curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Dean Obeidallah: Todd Blanche should not be confirmed as Attorney General. He should be disbarred.
Donald Trump is nominating his personal lawyer and current Acting Attorney Todd Blanche to be his Attorney General. Here’s the reality: Todd Blanche should NOT be getting confirmed as Attorney General. He should be getting disbarred! In fact, he should be investigated for potential crimes. That is not just my view but also Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa) who told me point blank about Blanche, “He should be disbarred, and disbarred is not enough.”
We’ve never seen an AG as openly corrupt as Todd Blanche whose only focus is serving Trump. In a nutshell, Blanche is the architect of the largest cover up of sex crimes in US history in connection with Jeffrey Epstein’s child rape and sex trafficking ring. He is the reason Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is in a cushy Club Fed. Blanche is why Trump is getting immunity from IRS audits which will mean he does for not pay in the area of $100 million in taxes to the United States. And he’s also why we are seeing the criminal prosecution of Trump’s political critics from James Comey to Tish James and more.
(Dean Obeidallah more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 6, 2026
In the wee hours of Friday morning, Senate Republicans passed a measure to provide about $70 billion in additional funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency for Border Patrol. They did so without meeting any of the demands Democrats had made to reform ICE and Border Patrol in the wake of the violent sweeps that led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
…… Democrats used amendments to cause an 18-hour debate that forced Republicans to vote against a number of measures that are popular with the American people, showing how Republicans really stand.
Republicans blocked Democratic proposals to stop Trump from establishing the $1.776 billion slush fund with the complicity of the men he has appointed to the Department of Justice and to prevent any such fund from giving payouts to people convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to bar the use of federal funds or private donations for Trump’s ballroom unless Congress explicitly approved.
Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to bar William Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency, from serving as the director of national intelligence by providing that no one could direct the Office of National Intelligence while heading a different agency. Trump has announced that Pulte will be the acting director of national intelligence, putting him in place through the midterm elections with the evident plan that he will weaponize intelligence against the president’s political opponents.
…At least 18 people incarcerated in detainment facilities have died in the first five months of 2026. At least 30 died last year, the highest number in 20 years. MacMillan notes that a number of those deaths happened after detainees were taken to the hospital.
Today Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) went back to Delaney Hall, the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, to talk with detainees. Despite the established congressional duty of oversight, “ICE refused to let me talk to any detainees,” he said. “They restricted my ability to do my job.”
…[Hegseth] perverted a commemoration of D-Day, when American soldiers fought with their Allies to defend democracy against fascism, into a call for the racial ideology on which fascism was based. Embracing the Great Replacement theory that says the culture of white Europeans and Americans is being undermined by people of color from Africa and Asia, he flipped the Allied and Nazi positions.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Kristina Fiore @ MedPage Today: Video: Police Tussle With Diabetes Experts at ADA Meeting
Researchers told they could no longer attend the annual scientific sessions
Members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) were escorted by police out of the convention center in New Orleans during the organization’s annual meeting on Friday as they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration changes to U.S. biomedical research.
Among them was Steven Kahn, MBChB, the lead author of the editorial, which published online in late April in the organization’s flagship journal, Diabetes Care. Kahn is also the editor in chief of the journal.
(Kristina Fiore @ MedPage Today more…)
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Alice Embree: Everybody Knows
Thanks to Carl Davidson
…There are moments in American political life when a single image captures the current terrain. This is one of them. It was not a policy document, not a diplomatic summit, not even a crisis unfolding overseas. It was a steel mesh UFC cage where men would beat each other bloody, rising on the South Lawn of the White House—a spotlighted octagon of violence as spectacle assembled where generations of presidents once hosted Easter egg rolls, treaty signings, and state dinners.
The cage was not an accident. It was not a sideshow. It was the show. …
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Can Artuc @ Medium: A $4 Billion Empire Broke Open Source. They Threatened One Developer. It Backfired.
They took open-source code for free, then threatened the lone developer who actually followed the license. The Internet had other plans.
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Justin Glawe: Trump’s cognitive impairment endangers us all
It’s undeniable if you actually watch him.
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Al Jazeera: Video shows Israeli soldier and settlers assaulting two Palestinians
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Heather Cox Richardson: Week Two in 250 to 250
This was the second week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
We designed the videos to emphasize the agency of Americans—mostly everyday Americans—to change the country. …
https://www.youtube.com/@twofiftytotwofifty
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting
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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