curated citations to news sources
Wired: US Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill
The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the US will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at least $34.8 billion a year.
(Wired more…)
Robert Reich: We’re Paying Big Oil to Kill the Earth
Combine political corruption with climate-change denial and what do you get? Trump’s love affair with Big Oil
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 9, 2025
…Examining the administration’s strike against a small vessel in the Caribbean last week, Duffy warned that “[t]he United States has crossed a dangerous line” into “lawless power,” operating without regard to the law.
Duffy reminded readers of the Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Donald J. Trump v. United States that the president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while exercising official duties. At the time, he notes, experts warned that the decision would “give the commander-in-chief license to commit murder,” but a majority of the court waved those concerns away. “Now,” he writes, “the president has ordered killings in international waters. Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat. The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will face no consequences.”
“This is no longer abstract,” Duffy writes. “The law has been rewritten in real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not strength. That is authoritarianism.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Al Jazeera: Hamas leaders survive Israeli strike on Qatar; US denies involvement
The United States claims it was not involved in the Israeli attack targeting top Hamas officials in Doha. Hamas says the leaders survived. Qatar says it was only informed as the strikes took place and has strongly condemned the violation of its sovereignty.
Times of Israel: Algeria asks UN Security Council to meet after Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar
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Jennifer Rubin: How to Exploit Trump’s Weaknesses
Donald Trump is as destructive as ever, simultaneously wrecking the world trading system and American economy, abusing his power as commander in chief, and doing generational damage to American institutions. But his frequent court defeats and notable political blunders suggest he remains vulnerable, especially when he and his radical appointees appear to be convinced of their invincibility. Two recent incidents illustrate what happens when Trump and his minions lose even the veneer of sanity.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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Noah Berlatsky: Demand the Head of RFK
A (maybe) winnable ask for a budget compromise
Bulwark: If the Government Shuts Down, Obamacare Will Be Why
The clock is ticking to avert a big rise in health care costs.
Jason Easley: House Democrats Are Right To Demand That Schumer Shut Down The Government
Democrats in the House are demanding that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer commit to shutting down the government unless Medicaid and Obamacare cuts are repealed.
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Liz Dye: Brett Kavanaugh explains that SCOTUS really IS doing racism
NY Times: ‘We All Thought the Raids Were Over’: Fears Return for Immigrants in L.A.
Los Angeles residents are anxious once again following a Supreme Court ruling that allowed aggressive immigration raids to resume.
(NY Times more…)
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Dean Blundell: Trump’s “DC Is Safe Now” Dinner Photo Op Went Horribly Wrong Last Night
- Trump staged a dinner at Joe’s Seafood to sell “safety” in D.C.;
- protesters and some patrons answered with chants—most loudly “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”—while others countered with “U‑S‑A,” turning a soft‑focus PR walk‑through into loud, viral content.
(Dean Blundell more…)Mary Geddry: The Strongman Who Isn’t
Trump is silenced by boos, outmaneuvered by allies, ignored by enemies, and left watching the world stage slip away.
Daily Beast: MAGA Melts Down at Secret Service Over Trump’s Humiliating Dinner
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CNN: Florida’s surgeon general said he didn’t calculate the costs of ending vaccine mandates in the state. But scientists have.
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Jason Easley: Study Finds Trump To Cause Income To Drop For 99% Of Americans
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Democracy Docket: Missouri House Gives Preliminary Approval to GOP Gerrymander, Ballot Initiative Attack
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Politico: Apple is teaching its artificial intelligence to adapt to the Trump era
Apple policy documents enacted by a subcontractor show how the company shifted its approach to fine-tuning its AI in March, two months after the U.S. president was inaugurated.
Two months after Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down at Donald Trump’s inauguration, several hundred employees at an Apple subcontractor in Barcelona received a new memo.The memo — in the form of fresh guidelines on how to talk to and evaluate answers from Apple’s upcoming new artificial intelligence model — appeared to have been retooled following Trump’s return to the White House, according to POLITICO’s review of the guidelines and interviews with two data annotators working on the effort.
(Politico more…)Lucian K. Truscott IV: Why artificial intelligence will not take over the world
James Eagle: AI could cause a white collar ice age
We’re witnessing a catastrophic false economy being created right before our eyes. Companies are freezing graduate hiring while waiting for AI productivity gains that haven’t materialised yet. Nevertheless, half of UK firms plan to shift spending from staff to AI systems. This is happening, it is very real, and quite frankly, it’s frightening.
(James Eagle more…)
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Jason Easley: Mike Johnson Begs Democrats To Invite Trump To Invade Their Cities
With more than a hint of desperation, Speaker Mike Johnson told Democratic mayors to invite Trump to invade their cities.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 9, 2025
As Joe Perticone outlines in The Bulwark today, Republican lawmakers are greeting the release of the lewd letter in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book depicting the outline of a child and apparently signed by Donald Trump either by saying they don’t care or by denying the signature is Trump’s. For this to be true, someone would have had to have slipped the letter into the book when it was bound in leather in 2003, a story that makes no sense at all. But, as J.V. Last of The Bulwark notes, Trump and his loyalists, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, are insisting the letter is a hoax.
Last speculates this is the route they’re taking because claiming proof that Russian operatives worked to elect Trump in 2016 was a “hoax” mostly worked, because claiming the letter is a hoax is a loyalty test, or because Trump knows what else is out there and is setting a marker to declare any more revelations a lie.
Or, perhaps, all three.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Dean Obeidallah: The birthday card confirms this: Trump and Epstein were in love.
Donald Trump was not just a close friend of child rapist Jeffrey Epstein. They were in love.
I do not mean they had a sexual relationship. But what we’ve learned over the past week from the Trump written birthday card, the brave words of the Epstein survivors together with facts we already knew, these two men were the kind of very close friends who shared everything. And that makes sense given they had so much in common.
That is why it’s simply impossible to believe Trump did not know what Epstein was up to with his sex ring—and increasingly difficult to believe Trump was not involved.
(Dean Obeidallah more…)
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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