curated news excerpts & citations
Heather Delaney Reese: The problem is, we can’t trust a word they say
Hugh Dougherty @ Daily Beast: I Slept Next Door to the Assassin in Hilton Room 10235. This Is a Security Fiasco
The Daily Beast’s Executive Editor witnessed a jaw-dropping security breach. And then it got worse.
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It does not take a security expert to unravel the layers of failure that happened at a Washington, D.C. hotel on Saturday night.
How on earth could someone with a disassembled long gun check into a room at a hotel where the president was going to speak? I can answer that: Nobody even looked at my luggage on Friday afternoon. Worse, my colleague arrived on Saturday at 5 p.m. Nobody looked at his luggage either: No magnometers, no hand checks, no I.D. checks. Nothing.
How on earth could that person get downstairs and assemble a long gun? I can answer that too. I moved up and down from Floor 10 all day. Nobody ever stopped me and asked me anything. I have never shown my I.D., except to the clerk who checked me in; I have never been searched or frisked when I checked in, or moved in and out of the hotel. To get down from my room to the dinner, I simply flashed my ticket. It could have been a photocopy.
The only time I went past a checkpoint was at the same magnetometers that Cole Allen, 31, sprinted past with his gun.
Another colleague was outside; I texted them a copy of their ticket. That allowed them to get into the hotel as far as those same magnetometers, entirely unchecked.
How on earth could that be considered safe?
Jennifer Rubin: Lessons From the Correspondents’ Dinner
Chris Geidner: DOJ jumps into action — to defend Trump’s ballroom plan and attack those challenging it
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 26, 2026
Today Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Department of Justice Civil Division wrote to the lawyer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation demanding that the organization drop its lawsuit against Trump’s planned ballroom on the site where the East Wing of the White House used to be.
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Shumate said last night’s incident “proves, yet again, that the White House ballroom is essential for the safety and security of the President, his family, his cabinet, and his staff. …
This is an odd angle to take, since, as Bluesky user Tom Shafer pointed out, the Hilton ballroom seats 2,945 people and Trump says his proposed ballroom will seat only 999. And to be clear, a judge has permitted the construction of the secure facility under the ballroom to continue despite the lawsuit; it’s just the ballroom itself that’s currently at issue.
Attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is not an official requirement; this is actually the first time Trump has chosen to go as president. As Emily Davies, Isaac Arnsdorf, Jeremy Roebuck, and Joe Heim of the Washington Post reported today, the Trump administration could have provided a higher level of security last night as it has for other gatherings of high-ranking officials, but it did not designate the dinner as a “National Special Security Event.” …
The focus on last night’s event has obscured this upcoming week’s big story.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Jason Sattler: I marched to a concentration camp yesterday. We need to call it that.
‘Detention’ sounds like something America does to people who ‘have it coming.’ That’s the problem.
(Jason Sattler more…)
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Justin Scheck, Simón Posada and Federico Rios at NY Times: U.S. Mint Buys Drug Cartel Gold and Sells It as ‘American’
As prices for the precious metal soar, the industry’s guardrails have broken down.
…Congress in 1985 prohibited the Mint from making bullion out of foreign gold because it wanted to insulate the process from human rights abuses, primarily in apartheid South Africa. …
…When we first approached the Mint, a spokesman said that its gold came entirely from the United States, as the law requires. After we shared our findings, the Mint said the U.S. was its “primary” source and said it was taking steps to better track its gold.
(Justin Scheck, Simón Posada and Federico Rios at NY Times more…)
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Andrew Weissmann: The Poverty of the DOJ Indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center
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The indictment pointedly notes the role of senior people at the Center who made the 2021 representations to the bank about these companies, and so it is a good bet that those individuals are the intense focus of this Department seeking to flip them, something that this case appears to sorely need. Indeed, there is little sign that there is any insider witness cooperating with the government, as well as any donor who says they were misled by anything that was represented orally or in writing by the Center.On its own terms, the indictment is frail and deficient. Time will tell if this is not worth the paper it is written on, and is serving a very different extra-legal purpose.
(Andrew Weissmann more…)
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Catherine Porter @ NY Times: The 85-Year-Old Widow Snagged by Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
In her first interview since being deported, Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé, a French citizen who lived with her American husband until he died in January, told The Times she was stunned by her experience in immigration detention centers. The 85-year-old had previously considered herself a supporter of President Trump.
…“I didn’t know what was happening to me really,” she told me in France this week, in her first interview since being deported after a 16-day incarceration. “It was very humiliating. My hair had not even been combed. I was just getting out of bed.”
(Catherine Porter @ NY Times more…)
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Dissent in Bloom: The People Who Built JD Vance Long Before Anyone Knew His Name
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Ruth Ann Crystal MD: Dr. Ruth Report 4/26/26
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Rebecca Solnit: The Case for Climate Champion Tom Steyer in the California Governor’s Race
(Rebecca Solnit more…)
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Heather Delaney Reese: Donald Trump works for the highest bidder
… As he hurried through questions after attending a crypto event at Mar-a-Lago for those who invested in his $TRUMP meme coin, which he has personally made millions of dollars from, he continued to struggle to justify not sending negotiators to Iran talks because it’s “too expensive,” adding that he’s “a very cost-conscious person.”
…That is where we are. The president of the United States, standing on a tarmac, too cost-conscious for diplomacy, on his way back from selling access to himself by the token.
(Heather Delaney Reese more…)
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Borowitz: High Jet Fuel Cost Forces King to Visit US Remotely
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- 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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