curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Tyler Pager, Eric Lipton, Adam Goldman, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes @ NY Times: New Air Force One Lacks Defensive Countermeasures of Previous Model, Officials Say
Experts said the lack of such capabilities poses a potential risk when the president travels overseas. The White House defended the aircraft’s safety.
Mitch Jackson: Federal agents showed up with grand jury subpoenas this week, not because these journalists broke the law, but because they broke a story the government did not want you to read.
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Read this twice. The government did not investigate why the plane might be unsafe. The government investigated the people who told the country the truth.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 11, 2026
… when tensions escalated with Iran while Trump was in Türkiye for the NATO summit, [Secret Service] asked the president to use one of the other, older, Air Force One planes for his return journey.
Trump and White House officials pushed back strongly against the idea that the new plane had any security problems after pouring what appears to have been hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into renovating the plane. But, according to Adam Gramegna of Military.com, U.S. officials told CBS News that the speed with which the plane was rushed into service meant that it does not have the same protections as the older planes.
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… issuing subpoenas to U.S. journalists, who are protected from government interference by the First Amendment, is a huge red flag. As former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel noted: “The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars. Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Marianne Dhenin @ truthout:
The FBI Has Deputized Local Cops as Federal Agents. Communities Are Resisting.As the Trump administration widens its crackdown on immigrant communities and progressive activists, federal task forces are playing an important behind-the-scenes role. Organizers warn that institutions like the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are targeting vulnerable communities and sharing the kind of information that facilitates Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. But some say the current political climate also presents opportunities as appetites grow for local and state agencies to cut ties with the federal task forces endangering their communities.
“We have an opportunity for more allies because more people are upset, more people feel that they are impacted, more people see their neighbor being dragged away, and they don’t like it, and so the body of people that feel like something should be done is larger,” Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director at Oakland Privacy, told Truthout. “We should take advantage of that to protect people who have been vulnerable this whole time.”
(Marianne Dhenin @ truthout more…)
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Amy Green @ Inside Climate News:
Grassroots Justice Group Challenges Trump Administration Order to Keep Florida Coal Plant RunningAdvocacy groups said the order failed to establish an energy emergency. The Department of Energy partly attributed one to anticipated demand associated with data centers.
The Trump administration is facing a new legal challenge over an emergency order keeping a Florida coal-fired power plant, which had been scheduled for retirement, in operation.
(Amy Green @ Inside Climate News more…)
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Scott Greer @ American Conservative: Karoline Leavitt’s Zoomer-Bashing Is Bad for America
The right has a generational conflict on its hands.
… “This generation, my generation, I hate to say it, Gen Z and those younger than me have been raised with just silver spoons in their mouths,” she told the Fox News host. She added that they’ve been given everything and are completely ungrateful for those privileges. She even thinks some of them need to be sent to Cuba or Iran to straighten up.
…But the message was likely well received among its target audience. Those who regularly watch Fox News aren’t Zoomers. …
(Scott Greer @ American Conservative 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
- 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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