curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Julia Conley @ Common Dreams: ‘Absolutely Crazy’: Horror as Trump Moves to Dismantle Crucial Ocean Monitoring System
“Blinding the public to climate change won’t make it go away. It will only accelerate its profound consequences.”
In what a number of scientists suggested was the Trump administration’s latest effort to stop tracking the changing climate in hopes of convincing the public that the climate emergency isn’t happening, the National Science Foundation announced Monday that it was dismantling a crucial deep-ocean monitoring system that for years has helped researchers understand the impacts of the crisis on the world’s oceans.
The NSF said it plans to send ships this month to remove more than 900 instruments, part of a project called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The project collects data on temperatures, currents, and the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide off the coasts of Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and North Carolina, as well as in the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.
(Julia Conley @ Common Dreams more…)
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Michael Fanone: A Black Boy’s Killer Walked Free. The Law Made Sure He Would.
A jury in Columbia, South Carolina, took eight hours on Monday to decide that a sixty-one-year-old store owner who chased a fourteen-year-old boy down the length of a football field and shot him in the back did nothing wrong. The boy’s family broke down in the gallery. The shooter, Rick Chow, bowed his head into his hands. He will walk out of the Richland County jail a free man for the first time in three years.
The boy was Cyrus Carmack-Belton. He was fourteen. He was Black. …
(Michael Fanone more…)
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Ed Zitron: AI Doesn’t Have ROI
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If you can’t measure how good something is, how much it might cost, or what your return on investment might be, it’s fair to ask why you’re even paying for it in the first place.
Emily Forgash, Rachael Dottle @ Bloomberg: Data Centers Now Use So Much Power, Their Designs Are Changing
The huge amount of power that data centers use is forcing a rethink of their form.
A new generation of ever more powerful artificial intelligence chips is pushing data centers to their limits.
These “AI factories,” which gobble up enough power to keep the lights on in millions of homes, threaten to put more pressure on electricity prices in the US and expand AI’s carbon footprint.
(Emily Forgash, Rachael Dottle @ Bloomberg more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 2, 2026
Officials in the Trump administration have worked hard to restrict the access of members of Congress to the detention centers it has established across the country. Although lawmakers have a constitutional duty to oversee executive agencies and courts have reiterated their authority to conduct unannounced visits to federal immigration facilities, officials have repeatedly tried to limit that access.
…The destruction of the rule of law in Delaney Hall is part of the Trump administration’s destruction of the rule of law across the United States. This morning, Trump announced he is appointing the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, to become the acting director of national intelligence in addition to his job at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The director of national intelligence is the nation’s top intelligence official, and federal law requires that the director have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte has none.
What he does have is willingness to use the power of the government to persecute Trump’s perceived political enemies. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Dissent in Bloom: Inside Delaney Hall, They Stopped Eating. They Stopped Working.
A dollar a day, worms in the food, and a billion-dollar contract you’re funding
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James Eagle: China still exports far more goods than the US
China’s economy has obvious problems: property stress, weak confidence and an ageing population. This chart, however, cuts against a lazy conclusion. Despite these issues, China is not easy to displace as the world’s factory. Furthermore, this domestic weakness has not erased industrial scale.
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(James Eagle more…)
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Heather Delaney Reese: Another day of losing for Donald Trump
Dean Obeidallah: Steven Beschloss: Trump has failed at everything he touched in his second term—except one thing
… Steven Beschloss noted in our conversation that Trump did have one “success story.” That is Trump has closed the border—but not in the way you might think. As Beschloss explained, Trump has “gone out of his way to make America as undesirable as possible.”
Jordain Carney @ Politico: DOJ’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ backtrack fails to calm Senate Republicans
“It’s pretty clear that the president has to say very explicitly that there’s not going to be a weaponization fund,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said.
Jaclyn Diaz @ NPR: Trump vowed to revoke hundreds of citizenships. It’s proving harder to do
Mary Geddry: One Decision, Made Over and Over
Let us begin with the number, because the number is the story: one in five. That is the share of Justice Department lawyers who were on the payroll at the end of 2024 and had walked out the door by this spring, out of a workforce of roughly ten thousand. …
zeteo: Where Did the 40,000 Iran Protests Death Toll Number Come From?
Borowitz: In Setback for Trump, Iran Says it Will Only Negotiate With Bad Bunny
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Timothy Snyder: “Waiting for the missiles to pass”
Why have a book festival in the middle of a war?
Why have a war in the middle of a book festival?
The historian Marci Shore goes to wartime Ukraine because it’s her job, and because she has people to see. …
(Timothy Snyder more…)
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Noah Berlatsky: Republicans go all in on toxic masculinity in Texas
Brian Beutler: Republicans’ Talarico Trans Taunt Is A Witch Hunt In The Classic Sense
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Jonathan Cohn @ Bulwark: The Cancer Research Machine Trump Is Gutting Just Delivered a Big Breakthrough
There’s new hope for one of the deadliest cancers. But Trump’s war on research puts future discoveries at risk.
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Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist: Covid-19 update, common cold, ticks, and lotssss of good news
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Jude Cramer @ Fast Company: Why Google wants to release 32 million mosquitoes in California and Florida
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Thomas Adamson and Jeffrey Schaeffer @ AP: Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting
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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