curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Radley Balko: studies, surveys, and reports on the disparate ways white, Black, and Latino people are treated by police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons
First, the main question you tend to get when pointing to this kind of research is whether it factors in the difference in crime rates between Black, white and Latino people. The answer is that many of them do. Some don’t. And in some cases, it isn’t all that relevant. … Second, you’ll notice that this post is inconsistent about capitalizing “white” and “Black.” … Third, this list isn’t comprehensive. I’m not sure that would be possible. … Finally, this is obviously a big undertaking — and an ongoing one. …
- Policing and Profiling
- Fines and fees, misdemeanors, petty crimes, and driver’s license suspensions
- The drug war
- Juries and jury selection
- The death penalty
- Prosecutors, discretion and plea bargaining
- Judges and sentencing
- Kids, school suspensions, and the school-to-prison pipeline
- Prison, incarceration, probation and parole, and solitary confinement
- Innocence, bail, pretrial detention, forensics, commutations and pardons, gangs, and other issues
- The rebuttal: Contrarian studies on race and the criminal justice system
-
Mitch Jackson: The Freedom To Hate
You have the right to hate anyone you want. That right belongs to you, protected by the Constitution you were born under. You get to hate the neighbor three doors down. You get to hate the driver who pulls up beside you at the red light and blasts music you loathe.
You get to hate people who speak a language you never learned, people whose skin looks nothing like yours, people who vote the opposite of you, people who cheer for the team you swore off years ago. Hate all day long if you choose. Hate what they say. Hate what they do. Hate what they think. …
(Mitch Jackson more…)
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 8, 2026
…
As Tom Nichols noted in The Atlantic, the U.S. emphatically does not have the Strait of Hormuz. “Iran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War,” the title of Nichols’s article reads. It goes on to say that the Iranians are calling the shots in the war and “are routinely humiliating the American president.” The so-called ceasefire was likely intended to calm oil markets, Nichols says; neither side ever stopped shooting.Like many other observers, Nichols noted that Trump was “incoherent” in Ankara. He referred to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Japan” and referred to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” In an off-with-their-heads! moment, he also announced he had ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to cut off all trade with Spain.
…As economist Paul Krugman notes in his newsletter, cutting off trade with Spain is simply not going to happen. First of all, Trump does not have the authority to do any such thing. Second, the U.S. actually does a lot of business with Spain, and American businesses would not accept any such cuts. But even more, it is impossible because Spain is part of the European Union. As Krugman notes, this declaration is rather like Europe declaring it is going to cut off all trade with Florida.
…A German official was more succinct: “Europeans don’t take Trump seriously any longer.”
Meanwhile, Steven Rattner of MS NOW noted today that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s sons have raised about $13 billion in investment capital from foreign governments, mostly in the Middle East, even as Kushner is working for Trump as special envoy to the region.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
-
Robert Reich: [ICE] arrests have doubled, its budget has tripled, its illegalities have multiplied
If you’re like me, you don’t want to think about anything Trump is doing that you don’t have to think about. The horrific domestic police called ICE, for example, appears to have quieted down. So we can erase it from our minds, right?
Wrong. ICE has not quieted down. It’s even worse. It’s just become less visible.
Joyce Vance: ICE: Still Out of Control?
-
Broad Daylight News: When Does A Federal Investigation Become Government Intimidation?
(Broad Daylight News more…)Chance Meeting: The Courage of Major Jason Watson’s Dissent
-
Ishika Mookerjee, Mary Hui, Cao Ban @ Bloomberg: Private Equity Funds Seek Climate Experts as Risks Rise
(Ishika Mookerjee, Mary Hui, Cao Ban @ Bloomberg more…)
-
Borowitz: McConnell Bolts Upright in Terror as JD Vance Enters Hospital Room
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
- July 7: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
- 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
Leave a Reply