curated citations to news sources
2024 Derek Hunter: Kamala’s newest lie: Trump will send the army after you
… So now we have another lie: the “enemy within” lie. This is a 33-second clip of an interview Trump did with Maria Bartiromo. It started circulating Monday in left-wing circles with the claim that, were he reelected, he would consider using the military against his political opponents.
(2024 Derek Hunter more…)
Bulwark: Understanding Trump’s Pivot to “Crime”
Where does Kamala Harris go to get her apology?
NY Times: Trump Says Having ‘a Little Fight With the Wife’ Should Not Count as a Crime
President Trump said that offenses that happen at home should not undermine his record of crime reduction in Washington.
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“Just a casual dismissal of domestic violence as a crime,” Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican political strategist, wrote on social media.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 8, 2025
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The administration appears to be in a rush to replace democracy with a dictatorship before the whole administration collapses. On Saturday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that 46% of Americans—almost half of them—“strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president while only 24% “strongly approve, a 22% enthusiasm gap.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Jennifer Rubin: The military is not a cereal box to be ‘rebranded’
The legacy media don’t get it. Just because Donald Trump barks out an executive decree does not mean it is the law of the land. When he insisted that the Defense Department would be renamed the Department of War, far too many headlines suggested that it was a done deal. The irresponsible, frankly unserious, billionaire-owned media calls this “rebranding,” as if a Cabinet agency is a cereal box.
The Defense Department is not a “brand,” and treating it as such insults the men and women who serve. In the real world, Trump does not get to name and rename entities established by law. In this case, the Department of Defense was created by statute in 1947 along with the CIA and the National Security Council.
“The War Department and Navy Department merged into a single Department of Defense under the Secretary of Defense, who also directed the newly created Department of the Air Force.”No wonder military personnel are flummoxed. Politico reported, “Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.”
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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Bill McKibben: America: A (Fracked) Gas Station With Nukes
One part of the Trump plot to wreck America gets clearer
Way back in January of 2015, six months before Trump began America’s escalator-like descent, Senator John McCain of Arizona took to the floor of the Senate to describe Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country.” He was responding to the invasion of Crimea, and demanding the U.S. stand up to Moscow; within a few weeks others has shortened his bon mot to “gas station with nukes.” It hit at an essential truth: Russia, for all its size and might, hadn’t developed much of anything in recent decades; Vladimir Putin survived by pumping gas to the rest of the world, resting on the weapons his Soviet predecessors had bequeathed him.Eight months into the second Trump administration, what are we? The president and his minions have been enriching themselves, and doing it by stripping the state that better women and men had built in the decades before. Our scientific and medical prowess? Our great universities? Our shared culture, from public broadcasting to the NEA to the Kennedy Center? Even our history, as the Smithsonian comes under attack. But we still have a lot of fracked gas, dammit! And—viewed one way—much of what they’ve been doing seems designed to insure that fracked gas will be our central legacy.
(Bill McKibben more…)
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Boing Boing: SCOTUS approves racism as “reasonable suspicion” for immigration raids
NY Times: The Supreme Court Decision on ICE and Racial Profiling, Explained
The ruling allowed immigration agents to stop people for reasons that lower courts had deemed likely unconstitutional.
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James Eagle: The world’s central bankers are trapped
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This is the killer chart not because it shows what will happen, but because it reveals what must happen if the whole edifice isn’t to collapse. These aren’t forecasts; they’re prayers. Prayers that every central bank will cut rates just enough to keep their governments solvent, but not so much that inflation roars back.
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(James Eagle more…)
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404 Media: ‘It’s Just a Mess:’ 23 People Explain How Tariffs Have Suddenly Ruined Their Hobby
“The real kick in the teeth is no matter how much manufacturing is brought back to the US these items will never be made in the USA. There is no upside.”
… Customers are also learning that they are not only responsible for the tariff on any given item, but they are also responsible for the “brokerage fees” charged by UPS and FedEx, which is a customs-clearance processing fee associated with international packages.
(404 Media more…)
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Your Local Epidemiologist: Covid-19 state vaccine access, flu on the horizon, grandparents to the rescue, Florida’s school requirement rollback, food safety cuts, and more
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Search Engine Roundtable: New Google Court Doc: Open Web Is In Rapid Decline
(Search Engine Roundtable more…)
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Bulwark: Yet ANOTHER Right-Wing Payola Media Scandal!
This time, the allegations involve paying influencers to post positively about India, a country increasingly in MAGA’s crosshairs.
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Kareem’s Daily Quote
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People demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), existentialist philosopher
(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar more…)
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Intercept: This Imam Refused to Be an FBI Informant. Now ICE Wants to Deport Him.
Foad Farahi resisted the FBI for two decades. Then the Trump administration rounded him up.
(Intercept more…)
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WSJ: Epstein Birthday Letter With Trump’s Signature Revealed
The 2003 birthday book also includes a letter that references Trump with a crude joke about a woman from another Epstein associate
NY Times: Trump Says It’s Not His Signature. But Personal Letters Look Similar.
CNN: Trump’s Epstein letter denial just suffered another huge blow
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The key fact here is that this comes from Epstein’s estate. In other words, for this letter to have been fake, someone would have had to plant it in Epstein’s possessions a long time ago, somehow.Jason Easley: Mike Johnson Humiliates Himself And Walks Back Trump Epstein Informant Claim
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to walk back his absurd claim that Trump was an Epstein informant while talking to reporters on Monday.
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Borowitz: Trump Furious at Having to Pay All His Hard-earned Bribes to E. Jean Carroll
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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