curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Jeff Cox @ CNBC:
U.S. job creation cools in June with payrolls growth of just 57,000; unemployment rate at 4.2%
- Nonfarm payrolls for June increased by 57,000 in June, slower than the downwardly revised 129,000 added in May and worse than the 115,000 Dow Jones consensus forecast.
- The unemployment rate, however, dropped to 4.2%, largely due to a slump in the labor force participation rate, which fell 0.3 percentage point to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021.
- Household employment plummeted during the month, with 507,000 fewer people reported at work.
- Professional and business services contributed the most, with a gain of 36,000. Social assistance added 25,000 and healthcare employment rose by 22,000.
Robert Reich: Today’s report from the BLS
Harriet Torry @ WSJ: U.S. Snaps Hiring Hot Streak With Only 57,000 Jobs Added in June
Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell, Courtney Elliott @ NY Times: The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week
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Vanessa Romo @ NPR: The U.S. healthcare system is in crisis. A Supreme Court ruling could make things worse
Amid the flurry of consequential Supreme Court decisions that have come down recently, it’s the one about temporary protected status that has America’s healthcare sector the most worried.
The ruling last week cleared the way for the Trump administration to cancel TPS for Haitians and Syrians. Experts say deporting Haitian TPS recipients will have a catastrophic impact on the nationwide healthcare workforce crisis — a workforce that is hugely dependent on immigrant labor.
(Vanessa Romo @ NPR more…)
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Olivia Raimonde, Spencer Soper, Chris Rovzar @ Bloomberg:
There’s an AI-Sized Hole in Big Tech’s Plans to Cut EmissionsAmazon and Google saw their greenhouse gas emissions jump as they struggled to balance climate goals with growing data-center power demand.
(Olivia Raimonde, Spencer Soper, Chris Rovzar @ Bloomberg more…)
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Andy Corbley @ Good News Network:
New Solar Tech Makes Desalinating Seawater Cheaper Than Producing Bottled WaterA team of materials scientists in China have developed a solar-powered device that can produce freshwater from seawater with better economics than bottled water.
By creating a weave of nanomaterials and organic polymers which were both durable and highly reflective, they created a device that could absorb 90.2% of incoming sunlight and use it to evaporate water with 47.5% less energy.
After it generated 5 gallons of fresh water every day for a year of testing, the scientists say that at scale it would be cheaper than producing bottled water.
(Andy Corbley @ Good News Network more…)
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Aarian Marshall @ Wired: How Trump Helped China Make America’s Cheapest EV
Slate is the latest automaker to transition to lower-cost batteries built on Chinese technology, driven in part by the repeal of EV tax credits that required materials to be sourced domestically.
(Aarian Marshall @ Wired more…)
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Marcy Wheeler: Trump Has Made the National Mall a Tribute to His Squalid Corruption
If you’re not already, I recommend following Amanda Moore for her coverage of Trump’s Great American Fair, especially this video of the mock up of the triumphal arch Trump wants to build to celebrate his capitulation to Iran (they have since put up traffic cones to prevent people from walking under the arch).
She also captured the light drizzle yesterday which Trump used as an excuse to close the Fair, which avoided a weekend day of commentary about how almost no one showed up, though others captured the sign that misspelled Freeedom, and still others have been monitoring Fox News’ attempts to claim there are somewhere thousands of attendees when their cameras show merely dozens.
(Marcy Wheeler more…)Decoding Fox News: The New Red Scare: A Weapon of Mass Distraction
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Allison Gill: DOJ Accidentally Sent Volume II of Jack Smith’s Report to Outside Counsel
The kicker? The Outside Counsel they accidentally sent the report to is representing a woman they charged with a crime for taking Volume II out of the DOJ
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Jess Piper: Persisting
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I have been at several rallies with my friend Veronica over the years — the terrible news is that we have been protesting together for nearly a decade. Terrible because we have to keep protesting the same things in the same state. Abortion access. Public school funding. Access to the ballot. Democracy in general. And recently we have met up at anti-ICE and anti-data center meetings and rallies.
(Jess Piper more…)Liz Dye: E. Jean Carroll Beat Trump. Again.
Joyce Vance: Former CIA Director John Brennan Takes on Trump’s DOJ
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Mitch Jackson: America at 250: A Trial Lawyer Reads the Record Out Loud, and Names What We Have Allowed.
(Mitch Jackson more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – Juky 2, 2026
On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed a “Resolution for Independence” declaring “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Also known as the “Lee Resolution,” after Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, who had proposed it, the resolution was the final break between the king and the thirteen colonies on the North American continent that would later become the United States of America.
(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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