curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Eric Roston, Rachel Yeo @ Bloomberg:
Heat, sea level rise, polar melting: They’re all picking up pace.
Much of the US just sweltered through the July 4 holiday weekend as an intense heat dome bore down, putting strain on power grids and prompting the cancellation of many events. In Europe, punishing temperatures are set to return days after a deadly heat wave pushed thermometers as high as 43.8C (111F) in France.
A troubling pattern has emerged in this summer’s heat: Not only has it broken records, it’s done so often by margins far above the previous all-time highs.
Hans Christensen: Forest Fires Threaten Stages of Tour de France
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Mitch Jackson:
Roy Cohn taught one man to destroy people with a single word. On the Fourth of July, that man stood in front of the flag and used it on his own country.…
In February 1950, a senator named Joseph McCarthy stood up in Wheeling, West Virginia, and waved a piece of paper in the air. He claimed it held a list of 205 communists hiding inside the State Department. Hidden traitors, he said, buried inside the government and later inside the United States Army.None of it was true and he had no proof. He did not need proof. He needed fear, and fear did the rest. He never produced a real list. He named almost no one who held up. And it did not matter, because the accusation alone was the weapon.
…McCarthy did not do it alone. He had a young lawyer at his right hand named Roy Cohn.
…Years later, when his own attorney general would not act as his personal protector, Trump reportedly asked the question that tells you everything you need to know. “Where is my Roy Cohn?”
C.J. Atkins @ People’s World: The specter of communism haunts Donald Trump
Miles Taylor: Masked fascists paraded through DC this weekend. I know why they weren’t afraid.
If the 250th taught us anything, it’s that the current regime has swapped the definitions of “terrorist” and “patriot.”
Thom Hartmann: The real divide isn’t political: it’s between those willing to normalize modern fascism’s cruelty and those who refuse…
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Aaron Parnas:
Donald Trump attacked kindergarteners in Minnesota simply because they were MuslimJessica Washington @ Intercept: RFK Jr. Claims He’s Investigating Terrorism Now, Too
The Health and Human Services secretary is targeting the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization as Republicans run on Islamophobia in a tough midterm cycle.
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Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany @ NY Times:
Nearly a Million Investors Lost a Total of $3.8 Billion on Trump Crypto Coin
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Jason Sattler:
Trump Is Using Your Baby to Keep Elon Musk’s Bubble BloatedSpaceX’s own bondholders aren’t sure the AI giant (with a few rockets) can pay its bills. The federal government just found a buyer who can’t say no.
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Matt V & Maria G @ Mindstream:
The paper trail behind Anthropic’s Pentagon breakupAmrith Ramkumar, Heather Somerville, Chiqui Esteban @ WSJ: Read the Emails Revealing How Anthropic’s Pentagon Relationship Fell Apart
Marcus Chen @ Axis Intelligence: Amazon AWS & AI Outages Tracker 2025–2026: Every Major Incident, Documented
James Eagle: AI data centres spending on chips and memory surge
Romaric Jannel, Ph.D.: Thinking About AI and Glamorous Careers
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Rook T. Winchester:
Bring Beata HomeBeata Siemionkowicz.Is a mother, a 57-year-old hospice caregiver, a woman who spent her life easing dying strangers into their last breath, She has spent nights on a concrete floor in a Kentucky county jail because there weren’t enough beds. Her daughter, Claudia told me this the way you tell someone a fact you still can’t quite believe yourself.
Sabrina Franza @ CBS: Polish mother Beata Siemionkowicz detained by ICE in Kentucky since last August, despite Green Card
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Joanna Slater @ Washington Post:
David Streever of Rochester, New York, sued Department of Homeland Security officials on Monday, saying the agency’s actions violated his First Amendment rights.When two Americans were killed by federal agents during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis this year, David Streever was filled with outrage. On Jan. 26, the Upstate New York resident wrote a brief, caustic email to Todd M. Lyons, then acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being” and “America’s Reinhard Heydrich,” a reference to a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany who oversaw the regime’s secret police. He says he never dreamed the note would lead to a knock on his own door.
(Joanna Slater @ Washington Post more…)
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Jason Koebler @ 404 Media:
Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman He Met on a TV Set After Surveilling Her With a License Plate ReaderA Florida police officer met a woman on a TV set, surveilled her for weeks, stalked her, and nearly caused a head-on collision while chasing her to pull her over.
(Jason Koebler @ 404 Media more…)
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Andy Borowitz: Trump Says His Funeral Will Draw Much Bigger Crowd Than Ayatollah’s
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 6, 2026
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But a world in which playing fields are level is not the world Trump wants. He wants one in which people in power can ignore the rule of law for their own ends.
…The president of the United States pressuring the president of FIFA to change the rules for his favored player perfectly represents the way Trump thinks about the rule of law in the United States. And the rejection of a level playing field shows in the way Trump and the Republicans have skewed the U.S economy so only their team can win.
…And yet in 2026, Trump has taken to saying that those Americans calling for the government to maintain the rule of law to make sure the economic playing field is level, rather than working for corporations and the wealthy, are “communists.”
So he is looking to put a thumb on the scale of the midterm elections as he did in the FIFA match and the economy. …
…Tonight, Belgium defeated the USA 4–1 in the World Cup match played in Seattle.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Nada Tawfik, Steve Sutcliffe @ BBC: The US World Cup star who wouldn’t have been American under Trump’s plan
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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