curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Heather Delaney Reese:
Donald Trump just keeps losing
At 8:11 last night, Donald Trump stepped onto the stage in Syracuse after a day spent ranting about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He told the crowd, “Iran gives us everything, or they don’t exist any longer,” then immediately complained that he should have received an award for peace. He blamed Norway, warned that he would not forget, and called the Nobel Committee the “enemies of civilization.” The person he dismissed as a nobody is Navi Pillay, an 85-year-old South African who grew up under apartheid and spent her life fighting human rights abuses. She helped establish that sexual violence could be prosecuted as genocide and worked to hold powerful leaders accountable. She learned of her award in Nuremberg, the very city where Nazi leaders were tried after World War II. The contrast could not be clearer: a woman honored for defending international law, and a president threatening a nation while demanding a prize for peace.
The Nobel Committee warned that international legal institutions are under political attack and said, “Peace requires justice.” Not long after, Marco Rubio announced sanctions against the entire International Criminal Court, cutting it off from American financial services, technology companies, and the use of U.S. dollars, with limited temporary exemptions. Four years ago, Rubio supported that same court investigating Russian war crimes. Now the administration fears that it could eventually investigate Trump and his inner circle. Trump has also described the campaign as “defending Bibi.” Since the boat strikes began last September, the military has killed at least 238 people without providing evidence of who or what was actually on those boats.
(Heather Delaney Reese more…)
Dean Blundell:
Trump Lost the Nobel. Then He Declared War on the World Court While Netanyahu Compared the Nobel Committee to Goebbels
-
Sergey Cleftsow @ Medium:
Experts Claim That OpenAI and Anthropic May Not Survive for a Reason Nobody Saw Coming. Here’s WhyThe marketing strategy of two leading American AI labs has turned out to have a catastrophic vulnerability. They have no alternative.
From the very beginning, the AI labs have been drilling one idea into everyone’s head: whoever builds the most advanced models wins. Just give us more compute, massive data centers, and endless billions in investment.
The first warning bell was the “DeepSeek moment.” The Chinese had none of that, yet they came within striking distance of OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s models.
The market freaked out. Nvidia lost half a trillion dollars in market cap in a single day.
But the AI labs wriggled their way out of it back then. They managed to calm investors down: American models are still better, they said. They’d never cede the frontier to anyone, and they’d keep widening their lead over their Chinese rivals.Then came Kimi K3, an open-weight model. Another shock, and almost the same dose of sedatives. Plus a campaign to scare the public: models like this, we were told, would let bad actors build agents capable of wreaking havoc on a civilizational scale.
But now this whole line of argument is falling apart before our eyes. The problem has suddenly surfaced from inside the American AI industry itself.
(Sergey Cleftsow @ Medium more…)Elizabeth Dias @ NY Times:
Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious.
Kate Conger, Mike Isaac, Julian E. Barnes, David E. Sanger @ NY Times:
Anthropic Agents Tried to Fill Out Visa Forms on State Dept. WebsiteThe Philadelphia Police Department said the agents had also sent in a false homicide tip.
-
Joyce Vance:
Can the Sherman Act Be Used To Silence the Press?Apparently, Trump’s DOJ thinks so.
-
Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – October 10, 2026So now, after more than a decade of pretending that he is not associated with Russia and that he would honor the U.S. national security position of support for Ukraine and our European allies, Trump is openly backing Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.
…… at this point, how much more evidence is necessary to assess that Trump has undermined U.S. national security and is working for Russia? And how much longer will Republicans in Congress continue to protect him as he does it?
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
ICE Detention Expansion Tracker
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
Leave a Reply