curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Mitch Jackson:
Six Justices Put Out the Statue of Liberty’s Torch This Morning
The Supreme Court decided who counts as human at our border today, and 350,000 families are about to pay the price. Here is what happened, and what you do next.
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Today, on June 25, 2026, six members of the United States Supreme Court quietly changed what your country promises the world. They wrapped the whole thing in dry legal language built to make your eyes glaze over and your attention drift. Underneath the vocabulary sits a decision about who gets treated as a human being at our border and who gets shoved back into the dark.
You deserve the plain version. Once you see what these six justices signed their names to, you will understand why sitting out the next election is a luxury none of us own anymore.
The Words In Bronze
A poem has welcomed the world from the base of the Statue of Liberty for generations. Most of us grew up hearing a few of the lines without ever reading the whole thing.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
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Anika Arora Seth, Shelby Holliday,
Denise Blostein, Milàn Czerny @ WSJ:
How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. RecalculationSatellite imagery reveals for the first time the extent of what Iran destroyed at Naval Support Activity Bahrain
The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was hit by Iranian missiles and drones, causing extensive damage not publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon.
(Anika Arora Seth, Shelby Holliday, Denise Blostein, Milàn Czerny @ WSJ more…)Decoding Fox News: Only the Dumbest Man in Television Believes in Trump’s Deal with Iran
… In the four and a half years I’ve covered Fox News I have never seen the network abandon Donald J. Trump as they did last week.
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Sylvan Lane @ NewsNation: Inflation hits 4.1 percent in May, highest level in 3 years
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Michelle Breidenbach @ syracuse.com: Federal agents track down Syracuse woman, demand she remove Instagram post about ICE
(Michelle Breidenbach @ syracuse.com more…)
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Joyce Vance: Finally: A Judge Orders the Government to Release the Rest of the Epstein Files in a Lawsuit Filed by Katie Phang
…There will certainly be an appeal. But if DOJ wants a stay in the Judge’s order, they’ll have to get it from the D.C. Circuit, because Judge Sullivan declined to give them one.
DOJ has until July 2 to comply with the order. Tick Tock.
(Joyce Vance more…)
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Paul Kedrosky @ NY Times: Why Americans Are So Freaked Out by A.I.
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The technology industry says American nervousness is wrongheaded. Fear-mongering media! Foreign disinformation! This makes pessimism a communication problem. Fix the messaging, get the optimistic voices out there, and the support for A.I. will grow. Hang around any Reddit A.I. group, or listen to recent college graduation speeches by tone-deaf tech execs, and you will feel as if there is already an entire gig economy of A.I. boosterism.Why isn’t it working? Because the theory is incomplete, at best. If American A.I. pessimism were merely cultural or informational, it would correlate with media consumption, education levels or political polarization. Instead, it cuts across all those categories. It correlates instead with labor market institutions.
(Paul Kedrosky @ NY Times more…)
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Matthew Gault @ 404 Media: Bodycam Shows Moment Cops Arrested a Man for Speaking Too Long at Data Center Meeting
In February, police in Claremore, Oklahoma arrested farmer Darren Blanchard for speaking a little too long during a community meeting about data centers. The city charged Blanchard with criminal trespass …
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“I continue to maintain that my arrest was retaliatory, as I was engaging in protected speech at a public meeting. These actions as well as the undue resulting responses by the City of Claremore should raise major concern,” Blanchard said. “For now, I am allowing the legal process to move forward at whatever pace that may be. I am confident the truth will eventually come out, and remain steadfast in that this charge should never have been brought in the first place.”
(Matthew Gault @ 404 Media more…)
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Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Sebastian Orejas, Ellie Holbrook, Dylan Patel @ semianalysis: US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-The-Meter Datacenter by 2028?
Why the Grid Can’t Keep Up, and Why that Drives Behind-The-Meter 50%+ of DCs/Year By 2028
(Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Sebastian Orejas, Ellie Holbrook, Dylan Patel @ semianalysis more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 25, 2026
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who led the 7th Cavalry, lost his entire command to Lakota warriors after falling on them unexpectedly in their own territory. The only army survivor of the battle was a horse, Comanche, who became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot, trotted out draped in ceremonial black for years after the event itself.
The road to the Little Bighorn started during the Civil War. …
…“I feel sorry that too many were killed on each side,” Sitting Bull said, “but when Indians must fight, they must.”
(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
Mike Ludwig @ truthout: ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- June 4: Mamuka Artmeladze
- 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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