curated news excerpts & citations
Paul Krugman: Trump Is Losing a Second War
The Iran debacle is accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels
Last month, out of more than 11,000 new passenger vehicles registered in Norway, only around 150 had internal consumption engines. The rest were fully electric. In mainland Europe as a whole, EV sales are up 51 percent from a year ago.
The global energy transition — the shift from fossil fuels to electrotech, which uses solar, wind and batteries to power an electrified economy — is accelerating. It’s now clear that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz marks an inflection point: the global green energy curve, which was already on a rapidly rising trajectory, has suddenly become even steeper. “Investors,” reports the Financial Times, “are piling into clean energy funds.”
This acceleration isn’t just a consequence of soaring fossil fuel prices. It is also the result of the worldwide realization that, with the end of Pax Americana, depending on imported hydrocarbons is a risk not worth taking. …
Howard Yu: Western automakers just destroyed 73 billion dollars in EV writedowns this year
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Western governments pushed automakers toward electrification. Companies committed 330 billion dollars in EV investments between 2021 and 2024. Then the policy reversed. The 7,500 dollar tax credit was killed. CAFE standards were gutted. So automakers went back to gas trucks.
And now every canceled EV program in Detroit is a market BYD walks into unopposed. BYD exported 120,000 vehicles in March alone, up 65 percent year over year. It just raised its 2026 export target to 1.5 million units. A BYD dealership in Manila booked a month’s worth of orders in just two weeks.
Hans Christensen: Yerevan Summit
James Eagle: Africa is being left behind in the electricity race
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Gram Slattery, Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco @ Reuters: US intelligence indicates limited new damage to Iran’s nuclear program, sources say
- US intel assessments of Iran’s nuclear capacity broadly unchanged despite ongoing war, sources say
- Iran would need around a year to build a weapon if leaders decided to pursue that path, sources say
- Sources say the US has largely steered clear of nuclear targets during current war
- US officials argue that by destroying conventional military targets, US has muddied Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon
(Gram Slattery, Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco @ Reuters more…)
Kang Jae-eun @ Yonhap News: S Korean vessel damaged in Strait of Hormuz to be towed to Dubai: HMM
Dean Blundell: Iran Says the US Bombed/Sank Civilian Boats in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump Said the War Was Over.
Mary Geddry: The Ceasefire Has Missiles Now
Lucian K. Truscott IV: The Strait of Hormuz is closed. We’re almost out of ammo. Why does Hegseth still have a job?
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 5, 2026
Late yesterday, Republicans in the Senate released their funding request for the budget reconciliation bill. It includes $1 billion for White House security, including Trump’s proposed ballroom. President Donald J. Trump unexpectedly began the process of knocking down the East Wing of the White House on October 20, 2025, just two days after millions of Americans turned out for the October 18 No Kings rallies.
Days later, Trump told reporters that the cost of the ballroom he intended to build on the site would be paid “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.” …
While Republicans don’t intend to fund healthcare or nutrition programs, the Senate’s proposed budget reconciliation bill appropriates $72 billion to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for Border Patrol, through 2029. Extending the funding until then means that Democrats will not be able to use funding as leverage to try to reform ICE and Border Patrol after their aggressive sweeps targeting immigrants led to dramatic abuses, including the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Joyce Vance: Two Motions From the SPLC Tell the Story: The Government’s Indictment Is in Trouble
… the government has in essence conceded the motion—they don’t dispute in their three-page response that Blanche, Patel, and the president of the United States made false statements, accusing SPLC of advancing white supremacist causes and denying SPLC provided information about those groups to the government in an effort to take them down. This is an indictment that’s in trouble.
Then it gets worse. Because SPLC filed another, related, motion back on April 28, that one seeking transcripts of the government’s grand jury proceedings.
(Joyce Vance more…)
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Catherine Bouris @ Daily Beast: Trump Reignites Pope Battle With Bonkers New Comments
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Michele Hornish: Lois Gibbs, the Mother of Superfund
Joyce Vance: Mifepristone Is Back In Court
Grace E. Howard @ truthout: Decades of Stigmatization Fueled Growing Threat of Pregnancy Criminalization
Katelyn Jetelina and Hannah Totte, MPH @ Your Local Epidemiologist: Hantavirus, allergies and common cold, Covid-19 spring vaccine, and good news
Paul Offit: The Subtle Horror of Package Inserts
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Jason Koebler @ 404 Media: The AI Hard Drive Shortage Is Making It More Expensive and Harder to Archive the Internet
The Internet Archive, Wikimedia, academics, and hobby archivists are having trouble finding hard drives or are having to pay extremely high prices for them.
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Borowitz: Trump Signs Executive Order Banning Seashells
Apocalypse Early Warning System
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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