curated news excerpts & citations
Lloyd Doggett, Michael Shank @ Guardian:
The Iran war reminds us: we’ll never be energy-independent with fossil fuels
Energy security comes from using local, renewable resources to power, heat and cool communities, as Ukraine is doing
Donald Trump’s unjustified war on Iran and the resulting global fuel crisis is a continuing reminder that true energy security and independence will continue to elude us so long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels.
Whether it’s wars over oil and gas resource access or attacks on fossil fuel power plants and energy grids, this reliance on finite resources only worsens a country’s threat profile. News this month of Russia’s deadly attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian drones swarming Ukrainian power stations and Kyiv running out of time to prepare for another winter of attacks on its energy grid illustrates this urgency.
No country will be energy-secure or independent as long as its fuel supply remains finite and fossilized and its power plants and energy grids centralized and fossil fuel-dependent. Those are sitting ducks, targets very vulnerable to attack by adversaries.
James Eagle: Solar is winning the growth race, but gas is still in it
Marisa Kabas: Hating AI is good, actually
Emily Biuso, Akshat Rathi, Olivia Rudgard @ Bloomberg: How Cities From Tokyo to Nairobi Are Becoming Flood-Proof
The business of adaptation—investing in climate resilience—is projected to be a $1.3 trillion market
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Deuce Davis: On Cotton…
…and the American operating system.
I’ve been thinking a lot about cotton and about how the commodity that made America rich is also the commodity that explains why America still can’t figure out whether it owes anything to the people who picked it, or to their descendants, or to anyone at all. Cotton is the early structure behind the American economic miracle, and it is explanatory of the American political pathology.
Tobacco came first. The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland grew rich on it, and Europe acquired a taste for it, as it had already acquired a taste for sugar and would soon acquire a taste for tea. Rice and indigo built the Lowcountry of South Carolina as sugar built Louisiana. The antebellum South was a portfolio of extractive monocultures long before cotton was the only stock anyone wanted. What turned cotton from one item on the slate into the slate itself was two things: Eli Whitney’s gin, patented in 1793, and the violent clearing of the Mississippi Black Belt that followed Andrew Jackson’s removal policies four decades later. The Louisiana Purchase gets the diplomatic credit, but France didn’t have anyone living on that land to consult, and the United States still had to evict the people who did. The cotton kingdom wasn’t bought from Napoleon. It was taken from the Choctaw and Cherokee, to the Creek and Chickasaw, and then planted by people who had been bought from Virginia.
The cotton gin is worth dwelling on because it sets a pattern. Whitney’s machine handled seed separation, the original bottleneck. But with that bottleneck cleared, picking became the new bottleneck, and picking required hands. So the technology that, by any reasonable logic, should have made enslaved labor less necessary instead made it more profitable. …
(Deuce Davis more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 20, 2026
Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn sued President Donald J. Trump, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today to block the creation of the fund to pay off those convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The lawsuit begins: “In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.”
The suit continues: “The fund…is illegal. No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”
Both Hodges and Dunn defended the Capitol and the lawmakers in it on January 6. Hodges was the man in the infamous photograph of the rioters crushing a police officer between metal doors. The officers claim the standing to sue because they have had to live with death threats and harassment since January 6 from MAGA Republicans and the plan to pay off rioters “will both compensate and empower the very people making those threats. Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the Fund to arm and equip themselves. The Fund will grant their past acts of violence legal imprimatur. And, most chillingly, the Fund will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Sherrilyn Ifill: Trump’s Insurrectionist Payout Scheme Violates the 14th Amendment
“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States….” – Section 4, 14th Amendment
Garrett Haake @ NBC: Longtime Trump ally Michael Caputo files first known claim for ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
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Michael Fanone: Trump’s DOJ Just Sued to Make Its Own Lawyers Untouchable
…
Read that again. The agency that’s supposed to enforce the law is in court trying to stop other people from enforcing the law on its own employees.This happened yesterday. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the number three official at the DOJ, Stanley Woodward, filed a lawsuit against the D.C. Bar — the body that handles complaints when lawyers in Washington behave unethically. That’s its entire job. A lawyer does something shady, somebody files a complaint, the Bar investigates, and if the lawyer broke the rules they get disciplined. Sometimes suspended. Sometimes disbarred.
That system has been around forever. Every state has one. It’s how the legal profession polices itself.
And the Trump DOJ just decided they don’t want to be policed.
(Michael Fanone more…)
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Tom Nichols @ Atlantic: Why Does Donald Trump Refuse to Defend America?
The president has long articulated a moral equivalence between the country’s interests and those of dictatorships.
Some of Donald Trump’s favorite world leaders have been scoundrels, bullies, and dictators. He keeps a picture of himself with the Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin on the wall of the White House. He claims to have fallen “in love” with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He publicly supported Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has been chased from power, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who is now under house arrest for the next two decades. He just returned from China and gushed about how the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is a “great leader” whom he’s honored to have as “a friend.”
(Tom Nichols @ Atlantic more…)Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Farnaz Fassihi, Ronen Bergman @ NY Times: Early War Goal Was to Install Hard Line Former President as Iran’s Leader
Tim Bray: Declining America
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Jennifer Rubin @ Contrarian:
Republicans Might Finally Consider Their LegacyLosing loyalists could use their remaining time in office to do the right thing
(Jennifer Rubin @ Contrarian more…)
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Carlos Greaves: TACO, NACHO, and More Trump Acronyms
FAJITA — Forget About Jurisprudence If Trump’s Around
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Decoding Fox News: Step Right Up and Get Your Very Own Handshaking Trump Doll!
A condensed overview of 22 hours of Fox News for the week ending 5/17/26
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
Apocalypse Early Warning System
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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