curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Paul Krugman:
the cost of climate change is getting serious
Last Friday extreme heat forced early closure of Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. Fortunately, the fair was sparsely attended. … Even so, 44 people received health assistance and 11 were taken to hospitals due to the heat.
… the disruption of Trump’s festivities is a harbinger of many disruptions to come. The brutal heat wave in the northeastern US — an event that would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change — followed an even more brutal heat wave in Europe.
These disasters represent the leading edge of serious damage — social, human, and economic — from a warming planet.
Projections of future climate change are often expressed in terms of averages: By 2050 average global temperatures are expected to be above pre-industrial levels by around 2.5° C — 4 ½ degrees Fahrenheit, while sea levels will be 10 inches higher.
(Paul Krugman more…)
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Jay Kuo:
Ukraine’s latest campaign against Russian oil facilities has begun to affect the harvest.On July 6, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s largest oil refinery, in the Siberian city of Omsk, some 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine. Until that night, the Omsk facility was one of only two of the country’s top ten refineries Ukraine had not yet hit. Ukraine’s General Staff called it the last of the country’s 11 largest gasoline producers to fall.
The same week, Ukrainian drone units struck 21 vessels near occupied Crimea, including 19 sanctioned tankers from Russia’s shadow fleet hauling gasoline to the peninsula.
The effect of Ukraine’s escalated attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure is already visible. Gas lines and fuel rationing have spread across nearly all of Russia’s 83 regions. Yet shortages at the pump are only the beginning. The fuel crunch is now moving into Russia’s farm fields, where the harvest is underway, and from there to Russian dinner tables.
(Jay Kuo more…)
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Heather Delaney Reese: Trump invented 15 million beheadings, and no one around him blinked
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Mitch Jackson:
You Are Being Told What to Care AboutSomebody decided what you would think about this week. It worked, and most Americans never noticed.
(Mitch Jackson more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 9, 2026
Today marks the anniversary of a dramatic reworking of the U.S. constitutional order.
On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation that brought the principles of the Declaration of Independence to life. They required the federal government to protect the equal rights of all American men.
In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had prohibited slavery on the basis of race, but it did not prevent the establishment of a system in which Black Americans continued to be unequal. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Julie DiCaro:
The men who defended Platner against all comers dominate left-wing mediaI really don’t want to write, yet again, about Graham Platner and all the ways he’s revealed himself to be problematic, starting with an inexplicably forgiven Nazi tattoo and ending with the inevitable sexual assault allegations. And yet, the conversation, once again, dominated political discourse yesterday, so I feel compelled to keep talking about it. …
And yet, if women don’t keep screaming about the rape culture we tread water in every day, the stories go ignored. Most of the fawning profiles of Platner came from big-ish media outlets, and most of the criticism and gesturing at multiple red flags came from women writing independent newsletters or blogs. That’s a problem.
(Julie DiCaro more…)Jennifer Rubin: Which Democrats are getting it right
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A.D. Chilcote, C. Frances @ Intercept:
FBI Raided Texas Activist’s House — Then Offered Her $200,000 to Become Antifa InformantFederal agents asked about links between the woman and the Prairieland case — suggesting a sprawling conspiracy that fits with Trump’s attacks on antifa.
(A.D. Chilcote, C. Frances @ Intercept more…)Joyce Vance: DOJ: Not Doing Justice
No one is safe
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Elad Nehorai: You Can’t Have a Moderate Democracy
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James Eagle: US under-40 households cannot keep up with home prices
(James Eagle more…)Marlon Weems: Fed Discovers “Average American” Is No Longer an Economic Category
Thom Hartmann: What Happens When Trump Voters Realize They Want the Same Thing Progressives are Working For?
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Tyler Pager, Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Eric Lipton @ NY Times: Security Precaution Led Trump to Use Old Air Force One in Leaving Turkey
The Secret Service is said to have asked that the president not use the Qatari-donated jet when he left Ankara. The swap deepens questions about the retrofitting of the new plane.
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Rebecca Crosby, Noel Sims: RFK Jr., Scientology, and the war on antidepressants
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Decoding Fox News: A condensed overview of 25 hours of Fox News for the week ending 7/5/26
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
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