curated news excerpts & citations
Thom Hartmann: Trump Is Making Khrushchev’s “We Will Bury You” Real for Putin. Why?
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Putin called Trump last Wednesday and they talked for almost two hours; fewer than three days later, America announced we’re pulling 5,000 US troops out of the NATO forces in Germany, accomplishing a 60-year-long Russian goal. Trump also ended sanctions on Russian oil, handing the Putin regime billions in revenue, while continuing to block US weapons delivery to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, …
This list is an operational blueprint, the kind of document a hostile foreign intelligence service might draw up if it had been handed unlimited access to the executive branch and told to dismantle the American republic from inside without firing a single shot:
- Hollow out the public health system so disease can do its work,
- Demoralize the officer corps and burn through munitions in unconstitutional wars,
- Terminate the diplomats and intelligence professionals who keep allies aligned,
- Replace independent journalism with state propaganda at Voice of America,
- Defund the agencies Congress created,
- Abandon the clean energy transition that would have weakened OPEC and Russia simultaneously,
- Politicize the FBI and DOJ so they target dissenters instead of crooks, and
- Turn armed, masked ICE thugs loose to terrorize immigrant communities while training the rest of us to accept anonymous federal agents disappearing our neighbors into massive concentration camps.
Every line item that would appear on such a plan has been checked off in the last 14 months, executed by a cabinet of grifters, ideologues, and 13 billionaires whose loyalty runs to Trump and the morbidly rich rather than to the nation whose Constitution they swore an oath to defend.
(Thom Hartmann more…)
WSJ: How to Make Vladimir Putin’s Year
Germany’s Merz was insulting, but that’s no reason for Trump to undermine NATO.
Dariia Mykhailenko @ United24: Putin Retreats to Bunkers as Coup Fears and Drone Threats Shake Moscow
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 4, 2026
According to a new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans believe President Donald J. Trump does not have the mental sharpness necessary to lead the country. Fifty-five percent think he does not have the physical health to serve as president. Fifty-four percent say they don’t think Trump is a strong leader. Sixty-seven percent think Trump doesn’t carefully consider important decisions.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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James Eagle: America has become the emergency oil supplier
The surge in empty supertankers heading to the US is not a normal shipping quirk. It is a scramble for replacement crude. With Middle East supplies disrupted by the Iran war, buyers are turning to American oil, and FT reported that US crude exports were expected to hit 5.2 million barrels a day in April, up from 3.9 million in March.
(James Eagle more…)Leigh Kimmins @ Daily Beast: Manic Trump’s Scramble to Fix Catastrophe Immediately Backfires
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Claire Woodcock @ 404 Media: How a University’s Censorship Conference Got Censored
Presenters say that Weber State University’s legal team adopted a narrow construction of a state law designed to withhold funding from public institutions suspected of practicing DEI.
(Claire Woodcock @ 404 Media more…)
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Judd Legum: ICE has not paid for detainee medical care for 7 months
The termination of payments to providers has coincided with a massive spike in detainee deaths and medical crises.
(Judd Legum more…)
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Miles Taylor: The reckoning is coming for Trump’s DOJ.
The last attorney general who turned the Justice Department into a weapon went to federal prison. The pardon power could not save him. And it won’t protect Trump’s team.
(Miles Taylor more…)Steve Vladeck: How Congress Used to Leverage the Court
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Paul Krugman: The Death Star Administration
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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