curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Michele Hornish: Celebration Postponed
Just wait until we oust the King.
…
All Fourth of Julys are celebratory, but this one had promised to be especially so. “America’s 250th Birthday” was the promise. Popsicles and patriotism on a menu set years ago in a time that now feels like a shimmering dream.
And yet. The Mall in DC is devoid of revelers. The so-called Great American State Fair is boring and overpriced – like most of Trump’s efforts. People walk about aimlessly about while performers perform to a crowd that isn’t there. Television cameras pan across the empty vistas – nobody on the ferris wheel, or by the plywood arch, or on the grand lawn.
It’s sad, frankly, that July 4, 2026 is so morose. But it’s also quite right.
…
This weekend might be a subdued party. But the celebration isn’t cancelled.
It’s just postponed until we finally make our own history, and oust the king.
Let’s get to work.
Jennifer Rubin: ‘A Golden Age’ and a ‘Great America State Fair’?!
-
Dr. Céline Gounder @ zeteo:
Trump Wants YOUR Medical Data for His Drug WarThe Trump administration’s new drug strategy does more than escalate the war on fentanyl. It sketches the architecture for a national surveillance system built from some of Americans’ most personal data: prescriptions, toxicology results, wastewater, electronic health records, license plate scans, and law enforcement intelligence.
(Dr. Céline Gounder @ zeteo more…)
-
Jason Koebler @ 404 Media: How I Bought a Private Jet By Selling $10 Subscriptions to 404 Media
My journey inside the world of LARPing, where hustlebros pretend to be rich for TikTok.
…I stop recording. In reality, I was sitting alone in photo studio Olympic 4, inside a warehouse jammed between the 5 freeway, a railway for cargo trains, and the largely dry, concrete Los Angeles River. Moments earlier I called a receptionist because the code for my one-hour rental ($65) wasn’t working. I didn’t even have the keys to my fake, indoor private jet. I had to stop recording because my voice inside the private jet was overpowered first by a power saw outside, then by an ambulance siren. My subscribers, my Stripe dashboard, my notifications were all fake of course. My prosecco was real; I bought it at Ralph’s for a party a few months ago on sale for $6. It didn’t matter. I was LARPing. It was going well. Buy my course.
(Jason Koebler @ 404 Media more…)
-
Gil Duran: A new video exposé on the cult billionaire plan to privatize government
(Gil Duran more…)
-
Ed Zitron: The AI Industry Is Losing
On Sunday, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) put out its annual report and said, well, a bunch of things that I’ve been saying:
In the near term, the ongoing AI investment boom raises questions about the sustainability of the current economic expansion. The five largest hyperscalers are set to spend over a trillion US dollars on AI-related capital expenditure from 2025 through 2026. These commitments are outpacing earnings and the free cash flow of these firms, leading some to issue debt to raise additional financing.
As edifying as it is to see the bank for central banks say exactly what I’ve been saying for the last few years, this part is the one that both rocks as far as being right goes and sucks for the world at large:
Disappointment in returns could trigger a sudden pullback in financing and turn the capex boom into a protracted investment bust, with potential knock-on effects on financial conditions…should hyperscalers slow or halt the aggressive pace of capex deployment, many borrowers across the supply chain could struggle to replace lost revenue and service their debt.
-
Brian Klaas: The Great Cognitive Divide
…
Human brains are the most complex and wonderful creations in the known universe, but they wither when left unused. I worry that we could already be sleepwalking toward that mental chasm, one mindless AI prompt at a time.
(Brian Klaas more…)
-
Phillips P. OBrien: Well, It Seemed A Rational Debate For The Time
…
Drones will be able to stay in the air for longer and avoid detection better, while increasing their lethality and improving their own computational performance. The ability of both to destroy heavy land vehicles while remaining unseen will improve. The massacre of Russian vehicles we have seen in Ukraine will become the norm, not the exception.
(Phillips P. OBrien more…)Hans Christensen: Putin’s Superyacht, Protected by Drone Nets
-
Thomas Gualtieri, Eamon Farhat, Clara Hernanz Lizarraga @ Bloomberg: [Spain] has too much power on sunny days.
…
So much solar capacity was added last year that it flooded the grid, pushing prices deep below zero during peak times as producers cut rates to off-load excess power. Only six months into the year, the country has already surpassed its annual record for the number of hours when producers must pay users to take their electricity. The problem is happening across Europe, but it’s most dramatic in Spain, where solar last year overtook wind as the largest source of electricity.
(Thomas Gualtieri, Eamon Farhat, Clara Hernanz Lizarraga @ Bloomberg more…)
-
Matthew Gault @ 404 Media: [Henrico County, Virginia] With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to ‘Conserve Electricity’
Henrico County is a major hub for data centers in Virginia. Its officials said it expects a 25% rise in electricity costs next year, and advised workers to close the blinds and turn off their computers to make up for it.
(Matthew Gault @ 404 Media more…)
-
Katelyn Jetelina, Julia Tellerman, Marisa Donnelly, Ph.D. @ Your Local Epidemiologist: Heat illnesses, flu outbreak in the military, a new mRNA flu vaccine, and more
-
Will Neal @ Daily Beast: Trump’s Favorite Paper Turns on Him Over ‘Sleaze’ Scandal
-
Alana Hope Levinson, Makena Kelly @ Wired: How Hunter Biden Won the Internet
He’s fed the trolls—and everyone is eating.
…The new public fascination with Biden has been suffused with a constant “will-he-or-won’t-he” energy—an obvious suspense around his dynastic political prospects. In late May, Biden told WIRED that his return to public life has nothing to do with political ambition. “I hate to talk about myself, I’m not running for office, I’m not running for school president,” he says, “and I’m not running to be the most popular person on Twitter.” His primary goal? He says it’s to help other addicts—a community that “doesn’t have any political boundaries or economic boundaries”— who seem to find Biden’s frequent posts about recovery genuinely inspiring: “If I made it back from that global public humiliation, then you know what? They can too.”
(Alana Hope Levinson, Makena Kelly @ Wired more…)
-
Dean Blundell: The 13-Year-Old Trump Rape Accuser Has Gone Into Hiding. The Day Before SCOTUS Labelled Him A Rapist. And Two Days Before The DOJ Has To Cough Up 37 Pages Detailing Trump’s Abuse
-
James Eagle: US manufacturing construction is falling under Trump’s second term
(James Eagle more…)
-
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 30, 2026
On January 20, 2025, the day he took the oath of office a second time, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” …
…
Although the court’s decision simply upheld the conditions that have been in place for more than a century, MAGA is treating it as a dramatic and dangerous change. “Now that [the Supreme Court] has opened the floodgates for foreign invaders to flock across our borders and spawn, the only choice we have is to triple down on immigration enforcement,” wrote right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh. “Militarize the border. Mass deportations. Round every illegal up. Don’t pull back when the lesbian activists start screeching about it. Use whatever force is necessary. There is no other option.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Dissent in Bloom: Birthright Citizenship Barely Survived the Federalist Society Coup D’état
Joyce Vance: Beyond the Headlines: The Supreme Court’s Final Decisions
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
