curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Rebecca Solnit:
Lifeguards and Angels
I have lived a long time but I have never lived through such a time of destruction, of nature, of human lives, of truth, fact, science, journalism, the rule of law. … It is often overwhelming, and it feels like more than any one of us can respond to.
But we can. We might need to take breaks or pace ourselves or find our niche and our people to do it. People are doing the work, often in undramatic ways — meetings, court filings, fundraisings, investigations, forms of support and solidarity that are not high-profile. But let me talk for a moment about a high-profile incident that riveted people across the country and the world. A few days ago, I watched a novice lifeguard, age sixteen, pull a younger boy out of the surf that threatened to sweep him away, on a Santa Cruz beach where the waves had suddenly become far larger and more dangerous. …
Even so, there are parallels. Many are caught up in the violence of Trump’s unregulated militias, the ICE stormtroopers, and many are trying to pull them back out to safety, to the solid ground of the lives they were leading in the places they lived. … Such lifeguards … do not always succeed but they go into the surf to try. Perhaps another lesson from that riveting video of rescue is that the waves may crash over you repeatedly before you get to safety. The process may not be simple and the outcome may not be certain while things unfold, which I say because I too often hear the lack of immediate victory interpreted as defeat.
In a way this is a terrible metaphor. The harm is not being done by a vast and ancient natural force or even by a majority; it’s being done by an unpopular regime that is plummeting in the polls and seems almost frantic to do as much as it can while it can (because they seem likely to lose the midterms, because they are losing popularity fast, because Trump seems to be in a phase of rapid decay, and because the courts– thanks to the lifeguards of the law–keep overturning their overreach and other transgressions). …
(Rebecca Solnit more…)
-
Nikki McCann Ramirez
@ Rolling Stone:
‘Unhinged obsession’: Fauci hearing goes off the rails after he stonewalls SenatorsRand Paul had the infectious disease expert’s lawyer ejected from the committee room
…
In his opening statement, Fauci, who has appeared before multiple congressional bodies in the past, told the committee that given Committee Chair Rand Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution,” the “only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up — in his words — ‘behind bars.’”“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he added. “Therefore although it pains me to do so — because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress — under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
(Nikki McCann Ramirez @ Rolling Stone more…)Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist: It’s time to leave the man alone.
…
Watching a man who is typically so talkative plead the Fifth, I realized that some of the hate aimed at me had subsided, in part, because one person had continued to absorb the heat, fire, vitriol, and anger over all of our mistakes. Not just his.Fauci didn’t close your schools. That was your local politician, school board, and health official. Fauci didn’t mandate your vaccine. (In fact, he said it’s not the role of the federal government.) Your employer did. Fauci wasn’t the one who barred you from seeing your dying grandma. That was the nursing home. He wasn’t out to secretly kill us all. And he’s not responsible for alllll the other system failures either (like costs due to corporate influence) or political lightning-rod topics that divide this country, like abortion, brought up today in the hearing.
…He absolutely made mistakes—no question about it. And I get angry about it, too, because at times I feel like he led me astray. He could have, and should have, done better at communicating uncertainty, being transparent, not brushing off people’s fears, frustrations, and misunderstandings, and integrating the whole person into policy instead of just the science. I’m also mad that he didn’t admit to his mistakes. (There’s been such a bad-faith effort that now I don’t think he can engage honestly, even if he wanted to.)
The point is, we all made mistakes. …
(Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist more…)
-
Jennifer Rubin:
Trump Has Lost More Than the Iran WarNonstop blunders further erode our international standing
…We cannot “win” the war. Instead, we have given Iran new, unprecedented leverage to control the Strait of Hormuz, enhance its regional influence, economically blackmail the West, and insulate itself from further attempts to dislodge its regime.
Americans know — his nonstop boasts notwithstanding — that Trump’s entire exercise is a canard; an ongoing reckless charade that only diminishes our munitions reserves and exposes us as a feckless power incapable of maintaining freedom of the seas.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 29, 2026
…
Americans unhappy with Trump’s war on Iran are unlikely to be cheered by the news from that conflict over the past few days.Andrew Egger wrote in The Bulwark today about how the Trump administration seems stuck in a loop, “orbiting hopelessly around two demonstrably failed positions: If we bomb the hell out of them, they’ll give us what we want. If we stop bombing them, they’ll give us what we want.” …
Laura Wise, a scholar of peace and conflict resolution at the University of Edinburgh, told Renner that the process of ending the war has been complicated by the fact American negotiators seem focused on “getting a deal rather than making peace.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
-
Matthew Gault @ 404 Media:
A new AI data center can be up and running in a year. Building new energy infrastructure to power it could take a decade.On Wednesday the power flickered in homes from Washington DC to Chicago. The cause was a data center disconnecting from PJM — a massive power grid that connects 13 states including North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and Michigan, a span that covers 67 million customers. The incident points to a larger problem with the compute warehouses fueling the AI boom: It’s physically and economically impossible to build power infrastructure fast enough to meet the demands of AI data centers and when problems occur, everyone will pay the price.
(Matthew Gault @ 404 Media more…)Kailey Hunt, Katy McAfee, Leigh Walden @ KUT: Data centers are being built across Texas every day. Here’s what goes on inside one in Austin
-
Paul Kedrosky: The Robot Wars of 2026
-
Brian Beutler: Obamacare Was Not Universal Health Insurance
It was much better than the status quo ante, but the point of a starter home is to move on to something better, not to continually rebuild as time and vandalism damage its foundation.
-
Andy Borowitz: Pope Says Church Will Relax Stance on Birth Control When it Comes to JD Vance
-
Decoding Fox News: Hey Trump Even Fox News Hates Your War!
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 14: Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran
- July 13: Joan Sebastian Guerrero
- 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
