curated news excerpts & citations
Joyce Vance: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come
“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.
Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”
That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” …
(Joyce Vance more…)
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Mary Geddry: No Quarter: The Collapse of Competence in Trump’s America
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Adam Kinzinger, in an emergency video that should be required viewing for every American who thinks “toughness” means murdering drowning men, laid it out with military bluntness: This is the moral equivalent of shooting prisoners. It’s the kind of thing the U.S. condemned as a capital offense at Nuremberg.
…And finally, because every collapsing republic eventually finds itself run by a rogue’s gallery of people who think diplomacy is just real estate with better wallpaper, we turn to Trump’s “peace plan” for Ukraine — a plan so amateurish that European diplomats are reportedly walking around muttering in multiple languages.
The latest proposal, drafted by developer Steve Witkoff and delivered with Jared Kushner’s signature brand of geopolitical derangement, would offer Russia what it has always wanted: U.S. recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as Russian territory. All of it, carved up like a foreclosure sale.
…So when Trump now sends Kushner and Witkoff to Moscow with a “peace plan” that rewards Putin with the territorial jackpot he’s been craving for a decade, it doesn’t read like statesmanship. It reads like a debtor settling a tab.
This is why Angus’ final line lands like a hammer:
“Trump is a construct, a product of Russian money and Russian influence. Fiction rested on fiction. A winner built to make his country lose.”
Which brings us back to Ukraine. Trump isn’t negotiating a peace plan. He’s delivering an invoice. The amateurs aren’t in charge because America ran out of experts, they’re in charge because the experts know too much.
(Mary Geddry more…)Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – November 30, 2025
On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. …
…“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
On ABC’s This Week this morning, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said to host Jonathan Karl: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
…In 1932, in a similar time of political realignment, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt attracted voters across the political spectrum when he promised “a new deal for the American people,” with “more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth.” “Let us…constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage,” he told the delegates to the Democratic National Convention when he accepted its nomination for president. “This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Miami Herald: White House gives Maduro ultimatum as U.S. moves toward land operations
As Washington prepares to launch land attacks inside Venezuela, a long-awaited phone call between the White House and Caracas aimed at defusing the crisis carried a blunt message for strongman Nicolás Maduro: You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now, sources familiar with the exchange told the Miami Herald.
(Miami Herald more…)
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Quanta: How Soon Will the Seas Rise?
The uniquely vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 5 meters. But when that will happen — and how fast — is anything but settled.
(Quanta more…)
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Hans Christensen: Swiss Renew Attempt at Universal Income
Jess Piper: The Goodies
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From The Rich Are Hoarding Wealth — Because They Know What’s Coming:Let’s cut through the noise: the ultra-wealthy are not just accumulating wealth; they are hoarding it, stockpiling fortunes at a rate so obscene it makes the concept of money itself feel ridiculous. While the rest of us get lectured on cutting back — drive less, eat less meat, recycle, make do with less — they are securing their bunkers, buying up remote islands, and building escape plans for the very collapse they are accelerating.
The billionaires and the corporations are taking all of the goodies. And they are doing it at a quick pace. From land to homes to wages. They are selfishly keeping all the good things for themselves.
(Jess Piper more…)
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Wired: The Rare Earth Metal Driving Tensions Between the US and China
Yttrium plays a critical role in everything from aircraft engines to semiconductors. China controls the vast majority of the market—and that’s not changing anytime soon.
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Dylan Patel, Steven Lee, and Jeff Koch: TSMC Overseas Fabs – A Success?
Why Morris Chang Said U.S. Fabs Will Fail, Wafer Cost and Economics of Taiwan vs. U.S. Fabs, TSMC Supply Chain Details
Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump called TSMC “one of the most important businesses in the world.” Although he was incorrect, TSMC is the most important business in the world, his government and others do realize the importance of bringing TSMC into their countries.
(Dylan Patel, Steven Lee, and Jeff Koch more…)
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Brian Allen: The Great American Selloff: How the Trump Administration Turned Public Art Into Private Loot
There is a quiet theft happening in Washington. No flashing lights. No sirens. No dramatic footage of agents sprinting across a lawn. This one is slower. Quieter. The kind of theft that happens when a government stops believing it owes anything to the people who built it.
(Brian Allen more…)
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Daily Beast: Convicted Fraudster Trump, 79, Frees Man Convicted of $1.6B Fraud
PEAS IN A POD
David Gentile, who scammed thousands of “hardworking, everyday people,” had served less than two weeks of a seven-year sentence.
(Daily Beast more…)
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Adam Unikowsky: Inverse Critical Race Theory
Why did Texas redistrict?
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yahoo!news: The campaign to make Richard Nixon great again
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Bulwark: Steve Bannon Was Epstein’s Comeback Consultant. Where’s the Uproar?
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
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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