curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Catherine Rampell @ Bulwark:
Racist Law From 1882 Is Not That Racist, Trump Says
Buried in the White House’s broadside against the Smithsonian is a bizarre—and revealing—claim about the Chinese Exclusion Act.
A RACIST LAW THAT INSPIRED MORE RACIST LAWS and was literally named after its racism is definitely not racist. At least according to the Trump administration.
Laser-focused on the midterms, the White House recently released a 162-page report on the most critical issue facing voters: woke museum exhibitions. The report follows a prior Trump executive order complaining about the Smithsonian Institution, which the president said had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”
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… Among [Smithsonian’s] worst transgressions:
- Museum exhibitions acknowledge that some of the nation’s founders were slaveholders.
- In a PowerPoint slide in 2022, a museum director included an image of a butterfly. This is offensive, the White House report explains, because butterflies are “a well-known symbol in the illegal alien activist community, symbolizing illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S.”
- The National Museum of American History refuses to present a single “unified, national narrative,” and instead “asks visitors, ‘How should Americans remember their Revolution and the founding of the nation?’ without providing an answer.” Just as it was taken to pose a threat to the ruling powers in ancient Athens, the Socratic method is apparently an affront to real patriotism today.
But arguably the most telling section of the White House report relates to its defense of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The report’s authors bristle at any suggestion that this famously racist law may have been motivated by any kind of racial animus. After all, such an acknowledgment might raise uncomfortable questions about the policies of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller—policies that are explicitly modeled on laws like this one.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.: A White Supremacist Stabbed A Muslim Man 15 Times Because of His Faith
National Media Is Ignoring It And American Muslims Are Seeing The Hate Escalate
Andrew Perez @ Zeteo: ‘My Neighbor Was Murdered by White Supremacists’: Zeteo Reports From Maine on Yet Another ICE Killing
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Jess Piper:
I Know a Thing or Two About a Thing or TwoA blueprint
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 16, 2026
An exchange yesterday between Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to oversee the U.S. intelligence community as director of national intelligence, illustrated the dilemma of those trying to force Trump’s lies onto the American people when they are confronted with reality.
…Clayton could not answer because, although all of the claims of Trump and his loyalists that he won the 2020 presidential election have collapsed in court, Trump requires his cronies to claim that the election was stolen in order to have justification for rigging future elections. They know the truth—that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by 51.3% to 46.8% in the Electoral College. But they refuse to say so because if they do, they will lose Trump’s favor.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Julian E. Barnes, Maggie Haberman @ NY Times:
Takeaways From Trump’s Address Claiming Election VulnerabilitiesPresident Trump said his address on Thursday night was about building public confidence in American elections, but he spent much of his speech undermining them.
… documents Mr. Trump released to support his claims — and previous assessments from the intelligence community — do not back up his most aggressive statements about election security. In fact, some of the documents reach the opposite conclusion.
- Trump called for bolstering protections he has dismantled.
- Grains of truth were blown out of proportion.
- What about Russia?
- He repeated a demand for voting restrictions before the midterms.
(Julian E. Barnes, Maggie Haberman @ NY Times more…)
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Issam Ahmed, Manon Jacob @ Barron’s:
Top US Science Body Readies Climate Report As Republicans Push BackA leading US science body will launch a major report Thursday on how precisely specific extreme weather events can be tied to climate change, a growing research field underpinning billion-dollar lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry.
…Ahead of its publication, Republican lawmakers have sought to cast doubt on the authors’ work — sending, for example, a letter in April to the president of NASEM alleging bias and demanding details on the authors’ professional ties.
(Issam Ahmed, Manon Jacob @ Barron’s more…)
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Alexandra Stevenson @ NY Times: Hong Kong Police Raid Independent Bookstores and Arrest 5 People
Other booksellers have been detained in recent months as part of a broad national security crackdown.
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Amelia Gentleman @ Guardian: The social media ban sceptic: are we getting it wrong on kids, tech and mental health?
“It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that bans are likely to make things worse, not better”
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Jesse Weber, Tatiana Carter @ NewsNation:
Up to 2,000 Native Americans dead or missing in Medicaid fraud scheme: Attorneys
(Jesse Weber, Tatiana Carter @ NewsNation more…)
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Katherine Faulders, Aaron Katersky, Peter Charalambous, Nicholas Kerr @ ABC: White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump’s speeches: Sources
The White House said that Gabriel Perez has been placed on unpaid leave.
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Gil Duran: Why Trump Keeps Talking About Communism: The ‘Unhumans’ Playbook
“It’s important to use ‘communist’ this way as a slur.”
(Gil Duran more…)
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Joseph Cox @ 404 Media:
How Cops Use Flock to Track People, Not CarsCops have used Flock’s FreeForm search feature to look for people with tattoos and wearing specific sport shirts, and searches sometimes include the target’s race, according to data reviewed by 404 Media.
(Joseph Cox @ 404 Media more…)
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Mitch Jackson: Did Todd Blanche Lie to the Senate Yesterday? He Signed the Answer Himself — Read It and Decide.
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Nadira Goffe @ Slate: Why Is It Always Lettuce?
Christina Jewett, Alice Callahan, Caroline Hopkins Legaspi @ NY Times: Cyclospora Linked to Taylor Farms Lettuce Sent to Taco Bell
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 13: Joan Sebastian Guerrero
- 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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