curated citations to news sources
Jay Kuo: It Really Is A Cover Up
A memo from the Justice Department reopens claims that it’s hiding the truth to protect powerful people.
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One thing has always piqued my curiosity, though. Donald Trump’s name appears multiple times on Epstein’s call and flight logs. He was friends with Epstein for a long time before distancing himself. Trump himself has a public history of sexual assault, and there are credible allegations of rape of a minor against Trump and Epstein together.
So how would the White House handle all the potential evidence once Trump was back in office?
It turns out, by issuing a quite unbelievable and outright denial, and seeking to close the case forever. Maybe they haven’t heard of the Streisand Effect, which says a cover-up only increases the visibility of the thing you don’t want people to talk about.
(Jay Kuo more…)
emptywheel: Pam Bondi Admits She Must Fire Kash Patel and Dan Bongino
Bulwark: MAGA World’s Mega Meltdown Over Latest Epstein Flop
The online right wants the attorney general fired after being told that the disgraced sex trafficker did not, in fact, have a client list.
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Marisa Kabas: FEMA response to deadly Texas floods delayed & deficient with Noem in charge
Staffers sound the alarm.
TNR: Democrats Should Say Who’s Really to Blame for the Flooding [response] in Texas
Republican lawmakers have Texan children’s blood on their hands. Democrats shouldn’t let anyone forget it.
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The Texas Tribune further reports that the state’s Republican-controlled legislature rejected a bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve Texas’s disaster response infrastructure, upgrading alert systems and providing grants for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment, including “outdoor warning sirens” that could have saved lives lost over the weekend. State Representative Wes Virdill—whose district includes the worst-hit areas, in Kerr County—voted against the bill. He told the Tribune that he couldn’t recall the specifics of the bill or why he opposed it, guessing that it “had to do with how much funding” was tied to the measure.Daily Beast: Vacationing Cruz’s Claim He Returned to Texas as ‘Fast as Humanly Possible’ Crumbles
ACROPOL-OOPS
Cruz says he returned to Texas as quickly as he could after news of devastating floods broke. Flight data tells a different story.
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Your Local Epidemiologist: Measles reaches highest number since elimination. Start of a Covid wave? Incoming Medicaid cuts, GAVI, and some good news
(Your Local Epidemiologist more…)
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Dan Rather and Team Steady: Don’t Take Advice From This Guy
Why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is bad for your health
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 7, 2025
At about 10:30 this morning local time, heavily armed masked agents in trucks, armored vehicles, a helicopter, on foot, and on horseback, accompanied by a gun mounted on a truck raided the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. Journalist Mel Buer reported that agents from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the National Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brought what he called a “massive federal presence.”
Fox News Channel personnel were embedded with the raiders and broadcast throughout the operation, suggesting that it was designed for the media as a show of force to intimidate opponents. CBP brought its own press team, and its people were also taking photos of bystanders. After Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass arrived and spoke with Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, the agents left. It is not clear that there was a specific target for the raid, or that anyone was arrested.
Later, Bovino told Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Ken Klippenstein: Operation Excalibur in Los Angeles Was Show of Force
Leaks from military’s LA deployment reveal Coca Cola vs. Pepsi rivalry, sweaty guardsmen, and abject failure
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The news media is describing the operation as an ominous crackdown, but National Guard sources tell me that it was a botched laughingstock. The military aspect of the operation, codenamed Operation Excalibur, has not been previously reported.The documents reveal that the erstwhile justification for the operation was to try to shut down the distribution of fake IDs. …
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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Jennifer Rubin: Words & Phrases We Can Do Without
DHS is a human rights monstrosity
The Department of Homeland Security sounds so innocuous. Who could be opposed to affording America “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” as Merriam-Webster defines “security”? Surely we do not want to deprive Americans of “measures taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or escape,” and/or deny them “the state of being able to reliably afford or access what is needed to meet one’s basic needs,” (two other definitions of “security.”)
But in its current incarnation, the Department of Homeland Security is providing precisely none of those things. It is provoking fear and anxiety among immigrants (legal or undocumented) and even native-born citizens. It has ceased to focus on protecting Americans from criminals or espionage (more than 93 percent of whom have never been convicted of any violent offense, while 65 percent have no convictions whatsoever). Instead, masked, unidentified shock troops have been regularly attacking hard-working immigrants or just those they assume are immigrants, mistakenly seizing citizens, and shipping them off to foreign hellholes or unsafe domestic camps. Depriving suspected undocumented migrants of dignity, due process, and humane treatment, conducting violent intrusions into workplaces, schools, and courtrooms, and creating labor and food scarcity as workers disappear, DHS has become a menace to public safety.The Los Angeles Times reports:
Masked, unidentified agents have been “systematically” cornering brown-skinned people in a show of force across Southern California, tackling those who attempt to leave, arresting them without probable cause and then placing them in “dungeon-like” conditions without access to lawyers, a federal lawsuit alleges.
TNR: Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Awkward Truth about ICE as MAGA Seethes
As Trump angers MAGA personalities by vowing to suspend deportations of farmworkers, a journalist who covers ICE explains how he accidentally revealed the deep unpopularity and unworkability of his own agenda.
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LAWdork: Bombshell report alleges El Salvador disclaimed responsibility for those U.S. sent to CECOT
Challengers filed the document, from a U.N. investigation, in court on Monday. An update on the rule of law: Alien Enemies Act, birthright citizenship, and law firm litigation.
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In the filing, those challenging the administration asserted that officials from El Salvador told the United Nations that it “facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure” by the U.S. but that that “jurisdiction and legal responsibility” for those sent there remains “exclusively” with the U.S. (Much more on that below.)
(LAWdork more…)
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Sarah Jones & Jason Easley: Lawrence O’Donnell Calls Out Melania Trump’s Immigration Status
Lawrence O’Donnell said that people are being arrested and deported for using the same way that Melania Trump came into the United States.
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Dean Blundell: “Dear Mr. Japan…”: Trump’s Tariff Letter Threat Writing Campaign Is Copy-And-Paste Comedy For The Ages
14 Countries. 1 Copy-Paste letter. 34 grammatical errors. Zero Deals.
(Dean Blundell more…)Daily Beast: Trump’s Embarrassing Typo in Tariff Letter to World Leader
AWKWARD
The letter featuring the typo was reissued after it was criticized online.
…It didn’t go quite to plan. Despite correctly referring to Željka Cvijanović, the Chairwoman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina as “Her Excellency,” the letter to her begins with “Dear Mr President.”
The post was later replaced with a letter that began “Dear Madam President.”
Daily Beast: Lawrence O’Donnell Calls Out the Major ‘Lie’ in ‘Spoiled Brat’ Trump’s Threat Letters
GAME OF CHARADES
The president sent out a dozen warning letters to countries to encourage trade deals—with a “fake” deadline, the MSNBC host said.
…His main issue, though, was the fact that the deadline was “fake.” In fact, the whole charade is artificial, according to O’Donnell.
“It’s all fake. There’s no deadline. It’s a self-imposed landmark in this theatrical show, and that’s where we are,” he raged.
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James Eagle: Trade policy uncertainty continues
(James Eagle more…)
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Gideon M-K: Health Nerd: Pandemic Revisionism, Part One: COVID-19 Origins
Because people keep getting this very wrong.
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Let’s go from least to most likely.Theory 1: China Created COVID-19
My Rating For Possibility: <1/100The first theory is the one currently accepted by the United States government under the Trump administration as truth. You can find the propaganda site online if you want, I’m not going to link to it.
…Theory 2: A Big Accident
My Rating For Possibility: 5/100
…The main issue with this theory is that it is actually really hard to get infected with a virus while working in a lab. The biggest challenge with working on pathogens is generally keeping them alive. I had a friend in university who lost 6 months of his PhD because one outlet for water in their lab had the wrong piping installed and it kept contaminating his pathogen samples and killing them.
…Theory 3: Zoonosis
My Rating For Possibility: 95/100Zoonosis is the process of a disease spreading from an animal source to humans. It’s a natural process that is behind many of our infectious diseases, including everything from rabies to influenza. It happens all the time. Unlike lab leaks, which only happen once or twice a decade despite the millions of researchers working with live viruses all across the world, zoonotic outbreaks occur hundreds if not thousands of times a year.
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What I like to focus on is the evidence. And the evidence, to me, is convincing that the pandemic started at the Huanan market in November 2019. There is strong data showing that this was the original source of the COVID-19 outbreak that went on to infect the world. Given the facts as they stand, this makes zoonosis by far the mostly likely explanation.
…But the problem is, both explanations for the origins of COVID-19 are terrible for the Chinese government. A lab leak is bad, obviously, but so is a zoonotic event at a wet market. Wet markets are very common in the country, and the Chinese government was aware well before 2019 that they posed a risk of causing pandemics. They had even committed to taking steps to making these markets safer to prevent exactly the sort of outbreak that we saw in the Huanan market.
That’s why official Chinese government sources have spread theories that the virus was created by the USA, or that it was imported from another country in frozen food. Chinese officials aren’t keen on any explanation that makes the government look bad, and zoonosis is almost as problematic as a lab leak in that respect.
(Gideon M-K: Health Nerd more…)
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Daily Beast: Trump Makes Stunning Reversal After Humiliating Phone Call With Putin
SO MANY PEOPLE DYING
The U.S. will now send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after they were halted by Pete Hegseth.AXIOS: Inside Trump’s Patriot missile plans for Ukraine
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National Memo: Bessent Blames Democrats For 2020 Deficit (When Trump Was President)
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Borowitz: DOJ Finds Man in Photo with Epstein was Actually Biden
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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