curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Chance Meeting:
Entering an American Concentration Camp
My Visit with Martin Soto at the Elizabeth NJ Concentration Camp
For almost two months, Martin Soto has been in solitary confinement in the Elizabeth Concentration Camp in New Jersey. Before being transferred there, he led a hunger and labor strike in Delaney Hall so effective, it made national news and spawned weeks of large-scale protests. For it, they punished him and painted him a criminal.
When Gabriela asked me if I wanted to join her during visitation and speak to Martin, I immediately said yes.
I had my doubts they’d let me in. Just the night before I had been outside taking pictures of the facility with Matthew Wagner and some others when a guard resembling a human rendering of Jabba the Hutt started yelling at us that we were on private property and had to leave. I asked where the signs were and what ensued was an argument turned lobbing of insults between me and Jabba before the police came to mediate.
(Chance Meeting more…)
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Sam Fortier @ NOTUS:
Suspicion and Doubt at the National Civics ContestAmerica’s finest young scholars competed to mark their country’s birthday. It led to a disputed finish in the age of mistrust.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 27, 2026
On July 22, Sam Fortier of NOTUS reported that the Trump-appointed judges of the Presidential 1776 Award competition, emceed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, apparently rigged the competition to cut out a 17-year-old Indian immigrant in favor of a homeschooled blonde girl from Wyoming, a Michigan boy who attended a private Catholic school, and a girl from Washington who told CNN she supported Trump and wanted to see “everyone walking away from the competition knowing this is the greatest country of the world.”
In order to privilege white contestants over an immigrant, the judges apparently changed the acceptable answers to questions about our history.
This story mirrors the larger attempt of the Trump administration to rewrite the history of the United States. Trump officials reject our traditional understanding that the country was based on the ideas the Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence and that Americans from all walks of life have struggled ever since to make those principles come to life.
In place of that historic understanding, the administration argues that the United States was founded as a white nation whose citizens are defined by their European heritage and the land they inhabited, an echo of the “blood and soil” ideology of Germany in the 1930s.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Eric Roston @ Bloomberg:
El Niño Threatens to Push World Past 2C Warming ThresholdA powerful El Niño already beginning to roil weather around the world may push the monthly global average temperature past 2C of warming for the first time on record, according to projections published by a University of Miami-based ocean and atmospheric research center.
The probability that a single month in early 2027 passes 2C has reached 35% to 40%, said Ben Kirtman, dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at Miami.
“That’s a large probability,” he said. “That’s really large, and maybe that’s what people don’t appreciate.”
(Eric Roston @ Bloomberg more…)
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Jamila Osman @ Truthout:
Trump Is Already Outpacing His First-Term Record Number of Airstrikes on SomaliaThe Trump administration cut humanitarian aid to Somalia while continuing to pound it with military airstrikes.
(Jamila Osman @ Truthout more…)
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Zev Shalev @ NARRATIV:
Epstein: Bill Barr was in the room when it happenedA DOJ official summed it up in eleven words, typed the morning Todd Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell. Barr promised to hunt Epstein’s co-conspirators. The Department’s own file names him among the accused.
(Zev Shalev @ NARRATIV more…)
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Edith Olmsted @ TNR: Trump Official Crashes Out When Asked About Depleted U.S. Munitions
Joe Biden depleted our munitions. But also, our munitions are not depleted.
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Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling @ TNR: Trump’s Own Team Urges Republicans to Distance Themselves From Him
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Jennifer Rubin: Trump Should Be Tired of Losing
Losses in court and atrocious polls pile up.
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Joe Barnes @ Telegraph: Ukraine’s strike on Iranian tanker is a message for Trump
An Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea does not, at first, seem like an obvious target for Ukrainian drones.But more than 500 miles away from Kyiv – and just days before meeting Donald Trump at the White House – Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to make an important point.
The ship, which has not been named, was allegedly carrying military cargo between Russia and Iran.
Iran has long been supplying Shahed drones to Russia for its war against Ukraine. Now Russia is fitting them with powerful jet engines, and is believed to be sending them back to Iran for its war against the US.
(Joe Barnes @ Telegraph more…)
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Free Speech For People: Former Trump White House Special Counsel Ty Cobb Calls for Congress to Impeach President Trump
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Chris Geidner: Donald Trump’s effort to run his lawsuits out of Florida has hit a snag: the law
Trump v. BBC, Trump v. NYT, and Trump v. IRS all sent a message to Trump on Monday.
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Joyce Vance: 86 the “86 47” Prosecution of Jim Comey
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Ruth Ann Crystal MD: Dr. Ruth Report, 7/26/26
COVID levels are starting to creep up, especially in the South.
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 14: Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran
- 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
