of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” they “carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment—as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English Common Law and Magna Carta.”
King Charles noted that at least 160 Supreme Court cases have cited the Magna Carta. That observation was not idle. It was the heart of his message. The Magna Carta, or Great Charter, hammered out in 1215 by King John of England and a group of rebel barons, established the concept that kings must answer to the law. It prohibited unlawful imprisonment and protected the right to trial by jury.
…Appearing to miss the point completely, at about the time King Charles finished his speech, the official social media account of the White House posted a picture of Trump and King Charles with the caption “TWO KINGS.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Robert Reich: The Supreme Court Republicans Make America Safe for White Republicans
Michael Peabody: Explainer: Congressional Map Struck Down as Unconstitutional Racial Gerrymander by Supreme Court in Voting Rights Act Case
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Justice Kagan, writing for the dissent, argued that this decision “overturns decades of established precedent” and effectively makes Section 2 of the VRA “impossible to win” in many states. The dissent contended that the new test places an impossible burden on plaintiffs, allowing states to use “partisan gerrymandering as an automatic defense against racial discrimination claims.” Justice Kagan noted that this creates a shield for states that want to suppress the voting power of minority communities, provided they can link the action to a political goal.
(Michael Peabody more…)
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Jason Sattler: Why Trump Can’t Deal
You cannot understand Vietnam without the Cold War. And you cannot understand the Iran War without considering the sun and the moon of Trump’s dysfunction: Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama.
Mary Geddry: Trump Discovers Wars Don’t Come With Unlimited Ammo
Patrick Tucker @ Defense One: The Pentagon replicated a Ukrainian-style drone attack in Florida. Now it’s changing its counter-drone strategy
Greg Jaffe @ NY Times: Hegseth Cites Falsehood to Defend His Firing of Senior Officers
The defense secretary said at a House hearing that President Barack Obama had fired 197 generals, a figure that the Pentagon previously acknowledged was false.
Adam Kinzinger: Doing Putin’s Job For Him: The Trump Cabinet’s Meme War on America
Picture this. American troops in harm’s way. Gas prices climbing toward record highs. The economy teetering on the edge of recession. Russia attacking Ukraine. China flexing across the Pacific. Iran probing every soft spot it can find. The world is on fire, and the global order our parents and grandparents built — the order that has kept us prosperous, free, and feared by tyrants — is shaking on its foundation.
So what is the Trump White House doing about it?
Posting cartoon turtles.
Heather Delaney Reese: Trump’s latest desperate moves
Charlie Sykes: Blanche Ambition: An Indictment Built on Sand
Miles Taylor: There’s a secret reason they charged Comey. It’s worse than the charges themselves.
The arrest warrant gave away the game. Donald Trump doesn’t want a prosecution or a successful conviction. He wants a mugshot.
Robert Davis @ RawStory: ‘Ludicrous’: Expert warns new revenge bid is so weak it could get DOJ lawyers disbarred
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Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Samuel Oakford, Alex Horton @ Washington Post:
Video shows moment Secret Service officer fired at correspondents’ dinner suspectSurveillance footage reviewed by The Washington Post shows that Cole Tomas Allen appeared to raise his shotgun in the direction of a Secret Service officer who then fired the only shots that are clearly visible in the video from a security checkpoint outside Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner.
(Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Samuel Oakford, Alex Horton @ Washington Post more…)David Edwards @ RawStory: DOJ drops claim of Secret Service officer being shot during WHCD attack
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October Krausch @ truthout: Hundreds of Incarcerated Migrants Go on Hunger Strike in Remote Michigan Prison
Migrants at the GEO Group-run facility demand their right to due process, edible food, and an end to sleep deprivation.
(October Krausch @ truthout more…)Adrian Carrasquillo @ Bulwark: ICE Deports Colombian Torture Victim—to Africa
Uriel J. García @ Texas Tribune: Texas DACA recipient will be allowed to return after Trump administration deported him
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Jennifer Rubin: Trump Made Progressivism Great Again
Americans like active, humane government
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Anthony Cuthbertson @ Independent: ‘It took nine seconds’: Claude AI agent deletes company’s entire database
PocketOS founder says ‘systemic failures’ with AI infrastructure made catastrophic failure inevitable
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James Eagle: China’s power demand is rising far faster than everyone else’s
(James Eagle more…)
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Brian Merchant: The data center rebellion is only the beginning
And it’s precisely what democratic governance of AI looks like
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Anna Clark @ ProPublica: Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash
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Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD @ Your Local Epidemiologist: 5 (more) logical fallacies in the era of RFK Jr.
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Borowitz: King Charles Alienates Republicans With Offensive Use of Complete Sentences
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- April 16: Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt
- March 25: Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - 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
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
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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