curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Mitch Jackson:
Make Good Trouble. It Is Your Job Now.
What do you do when the people running your country are counting on you to stay home, stay quiet, and stay scared?
You make good trouble.
Those words belong to John Lewis, and six years after his death they have turned into the most feared idea in America. Feared by the men in Washington who would love nothing more than a nation of citizens too tired and too frightened to show up. John Lewis spent his whole life proving them wrong. He got beaten, arrested more than forty times, and nearly killed, and he kept showing up, because he understood a truth the comfortable never want you to learn. Ordinary people, standing together, refusing to back down, are the strongest force this country has ever produced.
Right now, in Donald Trump’s second term, you are living through a stress test of everything Lewis fought for. The vote. The right to protest without fear. The promise that no person stands above the law and no person falls beneath its protection. Trump and the people around him are treating the Constitution like a suggestion and treating your fellow Americans like targets. The damage is piling up, and the repair bill will land on your kids and your grandkids.
Here is the part they do not want you to hear. You hold the same power Lewis held. You hold it in November, and you hold it every single day between now and then. Let me show you how he used his, and how Americans like you are using theirs today.
(Mitch Jackson more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 28, 2026
A wide range of Democratic voices are in the process of shaping new political language to move their party, and the country, forward. James Talarico is one of those new voices. On Friday, June 26, he delivered his official acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from Texas at the Texas Democratic Convention held in Corpus Christi.
He began by invoking Barbara Jordan, a lawyer who in 1972 became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Texas. A brilliant orator, Jordan delivered a statement on July 24, 1974, from her seat on the House Judiciary Committee during President Richard Nixon’s impeachment that is considered one of the most powerful speeches in U.S. history. “My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total,” she said. “And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.”
…“Texans don’t like tyrants. And we don’t surrender easily. Tonight, standing before you, to accept your nomination for the United States Senate, I make the same commitment to you that my ancestor made 200 years ago. Any duty that my bodily strength would enable me to perform, either in public or private, that would advance the cause of Texas, I feel anxious and ever ready to perform.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Hans Christensen:
Peace Is More Than End of HostilitiesLast week was the first United Nations Peacebuilding Week. The initiative highlights what recent conflicts have taught us; that peace cannot be built on ceasefires or memoranda alone.
(Hans Christensen more…)
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Jonathan Cohn @ Bulwark:
These Are the Medical Miracles Trump Could Take AwayA LOUISIANA MAN WALKED OUT of a hospital this week, functionally cured from a debilitating disease that until very recently was mostly incurable. In so doing, he offered a genuinely heartwarming case study in what modern medicine can now achieve—and a genuinely worrisome reminder of what Donald Trump’s attacks on science could now destroy.
(Jonathan Cohn @ Bulwark more…)
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Ibrahim Hirsi @ truthout:
Operation Metro Surge cost residents and businesses in Minneapolis nearly $700 million in economic losses.Months after the Trump administration announced the end of Operation Metro Surge, Minnesota immigrants are still grappling with the impacts of the largest federal immigration crackdown in recent U.S. history. Lost jobs, shattered businesses, missed rent payments, mounting legal fees, family separations, emotional distress, and uncertainty about the future have become part of daily life for many in the state.
(Ibrahim Hirsi @ truthout more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Week Five in 250 to 250
This was the fifth week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and it’s been quite a week. For me, this week’s videos, taken together, illustrate both the complexity of U.S. history and how many different individuals have used many different approaches to change that history.
On a more personal note, they also show how many wonderful people have come together to brainstorm, write, edit, film, cut, and produce this project. It’s not every week you get to jump from Emily Roebling to Jimi Hendrix with a whole bunch of cool stops in between, and it took a lot of people to make such a journey possible.
https://www.youtube.com/@twofiftytotwofifty
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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
- 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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