curated news excerpts & citations
Jennifer Rubin: Undaunted
On Saturday, a massive civil rights organizing response to the Jim Crow redistricting enabled by the MAGA Supreme Court justices — then rammed through by MAGA-controlled state legislatures — will kick off in Alabama. Who is behind this bold campaign, and what can we expect?
“All Roads Lead to the South,” focused on Selma and Montgomery (two iconic sites in civil rights history), is a coordinated effort championed by Black Voters Matter and over 200 (!) civil rights and pro-democracy organizations (including #WinWithBlack Women, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, Democracy Defenders Action, The Lawyers’ Committee, LULAC, The Brennan Center, SPLC, The Transformative Justice Coalition, and Fair Fight) as well as the broader No Kings Day coalition. A massive response to the re-imposition of Jim Crow, one-party rule (with Republicans racing to redrawn lines to eliminate batches of Black and Hispanic House members and dilute Black and Hispanic voting power) could not be more urgent.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
Mark Gruenberg @ People’s World: Selma revisited: Mass voting rights march happening May 16
Maya Miller, Lisa Song @ ProPublica: At 17, He Was Tear-Gassed at Selma. At 78, He’s Watching Kids Tear-Gassed During Trump’s Deportation Campaign.
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Josie Ensor @ NY Times: I’ve interviewed dozens of Epstein victims. There’s one person they still fear
Women abused by the late financier’s network say fear, silence and rumours of influence wielded by his girlfriend and enabler shape their lives decades later.
In late January, the name of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims appeared buried in the Epstein files.
The woman’s name had been left unredacted, exposing her identity to the world. The woman, whom I will call Francesca, had in the decades since her abuse gone on to marry, start a family and forge a new life of anonymity.
She was furious — the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had promised to protect survivors of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring by concealing their names. But above all she was terrified of Ghislaine Maxwell.
(Josie Ensor @ NY Times more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 15, 2026
President Donald J. Trump arrived back in the United States of America today after a three-day state visit to China. Isaac Arnsdorf, Michael Birnbaum, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Washington Post note that the summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded “exactly what Xi aimed to achieve with the visit.” Its pageantry and Trump’s gestures of friendship and admiration showed the U.S. and China as peers, something previous U.S. leaders have rejected.
In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that aired today, Trump said: “It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2. This is the G-2. I think it’ll go down as a very important moment in history.”
Former China director on the National Security Council Julian Gewirtz, who served under President Joe Biden, told the Washington Post reporters: “Xi has done something Chinese leaders have been working toward for decades—bringing an American president to Beijing as an undisputed peer. Xi used the opulent optics of the visit to make clear to the world that China and the United States are the two dominant, equally matched superpowers. There is no going back.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Dean Blundell: Xi Jinping Just Insulted America And Trump To His Face In Front Of The Cameras. It Took Trump A Full Day To Notice. Then He Blamed Biden.
Trump flew to Beijing, got handed a 2,500-year-old warning and insulted, didn’t recognize it, came home with nothing, and posted about a ballroom. This is not a column. It’s a coroner’s report.
(Dean Blundell more…)BBC Mundo: What is the Thucydides Trap and why does Xi believe it defines the US-China relationship?
Thom Hartmann: Why Was Hunter’s Cup of Coffee a National Crisis but Trump’s $5 Billion Grift Isn’t?
Republicans spent years manufacturing outrage over Hunter Biden while Trump openly turned the presidency into a billionaire’s cash machine…
Mary Geddry: Trump Went to China and Came Home With Ballroom Envy
Ewan Palmer @ Daily Beast: Trump Thirsts After Xi’s Ballroom in Gushing Post
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While flying back from China, the 79-year-old president whined that “China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A”—while suggesting a deadline for his own $400 million vanity project at the White House.Ian Aikman @ BBC: Trump warns Taiwan against declaring independence, hours after summit with China’s Xi
Ian Aikman @ BBC: Trump says he ‘made no commitment either way’ to Xi on Taiwan
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Howard Yu (LinkedIn): Same oil shock. Different homework assignments from 2003
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on March 4. Four countries went into crisis. One country barely noticed.…
The same crisis that rewrote national budgets across Asia landed in China as a rounding error.
That gap did not happen by accident. It was built over 20 years.
(Howard Yu (LinkedIn): Same oil shock. Different homework assignments from 2003 more…)
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Mindy Belz: A narrow place
Counting human losses and Hamas atrocities alongside shipping constraints
(Mindy Belz more…)Will Neal @ Daily Beast: Fox News Corners Trump on Siding With China in MAGA Betrayal
Donald Trump has suddenly announced a complete one-eighty on his campaign pledge to American farmers that he’d stop Chinese nationals buying up land in the U.S.
Fox News host Sean Hannity pressed him on why he had abandoned his promise to intervene on Thursday during his trip to China.
“It’s not that I love it,” Trump said, as he conceded that his promise has been withdrawn.
Hannity said “thousands and thousands of acres of farmland, ranchland, and land near military installations” are being purchased by Chinese buyers.
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Things that need to be said
Let’s start by calling the 57 missile strikes that have sunk boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean what they are: murders. The Pentagon cannot provide the names of the 192 people killed by missiles fired on civilian boats. The Pentagon calls the victims of the aerial bombings narco-terrorists or drug smugglers. No one knows the names of those who have been killed on the boats because no attempt has been made to learn their identities or to provide proof that what the boats and the 192 victims carried was indeed drugs. They just fire missiles and drop bombs and call what they are doing “authorized.”
Hegseth’s Pentagon could prove that they are hitting drug boats by picking up the debris left by the sunken boats and showing the drugs, if in fact there are any, but they don’t do that. …
(Lucian K. Truscott IV more…)
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Jess Piper: All of the Audacity
I have said, “There is no perfect candidate,” on several occasions, and I am starting to think I may have to eat those words. Or chew on them anyhow.
…I am thinking of New York Mayor, Zohran Kwame Mamdani. The same man we were supposed to fear is turning out to be the politician so many of us hope to see run and win. The lawmaker who will tell us what he plans to do, and upon winning, does exactly that.
I mean…I haven’t seen anything like it in my life, and I hope to see more of it. I know that Mamdani is not perfect, but he is doing the thing a lot of progressives have hoped to see. He is supporting his constituents and public services while partially paying for those needs by taxing the wealthy.
He’s doing it. And it may just be working.
(Jess Piper more…)
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Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist: Something deeper than hantavirus
- Absent leadership
- The positive and negative aspects of Covid-19
- The trauma of Covid-19 has not healed. Not even close
- Mistrust is pervasive
- Social media and the hurting media economy are fueling the embers
(Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist more…)
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Anne Applebaum: What, actually, is European Civilization?
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Robert Reich: How to Describe this Catastrophe?
We must use words that accurately describe who Trump and his lackeys really are — and what they are actually doing to America
(Robert Reich more…)
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
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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