curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Mark Leonard @ Foreign Affairs:
Learning to Live in a Post-American World
Five years ago, the Chinese housing market crashed, leaving thousands of apartment buildings unfinished across the country. A generation of Chinese citizens who had bet all their savings on indefinite expansion suddenly found themselves homeless. Over time, however, some intrepid people moved into the ruins of these edifices, setting up tents on the concrete floors, using bed sheets as walls, cooking on makeshift stoves. The Chinese call these abandoned structures lanwei lou, a phrase that literally means “rotten-tail buildings,” signifying a project gone awry, a plan in suspension. The inhabitants of rotten-tail buildings repurpose the old and improvise to find a way of surviving an economic storm.
The state of the Chinese housing market is a good metaphor for the U.S.-led rules-based international order. After decades of expansion, it, too, is being abandoned. Never fully accepted by China and Russia and resented by newly assertive middle powers, its main financial backers—the American people—have lost interest in underwriting its further development. And as in the case of China’s failed housing projects, no alternative provider is stepping in to take over.
A rotten-tail world is emerging, one in which states will have to adapt cunningly, improvise new uses for elements of the old order that remain valuable, and adjust swiftly to the dramatic decay of others. But too many leaders still act as if the old order can somehow be salvaged or even perfected. …
… For some time, the world will be without any order at all—swept by fragmentation, contagion, and strangulation or the temptation to weaponize a wide variety of geographic, economic, and technological chokepoints. Rather than constructing a grand strategy, states will need to develop far more flexible and artisanal responses.
(Mark Leonard @ Foreign Affairs more…)
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Garrett Graff:
On how 9/11 started — and America’s innocence… the period from 8:46 a.m. to 9:03 a.m., when the first attack happened and the second. … the experience of the day — what it was like to live for people before they knew what was unfolding and how the day would end. Because the way we summarize the day now — e.g., “the attacks begin at 8:46 a.m.” — is factually true, but not an accurate representation of how the day was lived.
The key to understanding that difference is examining the time before America realized it was under attack, when millions watched the second plane fly into the South Tower live on their morning television shows.
(Garrett Graff more…)
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Broad Daylight News:
The Ballot Doesn’t Have To Be Banned If You Can Just Make It FailA rushed, untested USPS system could reject entire batches of mail ballots over a single scanning glitch, and nobody would have to call it disenfranchisement
(Broad Daylight News more…)Jennifer Rubin:
*62 Days to the Midterms*…
After experiencing Trump’s heinous overreach, the American people are way ahead of the politicians. They should know that the midterms provide the opening to end this shameful chapter in immigration policy and reclaim our deepest-held values.David Edwards @ RawStory:
Markwayne Mullin puts ‘flagrantly unlawful’ Trump scheme at risk with obscure memo
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – September 2, 2026A number of pundits, especially Republican pundits, interpreted Trump’s win in 2024 as a permanent political realignment proving that post–World War II liberalism was dead. That conviction appeared to help feed Trump’s insistence that he had won a “landslide” and had a “mandate” to enact draconian policies.
Skeptics disagreed with this interpretation, noting that Trump’s victory in the popular vote was small— more people voted for someone else than for him— and that the 2024 election appeared to be determined by inflation and the pandemic, two things that had little to do with political positions. Rather than being an embrace of a political ideology, it appeared the swing toward Trump had more to do with anti-incumbent feeling, especially over inflation.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Mike Brock:
Tim Cook and what the gold was buying… when the president renamed the Gulf of Mexico last year, Google took eight days to comply and Apple took more than three weeks. This time Google took two days, and Apple took five — and the only new variable was a call from Donald Trump to Tim Cook.
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Qasim Rashid, Esq.:
A year ago, I published an article, part of it reproduced below, about a judge who tried to strip me of my law license for the “crime” of criticizing a bad ruling.A year later, sadly, attacks on my law license continue …
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Brian Allen:
Trump Says Americans Have Too Many Holidays. His Administration Wants Them Working Longer
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Sherrilyn Ifill:
Art and the Authoritarian Deracialization Campaign
(Sherrilyn Ifill more…)
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Megan Rose, Andy Mannix @ ProPublica:
Trump’s DOJ Blocked Serious ICE Shooting Charge Over Federal Prosecutor’s “Strongest Possible” Objections
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Byron Tate @ Arkansas Times:
Federal judge: Free speech trumps trade secretsAustin Gelder @ Arkansas Times:
In a panic over mistakenly shared documents, Entergy lawyers ask judge to restrain journalists
Last Days in Two Nations
Climate.us
formerly Climate.gov
Climate Solutions Explorer
Have I Been Flocked?
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
- August 31: Pierre Damas Bel
- August 1: Edwin Lopez-Cornejo
- July 19: Jose Chajon-Raxon
- 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
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