curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Konrad Putzier @ WSJ:
Anemic hiring falls far short of expectations with 29,000 jobs added last month
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Monthly employment numbers can be volatile, so investors and policymakers tend to focus on the unemployment rate.
The 29,000 number will seem low to anyone who remembers the job gains that routinely topped 200,000 in the years before the pandemic—much less the massive job gains that came when the economy reopened from Covid-19.
But the economy doesn’t need to generate as many jobs as it used to just to keep the labor market steady. The population is aging, and an immigration clampdown has reduced growth in the supply of workers.
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The job market remains in a low-hire, low-fire era that provides stability but can be frustrating for Americans used to more opportunity. That dynamic has made it harder for newcomers to break into the job market, or for those who have been laid off or seeking new jobs to find new roles.
(Konrad Putzier @ WSJ more…)
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Carlos Martinez, Sara Vivacqua @ Peoples World:
Washington targets Lula in bid to control Brazil and South AmericaBrazilians go to the polls this weekend in what will be a crucial election for the country and the wider region. The contest pits the incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against the far-right Flavio Bolsonaro—son of the former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year sentence, convicted of plotting a coup to overturn the result of the 2022 election.
Of all the elections in the Americas this year, this is the one whose outcome matters most to Washington, and it’s the one it has worked hardest to influence. Brazil—a top-10 economy, a founder of BRICS and a driver of the multipolar order—is the last large country in South America that, under Lula, refuses to fall in line with Washington. It is one of the final pieces and also a potential turning point in Washington’s strategy for the capture of the Americas.
In his speech at the opening of the 81st United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22, Lula denounced foreign interference in the region’s elections and brought it under international scrutiny to prevent an institutional rupture before it could materialize. “Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil will remain a sovereign country,” he declared
(Carlos Martinez, Sara Vivacqua @ Peoples World more…)
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Mitch Jackson:
Renee Good Wrongful Death Lawsuits“That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you. I’m not mad at any of you.”
Renee Good said those words to a federal agent on a Minneapolis street on the morning of January 7, 2026, and moments later he fired three bullets into her car and killed her.
Renee was 37 years old. She was an American citizen and a mother of three who had dropped her six year old son off at school that morning and was driving home through her own south Minneapolis neighborhood with her partner, Becca, and the family dog, Wapsie, riding along with her. She served on the school board at her son’s school and had applied to work there as a substitute teacher. She wrote poetry. She was getting ready to start a master’s degree in English, and no agency had her under investigation for anything.
On October 1, her family filed two federal lawsuits over her death. I’m a trial lawyer, and I’ve read every one of the 181 pages in those two complaints.1
My verdict is simple.
This family has winning cases, and every American who wants a government that answers to the law has a stake in how they turn out.
(Mitch Jackson more…)
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”Does kindness become any less necessary simply because the person credited with praising it may never have said the words?
(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – October 2, 2026Trump held a campaign rally tonight in Mobile, Alabama, the city where, as Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times recalled, his MAGA rallies really took off in August 2015, when more than 30,000 people showed up at a football stadium to hear the television personality turned presidential candidate.
…As journalist McCreesh reported, Trump’s return to Mobile tonight had a wistful feel. The stadium where he spoke was nowhere near the size of the football stadium of 2015, and even so, it was not full. McCreesh noted that some of the upper sections were almost entirely empty.
Trump is planning to travel to 17 states before the midterms to rally MAGA voters who might otherwise not turn out. “Can everybody just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot?” Trump asked the audience in Mobile.
That is no longer a selling point, even for many of those who embrace the administration’s racism and sexism.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Maddy Varner, Dhruv Mehrotra @ Wired:
DHS agents not only tracked and intimidated people observing ICE activity in Maine, but stored information about them in a Palantir-built database
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Norman Lebrecht @ SlippedDisc:
Kennedy Center is getting rid of its pianos
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Jim Saksa @ Democracy Docket:
The Postal Service is slowing deliveryTo help voters find out whether their mail ballots might be affected, Democracy Docket mapped those zip codes
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Brian Merchant:
[“stochastic parrots”] The two words the AI industry hates more than anything
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Ted Gioia:
The AI God Delusion Goes MainstreamMaría José Gutiérrez Chávez @ Fast Company:
Anthropic and Pope Leo are apparently at odds about this controversial AI concept
A field guide to claims
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
- September 18: Carlos Josue Marchena Marchena
- 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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