curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Kyle Kulinski @ Current Affairs:
Yes, The U.S. Is The World’s Biggest Terrorist
Let’s not get outraged about things that are obviously, undeniably factually correct.
PIKER: I think that that is not only terror that we are waging on regular civilians in nations in the periphery, but it’s also having consequences on ourselves. It’s having dramatic consequences on the home front. One clear example of this is what we did in Minab. Right? There’s no distinction between blowing up a school, triple-tapping it with Tomahawk missiles, if you’re killing 140 schoolgirls, that is an act of terror. This doesn’t mean that all Americans are terrorists. But the reality of it is, we have to create an environment of accountability to ensure things like that never happen again. If we want to seek out and punish those who terrorize us, like al-Qaeda—sometimes we aid and abet al-Qaeda, when we find them to be a reliable ally, in places like Yemen, for example—but if we understandably want to seek out and punish terrorist entities like al-Qaeda, we should also hold ourselves to a similar standard, if not higher.
THOMPSON: You said not all Americans are terrorists.
PIKER: Of course not.
THOMPSON: Insinuating that some are.
PIKER: I think if you are doing terrorism, then, yes, you are a terrorist.
Mitch Jackson:
Trump Threatened Iran’s Future Generations at the UN. Under American Law, That Threat Is a War Crime.
Dean Blundell:
Trump Officially Invites Putin Back Into The G20
Now Rubio has made it official, and the venue is Trump’s own golf resort.
Trump’s 8 AM Canada Meltdown, Fact-Checked Line by Pathetic Line
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Ella Jackson @ KQED:
California solar panels tower over canals in Turlock, proving to save water, produce clean energy and improve local water quality.… Harris pitched an “obvious” solution to his friend Robin Raj: Why not build solar panels on top of California’s 4,000 miles of open canals that transport water across the state? The panels would produce clean energy while limiting evaporation by shading the canal — a win-win.
(Ella Jackson @ KQED more…)
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Hans Christensen:
Super El Niño projected to cause 450,000 deaths over 6 months
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Ken Klippenstein:
Feds Target AI Critics As “Foreign Agents”Anxiety over AI and data centers is widely held, but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China.
This week, in little-noticed remarks by President Trump and Justice Department warning, the administration declared war on protestors and opponents of AI, threatening “criminal liability” if they “further the propaganda or other goals of a foreign power.”
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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Elena Mejía, Kyle Stock @ Bloomberg:
AI Data Centers Are Heating Up CitiesA single facility can use over 50 megawatts of electricity. Virtually all of that electrical power is converted into thermal energy — waste heat — that must be ejected into the atmosphere. That’s roughly the amount of heat generated by 54,000 homes.
Data centers often cool their systems with cold air and discharge superheated exhaust through equipment located on rooftops, producing intense plumes of hot air that can travel over 300 feet beyond the data center in certain wind conditions. Recent studies have detected hotter temperatures up to a third of a mile (500 meters) downwind from a data center — heating up surrounding areas and potentially raising their air-conditioning bills.
And, as more data centers pop up in dense clusters near residential areas, their warming effects on surrounding neighborhoods are set to be magnified, especially in places that already experience extreme temperatures.
In Phoenix, where the average daytime temperature in September is 100F (38C), a blizzard of fans cools the CyrusOne data center just south of the city limits. In communities downwind from this facility, temperatures were up to 4F higher than upwind, according to a recent analysis.
(Elena Mejía, Kyle Stock @ Bloomberg more…)
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Jack Brook, Dorany Pineda @ Independent:
Costa Rican man complained of lack of care for diabetes before his death in ICE custodyNicole Acevedo @ NBC:
Video shows injured man on the ground after ICE mistakenly targets him
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Joyce Vance:
It’s all about whether the press can criticize the presidentErik De La Garza @ RawStory:
“I just discovered that the lawyer defending Donald Trump’s media ban is an admirer of Adolf Hitler”Hilary Burns, Tal Kopan @ Boston Globe:
DOJ lawyer in Harvard case once wrote a paper from Hitler’s perspectiveDominick Mastrangelo @ Hill:
Peter Navarro calls on Cabinet secretaries, officials to boycott Fox
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – September 23, 2026…
The bribery angle of this story is huge. So, too, is that the story suggests that Trump, at least, might perceive that he has something to hold over Collins’s head to keep her behind his actions, even when they have dramatically weakened her power at the head of Appropriations.The 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain that gave the late nineteenth century its nickname was not about the riches of the industrialists who came to be known as robber barons. It was about the political corruption of the era. In the book, unscrupulous speculators bribed congressmen.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Dissent in Bloom:
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—the election machine regulator—has no commissioners.… One commissioner, Donald Palmer, left the EAC to work at the Heritage Foundation two months before Trump purged the rest of the commissioners in July.
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Joseph Cox @ 404 Media:
Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI EmployeesA sample of 5,000 alleged FBI employees seen by 404 Media includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and details on FBI employees’ spouses.
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Jonathan Cohn @ Bulwark:
Future cures and America’s innovation lead are in jeopardy thanks to Donald Trump and Russ Vought’s latest scheme.
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Chris Mooney:
Nearly two centuries of U.S. science magazines, and the lessons they teach
Last Days in Two Nations
Climate.us
formerly Climate.gov
Climate Solutions Explorer
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
- September 18: Carlos Josue Marchena Marchena
- August 31: Pierre Damas Bel
- 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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