curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
James Eagle:
Voters disapprove of Trump
…
The only area he is breaking even is immigration and border security, traditionally one of Trump’s strongest issues. Here, 42 approve and 45 disapprove. That’s basically neck and neck.
There’s also an interesting wrinkle with AI. The blue and red bars don’t add up to 100 because people who answered “unsure” aren’t shown in this chart. That group is tiny for all the other categories, but on AI it is huge: 38 in every 100 voters are unsure. Basically people haven’t decided on whether Trump is doing well or not on that issue.
Lauren Fedor, Ian Hodgson @ Financial Times:
Most US voters say they are worse off under Trump — FT poll
Paul Krugman:
Demography, Deportations and the Trump Stall
Why the American jobs machine is sputtering
Nicholas Casey @ NY Times:
He Was Deported to a Country He’d Never Heard Of. He May Never Go Free.
As the Trump administration sends a growing number of immigrants to countries they have no connection to, some find themselves imprisoned with no way out.
Mary Papenfuss @ DailyBeast:
Trump, 80, Fantasizes About Dead President in Bizarre Posting Spree
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Matt Sledge @ Intercept:
Secret ICE Agent Tried to “Entice” Minneapolis Activists Into Confrontational TacticsOrganizers in Minneapolis long suspected they were being surveilled by the federal government during the height of the winter protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was not until a court filing on Thursday, however, that the youth-led Sunrise Movement and other groups learned the depths of infiltration.
The Sunrise Movement has long preached nonviolence even as it pursues aggressive tactics, such as making a racket outside of the hotels where ICE agents sleep.
But the group’s public commitment to peaceful protest did not spare it from a months-long, aggressive campaign of government snooping that included ICE agents attending its meetings and protests undercover, subpoenas of its financial records, and at least one apparent attempt to entice an organizer into backing more confrontational tactics.
(Matt Sledge @ Intercept more…)
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Benoit Faucon, Summer Said @ WSJ:
Iran’s Secret Plan to Escalate the WarTom Nichols @ Atlantic:
Trump Will Make South Korea Pay For His Iran Humiliation
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Brendan Knapp @ BGR:
With solar panels and thoughtful planning, the land may not have to remain in ecological limbo.Farms are closing at alarming rates. In 2025, the number of farms in the United States shrank by 15,000, and total farmland fell by 2.51 million acres. That’s nearly enough farmland to cover Hawaii’s Big Island. Unused land will not naturally turn into habitat anytime soon. It takes almost a century for agricultural abandonment to see more than half of plant productivity return.
(Brendan Knapp @ BGR more…)Erich Schwartzel @ WSJ:
The ‘Country Hicks’ Who Refused $26 Million from an AI Data CenterPeter Rudegeair, Peter Santilli @ WSJ:
Why Big Tech’s AI Spending Is $3 Trillion Higher Than It Seems
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – August 16, 2026“There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Broad Daylight News:
Harvard’s $2.21 billion SpaceX stake shows who gets to plant the seed, and who only gets offered the tree
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Adam Claremont:
I Live in a City Where Healthcare Costs Fifty DollarsAlex Ip @ Xylom:
Living Through Hong Kong‘s Hottest Day in Recorded History
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Hans Christensen:
China Upgrading the Northeast PassageRussia is investing in the Northeast Passage along the Arctic coast of Eurasia from the Barents Sea to the Pacific Ocean, opening for shadow fleet traffic to China and back again to Russia.
Jasmine Fernández:
Push to oust US ambassadorPew research shows only 35 percent of Canadians view the US as a reliable partner
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Toby Codd, Myriam Toua @ Daily Express:
NATO jets shoot down Russian drone after major airspace breach, sparking war fears
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Sam Illingworth:
Herman Melville published Moby Dick in 1851. An AI detector has just told me that 44% of its opening involved artificial intelligence.…
For the avoidance of doubt: the first commercially successful typewriter went on sale in 1874, twenty-three years after Moby Dick was published.Next to the result sits the offer:
“Want your text to sound more authentic?”
A business model dressed as an AI detector, selling fear and inaccuracies.
(Sam Illingworth more…)
Have I Been Flocked?
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
- August 1: Edwin Lopez-Cornejo
- July 19: Jose Chajon-Raxon
- 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
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