Daily Beast: RFK Jr.’s Wish Is Coming True: Everybody’s Getting Measles

RFK Jr.’s vision for America is rapidly becoming reality, with the number of measles cases skyrocketing across the country, bringing the number of confirmed cases to a total of 884.

Just last month, the Health and Human Services Secretary appeared to argue in an interview with Sean Hannity that natural immunity was the best defense against the highly infectious disease. In other words, Kennedy believes that it would be great if everyone got measles.

(Daily Beast more…)

Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID & Health News, 4/27/25

Stat: New England Journal of Medicine gets swept up in U.S. attorney inquiry into alleged bias

Targeting of prestigious publication — and perhaps others — could signal a coming clash between journals and the Trump administration

• Conversation: 50 years later, Vietnam’s environment still bears the scars of war – and signals a dark future for Gaza and Ukraine

  
  
  
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  Dean Blundell: Zelensky Ambushed Trump at the Pope’s Funeral, Holds ALL the “Cards”

  
  
  
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• Closer to the Edge: The Trial of Mohsen Mahdawi

  Mohsen Mahdawi didn’t show up to start a fight. He showed up to swear allegiance. A decade of lawful residence, a future of service and study, and a belief—still somehow intact—that America meant what it said about freedom.
  

  
  
  
  ICE was waiting to prove him wrong.

  On April 14, 2025, at a citizenship interview in Colchester, Vermont, Mahdawi was arrested without warning and hauled into detention at Northwest State Correctional Facility. Not for committing any crime. Not for breaking any law. But because powerful men found his voice inconvenient.
  (Closer to the Edge more…)

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• TechDirt: Government Actually Threatens Wikipedia’s Editorial Freedom; Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warriors Suddenly Have Other Plans

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• Daily Progress: ICE promises bystanders who challenged Charlottesville raid will be prosecuted

  After ICE raided a downtown Charlottesville courthouse and arrested two men, the federal agency is promising to prosecute the bystanders who challenged their authority.

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• Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 27, 2025

  Last night a new club opened in the wealthy Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It’s called “Executive Branch,” and it’s an invitation-only club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and megadonor Omeed Malik. Dasha Burns of Politico reported that it costs more than half a million dollars to join. The exclusive club is designed to allow top business executives to talk privately with Trump advisors and cabinet members. Burns reports that the club already has a waiting list.

  When then-candidate Donald Trump celebrated the administration of President William McKinley, it was always clear he saw it as the triumphant marriage of the very rich to the U.S. government. It was the era of so-called robber barons, industrialists and financiers who flooded political campaigns with money to convince voters that those trying to rein them in were socialists or anarchists, then called upon the politicians they put into power to pass laws that benefited their businesses.
  (Heather Cox Richardson more…)

  Judd Legum: An unprecedented scheme to profit from the presidency

  Adam Kinzinger: The Court of King Trump

  How a President Turns Petitioners into Subjects — and America into a Palace of Favor and Fear

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• Wired: Donald Trump Is Already Ruining Christmas

  Santa’s helpers are freaking out that steep tariffs on Chinese imports will prevent toys, trees, and decorations from arriving in the US on time for the December holiday.

  Guardian: Trump tariffs prompt slump in shipments to US ports

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  In the latest sign of the US president’s tariff policies rattling the economy, figures show the number of vessels scheduled to arrive at the Port of Los Angeles next week is down by almost a third on the same period a year earlier.

  Moneywise: ‘We want them back desperately’: US border communities losing millions in sales tax revenue as Canadian shoppers avoid US travel due to Trump’s tariffs and ’51st state’ rhetoric

  Bloomberg: Cutting Off Chinese Companies Risks a US Policy Own Goal

  The US banned Huawei. Now it’s a bigger threat than ever.

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• TNR: Trump Treasury Sec. Rushes to Explain How Many Trade Deals He’s Made

  It sounds like Donald Trump has yet to make a single deal.

  Daily Mail: Massive blow to Trump as Japanese car giant moves manufacturing OUT of US in tariff twist

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• NY Times: New Details Emerge on Trump Officials’ Sprint to Gut Consumer Bureau Staff

  Emails and testimonials from workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau document the administration’s efforts to lay off 90 percent of the employees.
  

  
  
  
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  Judge Jackson halted the planned firings less than a day after the notices went out, saying that they went far beyond what the appeals court had allowed. Starting Tuesday, she will hold a two-day hearing to take witness testimony and decide whether to extend her order blocking the firings.
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  … Russell Vought, the White House budget office director who also serves as the bureau’s acting director, has called the bureau a “woke and weaponized” agency.
  (NY Times more…)

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• Register: DOGE may help Elon Musk’s biz empire dodge $2.4B in liabilities – Senate probe

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• Christina Pagel: Warning signs realised: Trump’s war on science and the fight to save American academia

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  We are now almost 100 days in and almost all the warning signs are happening. Key parts of US science are toppling. Since 8 March 2025, I’ve mapped another 51 actions attacking science and universities. All actions are available here (worksheet “Science Venn Diagram”) and a high resolution PDF of the Venn Diagram is here.
  

  
  
  
  (Christina Pagel more…)

  WSJ: Elite Universities Form Private Collective to Resist Trump Administration

  Separate from public dissent, group of school leaders strategize behind scenes about how to respond and push back against White House

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• Bulwark: Inside the Democrats’ Attempts to Stave Off Financial Death

  Major efforts are underway to plan for Trump killing the party’s main online giving platform, even as the committees rush to defend it.
  

  
  
  
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• Mary Geddry: The Summer Showdown: Trump’s Deportation Machine Faces a Supreme Court Reckoning

  Armed with fresh precedent, the ACLU demands justice for hundreds secretly deported under Trump’s phony “war” powers, and the courts are running out of excuses.

  After two brutal court losses, one from the Supreme Court itself, and one from the Fourth Circuit, the Trump administration now faces a new front in the legal war over its midnight deportations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed an amended class action lawsuit before Judge Jeb Boasberg in D.C., directly connecting the government’s unconstitutional actions against Abrego Garcia to the broader pattern of deporting at least 137 individuals without notice, due process, or access to the courts.

  What makes this move so shrewd is that the ACLU is seizing on the Supreme Court’s recent rulings, using the very language the Court demanded in Abrego Garcia: writs of habeas corpus, due process rights, and the government’s obligation to “facilitate the return” of wrongfully deported individuals.

  In other words, precedent is now on their side, and they’re hammering it.
  (Mary Geddry more…)

  Slate: The Clever Court Ploy That Could Force Trump’s El Salvador Scheme to a Head

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• Guardian: India test-fires missiles as tensions rise with Pakistan after Kashmir attack

  Indian navy showcases its strike capability, while Pakistani minister says nuclear weapons ‘are targeted at you’

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• NY Times: Rough Night for Republican at Town Hall in N.Y. Swing District

  Representative Mike Lawler faced shouts, groans and mockery at a high school auditorium in Rockland County.

  Steven Beschloss: Snapshot: Most Americans Can’t Stand Trump and His Policies

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  Yes. the polls do confirm that most Americans grasp that America is in serious trouble with Trump in the Oval Office. But I remain steadfast that it will take dedicated advocates of democracy and the rule of law—in the courts, government, media and millions of everyday Americans expressing themselves—to stem this rising tyranny.

  John Povlovitz: Do Americans Have What It Takes to Stop Fascism? We’re About to Find Out.

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• Noah Berlatsky: Did Trump Voters Want This?

  The answer isn’t “no.”
  

  
  
  
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  Trump is a very bad politician, which means, among other things, that he doesn’t really know what voters expect of him (because he doesn’t listen to them at all) and is in any case incapable of paying attention to policy in enough detail to even attempt to give voters what they want. In that context, I think it is the case that there are some policies and initiatives which Trump voters really did not vote for and can say with a fairly clear conscience that they did not want.
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  And some things they did
  (Noah Berlatsky more…)

  Dean Blundell: Trump’s Plea to Canadians: “Vote For Pierre Poilievre Today and Surrender To Me!”

  Raw Story: ‘A failed administration’: Leaked texts from powerful Republicans reveal souring on Trump

  Verge: How Marc Andreessen’s Signal group chats helped spawn the tech right

  Dean Blundell: A Couple of Russian Spies Arrested in Germany With US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Personal Phone Number

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• Lisa Needham: Arresting judges is a 5-alarm escalation

  
  
  
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  Jay Kuo: Coming for the Judges

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  In reading the allegations, one of the first things that jumped out at me was that I.C.E. showed up in Judge Dugan’s court with an “administrative warrant” for Flores-Ruiz. That means an immigration officer signed it. It’s not the same as a “judicial warrant” signed by a fellow judge, which allows for the arrest of a suspect anywhere.

  Why does this matter? For starters, administrative warrants don’t grant agents a right to enter private spaces. They must remain in public ones. They also don’t allow them to demand compliance from other officers of the law. And they don’t even necessarily mean a subject is charged with a crime.

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• Jess Piper: Child Brides and a Baby Bonus

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• articulo66: El Papa Francisco murió con de 100 dólares en su poder ¿De cuánto era su salario? ¿Qué pasó con su herencia?

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• Malwarebytes: All Gmail users at risk from clever replay attack

  
  
  
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