curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Asawin Suebsaeng, Prem Thakker @ Zeteo: Trump’s Illegal Boat Bombings Are Just ‘Murder for Murder’s Sake,’ U.S. Official Says
Donald Trump’s boat strikes aren’t working – because they’re ‘not actually designed to end the fentanyl crisis,’ a senior administration official tells Zeteo.
Even as national media coverage of it ebbed since last year, Donald Trump’s “Murder Inc.” at sea never stopped. As of last month, the Trump-Vance administration is still conducting its (almost certainly criminal) lethal bombing campaign against supposed “narcoterrorist” drug boats. The killing spree shows no sign of abating.
Sources familiar with the situation tell Zeteo that President Trump wants more of them and has talked to key officials in recent weeks about expanding operations. He still goes over menus of different plans and boat routes to target. He and his administration keep propagandizing about how they’re winning this war, making the U.S. safer, saving tens of thousands of lives per strike, and keeping illicit narcotics off of American streets, all without actually knowing who they’re killing.
But the bombings aren’t just illegal or wrong. According to U.S. intel and government data described to Zeteo by several American officials and others familiar with the situation, the killing also isn’t working. At all. And the White House knows this.
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Allison Gill: FBI Admits it has Epstein Files Training Videos
Last spring, over 1000 FBI analysts were locked in the building, paid over $1M in overtime, and told to review and redact certain information from the Epstein Files.
In the summer, multiple anonymous FBI and DOJ sources who participated in the review confided in me that there were training videos instructing them on how to find, log, and redact Trump’s name.
I filed a Freedom of Information Act request, then sued the government to get the videos. In a stunning admission, the FBI just sent me their response confirming the videos exist. I have forwarded the information to House Oversight and Senate Judiciary committees ahead of this week’s confirmation hearings for Todd Blanche.
(Allison Gill more…)
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Rook T. Winchester: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
He got up at 5:50 in the morning. Every morning, for thirty-five years, in a country that spent the last one hunting him.
That’s the whole story, if you want it in one sentence and you don’t have time for the rest. But you should make time. Because somewhere between the alarm clock and the sidewalk where he bled out screaming, there’s a version of America worth being furious about, and I’m not going to spare you a single detail of it.
(Rook T. Winchester more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 12, 2026
The United States is currently in the grip of an outbreak of the Cyclospora parasite, which causes severe diarrhea and has sickened more than 3,000 people across the U.S. Last August, Aria Bendix of NBC News reported that on July 1, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would no longer track infections caused by cyclospora and five other common causes of foodborne illnesses.
…Meanwhile, the New World screwworm continues to spread in the U.S. and Central America, where Melody Schreiber of The Guardian reported today conservation cameras are showing the infestations spreading rapidly in deer, jaguars, peccaries, and even porcupines.
While Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly blamed former president Joe Biden for the arrival of the flesh-eating maggots, three former officials from the Agriculture Department, as well as another source, told Marcia Brown of Politico in June that Trump administration officials held up funding for the construction of a facility crucial to slowing the spread of the pest and also delayed funding for a $100 million research initiative to find new ways to stop the screwworm.
Trump administration cuts to staffing at the USDA meant that in 2025 the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service staffing dropped by 25%. More than half of the area veterinarians retired or resigned.
Things aren’t going terribly well internationally, either.
…On May 3, 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham posted on social media: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Mitch Jackson: He Explained $2.2 Billion In Fifteen Seconds. His Own Paper Trail Runs 927 Pages.
You watched the President of the United States report $2.2 billion in personal income for 2025. Then you watched him explain the whole thing away in about fifteen seconds. Before you accept any of it, ask yourself one thing. What happens when you hold those fifteen seconds up against the document he was legally required to file?
That document exists. It runs 927 pages, it sits with the Office of Government Ethics, and it is in public view right now. So let me set the record next to what he said, and then step back. You decide what it adds up to.
…Three statements. One paper trail. Notice what I did not do. I did not hand you a leak. I did not quote an anonymous source. I did not ask you to imagine what happens behind a closed door. Every number came from a document the president was required by law to file, checked against market data you can pull up in thirty seconds and tax history that has been public for years.
(Mitch Jackson more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Week Seven in 250 to 250
This was the seventh week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This one is a particularly fun week for me: in the wide range of stories are many that I insisted we include, and then a dream list of people took time out of their crazy busy schedules to narrate them.
I hope you all are enjoying these are much as we are. Our biggest problem now is that there are way more that we’d like to produce than we have the space for.
A reminder: we designed the videos to emphasize the agency of Americans—mostly everyday Americans—to change the country. Each falls into a category that defines what it means to be an American, including community, democracy, innovation, mobility, civil rights, education, conservation, and creativity.
https://www.youtube.com/@twofiftytotwofifty
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Thom Hartmann: Chapter 6: The First Corporate War
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: “Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told”
(Thom Hartmann 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
- July 7: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
- 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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