curated citations to news sources
Mindy Belz: Afghans go home
Protection anywhere for those forced to flee a Taliban takeover is in doubt
Afghans who escaped the fall of Kabul in 2021 aboard U.S. evacuation flights appear likely to be forcibly sent back to Afghanistan this weekend from a military facility in the United Arab Emirates.
On Wednesday officials at the Emirates Humanitarian City (EHC) outside Abu Dhabi confiscated passports for 32 Afghans who remain there. They include Afghans who worked for the U.S. military plus women and children. Since their arrivals almost four years ago, Emirati officials prohibited them from leaving the sprawling facility, once home to more than 5,000 Afghan exiles who boarded U.S. flights from Kabul and other cities as part of a chaotic airlift that began in August 2021.
At one time State Department officers and humanitarian organizations had representatives to ensure their well-being pending approval for onward travel to the United States or other countries. But the Department of Homeland Security never showed up to adjudicate their cases, as promised, and U.S. diplomats pulled out long ago. The last NGO representatives from CARE left earlier this week.
(Mindy Belz more…)
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Dean Blundell: Trump Just Gutted America’s Anti-Trafficking Office While Calling the Epstein Files a “Hoax”
(Dean Blundell more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 18, 2025
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The Epstein story is about more than the sex trafficking of girls. It is also about rich and privileged people evading accountability for breaking the law. MAGA likely jumped on the story for both of these reasons when they thought a coverup was protecting Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites.But the story is also about a group of elite people who think they are better than the rest of us and have the right to dominate anyone that is not part of their group, particularly people of color, Black Americans, and women, no matter what the law says.
Journalist Fareed Zakaria called out that worldview today in a Washington Post story noting that for all their performative cruelty, Trump’s ICE raids have led to far fewer deportations than took place under Obama, and barely more than under Biden. ICE does not coordinate with local law enforcement, follow rules, or work with legal processing—all of which are necessary for an efficient process. The plan appears to be simply to create a spectacle that demonstrates power and dominance.
The latest step from the Justice Department in the case of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Louisville, Kentucky, woman killed during a botched police raid in 2020, reinforces that message. In 2024 a federal jury convicted former police officer Brett Hankison of depriving Taylor of her civil rights when he fired several shots into her home through a covered window and glass door. While his bullets were not the ones that killed Taylor, a jury decided that his blind firing constituted excessive force.
On Wednesday, assistant attorney general for the civil rights unit in the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist, asked a federal judge to sentence Hankison to a single day in jail, time he has already served.
Civil rights lawyer and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Sherrilyn Ifill wrote: “They mean to be as insulting to Black people, as dismissive of our lives, as [resistant] to our status as full citizens in this country as they can be.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Bulwark: Street Vendors Hit Hard by Trump’s Assault on L.A.
(Bulwark more…)
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ProPublica: Trump Administration Prepares to Drop Seven Major Housing Discrimination Cases
Federal housing officials spent years investigating cities from Chicago to Memphis to Corpus Christi for putting industrial plants and unwanted facilities in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods. Now, under Trump, the agency plans to drop the cases.
(ProPublica more…)
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Hill: Durbin: FBI agents were told to ‘flag’ Epstein records that mentioned Trump
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he has received information that Attorney General Pam Bondi “pressured” about 1,000 FBI personnel to comb through tens of thousands of pages of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and flag any mention of President Trump.
Durbin made the explosive allegation in letters he sent Friday to Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino seeking more information about the administration’s handling of files related to Epstein and asking why senior officials were allegedly focused on looking for documents connecting Trump to Epstein.
Guardian: Trump vs Murdoch: why the Wall Street Journal isn’t toeing the line
The president is furious over the Epstein story – but the media mogul appears to be playing a longer game
NBC: Trump DOJ order on Jeffrey Epstein could create legal and ethical challenges
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Marvin Olasky: Should we care about the Trump-Epstein connection?
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Chuck Colson’s foreword to The American Leadership Tradition asked, “So what if what our leaders do in private disgusts or dismays us? What business is it of ours?’ Now Marvin Olasky challenges that notion with a serious work of historical scholarship…. His research should persuade even the most self-indulgent and permissive among us that it does matter for the common weal and even for national security whether high public officials lie as a matter of course or convenience, whether they are faithful to their wives or prone to sexual adventurism.”
(Marvin Olasky more…)
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emptywheel: Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Kash Patel of Covering Up for the Obama Deep State
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arsTECHNICA: Trump to sign stablecoin bill that may make it easier to bribe the president
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Bill Gates: What does the Stetson Hat have to do with Tuberculosis?
A book about tuberculosis, and everything else
(Bill Gates more…)
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Charlotte Clymer: The Inconvenient Faith of Stephen Colbert
The core of why Trump World hates him.
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That’s the political piece of all this, which, alone, is pretty disgusting, but there’s another aspect to why most Trump supporters generally don’t like Mr. Colbert, who is one of the most widely beloved people in all of entertainment.Part of the reason so many of these fools hate Stephen Colbert is that he lives his life as the faithful and humble Christian they constantly claim themselves to be but are too selfish and fearful to actually be.
(Charlotte Clymer more…)Borowitz: Trump Will Lose His War on Laughter
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Yesterday, Trump’s proxies at CBS dutifully canceled Colbert, issuing the following statement: “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”No offense to Colbert, but the funniest comedian at CBS is whoever wrote that statement. They might be the most hilarious words ever typed, with the possible exception of the phrase “Trump’s presidential library.”
(Borowitz more…)
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LA Times: What’s next for PBS and NPR after Republicans strip funding?
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Reuters: US EPA cutting workforce by 23%, closing research division
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WSJ: The Epic Battle for AI Talent—With Exploding Offers, Secret Deals and Tears
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NewsMax: Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Against Author Woodward
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David Lat: The Sean Combs Criminal Trial: An Inside Look
Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lead lawyer, discussed the defense strategy, why they didn’t put Combs on the stand, a possible appeal, and sentencing.
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Independent: Trump claims he never ‘wrote a picture.’ His sketchy Epstein lie has now been exposed
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In his 2010 book Trump Never Give Up, the president boasted, “Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green.”
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Marisa Kabas: What happened this week in non-Epstein news?
While MAGA melted down, mass deportation and government corruption stories proliferated.
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
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